What not to do when travelling: On the Road Again

Nope, I'm not listening to Willie Nelson. I'm finally mobile again. I got my new ATM card and it's working, so I am able to be on my way. I came back to Indonesia to see a couple of people I met here the last time and because I wanted to have the chance to see a Buddhist temple called Borobudur. It's located near the city of Yogyakarta (which everyone seems to like to pronounce as Jogjakarta, or just Jogja for short), so with my new ATM card all settled in my waist pack, where it's less likely to be stolen, it's time to move on to Jogja. I considered flying. With so many discount airlines around southeast Asia, it is really cheap to just fly places. It's fast and costs almost no more than taking a train. But I wanted to see the countryside. I imagined it must be quite nice. So I headed over to the train station and bought a train ticket. I did go for the higher class train. It is warm here and the higher-class train has air-conditioning and is less likely to be overcrowded. (If I had gone for the really cheap train, then it would have been significantly cheaper than flying, but also might not have arrived, as they are notorious for breaking down and things like that. It's also the kind of train where they pack them on and people bring their livestock and may sit on top of the train, that kind of thing.)

Early on Tuesday morning, I headed over to the station to catch the train. It came in and I climbed on. And I was off. Despite it being the high-priced train, it still had windows that may or may not have been shot at, or had rocks thrown at them. The seats were nice, but the reclining feature was a bit dodgy. And when you went through to another car, there were spots where you could see through to the tracks. I don't think they were big enough to actually fall through, but you could see the tracks. And Indonesia is one of those places where you can just go and open the door while the train is moving and have a look outside as the countryside whips past. I did that so I could take some photos of the whizzing countryside, the towns we passed through, the farms and farmers, and the other pastoral scenery that went by.