We spent our four-day Eid al-Adha holiday in Semarang. Which we liked. A lot.

It's a great place for walking and eating, two of our favourite things.

We walked around Chinatown, and we walked around the old Dutch quarter, just to the north of Chinatown. Both are eminently photogenic. Many of the buildings are crumbling quietly away, but the street art is fresh, and the colours are vibrant.

In a league (and a direction) of its own is the Gedung Lawang Sewu, the old Dutch railway administration building. You can totally see why some believe it's haunted. The corridors and doors and windows cut up the light in a way that confuses the eye. Not easy to be sure what is there and what is not.

It's pleasant to walk to Simpang Lima, too, which is the centre of the more modern part of the city. The roads are broad and tree-lined, with surprisingly wide, uncluttered pavements, and some gracious old buildings.

On the sight-seeing front, I have to mention a contretemps, however. The Sam Po Kong Temple, dedicated to Cheng Ho, the famous Muslim Chinese explorer, is a few kilometres out of town. You pay 10,000 rupiah per person to enter the grounds, and then another 30,000 rupiah per person to enter the area dedicated to Cheng Ho. This is serious money.

It was annoying, therefore, to be then told that we couldn't actually go into the shrine, as it was only for those who were "praying". I didn't understand why we couldn't go in to pray, too. I always pray at such places. But the guardian of the portal remained obdurate. When I politely complained to the ticket girls afterwards, it became clear that "praying" is a euphemism for "buying incense sticks". When such a large sum of money has already been charged, it seems very unfair to require visitors to stump up yet more for incense sticks whose importance hasn't been made clear from the outset.

I totally respect holy places, and never, ever try to butt in where I'm not wanted. But to be relieved of 40,000 rupiah, and THEN be told we couldn't go in, just sucks. We couldn't enjoy the rest of the temple complex to the full -- picturesque though it was, with its red and green pavilions, and its reflective tiles, and its strings of lanterns -- because we felt too abused.

But travellers have to shake the dust from their feet over these incidents, and move on... So we did.

On the eating front, Semarang had lots of pleasant surprises. Here are some:

-- Asem-asem Semarang, a sweet-sour-spicy beef soup;
-- Lunpia or lumpia (we had ours in the august surroundings of Toko Oen);
-- Delectable little coconut cakes called wingko babad; and
-- Mangut, which is a spicy dish made of smoked fish and tofu.

Not specifically Semarang, but very, very tasty was the durian and sticky rice we had at Mr Durian (where else?) on the way home on Day 1.

All in all, a highly rewarding destination. And Day Trans deserves plaudits for very efficiently getting us there and back.