Yogyakarta

We arrived in yogyakarta on the 8th. As mentioned we spent most of that day waiting for check-in. But we arranged for a sunrise tour at Borobudur so we went to bed early.

Next morning at 4 we were waiting on the main street near the hostel for our ride. "Why did we keep doing sunrise things?" we lamented.


The car arrived arrived with three tourists in it. One young man from Germany and two young ladies from Italy.

The tour first took us to Setumbu hill, which was a 10 minute easy climb, and there at the top we waited for the sun to rise. It was cloudy, so the sun never really emerged, but the ambient light grew and the fog on the jungle was interesting, hard to capture on our bad cameras.

Borobudur is technically visible in this picture, but you'll have a hard time seeing it. On the left side, the farthest really visible hill has a pointy bit on it. That's the temple.

Still a nice view, indeed.

We descended the hill and met back at the car at 6AM and we left for the temple proper. Borobudur is a big attraction, so there was a big parking lot and our guide made sure to point at the "Lot B" sign. He'd also given us little laminated ticket vouchers for breakfast at a place outside the entrance--one of many stalls selling food, souvenirs, clothes, etc.

We went into the ticket entrance, where we were offered a choice between complimentary coffee, tea, or mineral water. We had coffee. Coffee in Indonesia is quite...earthy? I guess that's how I'd describe it. And unlike our purified black liquid you typically see in America, Indonesian coffee generally has a bit more grind/sediment in it. 

Anyway, coffee was not the main attraction, so I'll move on.

Borobudur is a big temple. Something like 8th or 9th century I believe. It is a multi-tiered, four sided pyramid-shape with carvings all over the surfaces and these interesting bell-ish features decorating the top layers. It's also in a state of restoration, many of the stone blocks are not original, but you can climb it and walk inside the different terraced layers thanks to the new masonry. It's a mysterious place, if you'd like to read about it on Wikipedia.

Here you can see a staircase running up the side.

A bit of wooden scaffolding on the left there.

The bell things.

Inside each is a carved statue.

After exploring the temple, we eventually made it back to the parking lot, though in quite a roundabout fashion. We sat down at the breakfast place and had on of the most disappoiting meals of my life. It was...like, a peice of toast with jam, a tiny plate of fruit, and choice of coffee or tea. Christian somehow had lost his meal voucher, which to be honest might have been for the best since he ordered himself a more proper meal (Nasi Goreng again! Fried rice...I think I already mentioned that in a prior post).

Waiting to go back, the rest of our car was nowhere to be seen. 15 minutes after the agreed time, the Italian girls finally showed up, but German guy literally never appeared. I don't know the story, but he was replaced on our ride back by a young Asian man, Chinese I think he was. 

And that was pretty much the extent of our adventures in Yogyakarta. Even though we had another full day the next day, Christian and I both found ourselves cursed with...erm...hyper-active bowels. We basically laid low that day, ate food from near the hostel, did laundry in the hostel's laundry machine, planned more of our trip, etc. 

And on the morning of the 11th we rode a taxi to the airport to leave Indonesia for KL, Malaysia.