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| Author : sue_and_nathan | Diary name : yearaway | ||
| 3 Sep 2001 : Ungaran, Central Java - Indonesia | |||
| Into the Southern Hemisphere | |||
| 'I never thought we?d actually get here!? said Sue as we sat among the stupas at the top of the Buddhist temple of Borobudur. We were up there at five in the morning waiting for the sun to rise. As it did it slowly revealed the surrounding hills and, Mount Merupi, which spewed some red hot lava from its depths especially for us. The reason for Sue?s comment was that in the early stages of planning this yearaway Indonesia didn?t reckon in our itinerary at all. It was Sue?s sister Viv who kept on about how wonderful Indonesia looked which first wetted our appetites. She even bought us a book with pictures of Borobudur in it and suddenly the inclusion of Indonesia, or at least Java, was inevitable. Strangely enough Viv and her partner have started a yearaway too, but their itinerary doesn?t cover Indonesia!! So, for the next 5 weeks we are staying with our friends, Bill and Theresia, in Ungaran in Central Java and making trips away from their place. They have a lovely house set in a big plot of land and grow a lot of their own produce - jackfruits, avocados, coconuts, you name it they grow it! On our first morning they offered us fresh coffee for breakfast, and here fresh coffee means fresh. This stuff comes straight from the garden and is delicious. Our first little excursion was in a minivan to witness sunrise at Borobudur. We had a driver for the whole three days called Suratman whose English is slightly better than our Indonesian, although only slightly, so we tended to rely on sign-language. We stayed at the Manohara Hotel (http://www.vocal.net.id/twc/manohara) which was on the edge of the park in which Borobudur stands. They maintain the monument and so allow you in long before the gates are open to other tourists. So, we took a moped in the dark to the base of the monument and climbed up right to the top to witness the sunrise and only had to share this wonderful experience with about 15 other people. That felt very special indeed. In ancient times pilgrims would come to Borobudur and circumambulate the corridors on each layer of the monument, slowly proceeding upwards towards a clearer and purer state of mind. Each level is chock full of reliefs of the Buddha?s life, teaching the pilgrim numerous lessons on his way up. The top layer is his goal where he arrives tired and hot but closer to Buddha and the heavens - this is Nirvana. As we made our way down, taking in the reliefs in reverse, we passed hoards of tourists and hawkers selling all sorts of bits and pieces. Still only 8am we went and had breakfast with a view of Borobudur in front of us, pleased with ourselves that we had managed to reach Nirvana before breakfast! We headed for Yogyakarta next, where we spent a couple of hours wandering around the kraton (the Sultan?s palace) and the streets around about where his servants and courtesans live. Part of the complex contains a crumbling Water Palace where in the olden days the Sultan would sit high up on a balcony watching his concubines swimming and dancing below. From here he would select the lucky lady who would be taken off to the adjacent bedroom for the sultan?s pleasure. She would then be whisked off to spend a night at the palace. By doing this a long line of Sultans has managed to acquire very large families, although the current Sultan has only one wife and just a handful of kids! The next morning we went to the Hindu Temple of Prambanan. This popular monument was already heaving as Suratman showed us around. We hadn?t been there long when a group of notebook touting students appeared wanting to practise their English. They showed us around the temples and proved to be excellent guides. We, in exchange, taught them some cockney rhyming slang and demonstrated the differences between various English accents! By the time we were about to leave we had acquired quite a crowd and much waving and shaking hands took place on our departure. Another excursion took us out to a beach place called Pacitan in East Java. This time Suratman bought his son with him who spoke a little more English and was to be our interpreter for the next few days. On the way we stopped at some amazing caves called Goa Gong where we acquired a guide to take us around. He did point out some interesting looking formations, but then explained everything in Indonesian so it was all lost to us, but Suratman and his son seemed to enjoy it! We tipped the guide as is the norm in Indonesia as I?m sure he knew his stuff! Pacitan was a lovely place. A deserted bay, with a good mile of white sand all to ourselves, surrounded by the karst landscape (rather like an up-turned egg tray) that this part of the country is famous for. Java, as you may have gleaned from what I?ve said before, is just about devoid of foreign tourists at the moment due to the recent political instability. One girl even asked us if we were scared to be here and when we said no she looked pleased as they do really need tourists to return. Our time here so far has been quite different from the rest of the trip. We are staying with locals so we are getting to see a different side of life than we usually do. The heat is truly off us for a while as our host, Bill, has lots of suggestions for our itinerary. I mean, we haven?t even looked at a guidebook since we arrived and were most amused when we passed two westerners in an out-of-the-way place toting their Lonely Planet Guides with worried looks on their faces. ?Mmm,? we thought, ?that would have been us if we hadn?t had friends here!? | |||