Borobudur, Java

For me, the highlight of our trip to Jogjakarta was exploring the temple of Borobudur, a gigantic Buddhist temple built sometime in the 800's. It was abandoned around the 14th century, when Buddhism and Hinduism fell into decline as Java came under Islamic influence. The temple, which is 120m x 120m (almost exactly square, to the centimeter - how did those ancient Javanese Buddhist build this thing!?), was reclaimed by the jungle until Sir Raffles (of Singaporean fame) heard about it from some locals and sent an expedition to re-discover the temple. The temple has been renovated and restored twice, to great effect - it is truly breathtaking (and not just because there are ten levels with steep steps in between!)

Our trip to Borobudur started at 4am, when our driver Yuli picked us up at the hotel. The drive took almost an hour, and while I expected we would soon find ourselves in the 'country,' the city kept sprawling outwards into miles and miles of towns and villages. Indonesia, the 4th most populous country in the world!* We drove through (literally, through) a morning market, which Yuli said was only open from about 4-6am. We saw all sorts of goods and people balanced precarious on bikes - motor or otherwise.

Moonlit hike (full moon, too!)

Our guide convinced us that instead of going to Borobudur for sunrise, it was better (and somewhat cheaper) to go to a nearby hill and watch the sun rise over Borobudur. Fair enough. We entered 'the country' proper then, winding through (and up) dense jungle on a narrow track. We then parked and began the final leg of the journey, a 'short walk up the hill' (according to Yuli). Surprise! It turned out to more like a 15-20 minute hike in the dark up a steep hill, and it had us all huffing by the time we got to the top. But it was pretty darn exciting too, hiking through the dark jungle with no idea where we're really going, after being brought here by someone we didn't really know...adventure!

At first it was too dark to even take pictures, but little by little the sky lightened...

You can just make out the temple (top center) through the mist

To the left is Mt. Merapi, a volcano.
It last erupted in 2010

The sun peaks through

At times the mist almost completely obscured
the volcano and the temple

It was pretty special to get to share that with my parents and Jacob. I'm a lucky girl.

Some more mountains in the distance.

Upon entering the temple grounds, anyone wearing
shorts is asked to wear a sarong - which they kindly provide
(Though I brought my own). Looking good Dad!

Several groups of Indonesian school kids asked us to
take pictures with them - sort of a funny phenomenon,
it feels a little weird because they're pretty much doing
it because you're white. But they were really polite,
and Mom made some new friends!

Approaching the temple. This was
around 6 am so, blessedly, it was not
very hot (yet).

This place is massive!

Aerial view - each side is longer than a football field.

Hundreds of Buddha statues. Originally, each Buddha would have had a stupa
(one of those peaked dome-like coverings) over him,
but many have broken or been taken - along with many of the
Buddha heads themselves.

Relief on the sides of the temple tell stories of Buddha's life, along with other tales.
The temple was built without mortar - all the stones lock into place using nubs and keystones.
The reliefs were carved after the stones were put in place.

There were many beautiful carvings - amazing to think this was done 1200 years ago.

Not a bad place to meditate.

Really amazing architecture. I can't get over that they built this by hand.
And that, with a little help, it has stood for more than a millennium.

Jacob! No scratching!!

Hehe - I like to think of this as Buddha in a hot tub.

More lovely faces...

Stone grave yard - stones that were damaged and replaced during the reconstructions.

We also stopped by Mendut Temple, another Buddhist temple built around the same time. 

After what felt like a full day, Yuli dropped us off at our hotel - around 10:30 am! We napped, ate lunch at the restaurant, swam, napped some more, played cribbage, and read. Jacob and I hit up Malioboro again and ended up buying a beautiful batik of Borobudur (which is now up in our room, so every morning I can awake to sunrise over Borobudur). We got dinner at the FM Cafe (thanks Lonely Planet!) before hopping in some pedicabs to take us to a museum where they hold nightly Javanese shadow puppet shows. Before the show started, we got to see a man making the puppets. They start with a thin but durable water buffalo hide and delicately tap hundreds (thousands) of holes in them. After the carver/cutter is finished, another man painted them in incredible details - identical on both sides. All of the art and decoration we saw in Java tended to be amazingly intricate and the production of it appeared so very time consuming.

You can see how effective the thousands of holes are - the shadows are really ornate.

Speaking of time consuming, apparently the traditional Javanese people had a ton of time and patience when their culture was developing. The shadow puppet show we attended was only 2 hours long (alright, we did bail after an hour because we were falling asleep) but the traditional form of the puppet show, accompanied by gamelan, would have lasted all night, taking 7 or 8 hours to tell the whole story (either the Ramayana or the other Indian epic, the Mahabharata). One man worked all the puppets and sang the story/dialogue, accompanied by gamelan and other singers. We might have been able to hang in there a bit longer if we could have understood the words - but we did enjoy the several exciting puppet fights!

Hard to tell, but this is a big set up. Behind the screen is the puppeteer along with maybe a twelve-person gamelan orchestra.

After returning to the hotel, Jacob and I ran around the corner to Bintang Bar for a Bintang (type of beer) and a pancake (with chocolate and peanuts, yum). There was a great live rock band there doing some early rock classics. We didn't last very long though - even with a 2 hour nap we were pretty tired!

Here ends Part II - stay tuned for the final installment!

* Indonesia's population is roughly 238 million people, equal to about 75% of the US population. However, Indonesia has 1/5 the land area of the US, giving it a population density similar to that of Thailand (and Poland) and slightly less than China. (And while we're on the topic, I just noticed that Singapore has the 3rd highest population density for a country, with 19,500 people per sq. mile, behind Macau and Monaco. It doesn't even rank in the top 50 when you consider population density of cities though...and I'm done.)