We are now settled in Yogyakarta, about 7-8 degrees south of the equator. I was getting confused with my directions on the train as the sun was in the north for the whole journey when of course I was expecting it to be in the south. Angela always stresses the importance of having a south facing garden, well of course down here (below the equator) she would recommend a north facing one. Yesterday we decided to book our train tickets to the next place and walk around town. Again an oversupply of becaks (pronounced bechaks) meant every single driver stopped us to ask if we wanted his services, even when we had said no to three other drivers before him. Yogy is another super polluted Indonesian city, it has very few redeeming features. We saw the Dutch fort and the palace, but neither the Dutch nor the Indonesians are known for their architecture, so nothing worth photographing really. Yogy does have a more cosmopolitan atmosphere than the other Javanese cities, so there is a cafe / restaurant culture - good news for Paul who is proving that his appetite is well and truly back. We spent about an hour at lunch time trying to find a 'resto' recommended by Lonely Planet, but the maps we had including the Lonely Planet one bore no relation to what was on the ground. We found it eventually down a maze of backstreets, where the backpacker guesthouses were. Bedhot Resto was a Batik decorated hippy style place and we stocked up on our vegetables there. We got our much needed exercise too - about 5 hours walking. We found another Lonley Planet recommended resto for the evening meal - Milas a non-profit-making community project place which is vegetarian / Vegan. Jan would like to note I have had Karedok - salad of cabbage, carrot and beansprouts with a spicy chilli / peanut sauce over the top. We moved hotels today, this place is twice the size of the first one and cheaper. We have a/c, sat tv, elec shower, complimentary water daily and breakfast for 200,000 Rp (£15) per night for both of us. We had a coach tour booked today - Merapi view and Prambanan temples. Our coach turned out to be a taxi, which is great as we had the tour all to ourselves, stopping wherever we wanted. Gunung Merapi is another volcano, it erupted last year killing 353 people. Our driver took us up to about 4km from the top. Unfortunately cloud cover denied us the view of the very top. We walked up the steep road for about twenty minutes taking in the scenes of devastation; homes ruined, trees uprooted, other trees burned, rivers blocked and a flat lava path winding down the valley. See Paul's photos. The town of Kepuharjo set about 3-6 kms down the slopes of Merapi is just carrying on with business; rebuilding their homes and using tourism as its source of income. Next was the temples, first we visited the 9th Century Candi Plaosan, similar to the Angkor temples, they have both Buddhist and Hindu carvings. An earth quake hit the region in 2006 and caused a lot of damage to the temples that we visited today. Despite this the grounds were immaculately kept and work has been done to restore the temples' beauty. After a quick visit to Plaosan a government run temple costing less than £1 for us to enter, we then headed for the Chinese corporation run Prambanan temples - $13 each to enter. These are purely Hindu temples built in the 9th Century, reminiscent of Angkor Wat. We had a leisurely shaded walk around this complex and bumped into the Dutch couple who we shared a taxi with in Sumatra, then we came across the French guy who had giggled at me on the train - small world. The smaller temples had been pretty badly hit by the earthquake, it is a wonder they have all survived so many centuries. Our driver took us swiftly home; we politely declined his offer to take us to the silver market. Another visit to Milas resto and an early night. Tomorrow it is Borobudur, a colossal Buddhist monument set in a stunning landscape....