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!