Trip to Jogja

Jogja (Yogyakarta) is second to Bali, for cities to visit in Indonesia. It is on the Island of Java (the island I'm on), however it takes 11 hours to drive there and 1 to fly (of corse I flew). I went with my co-worker, Carol. She's the one that lives below me. We are pretty good friends, considering she's the only other single woman on my staff. She always jokes about being my mother figure, since she is old enough to be. Anyways, we decided to take this weekend to fly to Jogja and be tourists.

We saw everything we could in two days and I'm exhausted now! We went on a guided tour for 9 hours on Saturday. Leaving at 7:45am, we headed up to Borobudur. This is one of the most famous Budhists temples. Just two years ago it had been on the list of the seven wonders of the world! At least that's what the tour guide said. The temple was beautiful, and had lots of interesting stories about it. I'll include some pictures and stories about it on my blog.

Then we went to a much smaller budhists temple called Mendut Temple. This temple wasn't half as impressive, but it had a huge shrine of Buddah in it, which I got some good pictures of.

After that we stopped at a silver company, where we got so see how silver is made and shaped into jewlery. This is a very lengthy and delicat process.

We made a detour to the lookout tower to see the view of the Volcano. It is still active today, so we didn't get too close. I didn't get to see much, since it was very foggy that day. But that's ok, I think I have a pretty good idea what volcanos look like.

After stopping for lunch we went to our last stop on the tour, which was Prambanan. Prambanan is the Hindu temple. Part of this temple was destroyed in the 2006 earthquake and was deamed unsafe to be within a certain distance of it. So we couldn't walk through the entire temple. But it was incredibly interesting.

A highlight from the tour was being interviewed by a local news station about our thoughts on Prambanan Temple. And of corse feeling like a movie star when all the kids there came up to us and wanted to take pictures with us. We must have taken 30 pictures at least with different kids (mostly teenagers) wanting to stand next to the "bule" (white people). It's extremely rare to see "bule" around, and teenagers are fasinated and astonished.

That evening after washing up at the hotel we went to dinner and a ballet. The dinner was traditional javanese food... one of the most famous dishes is jackfruit. The ballet was a javanese ballet with such elaborate custumes. The story was a little hard to follow, but entertaining, to say the least. Its the most famous ballet to see on the island of Java.

Sunday we were exhausted from our big day on Saturday so we slept in a little. And around 8:30 we rode the bacet around town. This is a three wheeled bike with a little carriage attached to it that the riders ride in. I have a picture of it on my blog. The driver took us to all kinds of neat silver shops and batik shops and even a puppet shop.

After checking out of our hotel and taking a quick nap we went back out to face the heat of shopping in the local market, exploring the bird market (a local market only selling birds) and admiring the view of city from the top of the Water Castle ruins.

I almost forgot to tell you about the javanese coffee. I'm sure you all have heard of the term "java" being used around coffee. Well its because Java is famous for its coffee. Some of you might know about this famous "cevic coffee." Don't be shocked. Java is supposed to have the best tasting coffee because of its "cevic coffee". You might not be familiar with "Cevic Coffee." Well let me tell you how it is made. Coffee beans actually come from a fruit. Monkeys eat the fruit and pass the pit (coffee bean) right through their bodies. The famous javanese coffee is made from these pits that are in the monkey's poo. Supposedly it adds a delicious flavor. Sorry to change anyones opinion or tastes about coffee now.

The last stop was by far the most beautiful. We stopped at another temple that was on one of the highest cliffs in Jogja. It over looked the entire town. And there were caves and pools of water surrounding the temple. The grounds were "inda" ("Inda" in Bahasa is beautiful).

And that is the end of my trip to Jogja. You would think, with all the things we did, that we were there for a week, not two days. Now this week, I'm exhausted for parent conferences. But it was all worth it.