Day 53: Jogjakarta
Last night’s sleep was horrible! There were so many mosquitoes in the room, we got eaten alive. Plus, we got up so early for our flight to Jogjakarta (a.k.a. Yogyakarta), we were exhausted! We got our taxi to the airport (which wasn’t open when we arrived!), checked in, and got on our flight.
When we arrived, we decided to just rent a car and get all the things we wanted to do done today! So after a lot of haggling over a reasonable price – in broken English since no one speaks English too well here! – we headed over to Prambanan, a beautiful Hindu temple complex built in the ninth century. The temple had been in complete ruins, but with major reconstruction efforts since the 1930s, they have managed to restore a lot of it to its original beauty. A lot of restoration work is still going on so some parts of the temples are inaccessible, but what can be seen was still so beautiful. The temples are made of stone, and all along the outside and inside walls are intricate stone carvings depicting various Hindu religious stories, with figures resembling the characters we’re used to from India. We saw the main complex and then three other temples under reconstruction, one of which was a Buddhist temple.
After this, we drove out to Borobudur, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia. In the late 18th century, the temple was discovered buried under forest bush, and in complete ruins. Reconstruction efforts since then have resulted in the temple being almost completely restored. The temple is sectioned into North, East, South, and West, and has 8 or 9 levels, each of which has hundreds of Buddha statues lined along it. We followed the traditional way of proceeding through the temple by entering from the East side, walking clockwise on each level up to the top, and exiting from anything but the East side. Interestingly enough, although it is a Buddhist temple, a lot of Hindu carvings are also depicted on its walls. While we were walking through, we also heard the melodic Muslim call to prayer – it’s so wonderful that the people here respect each other and their religious choices.
After Borobudur, we were exhausted and running out of steam, so we had lunch at a restaurant on the way back to town, and then drove around looking for a hotel for the next two nights. We found a place and checked in for the night. After such a long day and barely any sleep, we grabbed a quick dinner and called it a night fairly early.
The language barrier has been extremely difficult in Indonesia, and sometimes impossible to breach, but we’ve tried our best! Hopefully we haven’t insulted anyone along the way!
Last night’s sleep was horrible! There were so many mosquitoes in the room, we got eaten alive. Plus, we got up so early for our flight to Jogjakarta (a.k.a. Yogyakarta), we were exhausted! We got our taxi to the airport (which wasn’t open when we arrived!), checked in, and got on our flight.
When we arrived, we decided to just rent a car and get all the things we wanted to do done today! So after a lot of haggling over a reasonable price – in broken English since no one speaks English too well here! – we headed over to Prambanan, a beautiful Hindu temple complex built in the ninth century. The temple had been in complete ruins, but with major reconstruction efforts since the 1930s, they have managed to restore a lot of it to its original beauty. A lot of restoration work is still going on so some parts of the temples are inaccessible, but what can be seen was still so beautiful. The temples are made of stone, and all along the outside and inside walls are intricate stone carvings depicting various Hindu religious stories, with figures resembling the characters we’re used to from India. We saw the main complex and then three other temples under reconstruction, one of which was a Buddhist temple.
After this, we drove out to Borobudur, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia. In the late 18th century, the temple was discovered buried under forest bush, and in complete ruins. Reconstruction efforts since then have resulted in the temple being almost completely restored. The temple is sectioned into North, East, South, and West, and has 8 or 9 levels, each of which has hundreds of Buddha statues lined along it. We followed the traditional way of proceeding through the temple by entering from the East side, walking clockwise on each level up to the top, and exiting from anything but the East side. Interestingly enough, although it is a Buddhist temple, a lot of Hindu carvings are also depicted on its walls. While we were walking through, we also heard the melodic Muslim call to prayer – it’s so wonderful that the people here respect each other and their religious choices.
After Borobudur, we were exhausted and running out of steam, so we had lunch at a restaurant on the way back to town, and then drove around looking for a hotel for the next two nights. We found a place and checked in for the night. After such a long day and barely any sleep, we grabbed a quick dinner and called it a night fairly early.
The language barrier has been extremely difficult in Indonesia, and sometimes impossible to breach, but we’ve tried our best! Hopefully we haven’t insulted anyone along the way!
Prambanan Temple
Carvings depicting scenes from the Ramayan
Borobudur Temple
Carvings depicting various stages of human and saintly life
Buddhas overlooking the landscape
No comments:
Post a Comment