Indonesia, day 3: Prambanan

For the third day it was time to go see another ancient temple, this time a Hindu temple of Prambanan close to Yogyakarta. We set up early to get there before the scorching heat, but then some folks were late in getting their act together and it didn't end up being early after all. We stopped for lunch in a restaurant that looked lovely with little huts in which you'd eat and a small pond in between, complete with rafts. I guess my friend was right when calling me a fat bastard, for the raft was about to sink when I stepped on it! Fortunately the second one could hold me... barely. There had to be a race then, which we won of course, comfortably.




The premises turned out to be the best part of that restaurant. Some of the food looked good, some even tasted good, but they served us something with shrimp chili despite it being specifically said to them many times it wouldn't be ok, and they didn't even admit doing so afterwards! So, not recommended. Instead, go to Yogyakarta and find a restaurant called Milas... I'll write about that one soon, for day 7.

Well, eventually we got all the way to Prambanan, but the scorching heat of the day was upon us already. The temple was built around 850 AD, but it was damaged in the earthquake of 2006 and some buildings are off limits as they might collapse. There are plenty of rumbles too, but those are results of destruction by president Suharto, if I read the sign correctly. I probably didn't as people laughed at my interpretation. :-P

The temple grounds are large, it consists of eight main shrines of more than 250 shrines overall in the surroundings. There's a motorized "train" that takes you from one to the other, costing 5000 rupiah for a ride including ice tea. You can't buy a ride without ice tea. The nicest part about the big area is that there are animals roaming around, sheep and deer at least.




There was a tale of the place these last pics are from. Apparently a princess was being pressured to marry against her will, and she accepted on the condition that the man would build her a temple with 1000 statues before the sunrise. To her utter shock the man was about to succeed in this task, so she got the roosters to yell so they thought the morning was coming. The man got mad of this trickery and turned her into the last of the statues. I asked in the group which one is this statue then, but the other members of the group denied the whole story and told me another one, that it was just a shrine built for Shiva, and no exciting tales of roosters and marriages. Hmh.

One of the buildings almost collapsed on me, quite a horror there...



Then a bit of the nature... as I said, there are deer on the grounds! Click the pictures to get the bigger ones.







Then it was time for a quick tango class before heading back, via a little vegetarian restaurant in Yogyakarta called Bodhicitta Kafe Daun. The food was simple but good. Heavy rain on the way back, I'm always lucky, it only rains when I'm inside.