Yogyakarta-The Motorcycle Diaries

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This morning started at the ASSCRACK of dawn. My flight was at 6 am for which I had to be at the airport by 430. I slept as long as I could, showered and then Niki's driver was waiting for me, to take me to the airport. I arrived about 4:45, checked in and then headed to the gate. I was headed for Yogyakarta, the cultural center of Java.

I slept most of the flight but when I awoke I saw incredible volcano looking mountains out the window and lush green landscape. In true Indonesian style we exited the airplane onto the tarmac and dodged luggage carts and other airport vehicles on our walk to the terminal.

My hotel had free pick up service, and my ride was waiting for me when I arrived. We headed out of the airport and through town. Seemed like a pretty large town and then we headed out of town to my hotel. The hotel itself is nice, has a very boutique feeling, lots of tropical plants and charming decor. My room itself is nice as well. Large bed, AC, nice inlayed tile bathroom and sink inlayed with pebbles. I wanted to see two main temples here today, Borobodur and also Prambanan, one is Budhist and the other hindu. I aksed the front desk about tours and all they could tell me is car.. car 350,000. In my guidebook I saw you could do the tours for about 80,000 and asked for other options but their english was limited. So I headed into town. I took a cab and during the cab ride realzed how far out of town I actually was. So I braced myself for the usual tourist touting that was to occur.

It was about 830 in the morning and I just missed all the tours. One guy offered the same 350,000 car service which I declined, another offered me one of the two temples in the afternoon, then someone mentioned motoro bike. I declined all and went to a second agency. Again same thing, and the other part was one guy said maybe no tours tomorrow if not enough people. Again motorbike was mentioned, I said how much, they said 175,000, I said 150,000, he tried to argue and I said take it or leave it. Sure enough they took it and they guy took off to find a friend of his to do the job. A motor bike and second helmut arrived. I found out if you had a studen ID you saved a bit on the entry fees so we headed back to the hotel to grab that and some US Dollars, the currency of choice for the entry fee for both of the sights.

I asked my driver the distances for the trip, he said 40KM to Borobodur and then 70KM to Prambanan then another 30KM back to the hotel. So I was in for a treat. So we went to the hotel, I applied some sunscreen and then off we headed. We were on main roads, back roads, next to trucks, next to horse and cart, next to bicycle carrying hay and other items from the fields, other motor bikes, some with families of 4 on them. You name it we passed it. I was so hungry on the way I could not stand it I did not eat nor drink anything on the plane. We stopped at a mini mart, I grabbed a water, a sports drink, two soyjoys and two choloate snack things, some of which I got for the driver. The girls working the stor all had headscarves on as Indonesia is 95 percent muslim. My cashier kept apologising that she didnt speak english. I said its okay I can read the screen, and my total for all of this was RP16,000 about $1.75, you couldn't even get one of those soyjoys for that price at home.

I ate the soyjoy so fast and the chocolate snack too. We headed off to Borobodur, my driver parked his bike and then showed me the entrance to the park. As I looked up I saw storm clounds and once I entered the park it started to rain. It looked like it might pass quick though. I walked towards the temple and was offered umbrella after umbrella but declined. They kept telling me umbrella mister, 1 dollar 1 Euro. I was fine a little water at this point was refreshing. I looked up and saw the temple it was not as vast as I originally imagined but it was very intricate, you could see inlayed Buddhas everywhere. There were about 5-6 levels to this temple.

I took a walk around the first 2 levels of the temple to check out the reliefs carved on the wall. They were extremely intricate and well kept. I then made it to the top which was the highlight of the temple. There are a series of pointed domes which cover the top level. There are Buddahs in some and others just have carvings around them. I did quite a good job of taking photos of myself, they turned out good, but of course Steve was missing from them. It is interesting traveling in Asia because anytime you are at a tourist site the Asians always want a photo with the white boy and there weren't many of us that day so I received an awful lot of requests. I of course would have the person take my photo in return.

I finished up and picked Steve up a little souvenir and then headed back to attempt to find my ride. I took quite the tour of the parking lot but found him. It was now time to head to Prambanan the second temple I had come to see. This was to be the longest part of my journey an hour and 20 minutes.

We headed off and stopped a couple times so I could take photos of 1 temple and a political statue. The ride to Prambanan was through the back roads, rice fields, banana trees, rivers, palm trees, locals working in fields. It started to rain a little bit but not too bad and again quite refreshing. This ride was so long though that we had to stop so I could stretch and walk around a bit. From this point there was only 20 more minutes left.

As we arrived at Prambanan you could see the peaks of the different temples. Again we parked the motor bike and I was shown where to buy my tickets. I entered the site and the walked through a park. The site where the temples stood was fairly large and these temples being Hindu were completely different from Borobodur. I walked around the site and again being the token white boy was the probably more photographed than the temples themselves. The temples were eac



Family from Borneo East..

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