DAY 114 - Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia

Ubud is a small town inland on Bali that rather fancies itself as an artist colony. That would be stretching it. But the place is a million times nicer that Kuta, which was a bit of an arm pit. Oh, and the restaurant waitresses kept putting flowers behind our ears which back home would count as assault (except you could hardly claim the weapon was lethal - except maybe to your pride).

We've taken to not booking hotels in advance. This has the advantage of being able to negotiate price, but the disadvantage of risking your place of choice being full. In Ubud we came off well. We got in our first choice hotel with 17% knocked off the price. Here in Yogyakarta we had to try three places before finding a room, at an above budget price.

Bali is terrible for being harassed by taxi drivers and shop owners pedalling their wares. You have to learn to shut them out. If you try to be polite and say "no thank you", they take this as your opening gambit in negotiating a price, so we've taken to staying stum.

There's some very nice countryside around the town with very picturesque paddy fields, tiny villages and rolling hillsides. Everyone seems to own a dog: more acurately, a pregnant dog. I don't know where all the boy dogs are as all the canines you can see look like udders on legs.

Saturday we hired a car and driver for the day and took a tour further afield. There were lot of temples, volcanos and pretty villages (to which you could make a donation). Of particular interest was a cave full of bats which the locals worshiped. Despite my respect for their beliefs, I can't really claim to understand the religious significance of it all, but I was surprised that they didn't clean the very large amount of guano off the furniture occasionally.

One of the ways the locals try to squeeze more money out of you is with the Great Sarong Con. The temples, quite reasonably, expect people to dress respectfully when entering. Anyone with shorts on is asked to cover up. The locals however tell people that they must wear a sarong and that they, fortunately, have one available for a "very cheap price". We fell for this once or twice, which was particularly embarrassing as I for one don't look particularly good in a dress. In
one place they were telling tourists they needed a Sarong even though they weren't allowed in the temple! The cads.

On Sunday we flew to Yogyakarta in Java. We were confidently informed (curse you, Lonely Planet!) that we could just turn up at the airport and we would be fighting people off trying to sell us tickets. Wrong! We had to wait 7 hours for a flight at an inflated last-two-tickets price. Bah!

On a darker note, it's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore what's going on back home with the economy going down the pan. I can't ignore the fact that I'm spending money while the rest of the world is saving it. Robert Peston and his blog have become the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Mostly it's the being isolated from real events, so I can't judge how bad things are or are going to get. For the first time i'm giving up reading the BBC website and The Economist,
otherwise I have no hope in hell of enjoying the rest of this holiday. Any good news would be welcomed. We may have to economise and stay in hotels without flush loos (I'm not giving up air con!)

Rich