We're in Surabaya for a fortnight.

We left Yogya's lovely Tugu station on a bright, clear morning, and five smooth, comfortable hours later, we were in Indonesia's second-largest city.

I'm doing a Bahasa Indonesia course at the IALF language school, and I walk there every day from the hotel where we're staying. Someone has really tried with Surabaya, I can't help feeling. The traffic is heavy and incredibly loud, but the one-way system at least keeps things moving. In our part of town there are wide, tree-lined roads; broad pavements; banks of flowering plants; pedestrian crossings and overbridges; and observable attempts to keep the streets clean. (Of course, there are also spirited attempts to undermine all this, chiefly by motor-cyclists, who freely invade the pavements at rush-hour and sail through red pedestrian lights oblivious...)

Is the intensive course working? Don't know yet...

But the schedule is busy. Four hours' instruction a day, and lots of preparation and homework. Plus, I'm still recovering from the nasty accident that skittled Nigel, Rufus, and me last week. So it has not been a tourism-heavy week.

Nevertheless, we have had time to:

-- Check out the absolutely stunning Hotel Majapahit, the ultimate in gracious elegance;

-- Revive our inner mall rats at the homey Surabaya Plaza, the massive Tunjungan Plaza and the spanking new Grand City Mall;

-- Wander round the old city: the red bridge, Chinatown, and the Arab quarter;

-- Scramble through the hatches of a 1960s Russian submarine;

-- Try the famous rawon.

More soon, I hope...