Indonesia, day 4: Semarang

Day 4 started up with the driver bringing breakfast to me, and by finding a bunch of kids who would want to go to Semarang with us because my friend wanted to visit the kids over there. I'm not sure what that food was, but it tasted ok and I'm sure it was vegan -- the driver was vegetarian and knew what sort of things to give me. On the way over I was taught a song in Indonesian and another in English, but actually I only really memorized the lyrics of the Indonesian song when leaving the country. It's a nice one, but I forget the meaning. A translation in the comments would be cool! Ada sifat mulia, didalam dada ini. Sifat kasih dan sayang itulah meta karuna. Ada sifat mulia, didalam hati ini. Hati selalu bersih tak pernah benci slalu simpati. Oooo... Hidup bahagia di dunia ini. Oooo... Masuklah surga setelah mati. The English song was easier to remember: Sunday morning beautiful, going to the Sunday school. Praying to the lord Buddha, and learning dharma. Meditation makes my feeling growing better each day! Sunday morning beautiful, go to Sunday school.

On the way we stopped in a village where a place called Kafe Tahu (The Tofu Café) had had a big advertisement, but it took a while to find the place as it turned out to be tiny. What's more, they had put fish sauce in the soup, despite clear instructions not to! Fortunately I only had a spoonful of it.

After lunch we stopped in to a Buddhist temple on the way, and the road was so lovely we got off the car and hiked up for the last bit. In a relaxed enough pace to stop and smell the flowers, yet some got exhausted by it.


The temple itself was beautiful and had gorgeous gardens. But for some weird reason they had their dogs tied in to really short leashes or even locked in cages! What sort of behaviour is that from a Buddhist temple? Where's the compassion for these lovely puppies?! I talked to the monk about it and he was agreeing, but somehow I doubt anything will actually change. Well, hopefully if I will go there again, I can be positively surprised.




I also discovered that the older people at the temple spoke Chinese! That was a lovely surprise, it enabled proper communication since my Indonesian is severely limited and very few spoke decent English. Anyhow, after some relaxation and tango teaching we headed onwards to Semarang, which is a seaside city of around 5 million people, I learned the next day, as none of the group had any idea of the population. They never did, wherever we went. In Semarang, our first destination was a vegetarian restaurant called Karuna (the contact details can be found on the picture of the box, click for a larger version). You'd pick what you wanted from the displays and pay by what you had collected on the plates. What's more, everything was vegan! The food was tasty, and of course like I always do in places where you pick yourself, I picked pretty much everything and ended up with far too much. We took the rest along to avoid the absolutely stuffed feeling I've got in some such places (Commensal in Montreal comes to mind). It was quite surprising to see Rome opposite the destination temple in Semarang.


Actually before heading to the temple we took a walk on the seaside under the full moon (purnama in Indonesian, apparently, surprisingly almost the same as in Tamil). Indonesia is a really weird island country: you have to PAY to get to the seaside! How they can pull that one out beats me. Incredible. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to swim in this location.

Finally we got to the temple we had come for and saw tons of Buddha statues and the kids we went to see. They had a really impressive echo effect on the 5th (or was it 6th) floor.

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.