IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (Planning Stage)

Assalamualaikum,

Recently, me & FF went to Jogja and posted a bunch of pictures on our Instagram. We were taken by surprise when a lot of our friends contacted us via whatsapp and FB (my FB) asking us about places we went to.

Although it wasn't the first time we were asked about our travels, but this time, the amount of people who asked about our Jogja trip is a lot more than we had experienced before. Apparently, many of our friends had Jogja for their upcoming travel destination.

FF had always love going to Indonesia ever since I brought him to Bali and then to Jakarta-Bandung and afterwards to Medan. The diversity of people and cultures, the lives they lead in the vast land of Indonesia appeals to him. So, going to Jogja was definitely on our plan.

One day, FF told me, "Cuti Chinese New Year book la pegi somewhere. Lama cuti, sia2 je tak pegi mana2." For FF's kinda work, he has more or less 2 weeks to go somewhere. But, it is after all CHINESE NEW YEAR. The flights to almost everywhere were crazily expensive! About RM1,400/person to Bali, RM2,000 if I'm not mistaken to Chiang Mai/Siem Reap/Korea/Japan. After many many time spent on tickets scouting, I found out that Lombok and Jogja are two places which has the most reasonable prices during CNY.

FF immediately agreed for Jogja. Why? Borobudur, enough said. My mom has been pushing us to go to Jogja. She knows that both FF and me love to explore a place with stories and she has been telling us to go there since long ago. And so, we booked the tickets to Jogjakarta. Air Asia. To be honest, I have always tried to steer away from AA. Because a lot of times I think the price is not that cheap after you add baggage and food etc. Trust me, Malindo is better value. Anyway, we took AirAsia because I have about 50,000 BIG points that I redeemed from my share tradings. My flight fare and our food were free. We only need to pay for FF's fare, the checked in baggage from Jogja and our airport taxes, about RM500+.

Note: In Jogjakarta, the bag system is pretty strict. The guards will make sure you have one hand carry and one small cabin bag going into the plane. If they suspect your bag is heavy, they will weigh your bag. I've read in other blogs about this too.

Naturally, after confirming, it's time to study where to go and most importantly, transportation. There is no Uber or Grab in Jogjakarta. Instead, they use Indonesia's most popular online rider app, Go.

In one application, there is everything. For cars, GoCar. Motorcycles, Gojek (widely use in Jakarta). Food, GoFood. And etc. But since we want to have our own supir, I use our best friend, Google. I got one from Google, one from Mom and one, while we were in Jogja. Standard price for car and driver in Jogja is 500k rupiah per day. Our supirs' names are Agung & Agus. Both has their own charm but I think we saved more with Agung, whereas Agus has more experience with foreigners.

In terms of knowing where to go and such, I've actually been following local travel sites for some time and already have in mind places that I want to go. Will be posting about the itinerary in the next post. Bear in mind, my itinerary is done to cater my wants and needs. I will tell you some sites that I did not go, but may interest you to go.

Follow my other Yogyakarta entries:
IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (Synopsis Itinerary)
IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (DAY 1)
IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (DAY 2 - BOROBUDUR)
IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (DAY 2 - GEREJA AYAM & MERAPI)
IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (DAY 3 - PRAMBANAN COMPLEX)
IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (DAY 4) - COMING SOON
IFTravels: YOGYAKARTA 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2017 (DAY 5) - COMING SOON