Thursday, February 22, 2024

This was the last morning in Yogyakarta, and we had nothing planned but to take the train back to Jakarta, so we were able to have a leisurely breakfast.

Here, I will finally talk about this breakfast buffet which was included in the cost of the hotel and how grand and overwhelming and borderline intimidating it was. I have some pictures but none of them do it justice.

You merely have to tell the host your room number, and you go into the beautiful sitting area. I, always chose to sit outside by the fountain. It was still a nice temparature in the morning (we usually ate around 6:30).

From this spot, you can see a couple of the stations. The man in black with his back to us on this particular day was making noodles from scratch. I was fascinated because I couldn’t figure out how he was doing that–stretching and pulling and twirling–without them sticking in such humidity. I struggle with any kind of dough in any level of humidity!

To his right is a station where a staff member is making fresh juice. There are always multiple kinds of fresh-squeezed juice and teas and of course coffee.

In that room, there is a table with multiple different kinds of porridge with all sorts of sweet and savory toppings. I was tempted by the chicken porridge every day, but it was just too hot for me to succumb to its delicious smell. In that room there was also a station with multiple different meat and seafood and vegetable dishes.

The first picture above shows the back of the fruit table, which always had multiple different kinds of fruit with a lovely fruit carving (see picture three). Where I’m standing while taking this picture, is the egg station where I forgot to take a picture. You can get omelettes to order and whatever egg special of the day. They also had various types of sausages at the egg station, too.

The middle picture is of the station that had different kinds of rice and noodles.

The lower left corner shows the bread table right in front and the pancake and waffle stand in the left corner. The bread station went from bread slices and rolls to all sorts of pastry–sweet and savory– to include quiche and pizza.

You can imagine why the whole thing was a bit intimidating. Here is one of my rounds of breakfast.

Because we had time, we decided to walk around the hotel. Remember, we had planned before to go to the spa but didn’t because we had been too tired, so we never really got see the rest of the hotel. The elevator to our room was right next to where we ate, and you basically had to walk through that area to get to the front desk.

I now wish we had walked around in the hotel more before because it is even lovelier than I thought and bigger than it seemed from the inside where we had always been and from the outside.

Afterwards, we packed up and my daughter ordered a taxi to take us back to the train station.

On the way back, we were in the executive car. Same set up as the other car but with nicer seats and a bit more room.

I did manage to get some pictures of the countryside and some stations on the way back before falling asleep. I wish people took trains more in the US. It really allows you the leisure to see a wide variety of places and towns that driving on highways don’t allow you to see.

You can see from the train map all the different towns between Jakarta and Yogyakarta.

It’s also shows how many more places there are to visit!

It’s funny though that I had been in the country only five days, but I still felt good seeing the train station in Jakarta again. Probably because it was the first time that I was seeing something familiar, something that I had seen before.

The thing about traveling is that though it is exciting, the newness of everything all the time can be exhausting. As someone who suffers from anxiety, this is even moreso of a strain. So seeing the station was, ironically, like seeing an old friend!

We went directly home and unpacked our things to make piles of laundry, took a break, and then it was out again to meet with some of my daughter’s friends for a night of Korean BBQ.

I was tired despite sleeping on the train, and despite how comfortable I look above, the lure of Korean food and karaoke with Kiana was too good to pass up. I also wanted to put faces to the names of people that my daughter always talks about.

We went to a place called Yongdaeri which is in the Sudirman Central Business District in Jakarta. They have other branches, too. You can have traditional Korean BBQ or get a karaoke room. We got a room and ordered quite a number of dishes and ate and sang into the night.

That picture of me is of me singing a Kim Bum Soo song, so I sent it to my friend Yumi. She teased me about singing a sad song (she knows that I’m only going to sing sad Kim Bum Soo songs), but really Kiana and her friends went all emo and outnumbered me with the sad.

I also got to sing two duets with Kiana, which was really fun.

Thanks to my friend Carolyn gifting my kids ABBA Gold when Kiana was six and Mattea four. They know all the ABBA songs because they sang them every single day for almost two years in the car on the way to preschool/daycare–Carolyn is probably smirking right now reading this.

It was an excellent night plus it turns out that with the amount of food we bought we were entitled to two more dishes. So we even got food to take home as well.

A perfect ending to a great day. Can you top train rides, Korean BBQ, and karaoke?

As I mentioned before, Kiana had given several different itineraries for this trip, but the next day was what she was calling a surprise day.

So I had to wait to see what was going to happen!