INDONESIA, Part 2: Something in the water

Well I guess I was speaking too soon when I said my stomach is coping fine with the food. 6 days of serious toilet troubles has left me feeling somewhat weak and tired, but I am soldiering on and now that we are in Bali I am hoping that my digestive system will return to normal.
So, last time I wrote we were still in Jakarta. Well, we have seen a lot and done a lot since then. Our next stop was Yogyakarta - Indonesia's cultural capital and the city where Ragil did his first degree. Our accommodation was a very nice hotel complete with outdoor swimming pool, tropical plants galore and a super relaxed feel (most welcome after stressful Jakarta). We spent 5 days in Yogya and during this time visited Borobudur (massive Buddhist temple), Prambanan (Hindu temple), a Batik museum charting the history of the Sultans of Yogya and Solo, the Sultan's palace and lots of yummy restaurants. Yogya is a student city, a city with a tourist infrastructure and sights but still very few non-Indonesians to be seen, and a city with a very cool transport system - the bejak. Bejaks are tricycles, with the cyclist sitting at the back and a mini carriage balanced on the two wheels at the front. I found travelling by bejak to be super relaxing (for me, not the driver!), peaceful and just thoroughly enjoyable.
From Yogya we took a minibreak to Mount Bromo - a very picturesque volcano in the South of Java. The drive was ridiculously long and we didn't arrive until after dark. We slept for 5 hours and then travelled by jeep across some fairly scary terrain to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise over Bromo. Once we had succeeded in giving ourselves frostbite (it is surprisingly cold that high up at that time in the morning when you are that tired, even in Indonesia) we returned to the jeep and went to the crater of Bromo. The volcano is very much active, and it gifted us with some fairly pungent sulphur gases drifting up from its crater. Apart from the smell is was a very cool experience to stand on the edge of an active volcano...
Now we are in Bali. We arrived last night, were met by Ragil's 2nd sister and her Italian husband (I've met all six siblings now) who drove us to their house and fed us a glorious meal of gnocchi and steak. Mmmmmmmmmm. We are going to be staying in Bali for about 10 days, living in Ragil's 4th sister's house. It is really amazing here, not too hot, a fresh sea breeze, a beach 5 minutes walk away, a gorgeous gorgeous house and one very cute dog. I have to say I am slightly more scared of being attacked by some tropical creature here and we had a close call last night - hearing a ridiculously loud noise that sounded like someone had broken in to the house and was stomping really loudly downstairs. After a few minutes of panic Ragil turned the light on to discover a tiny kitten cowering in the corner of the room - it had been charging at the glass doors, trying to get outside. Sounds can be deceiving! Amazing that a tiny little scared kitten could make us feel such fear! Later on in the night we were awoken again by a kitten meowing, it was also trapped inside the room. I saw the noisy culprits this morning with their mum, I guess they had been sleeping inside at night time and were caught by surprise when we arrived and shut the doors. Apart from fear-inducing kittens I have seen a frog, some turtles, big cockroaches and two huge dead fish on the beach - about 3 times the size of my sandal. Thankfully no snakes or big spiders to speak of yet, lets hope it stays that way.
Okay, that's all for now. The toilet is calling me...