Sarasvati Borobudur Hotel ☆ Yogyakarta, Indonesia

During our trip in Yogyakarta (Jogjakarta), we stayed at 2 different places. The first hotel was Saraswati Borobudur Hotel, a hotel located right by the entrance to Borobudur. We stayed there for 2 nights. We were glad we stayed at Saraswati Borobudur Hotel because it was very close to Borobudur and the location was convenient for the Borobudur Sunrise Tour, which I highly recommend anyone doing if you have a chance to go. (Please click on link to read my post about the Borobudur Sunrise Tour.) I did it with my 13-month-old baby and it was fine. He slept in my Ergobaby carrier. During the second half of our trip, we stayed at Hyatt Regency Yogyakarta for 2 nights and we were very happy there as well. I will post about Hyatt Regency Hotel later.

We let our son crawl around in the hotel lobby while we were getting checked in. After about 5 minutes though, his hands and knees got dirty as expected. This is a hard age.

ROOM

I booked a Junior Suite since there were 5 of us. It is nice that Saraswati Borobudur Hotel let us stay in one room because many hotels in this region ask for 2 rooms if you have more than 2 kids. We received an internet rate of US$175 for a Junior Suite, which is cheaper than the published rate. On the day we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised that we were upgraded to a Royal Suite. I assume that they let both us and our friends stay in Royal Suites because it was an off-season and we were one of the few guests staying at the time. The Royal Suite was huge and it was really nice for our kids, too.

We changed the first entrance space into our kids sleeping space. We moved the extra bed from the bedroom and moved it next to the sofa so that one child can sleep on a sofa and the other sleeps on the extra bed.

We also moved a suitcase rest from the bathroom and placed the baby cot in there so that our baby son would have some space to himself and the rest of us have a peaceful sleep. So I thought. My son did not like to sleep in the cot/pack and play. I think he recognized that he was in a different space and cried and cried. I lost sleep on both nights because he would wake up 3 times.

DESIGN

BREAKFAST

DINNER

SWIMMING POOL

Kids had a lot of fun playing at the pool.

We all enjoyed staying at Saraswati Borobudur Hotel. If you were to do a visit at Borobudur, I highly recommend doing the sunrise tour. If you do a Borobudur Sunrise Tour, I recommend that you stay near Borobudur. If you stay near Borobudur, I can tell you that Saraswati Borobudur Hotel is great.

When I was researching where to stay in Yogyakarta, I was recommended by my friend to stay at Saraswati Borobudur Hotel. I went online and looked at their website as well as TripAdvisor’s reviews. I take reviews on TripAdvisor as a guideline to make a decision, but don’t necessarily take in everything I read on TripAdvisor just because everybody’s review comes from different expectations and standards. We had a good experience staying at Saraswati Borobudur Hotel.

One thing that I noticed was that some people pointed out and complained on TripAdvisor about the noise level of call to prayer at Saraswati Borobudur Hotel. Hearing call to prayer at 4:00 in the morning at full blast is very common everywhere in Indonesia and you probably cannot avoid it. One of the few places that you might not experience the blasting sound of call to prayer at 4:00 a.m. is Bali because it’s an island with a majority of population practicing Balinese Hinduism. We went on a sunrise tour at Borobudur on the second day of our stay and 4:00 a.m. call to prayers was a perfect alarm clock. We asked for a wake-up call, but it was almost unnecessary. We left Saraswati Borobudur Hotel at 4:30 to walk to Manohara Hotel to buy tickets to get in. You could probably leave Saraswati Borobudur Hotel at 5:00 a.m., but 30 minutes wouldn’t really make much difference, plus we were with little kids, so we wanted to make sure we had a plenty of time until the sunrise.

We got back to our hotel, Saraswati Borobudur, around 7:30 a.m. and had breakfast. We all had a wonderful morning nap after breakfast. It was nice that we could just stay at the hotel and relax in the afternoon as well. Since we went to Yogyakarta with our good friends, the kids entertained each other. If you have kids, I recommend planing a trip to Yogyakarta with friends with kids. It’ll make a trip and tour at Borobudur more fun for the children and easier for parents.

Saraswati Borobudur Hotel was literally a minute walk from the main entrance.

*This is a regular gate which opens at 6:00 am and different from the entrance for the sun rise tour. In order to do a sunrise tour, you take a left facing this gate and walk about 300 meters and you’ll find a Manohara Borobudur Hotel‘s gate to your right. It was a 5 minute walk from Saraswati Borobudur Hotel.

Saraswati Borobudur
International Boutique Hotel & Resto

WEBSITE

Jl. Balaputradewa No.10, Borobudur, Magelang – Jawa Tengah – Indonesia
Ph : 62-293-788 843 ; 62-293-5503643 ; Fax : 62-293-788 842,
info@saraswatiborobudur.com