Yogyakarta and Borobudur

We spent over a day and a half in Yogya and surroundings. The city itself is not that great. "Macet" (traffic) everywhere, and Yogya was not as modern as Jakarta. They still have a sultan, whose palace we visited. Also, this city is the home of batik; the local markets and every street has vendors selling batik clothes and souvenirs. However, the highlights were just out of town.

Borobudur is the largest buddhist temple in the world. It was built like a pyramid on a hill. We climbed all the way up, where there were lots of monuments that looked like giant bells made of stone, with holes through which we could see a statue of Buddha inside each bell. In the picture, Simon is walking through the maze of giant bells. (Somebody described them better: "latticed stupas")

Before the arrival of Islam, Javanese weren't only buddhist. They were also hindu. There is a series of temples dedicated to Shiva outside of Yogyakarta, the main one is Prambanan. Like Borobudur these temples were built in the 800s, shortly thereafter abandoned and covered by volcano eruptions and rediscovered in the 1800s.

Speaking of volcanos, Indonesia's most active, Mount Merapi, is just around the corner. The last eruption was in 2006 following an earthquake that partially cracked and disassembled the hindu temples (and surrounding areas, including the city). We went to the area where the lava came through after the eruption. It is a river bank, super deep, but it has no water. It was the path of the lava. Currently, lots of trucks are digging the sand left behind after the eruption, apparently it is good for construction. We learned that people normally don't die of the lava, but rather of the hot air that it brings with it. Basically, the hot winds make the area become like an oven, burning everything. Merapi's peak is always totally or partially covered by clouds. Luckily, a wind moved the clouds a little bit, so we could see most of the mountain from our observation point (it was far from the volcano, they don't let tourists any closer).

Tomorrow morning we are taking a Garuda Airlines flight to Padang with connection in Jakarta. Padang is in Sumatra, the beginning of our last stop in our island-hopping trip through Indonesia.

Mercedes