Pictures of Yogyakarta

How do I catch up? I could write for a week about the week we spent in Yogyakarta. It was very cool to be south of the equator. The moon looks different as it waxes and wanes. Quite surreal.


It's about all of it. The gift of snake fruit that tastes so good it made me smile with every bite.

Everyone loves to take their picture with us. Even traffic wardens like this asks us for a photo op. So I started taking pictures of the people who want a picture with us.

 Some people do interviews of foreigners. This was after a video interview with one of the girls in the group. We really stuck out here, but in a good way.

How many temples did we see? 4 temple sites and 2 palaces, one old and one in use by the current Sultan. This was a small one by itself, across the street from the coffee processing tour we did. I can't remember which religion, there is much that is Buddhist and Hindu and more.

 This is the coffee place, where they supposedly have the most expensive coffee in the world. Luwak coffee. Famous for all the wrong reasons.

This is a civet. It's kind of what you would get if you crossed a cat with a mongoose. It eats coffee beans. Then it poops out the coffee beans. Then some guys says: I bet that would make super tasty coffee. And so he made some. And somehow coffee lovers across the world agree with him.

This was another temple site, not sure the religion. Hindu, I think. It was very cool inside. The yard around it was cool too with massive trees that look like they came from the move Avatar.

These pictures are from the Hindu complex call Prambanan. It's very incredible. Looking it up on the internet is nothing like actually being there! Except it was so hot, that was harder to handle than all the steps. But it was like a treasure hunt to climb up the stairs and see what was inside each one.

There have been a few earthquakes. They rebuilt the bigger buildings, but some are left to rubble, with hundreds of smaller ones surrounding the big ones.

I truly love Yogyakarta. It was an epic ten days. I loved it all. Except the food. Trying chicken claws, cobra meat, pig intestine soup, and frog leg soup. That was the part Ron loved. The pizza with jackfruit was a pretty good surprise.

Yogyakarta has some amazing sights, crazy streets, and a lot of smiling people. This purple wall is a fraction of the longer purple wall of art as I walked down the street.

Sunset from the 5th floor of the hotel. Epic days with the pool up there. Such memories!!

 Then there was the temple site called Borobudur. This one is Buddhist. It is massive. Gigantic. Colossal. Beautiful. Mystical. Monumental. And so hot it will make your brain boil inside your skull. Whew. When you watch a program on TV about this place, turn on your oven, open the door and watch from there, after taking a shower with your clothes on. Put on a goofy hat and squint. Then if the TV is big enough, you can almost feel like you are really there. These pictures don't do it justice. But I have more adventures to tell you about. I have to write about those before we get to Cambodia in 2 days.

Completely epic. We started at 8am. Just driving around is a huge adventure. There are no speed limits and few signs, and few lines on the road that make sense to me. Besides being on the opposite side of the road that I’m used to. The view, the volcano hidden in the clouds (which spewed when we arrived, so we couldn't do our volcano jeep tour), the traffic. It was amazing just to get there, to the temple called Borobudur. It’s a massive Buddhist temple from the 9^th century. It was $31 for the car and driver. Then $84 for the entrance to this temple and the next place we were going. We passed rice fields, and we were shown some traditional Javanese houses made of wood.

Just paying to go in was a big ordeal. It was like being a super star. The vendors who want to sell us things were like paparazzi. They crowded around us constantly asking us if we would buy their postcards and puppets and hats and that lady with the sunglasses did not know what No Thanks means. It seemed like a very long walk, with the gaggle of geese-sounding sellers. Being hounded by ten people who all start at one price, and end at another lower one. It was so bizarre. I felt famous, in a bad kind of way.

The temple was so big. It was like stepping into a picture. I have seen it on the internet, and in videos. It was like when I finally made it to the Grand Canyon. Seeing it in 2D is not at all like being there, being surrounded by it all, covered in sweat. It’s like a gigantic work of art. A feast for the eyes. A wonder to behold. My eyes dancing from stone to stone along walls of stones that make up passageways. It was 7 levels. Sometimes you could go around a corner and find yourself alone with the history and your own thoughts. If I were to ever go back, I would wear something beautiful for an amazing photo shoot. I was glad to be dressed for the heat, though. All that step climbing and tropical heat was intense. I am so happy with my stamina. We walked at least 8 miles by the end of the day.

These places are so amazing that Amazing isn’t a good enough word.