HOUSE IN SURAKARTA

I think we were among the first guests who stayed here. I’m always slightly hesitant to rent properties with no or very few reviews, but rest assured: the house exists, is legit and a nice place 🙂 The location is pretty central. You can reach most places in Solo with a Grab car within 10-15min, including Solo Balapan train station. The house lies in a quiet street in a safe residential area. The three bedrooms are very nice, each with comfortable beds and good airconditioning. The master bedroom is particularly comfortable, with two double beds and an en suite bathroom. The other two bedrooms also have a double bed and share a bathroom between them. The living room is very spacious, with a large sofa, a coffee table and a dining table. The owner supplies multiple boxes of water bottles so there is safe water to drink and prepare food. Also very convenient: the front door has a digital lock and each of the bedrooms has a compartment with keycode to lock away the physical key so you don’t need to take any keys with you. Last but not least, the owner is very helpful, always responding to our questions.

First of all, there isn’t any wifi. If you want to do data intensive things (e.g. backing up holiday photos/video to the cloud, Netflix), then you really need an unlimited 4G e-SIM) or find yourself a bar, café or mall with wifi. I think we were the first people to ever cook here. The owner got us a fridge, pans, knives and more gas. Still, the house could do with some more crockery, a closed kitchen waste bin, a better water kettle and tea towels. The house also deserves a folder with operating instructions. For example we were struggling to make the gas cannister work reliably. I’m sure this was our own incompetence but we just didn’t know how to operate it. The cleanliness of the kitchen is not up to the same srandard as the bedrooms. It’s nothing dramatic but it could be better. Finally, the house feels rather white and a little clinical, without any form of wall decoration. We’re sure that in a city with some of Java’s most beautiful batik, masks and wood carvings, this will be trivial to fix.