Rumah Boedi Private Residence Villa

Location: The property is situated near Borobudur Temple, Pawon Temple, and Mendut Temple, with easy access to local attractions like Rengginang Cracker home industry and EloProgo art gallery.(based on 2 reviews)

Despite its non-functioning website and wrong phone numbers everywhere (the one you want is +62 821-3476-2834) this place does exist and is operating. A mixed experience. The pros are that it’s an attractive and peaceful place with plenty of garden in which to sit and read; the staff are lovely; and the Indonesian food was excellent. The solicitous owner is keen to make your time enjoyable. He also immediately understood my veganism and ensured a steady stream of increasingly esoteric and mostly delicious vegan Indonesian dishes from the kitchen for me, which I appreciated. The cons include that it’s a little dilapidated, the room could done with redecoration and rewiring, and are musty upholstery and soft furnishing that don’t really work in gardens and pavilions in a hot, humid climate. Food and drinks, though excellent, are overpriced. The owner’s enthusiasm for looking after you is a little overwhelming and misjudged. And we were unimpressed by his charging us, for a third night, double what we’d paid online for the first two nights, having said he’d give us a ‘fair price’ for that extra night — a figure that was reduced only marginally when I raised an eyebrow, making the whole stay frankly overpriced for what it was. Lonely Planet gives this place a star and writes of a ‘magnificent garden’ and a ‘magical retreat and spa’. If those were once true they aren’t now, and it’s far from Lonely Planet ‘star’ quality. It’s not bad, but you can find more magic for less money at many mid-range rural guesthouses around Indonesia. Walking around, it looked like there may be a fair few in Borobudur. Note that the temple is no longer open on Mondays, and you can only walk around the base of it at the moment — not that the organisation that runs it thinks this is information worth mentioning on its website (where they’re even happy to sell you a Monday ticket online). The temple is, despite all that, astonishing and well worth travelling to see.