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Published: October 6th 2008
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The Smiling Buddha
Buddha statue inside of Borobudur Stupa This month October is one of the moments waited by most families in Indonesia. As the Indonesian government chose September 30th to October 3rd 2008 to be national holiday related with Idul Fitri Moslem Festive Day. Most Indonesian family spent their time by having family vacation or visiting their homeland or formerly known as Mudik. Holiday places like Bali and Jogjakarta were totally full of local tourists. I spent mine by meeting my family in Surabaya, then headed to Jogjakarta to have family vacation.
I was pretty excited to visit ancient temples as well as Malioboro Street the traditional shopping arcade. Excited enough to leave CNN which actively informs the latest update about US’s finance and Vice Presidential Debate. We thought that the traffic wouldn’t be too crowded we left on the second day of Idul Fitri, but our opinion was totally wrong. Usually it took us six hours to reach Jogjakarta from Surabaya, but we spent 13.
When we reached Jogja, it was dark enough to go sightseeing to the outdoor sites, so we ate and shop at Malioboro Street. The city was full by tourists from all over Java, Sumatra, and Bali. It was very hard to
find parking place in Malioboro Street. Little trick, you may park at the Train Station which located 25 meters from Malioboro Street. There were so many street cafes which let their visitors eat together by sitting on the covered floor or formerly known as Lesehan. In fact, Lesehan cafes successfully made Malioboro Street famous. But make sure you asked for the price first before ordering foods. Sometimes the sellers give non reasonable prices for tourist on holiday seasons. Malioboro Street sells products made from leather, Batik fabric, as well as T shirts with funny words. Although there were many cute products, what made the buying process interesting is the bargaining moments. I found interesting goodies such as small leather Arjuna (a wayang icon, which also symbol of perfection and power) which I might use to mark my book while reading for 60 US cents, funny T shirts for USD 3, and cute leather bag for USD 8. Compare with street prices in Bali, I think prices in Jogja are quite cheaper. More over, the people are very friendly and polite. I never found any person acted rude or drunk in Jogjakarta. Just speak a bit of their language such as
“Nyuwun sewu” (Excuse me) if you are in a very crowded place, and they would gladly say “Monggo” (Go ahead, be my guest). Or “Niki pinten Bu?” (How much is this, Mam?), and the seller will give you cheap price. But please be prepare to get their response in their language. I was confused to hear the response in their language which I don’t understand 😉
We can’t find any hotel which still has vacant rooms. From budget to fancy hotels, all are full of visitors. We should have booked the room before we got there. But this made road trip exciting, isn’t it? Fortunately, my dad has a very close friend in the city and we spent the night at his home. Useful tip, you may book hotel in Dagen Street for budget hotels (range Rp 150,000 to Rp 300,000) or in Inna Hotel as well as Ibis Hotel for the fancy ones (range Rp 800,000 to Rp 2,000,000), all of them located right on Malioboro Street.
The next day we visited parts of the ancient world around Jogja, Loro Jonggrang Temple and Borobudur which are also included in the World’s Heritage List provided by UNESCO. In
Street Cafes
The famous Lesehan cafes fact, Borobudur was one of Seven Wonders of the World on 1980.
Loro Jonggrang temple located at Prambanan village, 17 kilometres from Jogja on the way to Solo. There were several temples includes Siwa, Brahma, Wisnu, Nandi, Angsa, Garuda, Apit, Kelir, and Sudut. These temples were built on the ninth century on Sanjaya Dinasty. The movement of Mataram Kingdom from Central Java to East Java made these temples leave abandoned. There were also several big earthquakes which made the temple a bit ruin, as the site is very close to Merapi active mountains. Several restructuring has been made by Indonesian government up until now. There are three different regions of the temples, which is getting higher on the centre. There were 240 temples in total, included 224 small temples with 6 meters width and 14 meters tall and 16 big temples on the centre.
I found out there were interesting love story related with the temple’s history. Once upon a time, there were two big kingdoms in Java, the Pengging and the Boko. In order to enlarge his region, King Boko initiated a war at Pengging’s region. Then a prince from Pengging named Bandung Bondowoso kill King Boko.
By the time prince Bandung went to Boko palace, he met the pretty princess Loro Jonggrang daughter of King Boko. Loro means girl and Jonggrang means tall. Prince Bandung would like to marry the princess, but she refused as the prince previously killed her father. In order to refuse the Prince, Loro Jonggrang asked the prince to made a thousand temples in one night. The prince was actually able to made a thousand temples before the sunrise as he has supernatural powers. Loro Jonggrang afraid that the prince would finish his task, then she asked every girl in the Boko’s region to burn the leaves. It made the sky looked bright as if the sunrise had come. The prince realized the trick and he got angry. Then he changed Loro Jonggrang to be the last temple, so in total he has made 1000 temples. Quite a sad love story huh? 😉
Next destination, we visited Borobudur which located at Borobudur village, on the way to Magelang from Jogjakarta. In Sanskrit word, Boro means Vihara (Budhist praying place), and Budur means up. So Borobudur means a Vihara which is located up on the hill. There were so many mountains located
Me and the Tall Princess
Big temples at Prambanan near Borobudur. It is said that if we looked carefully to the mountains, we may see silhouette of a man slept at the upside of the mountains. One of the traditional myth informed that the sleeping man is actually Gunadharma, Borobudur’s construction manager.
Borobudur was made approximately on 800 C by Syailendra Dinasty. There were three different stages at Borobudur, start from the bottom Kamadhatu (world of passion), Rupadhatu (Physical world), and Arupadhatu (Non Physical World). In total Borobudur has 504 Stupas, each with Budha statue inside. It is believed that people who successfully touch Budha statue inside the Stupa will have their wish realized. Many visitors gave their best shot, trying to touch the Budha statue inside the Stupa.
The entrance ticket to Prambanan temples and also to Borobudur is Rp 10,000 each (nearly USD 1) plus additional Rp 1,000 ticket if the tourist brought camera. In my opinion the cultural-historical tour was exciting as I was wondering how does man able to built a very tall building with detailed construction and heavy stones without one single machine. I was sad to hear that nowadays there was structured black market who sells the genuine ancient statues from
Harmony
Beautiful detail on Prambanan temples temples in Java to international collectors and I was pretty shocked to found out that there were many missing statues in Prambanan and Borobudur, although we still may find hundreds of statue at that temple. The temple would be even prettier if the statues are complete.
We finished our family holiday after we went to Malioboro Street once again. And then we went back to Surabaya which only took us six hours to reach the destination.
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Milvie
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Photo sizes?
Nice entry, darling. It's quite a change after so many entries around Bali ( not that there's anything wrong with Bali :)) ). So, when are you going to write something about Pekanbaru? By the way, why are most of the photos are so small? Only 225x300 pixels!!! Too small to be properly enjoyed. Was there an error when you uploaded them, or was it on purpose?