I went to Yogykarta over the Chinese New Year since I had a long weekend to see the Borobudur Temple as well as other places in the area. I flew into Yogyakarta and met Alo there because he had been working there earlier in the week. We just loved our weekend there. Everything is so green and lush and it's so peaceful compared to Jakarta.
Borobudur is said to be the largest Buddhist Temple in the world. There were originally 504 Buddha statues on the temple. It's always ranked as one of the top places to see in Indonesia so of course it's one destination I didn't want to miss visiting. It was first built in the 9th century and abandoned in the 14th century when there was a significant decrease in Buddhists and Hindus in Java and a large conversion to Islam on Java. It wasn't until 1814 that Borobudur was discovered again by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the British ruler of Java who was advised of the monument by native Indonesians. The monument has since been preserved through several restorations, the largest in 1975 and 1982 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO. Borobudur is still used for pilgrimage and once a year Buddhists in Indonesia celebrate Vesak at the monument.
Borobudur is about 40 minutes from the Hyatt in Yogykarta. We stayed there and I would certainly recommend it. It's a little pricier for the area but was great and relaxing and they had good service. When we arrived we quickly got our tickets and headed up to the temple. It's up on a hill and you have to walk up tons of stairs to reach the top. It was also a beautiful HOT sunny day when we went so we were immediately sweating our buns off (nothing new in Indonesia!). You can see the temple up high, its really tiny behind me in the picture below...
Like I mentioned earlier, we chose a holiday weekend to visit Borobudur. I'm going to go ahead an mention maybe it wasn't the best idea. As soon as we hiked up to the bottom part of the temple a couple Indonesians asked for me to take a photo with them. Others saw this and then it was all over - you would have thought we were Brad and Angelina! We were literally swarmed by everyone visiting the temple asking for photos and interviews. There was a group of Indonesian students studying English so they ALL wanted an interview and a photo from each of us! ha. It was quite the day - but pretty funny! Some of the Paparazzi pictures below...
As we left the temple and were down at the bottom where tons of vendors are selling things we saw this little Indonesian man climbing these trees with just a rope wrapped around him and the tree to get Coconuts! And you thought your job was hard!
Holy huge tree! Yikes!
We visited an area with tons of local crafts and art and I just LOVED it. I think it was called Kasongan. It's a long street filled with tons of tiny shops full of hand crafted local goods. Certain areas in Yogykarta also have tons of furniture stores which are fun to shop in. Everything was much cheaper than things you can find in Jakarta. And the shipping to Jakarta was only about 15 dollars(it's a 2 hour flight away so i'd say that's a pretty good deal). We each bought our first pieces from Indonesia here - a small hand carved multi-colored cabinet and an old Indonesian boat made into a shelf.
We went to the beach one day and rode through the countryside for hours to get there. It was a fun trip and always interesting to see the local neighborhoods but the trip took us almost all day to get there and back so if you have limited time I might not recommend it. On the trip we had great views of Mount Merapi, the world's most active volcano that Alo hiked up back in September. On the way back from the beach we stopped at a cliffside restaurant to get a snack and a Bintang(the local beer).
I loved our weekend in Yogykarta and wished we could have gone back! It's a great close getaway from Jakarta and flights are usually really cheap!
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