Lessons learned

update: food and drink, rocks in your rice.

Visa
Pay to have it done, otherwise it is a bit time consuming and tricky.

Communication
Most people know enough English that you can probably muddle through so long as you are very patient and don't mind when you don't get what you expected.

Unlike India or China here the facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language is as we expect in the West.

All the folks we dealt with were extremely friendly.  During our 3-month journey we ran into some grumpy fundamentalists on a very few occasions and had no interaction with them at all.  Maybe just as well.

Learn to speak some Indonesian for the locals will appreciate that you want to try, at least yes, no, thank you, please, good morning, good night,...

Money
There are ATM's everywhere that will accept Visa and MasterCard, with English menu systems.  Look for those that issue 100k Rupiah notes, and withdraw the maximum, usually 200M, to reduce the cost of getting money.  We usually do two withdrawals of 200M, around $400USD, at a shot.  In Sarangan we had to take a taxi ride for a 10 minute ride to get to and ATM with small bills, but this situation is the only one we ran into where there was not an ATM within walking distance.

Carry some change in your pocket to give to street beggars in the small towns.  The locals do this too.

Expect to pay a bit more for stuff sometimes simply because you are a foreigner, but really you can afford it, and these folks can certainly use it.

Expenses in Indonesia will likely run 2 times your plan.  I'm pretty sure ours has.  Too much fun.

Accommodations
We avoided hotels catering to Westerners because they are so expensive, and more likely to get bombed.  The best deals are Homestays for in the neighborhood of $20USD/night or less including breakfast.  Don't expect everything to be fully operational.  Maybe the toilet won't flush right or there's a leaky sink drain, or the breakfast could have been better.  3 and 4-star hotels charge US rates room, food, and drink.  Book them online when possible.  Agoda (owned by Priceline) works well for this.
You can actually come into town with no reservations and have a cab driver take you around.  I took this approach in Bali.  There are at least 10 times the number of hotels than show up on the web.

Hygiene
Wash cloths do not exist.  Bring your own.  We bought a dust cloth at an Indomaret (local convenience chain) - works great.
Toilet paper is unlikely in public toilets.  Bring your own.
Napkins may not be available in restaurants.  Bring your own.
We carry a packet of tissues, always.
Laundry can usually be handled by the hotel/homestay.

Food and Drink
Bottled water is available everywhere, in little streetside stalls, everywhere.  Ice is made from bottles water, and everyone is aware we don't drink anything other than bottled or boiled water.

We still do not eat fresh vegetables, only cooked, just 'cause we're chicken.  I take it back, we did eat some tomato slices at a place in Yogya owned and run by an Ausie.

Almost forgot, Indonesians generally eat with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the left, picking at their food, examining it, deciding what piece to take next.  They are also looking for foreign matter.  Occasionally you will find a small rock in your rice.  Look and chew carefully.  During our 3 month stay I can recall maybe 2 or 3 instances for each of us.  Oh, I broke a tooth in Guam on some chicken sate that I killed on the grill at my sister's place. I got the tooth fixed in Madiun, Indonesia.  Found the dentist on Facebook, he used an amalgamation cured with UV light, refused to be paid, and gave me a T-shirt his father sells.  I did end up giving him what he admitted was his usual fee, something a little over 10 bucks.

Alcoholic beverages on Java are almost exclusively limited to beer.  Arak, a local rice wine home brew, can be had under the table.  Yogya had some real box and bottle wine.  Bali has some wine.

Insects
Bring your favorite bug repellent, or buy some, available in streetside "drug stores"  (Toko Obat / Apotik).  Mosquitoes don't like me so much, but they love Pat.  Romantic outdoor bathrooms are beautiful, but really!

Everything Else
will work out some how or other.

Borobudur

OK, we've done Borobudur, we can leave Java now.

There really is a reason to see Borobudur.  Kind of like the Great Pyramids of Egypt, but smaller, more complicated aesthetically, more obvious religious significance (it's mostly on the outside).  It really is awsome.  

They cut the stones out of lava rock (same as Prambanan), cut them to interlocking pieces, stacked them up on a hill, then carved iconographic images all over.  And, oh yes, put Buddha sculptures inside stone bells (sort of), but they leave one uncovered so you can get a good look.  It really is big.  When you go to visit check with the locals first to see if there might be some sort of school holiday in process to avoid being mobbed by school kids.

The other interesting thing: we pay a bit more and get a tour guide, the thing is she's wearing a jilbab explaining the meaning of the Buddhist temple to us.  OK, she probably is qualified, but then there's these carvings from around 800 CE (AD) that substantiate that the Buddhists of that time believed in Family Planning, that "two children are enough".  Really?  Are you pulling my leg?  She's a government employee, she gets paid for this.

"two children are enough, see the happy family"

steps are really steep.  Where's the building inspector?

see, it's only 5 times the size of Pat's head

Actually there's room for a couple hundred people way up on the top where those little pointy things are, and we're already on the second floor.

Yogya

The movie for the previous post is too big 28MB, needs some editing to get it uploaded.

We made it to Jogjakarta, most often called Jogja, and most often spelled the old way Yogya.  Can't tell your Y's from your J's?

On our return from Bali we had an overnight stay in Ketapang, just north of Banyuwangi, on Java (locally spelled and pronounced Jawa) side of the Bali Strait.  The hotel has a beautiful view of the national forest on the Northwest tip of Bali.

A quick couple of train rides with an overnight stay in Surabaya, and we're here in Yogya.

A day trip to Prambanan from here is well worth the time.  Never having seen the antiquities of Europe, I am not able to compare, but visiting these Hindu and Buddhist temples is a wonderful experience.  The Prambanan Complex consists of many temples, and we get private guides (students who study tourism) to explain everything, except the Kama Sutra.  After touring the really big Hindu temple, with mobs of students from packed tour buses (lucky, it seems it was a local holiday), we visit the neighboring Buddhist temple (built to impress a new wife), and we're alone with our private tour guides - really sweet.  The really really sweet part is visiting a temple in the process of reassembly from the last earthquake, and chatting with one of the guys doing it for 30,000Rp/day (about 3USD).  He tells me how he's had 5 kids all of whom died from various problems, explains the level of corruption he experiences, doubts about Allah,...

The day before we toured the Sultans' Palace grounds (The Yellow House), again with a private tour guide, this one a government employee.  Again, really worth the time.  It seems like ever since the Dutch arrived in the 1400's these sultans have capitulated (except the first who the Dutch would beheaded). But it seems to me that the culture of corruption that pervades Indonesia probably has it's roots in the Sultans' survival mechanism.  Anyway we loved it.  You should come.