MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! from Ko Lanta

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Well, we’re out of Indonesia and into Thailand!


I have to say it is quite a relief to be out of Indonesia. We saw a lot of cool stuff there and had a good time, but it is really hard to relax or enjoy a place when you have to constantly worry about getting ripped off. The never-ending harassment from the local population and the ridiculous inflation of the prices on everything from water to transportation was so exhausting and frustrating that I must say, we weren’t sad to leave the place.

Arriving in Thailand was like a breath of fresh air and with both of us feeling a little ragged, a week or two on the beaches of Thailand is exactly what the doctor ordered!

Nick’s been feeling a bit under the weather, so our first priority here in Thailand was to RELAX. We did a brief stop on Ko Phi Phi island, but weren’t feeling up for any activities and the scene was a bit loud for us, so after one day hanging out on Long Beach, we headed for peaceful and quiet Ko Lanta.

(Long Beach, Ko Phi Phi Island)

We went as far south as possible on the island to escape the crowds and have found ourselves on this little private beach with turquoise waters, no waves, and very few people. It’s the perfect place to recharge before we head out for the rest of our adventure.

The place we're staying at has a funky little vibe, very laid back and relaxed.

Last night, they even had a Christmas party with a little Christmas tree and some Christmas music! So we were able to get in the spirit a bit.

Being away from home for Christmas is of course not ideal, but I guess you can’t complain when you’re spending the holidays in paradise!

Ba Ba Banana... Prambanan...Ba ba da da!

So, after Borobudur, we were on our way to Prambanan, the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia. We first stopped at a small temple close to Borobudur, the Mendut Temple, to check out the 3m-high Buddha.

And then we were off to continue our path to enlightenment.

Prambanan was also built in the 9th century, by the same king who build Borobudur, but while Borobudur is a Buddhist temple, Prambanan is primarily a Hindu temple.

It's really impossible for me to capture this or any of these large temples with a standard digital camera!

The main part of the complex has 6 temples, three very large ones housing Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma, and three smaller ones directly across from them. The main temple stands 47 meters high and houses Shiva, the chief diety of the Hindu faith. Unfortunately these temples were severely damaged by a 5.9 earth quake that hit Yogyakarta in 2006. Consequently, all but one of the smaller ones was closed to visitors, and so we weren’t able to get too close or walk inside.

Walking around this site, it’s really hard to imagine that these things were built without any modern-day equipment – no cranes or bull dozers… I can’t imagine the man power that must have been required to make a 47-meter high shrine like this one.

Also part of the Prambanan complex is another area with Buddhist shrines – wouldn’t it be amazing if all religions could peacefully coexist as beautifully has Hinduism and Buddhism do??

This site is also under some serious reconstruction, due to the 2006 earth quake

But even before the earthquake, many of the smaller temples, both Hindu and Buddhist, have been in ruins for hundreds of years, due to serious neglect. Soon after the temples here were completed, they were “mysteriously abandoned” according to my Lonely Planet Guide, and weren’t discovered again until the 19th century.

According to our guide, before reconstruction began in 1937, local people were known to come by and take stones from the ruble to use as materials for building their own houses!

Nonetheless, the site was very impressive!

After a full day of exploring these temples, we made it back to our hotel for a long nap and a relaxing final evening in Yogyakarta. Tomorrow (12/20), we’ll be on a train to Jakarta where we’ll end our 2-week stay in Indonesia and head to Thailand!

Borobudur

Second time’s the charm, right? Today, we managed to wake up in time – thanks to the trusty alarm on our digital camera! – and set out on our third sunrise adventure… kind of.

We were headed to Borobudur

Borobudur is the largest Buddhist monument in the world. All of the guide books tell you to go at sunrise, and the travel companies advertise a sunrise trip, but actually trips typically don’t arrive at the site until the park opens, at 6:00am. If we wanted to see sunrise from Borobudur, we’d have to “go in the back door” which requires a large fee (maybe $10-20 USD) so that you can get in before the park actually opens – something the guide books fail to mention! But, no harm done, it is a beautiful site to see no matter what time of the day.

Borobudur was built in the 9th century and is very impressive. The entire structure has three main levels which take you through the spiritual journey of Buddhism.

The first level represents the first tenant of Buddhism – suffering and worldly temptations and sins. As such, much of the base reliefs on the first level depict sinful behavior and reactions to or consequences of those actions. These two base reliefs show two “sins” of Buddhism – gossiping and drinking alcohol.

Most of the base reliefs on this level have been covered with an outer layer of stone – this stone serves the purpose of supporting and reinforcing the structure, but it also conveniently covers up depictions of sinful behavior – including those which have been deemed inappropriate, such as depictions of the Kama Sutra…

Moving on, the second layer has more base-reliefs mostly depicting the story of the life of Buddha and the path to enlightenment. This level has tons of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, many of which are missing hands or heads.

The top level of Borobudur represents Nirvana or enlightenment and is full of very large formations called stupas.

There are many different interpretations of these things, but the one our tour guide told us was that they represent the only three possessions that a Buddhist must have. The bell shape at the bottom represents the robe, the square represents the bowl for food and the pole on the top represents the walking stick. These are the only three possessions that the Buddhist monk should have and they can be used as a focal point for meditation – thus the stupa.

All of the stupas on top contain Buddhas inside, this one was taken open as an example –

One of the stupas is said to have the “fortune” Buddha inside, although this has nothing to do with the actual religion of Buddhism. According to local myth, if you reach inside and touch the Buddha, good fortune will come to you. Women reach in and touch their right hand to the Buddha’s right foot

Men reach in to touch their right hand to the Buddha’s right hand – this is a picture of Nick’s hand inside the Buddha statue.

What is actually amazing is that this monument was originally built without any mortar at all. The base is just bricks laid one on top of the other. On the higher levels, they used a tongue and groove system to keep it all together. The entire complex was quite impressive, but after 2 hours of walking around, it was time to head to the next big site here in central Java: Prambanan... to be continued!

My New Rings!

After Mt. Bromo, it was back on the bus for 13 hours to head to Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta) the cultural center of Java. We spent our first day walking aimlessly around the city and had every intention of doing another sunrise trip yesterday, but…. We slept in! So instead we took a 3 hour walk across the city to check out some art classes. We ended up signing up for a 3 hour silver jewelry making class.

We payed our fee and ate lunch at the ViaVia Café, and then took a 20 minute ride down to the silver-smith’s workshop on these little pedi-cabs.

It was a lovely ride, until these guys later ripped us off… but that’s another story. (we've been lucky enough to get the "foreigner discount" on almost every purchase here in Indonesia, from water to sunscreen, hotels to taxis...)

Nick and I both decided to make rings (the other option was a pendant) and we had 4g of silver to work with. We came up with two rough designs; mine was a mountain with a sunrise – going along with our reoccurring sunrise theme on this trip, Nick’s was a row of waves – for our endless summer!

Our first step was to measure our silver band and begin to form the wire our desired pattern out of silver wire… easier said than done. Just to make some waves and swirls we had a heck of a time. Eventually, we ended up heating the wire up a bit to make our jobs easier.

After that, we used these little stamps and tapped some words into what would become the inside of our band – mine said “Yogya 09”

The next step was a difficult one – soldering. It’s actually pretty straight forward, but my hands aren’t very steady and I was having a heck of a time getting my little wires to sit on my little ring band just right.

After soldering was done, I used a hammer and some little stamps to give my mountain some texture

And then it was time to bend our little silver strips into rings – since Nick was making his ring for me (he’s not a big fan of jewelry) here he is giving me the ring to try on for size.

After that just some filing and polishing…

And next thing you know, I have two new silver rings!

Mt. Bromo

After a week in Bali, Nick and I headed to Java to explore the most populated island in the world. Going from Bali to Java means going from an island where over 90% of the population is Hindu to one where over 90% of the population is Muslim. Nevertheless, many of the famous sites to see on Java are relics from the days when Buddhism and Hinduism were the dominant religions of the region.

One 9 hour bus ride later (including a ride on a ferry) took us to a town called Probolinggo – the main jumping off point for people headed to Java’s famous active volcano, Mt. Bromo. After that it was just another hour more in a public mini-bus (bemo) and we arrived at the village of Cemoro Lawang on the lip of the crater at 6:00am.

Since we missed the sunrise, we decided to take a break for a day, relaxing and walking around the town, before heading up to catch the sun rise over the volcano.

The next day, we woke up at 4:30 am and hopped in a 4WD Jeep for a trip up the mountain to catch the sunrise.

Mt. Bromo is actually a pretty small volcano, and just one of three peaks situated inside of a huge caldera called the Tengger Massif (10km across!). The entire caldera landscape is made of sand, hardened lava flow, and volcanic rock and at times it can really feel as if you are on another planet.

Bromo is the “peak” to the left with it’s top blown off – endlessly smoking and steaming.

For our entire stay, the steam was flowing out of Bromo, across the caldera, over top it’s walls, and cloaking the village at the crater’s edge in fog and haze.

After enjoying the sunrise, we headed down into the caldera for a short hike up to the rim of Mt. Bromo. Upon arriving in the caldera, we were swarmed by people trying to convince us to hire a horse for the “grueling” “long” "hike" of about 1km across a field of flat sand.

Nick and I decided to “rough it” and walk through the black sand, passing by a very mystical looking holy site

Until we reached the stairs that take you straight to the top along the rim of Mt. Bromo

Where there is a nice little viewing area

But you can venture off the viewing area, if you’re feeling adventurous, and walk around the crater

Or sit at it’s edge

and look down...

From here you can actually hear the creation of the steam (or something) that sounds almost like an ocean break – I like to imagine that there was a sea of lava just under the surface lapping up against the walls of the crater… but I wouldn’t put a wager down that that’s actually what the noise was.

The whole landscape was a bit surreal; it was a bit like being on the moon. The only thing missing was weightlessness and space suits!

What an epic day!

Two days ago, Nick and I took our scooter and drove all the way up to Lake Bratur in Bali to take a sunrise hike up the volcano. Fortunately, after spending the previous day completely lost driving around Ubud, we actually had no trouble getting there and were able to spend a complete day relaxing by the lake before our big hike.

On Friday night, we went to bed nice and early, as we had to wake up at 3:30 AM to make it to the top in time. The sleep could have been better, but the fact that I didn't have a watch kept me from ever actually falling asleep, for fear that we would miss our wake up call.... that combined with the fact that a dog parked himself right outside our bungalow and proceeded to HOWL the ENTIRE night... but I'm not bitter or anything.

(although if we had a gun... this dog would no longer be alive)

ANYWAY, our wake-up call arrived at 3:30 AM and we were off. After a rather uneventful 2 hour hike, we made it to the top just in time to catch a BEAUTIFUL sunrise.

That is another island in Indonesia, seen from a distance

We spent about an hour at the top hanging out, eating breakfast, and relaxing before hiking back down.

Instead of taking a nap (which is what I wanted to do) we decided to take a drive down the coast to our next destination: Libeh beach.

On our way down the mountain, we were driving right past Pura Besakih, Bali's largest temple, so we decided to take a little detour and check it out. Unfortunately, the road was missing huge chunks in some places

and was so steep that I had to get off the scooter and walk while nick drove up with our packs.

We continued on this "road less travelled" for about an hour before we finally asked a local where the temple was.... and of course, we had gone the wrong way.

No worries, we eventually found the temple and it was beautiful.

After walking around the temple area for about an hour we decided to get back on our way to Libeh. We were taking our chances on Libeh, because it was not in our Lonely Planet guide, but we figured it was worth the risk.

A grueling hour or so of driving - including stops for gas:

and a parade crossing the street

and we made it! To a BEAUTIFUL, empty black-sand beach... it was paradise!

Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a hotel in this town... ok maybe this is why it's not in the Lonely Planet, but that's ok... we kept on down the coast....for another hour and a half driving down every road we could find and ALWAYS finding a beautiful black-sand beach and NEVER finding a hotel!

Until we finally made it to Sanur - a touristy town where we were able to find a hotel,
and, apparently, the "kiddy pool" of Bali beaches... Let's just say after no sleep, waking up at 3:30 am, hiking a mountain, and driving on a scooter for over 5 hours... I was less than thrilled!

But, thus is the life of do-it-yourself travel, right?

This Ubud's for you!

Ubud is a little town in the middle of Bali surrounded by tropical jungle and beautiful rice terraces. We just spent two days here checking stuff out, and in between long bouts of getting lost, we managed to find some pretty cool stuff.



Our first stop in Ubud was the sacred monkey sanctuary.The sanctuary is basically a jungle with 3 holy Hindu temples and about 300 Balinese Macaque monkeys living on the premise.

 




Although they have three temples, the only one that I got some good pictures of was the Bathing Temple. The temple was tucked way back down some paths in the jungle and had some pretty awesome old statues

Nick and I felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie!





The second thing we saw while we were in Ub ud was Goa Gajah(The Elephant Cave) which was discovered in the 1920's and had both Buddhist and Hindu holy sites inside.


The first is a cave – the Elephant Cave – which is an old Hindu holy site.

And why is it called the Elephant Cave? Well, we didn’t have a guide, so I can’t be sure, but I bet it has something to do with this Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god, who lives inside the cave.



Even though the place is called Elephant Cave, the elephant cave was definitely not the coolest thing they have going on there.


If you walk further back, you can see this awesome landscaped forest with stairs, carvings, bridges, and a lotus pond. It was absolutely beautiful.



After we walked past the Buddhist shrine and made a little offering,



we continued down the path, wondering where it would lead. We walked for maybe about 10 minutes (picking up a 13-year old “guide” along the way) when we came to a beautiful river and this little bridge



Our final big stop in Ubud was Gunung Kawi, a group of stone candi (shrines) carved into cliffs lining the Pakrisan River in the 11th century.

A contrast to the last two places that we had been, these monuments weren’t surrounded by wild jungle, but by beautiful, cultivated rice terraces.



If you looked at one side of the mountain, you would see rice terraces, or just a cliff, but on the other side you can find hidden ancient shrines. There were 3 or 4 different areas of these shrines, hidden throughout the property.







I have to say, it was very impressive!

After two full days in Ubud, it was off to discover more of Bali, but that will have to wait for another blog post!