Thinking of visiting Yogyakarta, the first thing that comes into your mind perhaps is the temple or the sultanate palace. However, isn’t that boring visiting mainstream destinations in the city you travel to? Don’t you want something more authentic and closer to the local people and culture in your Yogyakarta tours? Besides, all you can do in those places are watching the destinations and taking photos.
Yogyakarta city tour is slightly overrated. You can find plenty of travel agents or tour organizers who offer Jogja tour packages and will bring you around Yogyakarta. However, most of them will only suggest mass tourist destinations. If you like something more private, authentic, closer, and more “hidden-gem-ish”, you may like to try MOANA’s Yogyakarta Bike Tour.
Unlike other activities in Yogyakarta, our cycling tour serves you with anti-mainstream destinations closer to the local people and culture. You will have the most of your Yogyakarta experience throughout the route. Sounds intriguing, right? Besides this, these are other reasons why MOANA Bike Tour Yogyakarta is a must try activity in Yogyakarta.
1. Sustainable Cycling Tour
The first thing you might notice once you see MOANA’s logo is the slogan. Yes, our tour is designed with sustainable tourism principles. We are one of the first providers of Cycling tour Yogyakarta who implements this concept in tourism. On the tour, our main mode of transportation is bicycles. By riding bicycles and not motor vehicles, we are committed to reduce our emission carbon as minimum as possible during our business operation activities. Riding bicycles also allows you to take a closer look at the local community and see how authentic our Yogyakarta local tour is. Moreover, you can call our service a Yogyakarta private tour since we conduct the tour in small groups to avoid mass visits in our destinations. We also prohibit the use of disposable bottles and plastics for our guests and teams to reduce the plastic waste. We instead provide you with free mineral water refill from our dispensers. In addition, our tour’s value propositions are traditional cultures and natural landscapes. Thus, we invite our guests to appreciate how beautiful Javanese cultures and natural landscapes are to promote the preservation of those cultures and natures.
2. Tour Like A Local
Riding bicycles means you will not pass through main big roads but small roads and alleys where the local community settles. During the bicycle tour, Our tour guides will bring you to have a tour like a local where you can interact with local people, join their activities, and learn about their daily lives. You can see what Yogyakartans do in the mornings or afternoons and get involved in their activities such as planting rice, making pottery, making tempeh, and cooking traditional food. In the end, you can try the food and drinks and even bring home some if you would like to. These activities are exclusive to our bike tour Yogyakarta, because we are directly partnered with the local community..
3. Supporting Local Community
Since you will interact with local people, we have to involve them in our tours. We set them up in our Yogyakarta bike tour in such a way that you will get the best experience possible. We empower local people who can cook traditional food and drinks, have small industries, and have places that we can use in our tour. Besides that, the bicycles that you will be cycling around Yogyakarta with are of local people. We rent out bicycles from the local community. Thus, those people will have additional income that can support their living and economy. By having a bicycle tour with MOANA, you not only get an unforgettable experience of Yogyakarta but also support the economy of the local community.
4. Professional Local Tour Guide
The atmosphere and situation of a tour depends on the tour guide. When the tour guide is excited and eager throughout the journey, the tour will most likely be enjoyable. However, when the tour guide acts shily or passive, the tour is unlikely to be interesting. Unlike other Yogyakarta tour packages that mostly hire mature tour guides, our Yogyakarta bike tour is led by youths. MOANA’s tagline is “Meaningful Journey” and we have to ensure that our guests have the best experience of our tour. Thus, we choose the best candidates for our tour guides or what we call as Road Captains and train them well. Our tour guides are of young people and students that are eager and passionate about cycling and tourism. Even though they are young, they have a very good comprehension of Yogyakarta and the routes that we have designed. They are also very knowledgeable, helpful, and energetic to provide the best services to the customers.
5. Exploring Gastronomy
Participating in a Yogyakarta food tour sounds interesting, but you won’t be able to eat during the whole tour, will you? Food is a must when visiting places of other cultures. It can be the most iconic and memorable experience of that particular place. I mean, we have to eat anyway. However, if you can get more, why only choose food? In MOANA’s Yogyakarta Bike Tour, you will not only interact with people and join their activities, but also taste the traditional food of Yogyakarta. You can even try to make it by yourself and bring the results home. For example, in our Village Fun Cycling you can eat tempe benguk, geblek, tahu, and jamu as well as try to make tempe and bring some with you. If that isn’t enough, you can take one of our city tour routes like Hidden Gems or Royal Route and explore traditional markets to hunt for snacks and food to go.
6. Donation for The Environment
MOANA takes the name of Sustainable Cycling Tour very seriously. We understand that some of our activities in our Yogyakarta Bike Tour are still producing carbons and by that, we want to pay off for the carbon and pollution we contribute to the environment. Some of our profit is allocated to the preservation of trees and other social and environmental activities. In each group tour, we have allocated one mangrove tree to be planted in the locations of our partners. In other words, when you book our tour and have a tour with us, you have participated in sustainable actions such as producing less carbon, donating to mangrove planting charity, and producing less plastic waste.
Visiting other countries does not cost inexpensively. So, you must ensure that you get the most authentic and memorable experience while visiting it. Instead of paying for something that you may find in your own country, seek for something unique and peculiar to the destination. With the cycling tour Jogja by MOANA, you will be provided with the most authentic and local things you can imagine: people, atmosphere, culture, food, and many more. Additionally, you can support the local community and donate to the environment while enjoying the town and village.
Ristan Taufiq