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Published: October 2nd 2011
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Our alarm went off at 4:30am as scheduled so we would be ready for our pick up at 5:00am. We get a phone call at 4:35am saying our ride is here. What is with Indonesia and everything being early so far? We quickly brushed our teeth, finished getting dressed, through a bag together and headed downstairs. Our transport had left to go pick someone else up… so we sat there for 10 minutes waiting. UGH!
The first temple we visited was called Borobudur and we opted on getting a guide to take us around for an hour. Borobudur has been reconstructed twice. Long time ago there was a volcano in the area and it covered the temple. An English guy decided to dig through the debris and stumbled upon Borobudur. No one knows the actual date it was constructed as it was hidden for such a long time. Some people predict it took 2 decades to build, some say 80 years. Borobudur has 10 different layers and when looked at a bird’s eye view resembles a lotus flower. Many people call Borobudur a temple, but many disagree because you cannot go inside, so they say it is only a monument.
A year ago a big earthquake hit the area and many of its original blocks fell and got destroyed. So again, Borobudur is being restored. All the new blocks have a white dot in them so scientists in the future can tell which blocks are which. Many of the carving pieces are also broken due to acts of vandalism. Our guide said that many government officials have broken pieces to take home. We really enjoyed Borobudur and found its layout very interesting. What we didn’t enjoy was trying to find the exit. The signs pointed in every direction, and when we asked someone for help they’d point us in the direction of a museum or art display. After walking in circles for 20 minutes we finally found the right way to go and joined the group for breakfast.
It was a 2 hour drive to Prambanan temple. We stopped at a Buddhist temple called Mendut temple to take some photos, and then stopped at a town where a volcano erupted last year. The damage is incredible, but was also really neat to see how they started rebuilding around the mess. Most of the tourists, including both of us had
Borobudor
Lots of stairs a nap on the drive to Prambanan. When we arrived we decided not to get a guide. As soon as we entered the area we got bombarded with students wanting to practice their English and take photos with us. The first couple groups were alright, but after the third and fourth it got really frustrating as we couldn’t walk around or take photos without someone asking us if we could help them. In the end we had to politely say no. After they spoke, every single one of them had to have a photo with us. Not a group photo, but individual photo with everyone’s cell phone. We read a little information in our Lonely Planet about the temple before we came. This area was hit badly by the 2006 earthquake and many of the stone blocks collapsed to the ground. It will take years for Prambanan to be fully restored. Many of the areas were fenced off and covered in scaffolding. Prambanan was originally built in the 9th century AD.
After taking some photos of Prambanan temple we decided we were templed out and headed to the eating area. We settled on eating at the one stall where
the lady didn’t yell at us to come over. The menu was all in Bhasa and the Muslim lady behind us realized we were having trouble on figuring out what was what and came to help. We ended up ordering fried tofu and rice. It was really good, but mine was very spicy. The lady realized I was finding it really hot so she brought over some prawn crackers that most restaurants charge 4000 IDR for. Tris and I joked around that the lady was a good sales person, “lets make the Western people’s food extra spicy so they have no choice but to buy prawn crackers to cool their mouths down”, but when we got our bill it was only for the 2 dishes and 2 drinks. She also sent us on our way with some kind of peanutty snack.
When we arrived back our hotel we had an afternoon nap before heading to Via Via for dinner. Via Via is not only in Lonely Planet, but also on travelfish.org and tripadvisor as a great place to eat. We weren’t disappointed when we ordered a tenderloin steak for Tris, and a Mediterranean salad for me. We took a
peddle bike cart back to our room to meet some people we had made plans to go out with for some drinks. She came over last minute and said her hubby had the runs. We don’t know if we believe her or not, but it gave us time to run to the bank, get hour and a half long massages, and pick up snacks for our 9 hour bus ride to Mount Bromo tomorrow.
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