Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Today we saw the Hindu temples around the Prambanan plain. We had hired a private car and driver for the day to get to all the ruins, and it was well worth the $22.

We were up at 5am, our internal clocks still a bit messed up. Breakfast at the Ministry of Coffee didn't start until 8am, but we couldn't fall back asleep so just stayed up. Breakfast was great, the best on the trip so far (although still short of breakfasts we had in Morocco). Our driver arrived at 9am and we started our day.

First we stopped at Candi Sambisari (Candi translates as temple), about 10km outside of town. This is a ruin 6m below ground level that was discovered by a farmer. It now sits fully uncovered, surrounded by farms in the village. We didn't even see until we were right upon it. I went to take a pic and realized that my memory card was corrupted, most likely when I uploaded pics yesterday (stupid Windows). So we were now on a SD card hunt as well as ruins.

Next we saw Candi Kalasan and Candi Sari. These are also in the middle of farms and villages, which continue on with life as if nothing's extraordinary about a temple sitting next to your house. There were no other tourists at any of these ruins.

Before getting to the Prambanan complex we headed to a market and found a camera store, and picked up a 1GB card for $12. Yippee!

Just east of the main complex is the Plaosan group of temples. This was our favourite site, (maybe even better than Borobudur). Again, it's set surrounded by farmer's fields. Most of the site is an archaeological work in progress, with big mounds of rocks waiting to be arranged into temples and shrines and stupas. Two of the main temples are restored; the rest just a jumble. It was quite beautiful and peaceful.

Finally we headed to the Prambanan complex. Most of the temples (the highest reaching 47m) were damaged by the earthquake in 2006; and so access is very restricted. However they're still amazing to see.

We had a quick stop at Kraton Ratu Boko, primarily to see Prambanan from a lookout spot in the hills surrounding the plain. You need a pretty good zoom to get a decent pic -- my five-year-old camera with a 3x zoom just didn't cut it. Boko also has some basic ruins to see, which we glanced at.



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A couple days ago while I was about town, I was stopped by a few groups of girls so they could take their picture with me. Heather and I figure I must look like some Bollywood star or the other.

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We're now finished with ruins for the trip. Next up are a couple of natural wonders: Gunung Bromo volcano and Kawah Ijen (a turquoise sulphur lake). We've booked the same driver to take us for the next two days. The driver was great, and the car has good lower lumbar support (it's a couple of long days in the car for Heather's back). After that we're off to Bali for the remainder of the trip.