Culture Capital of Indo
Trip Start
Apr 16, 2008
1
36
55
Trip End
Apr 15, 2009
Yogyakarta,
Java,
Indonesia
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I found myself a nice little Losmen in the central Sosrowijan area - this place has lots of nice warungs (local restos) and is a good base for your stay. After one day of chilling out after my 14hr minibus journey from Jakarta (train was full unfortunately) I headed off on a tour on my second day. We started early (5am) to get to Borobudur for dawn and even though we didn't quite get there early enough we were still afforded some amazing views. By now I have forgotten most of the interesting things we were told by our guide but you probably wouldn't be that interested anyway so no major problem
View from monument at dawn
. Suffice to say there are lots of Buddha statues and relief sculptures and there are plenty of steps up to the top. Next up was another famous UNESCO World Heritage site (your nothing these days if your not UNESCO accredited) - Prambanan - but first a quick stop at a pretty small temple. Nothing amazing but they did have an enormous tree with tarzan vines which of course was called the 'Buddha Tree'.
Severly damaged during a major earthquake here in 2006, the Parambanan monument is not what it used to be. Almost everything fell down or was damaged so this is as much a monument to the power of the earthquake as to the power of religion. They are rebuilding the momument bit by bit but with the limited funding and the size of the task it is estimated to take almost 500 years to fix - I'll see you there in 2508. Also they are using some replacement brick because they are not good at jigsaws - imagine doing the Christmas jigsaw and then just making a new peice whenever you got stuck. But the site is still very impressive desite all the problems with falling masonary and so forth :)
Because I liked the city I spent a few more days just hanging around and I visited the Palace and the bird market and the old Royal Baths. The Palace was a bit of a disappointment as they wouldn't let me in. The bird market was really cool - not only many many types of birds but also bats, snakes, wasps, grubs, dogs, cats all jammed in cages - like a giant pet shop without any animal welfare rules. Had to shake off a persistent local trying to provide a tour which would have involved an unwanted trip to a Batik gallery. Next I went south to the ancient Royal baths and underground temple. I found the baths and temple but only after attracting the attentions of another local. This time I couldn't shake him off with simple No's and so he brought my around the baths and the temple and then, yes you've guessed it, a Batik shop. A blunt no from me ended the sales pitch before it began and I scarpered. Over the other days I ate well, relaxed, and finally bought a guide book.
Anyway, time to move on a see some volcanoes up close. No minibus of doom this time, I'm going by train.
