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Published: August 13th 2006
Prambanan
That's all I'll bother to show of this temple near Yogyakarta. It was pretty messed up after the earthquake they had.Well I think last time I wrote I must have been in Surabaya. We've been working our way west and have seen the places affected by the latest disasters in Indonesia. We stayed a few days in Solo, a nice quiet town with tons of nice scenery. I even did a Batik painting course for a day in which we designed and made t-shirts. Mine turned out pretty good and it was surprising since it is a long difficult process of applying wax and then colours. I'll have to put on some sweet pictures when I find a decent internet place. There were some amzing ancient temples in the area, and lately we've been taking all local transportation and motorbikes so even the journey to get there is part of the fun. It helps that I have been studying the Indonesian language quite dilligently from a book I got. I think we'd be screwed without being able to ask "where?, how much?, how far?" and the basics like that. Actually I think I can speak more Indonesian than French, and we did 5 years of that in school.
From Solo we took a train (for about 90 cents) to Yogyakarta, which
Lowly temple sweeper
Hey I'm wearing the batik painted shirt I made in Solo. It's a bad photo though. is a fairly touristic location. It was a big city with some interesting old-school stuff to see. There was a cool underground mosque that used to be full of water tunnels, and some palaces and such. The big deal in the area were two ancient temples of impressive magnitude, and an equally impressive price to visit. They were named Borobadur, which we took motorbikes to with a European couple we hung out with, and Perambandan, which we cycled to. They were in bad shape from the earthquakes in the past couple hundred years. We even coughed up the cash for a guide to explain it all. It cost like twenty bucks each to see the both of them. I guess I'll have to charge you all a fee to see the pictures!
Yogyakarta was severely rocked by an earthquake a couple months ago. The damage was mostly done to the surrounding villages in which some 6,000 people died. Imagine that. 60% of Weyburn gone in an instant. The actual city was in pretty good shape, which is quite amazing.
We took a bus from Yogya yesterday and ended up un some crummy town called Cilacap. Not much point in staying
Off to Borobadur!
Remember when they told you in school that it's "cool" to be safe.
I think I'm the posterchild for that.
St least this bike came with helmets. Sometimes that's a priviledge. there. People there didn't seem to appreciate us being around, and I overheard a group of teenagers calling us "orang asing bodoh", or "stupid foreigners". We statyed the night and arrived in Pangandaran today. It used to be a thriving tourist spot. It's a really nice beach town and usually full of tourists. But they had that tsunami hit here a few weeks ago and now everyone's afraid to come here. So again it's just us. The damage is not as bad as one would imagine, but still anything along the beach and up for about 300 meters is destroyed. Everything is just a pile of rubble. There are thousands of people living along the roads in tents supplied by the government because their homes are demolished. But still people are in good spirits after having lost everything. Just another attest to the wonderful attitude of the Indonesians.
It seems like we're just following the disasters around so as long as they stay a few weeks ahead of us I'm cool. In a week I'll be in Sumatra, the farthest land mass west in Indonesia. Some plans : diving, beaching it, and maybe some volcano trekking.
Check back later, I'll
Borobadur from afar
I couldn't believe the size of this place...of course all done without machinery, it's almost unimaginable. put up some pictures in Jakarta, the capital. They should have some better facilities there.
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MOM
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Scott "Indy" Robillard
Good job in learning the language Scoot! That would be terrible to see the disasters. Have you thought about going to Sri Lanka? Apparently it is totally rebuilt now from the tsunami in 2004. Movie Stars vacation there as it is so beautiful. Miss your blogs and pictures.... Hadn't heard from you in awhile so it was great to see your writings today. Love You, Mom