Month: May 2021

Santorini almost always comes up when you are looking for an idyllic honeymoon spot. Scenes of people in pools looking out over the caldera have become synonymous with ultimate couple luxury. We had originally short listed Santorini as a potential site for our own honeymoon but in the end we decided it would take too much travel to get there from the location of our wedding, Barbados. Years later, after Little Person arrived, I decided that I would finally tick Santorini off of our list and was challenged with planning a relatively inexpensive but comfortable trip where we could hopefully experience all that Santorini had to offer. 

Indonesia is a massive country with over sixteen thousand islands and the fourth highest population on the planet. As such there is no shortage of places to visit though some are much easier to visit than others. The destination with the highest level of accessibility is Jakarta, which contains the best connected airport in the entirety of the Asia Pacific region. This is followed by Bali which is incredibly popular with holidaymakers, especially from Australia. I have already written about our feelings regarding Bali (we love it) and they can be found by following this link. Today, however, I want to talk about a less popular destination in Indonesia, which shares the island of Java with Jakarta, Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta).

When I was planning our first trip to Bali, I had managed to find out about a rather impressive temple on the island of Java that was worth leaving Bali to see. That temple was Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in the world. I found out that the easiest way to get to Borobudur was to fly into Yogyakarta airport. As such, I decided it would be worth spending a couple days in Yogyakarta to see something different to Bali.

I was never particularly convinced by the Maldives, thinking that I would be too bored stuck on an island with nothing to do for a week. Then I learnt how to dive and started to think that going on a liveaboard in the Maldives would probably be very exciting indeed, but a shore holiday would likely still be boring and too expensive. Then Covid happened and our Christmas trip to the Canaries could no longer go ahead due to governmental restrictions. When this happened I immediately went through the list of places the UK government said I could go as well as whether I would be able to connect to get there without any trouble. I also didn’t want to have to quarantine for any length of time, since four or more days of quarantine during a seven day holiday would barely make it worth it to go. Due to our possible departure dates, considering when school term ended, a four day quarantine would mean we would be in quarantine for Christmas day which is definitely not ideal. 

The only destination which was able to meet all the criteria I had was the Maldives, with no need to quarantine on arrival once you had a negative PCR test. I surprisingly found some inexpensive flights on Etihad, especially considering we were flying during Christmas holiday, and set about the biggest challenge finding accommodation that would not require me to sell a kidney.