temples galore

We arrived in Yogya a few days back and immediately made our plans for the week. Yogya is short for Yogyakarta, pronounced Joe-jha-karta, and is a major city in central Java. We arranged a tour on 10/30/'08 of the two big temples nearby: Prambanan (Hindu and Buddhist) and Borobudur (Buddhist).

Leaving at a relaxed 10am, we took a private, air-conditioned 30 min bus ride to the town of Prambanan. Nice ride. Paid the exorbitantly high admission (by Indonesian standards), hired a tour guide and started exploring. My understanding is a bit incomplete, but IIRC there are three main Hindu temples devoted to Brahma (creator), Siva (destroyer) and Vishnu (protector). There are also 3 adjacent temples devoted to their wheels/ride to the heavens, such as horses, elephants and such. The main temples are huge, with reliefs carved in the side telling the respective stories. They were restoring them, so we couldn't get as close as we'd like to admire the detailed reliefs, but the sheer effort to build such a sprititual monument was striking nonetheless. Surrounding these 6 main temples are hundreds of smaller temples for the 4 non-kingly castes. They are ruins really because they were destroyed by volcano Merapi and not yet rebuilt. I couldn't help but imagine what it must of have been like standing at the main temple looking at thousands of people praying at their respective temples.

At Prambanan, the main attraction is what I just described, but there are also Buddhist temples off the beaten path, so we decided to go. These were really in a state of disrepair, destroyed by the volcano and not rebuilt yet because of local corruption by the equivalent of an American union. The Buddhist temples had more of a peaceful/meditative vibe, rather than mythological and epic story feeling of the Hindu temples. They were also a little more fun to explore because you could walk inside and see the statues and reliefs up close. The massive temples with clear bright blue sky and puffy white clouds in the background made for a beautiful (albeit hot) environment to explore.

It is when we left Prambanan that the transport adventures/hell began. On the way, we noticed a naked woman sitting roadside (prostitute? crazy?) that unnerved me a little. The direct trip from Prambanan to Borobudur should have taken about a half hour via bus. However, after that period of time, we noticed that the driver was taking small roads and looking for signage. I won't go on a long rant, but suffice to say that despite us clearly deliniating what transport we were paying for, the driver took an extremely circuitous, unagreed upon route to make a few extra bucks. The worst thing is that it wasted a few hours that we could be exploring the awesome temples with. I was enraged and fought with the driver for a really long time, and eventually got some cash back, but the principle of it really ate away at me. I eventually got over it, and we enjoyed Borobudur too, but it was an odd series of emotions, from spiritual to viscerally angry (almost physical), back to spiritual. The driver even tried to return us home by 4:30pm, totally negating the point of the 'sunset tour of the temples'! Enough about transport.

We eventually took a bus with a few french tourists to Borobudur. Once we arrived, the torrential downpours started almost immediately, so we grabbed some lunch and javanese coffee. BTW, Javanese coffee rocks! They brew it with the grinds still in and it is strong, but not acidic. Don't worry, we bought some for you all to try. Normal coffee reaks havoc on my stomach, but Javanese is smooth. We put on our raincoats and started the 1/2 mile walk up to the temple. It is massive, with meditating Buddhas in every direction! It is organized in the shape of layered rectangles (akin to concentric circles) with around 6 or so tiers. As you walk clockwise around the structure and up the tiers, it tells the story of Buddha and espouses the teachings of Buddhism. We couldn't make out much of the story from the reliefs, but it was still peaceful and neat to walk through at sunset. Once you reach the top, there are stupas everywhere with Buddhas inside them! The temple is adjacent to the Merapi volcano and a large mountain range (probably formed by Merapi). To boot, it was misty/foggy out, so it had this misty mountain spiritual vibe. Apparently the volcano erupted ~1K A.D., driving all the surviving residents to east java, so the temple is no longer active (at least not by the local community). There are persistent (almost comically so) hawkers along the exit, which is in sharp contrast to our time at the temple.