Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

It's Monday the 16th of March.

And I am reporting to you from on board an Indonesian train.

I've been in Indonesia for the best part of a week and travelling around the island of Java,

which is the Indonesian heartland with many, many millions of people living there, is an absolute joy.

I'm just drifting towards the city of Bandung. I've been travelling across from Yogyakata in the heart of Java and enjoying every moment of the journey.

Right now the sun is low in the sky. It's reflecting from the golden dome of a mosque just over to the east.

And we're pulling into Kiarokondong station, which the sign tells me,

is just over 600 metres above sea level, about 2,000 feet, so therefore good and cool.

There's so much to love about Indonesian trains starting with the price.

This trip has cost roughly £25 and that's for a six or seven hour journey. In my case,

I actually broke the trip. Otherwise it would have felt like spending, well, the whole day, on board a train.

So I managed to time it so I got into some random station at one o'clock and I had a train out at 2 o'clock.

And that meant I could go and enjoy some noodles and tea at a very good restaurant just opposite the station and that cost

slightly less than one pound buying the tickets is surprisingly easy you can go along and talk to somebody

but generally intercity trains are only on sale from the ticket

office with about three hours to go so yes you can walk up you can have to give them your

passport because you need to enter your passport details for them to print you out a ticket

but there's many different ways of buying tickets online. I happen to go through the

Man in Seat 61's website because they have a link to a very straightforward place to buy your tickets.

And I thought, oh my goodness, am I going to be able to get some space but in fact

this train like the others I've taken is somewhere between one third and one half

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