Flights from bali to yogyakarta
 

I have been trying to do a little research about the feasability of a 2 day trip to Borobodur from Bali and am not coming up with very much information. I am curious if such a flight exists on a reliable airline. I realize that I probably do not have as much time as I need in the area, but know that it will be probably be many years until I return, and so want to try to make the trip. However, it seems that it is not as easy as I may have thought, as Marmot has warned. Does anyone have some suggestions for me. Thanks in Advance (especially to Marmot, who has already been so helpful)

Garuda has several flights a day between Jogja and Denpasar. I'll leave it to you to decide whether Garuda qualifies as a reliable airline. In my experience, it's virtually impossible to book internal Indonesia flights on Garuda from a foreign country. I had an agent in Singapore try and he was unable to do so. My recommendation to you would be to wait until you are in Bali and have a travel agent there book it. Such packages are advertised at all of teh travel agencies in Bali. You could make your own hotel reservations in Jojga in advance (and do know what the change/cancellation policy is, just in case).

Thanks Kathie. Your posts on Java have been very helpful and are one of the reasons that I want to go. We are considering making the splurge and staying at the Amanjiwo. I will arrange this ahead of time, probably through american express platinum, for the upgrades and extras, and will arrange the flights when I get there.

Thanks Again!

If you go to Garuda's website you will fing contacts for their agents all over the world. I booked a round trip between Jakarta and Yogya from an agent in New York. I did it over the phone and used a credit card and within several days, I had my hard copy tickets, which were Fed Ex'd to me.

We have just returned from Bali and Java. We booked the flights between Bali and Jogjakarta through American Express Platinum here in Germany, no problem whatsoever and cheap, 120€.

The flights were good, everything went well, so easy to go back and forth.

I wrote a trip report including Amanjiwo, if you are interested.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=630492

My problem being unable to book Garuda, even from Singapore, was several years ago (2002), so Laurieco and opxzaw have more recent experience.

We recently flew from Jogja to Bali on Garuda and as stated above there was no problem booking the flights in US through Garuda offices in NYC. Do check the Garuda site for scheduled flights prior to calling however. For some reason in our case, the agent was initially unaware of a direct flight from Singapore to Jogja on the day we wanted. When the flight number was mentioned to him he did locate that flight.

Perhaps we were lucky but we flew Garuda from Singapore to Jogja to Bali and back to Singapore without incident. All flights were on-time and pleasantly uneventful.

Do go to the Borobudur area. We enjoyed it immensely. The people in the rural area near Borobudur are fantastic.

Unfortunately, I have yet to post a trip report but if you have any questions regarding our experiences in Java and Bali, I would be happy to answer you. Perhaps I will have time to post a report this weekend.

I can recommend a great tour guide for Borobudur and Yogya. Rohmad Hidajat, www.borobudurtourandtravel.com was everything we could have wished for in a guide. Rohmad lives in the immediate Borobudur area, is educated, knowledgable, polite and extremely professional. He gave us personal insight to the people, culture and history of the region. We arranged our tours through Amanjiwo where we stayed and they provided Rohmad as our guide. However, Rohmad's services can be booked directly through Borobudur Tour and Travel.

Thanks for all of the help. I will try the canadian office or the US offices this weekend, and I will check with amex while I am at it. This makes me feel much better as I am a huge planner and prefer to have things booked so I don't have to use up precious vacation time.

In addition, thanks for the info on the Amanjiwo and guides. It's starting to look like this part of the trip may have to be added...after this research.

Does anyone know if March will have decent weather in Indonesia?

There are several Indonesian airlines that fly between Denpasar and Yogya. I only fly Garuda. It's not great but has an acceptable level of reliability. Most flights are on-time and although the airplanes are not elegant they are reasonably clean. The service may be humble but it is very sincere. The safety record is good.

The problem with Garuda and all the Indonesian airlines is communication, or lack thereof. They just hate to give customers bad news.

[All airlines, everywhere, occasionally experience delays and other issues; Indonesian airlines just don't do a very good job of explaining to their customers what to expect.

There's an Indonesian all-purpose word, belum, which means "not yet." When you're told "belum" at the airline counter you don't know if it means 5 minutes or 5 hours or never!]

Last time I checked, Garuda has only one flight a day between Depasar and Yogya and return.
GA253 1310 / 1320 Denpasar / Yogya
GA252 1400 / 1620 Yogya / Denpasar

In the past year my clients in the States have been able to make Garuda reservations with their travel agents in America.

I'm an Amanjiwo fan as well. It IS wildly expensive and if that's going to bother you then I wouldn't recommend it. To me it's worth the price (but then again I get a substantial reduction because I live in Indonesia).

March is the tail end of the rainy season which I think is good for Central Java as the rice paddies will be green. It's always HOT so just be prepared to take it slow.

I travelled from Yogyakarta to Denpasar by bus years ago. A long journey and quite enjoyable. We spent an hour in a small town with the open jungle around us, and took a ferry to Bali, with a bus from there.

The local sellers at Borobudur were quite aggressive (a feeding frenzy another tourist said, watching them rush a newly arrived bus). Yogyakarta is worth a look around.