Borobudur

For the first time in this country, I feel ripped off. I can find it somewhat justifiable that I go to places like Borobudur or Prambanan and pay a lot more than Indonesians. I find it reasonable to go to Bali and pay twice what I pay in Jakarta for a room for a night. I find it forgivable that I follow a man to a mosque and get done for a fair amount of money for the “tour” he gave me of the mosque. But I just can't reconcile taking a bus out to a monument site, where I am paying far more than locals are anyway, and paying twice the fare that locals pay to ride that bus. And though I couldn't be bothered to fight it out on the bus, I really think this is possibly that bad part of Indonesia that had to be here.

But anyway...

I made my way out to the Borobudur site and then had to deal with touts who wanted a ridiculous amount of money to take people to the entrance gate of the temple. I guess there must be those who fall for it, but come on. They should be ashamed of themselves. After paying the higher price to enter the site, I went in and had a chat with a bunch of students who were demonstrating at Borobudur. It's not what you are probably thinking. They had made a bunch of posters to show people. The posters had etiquette rules to follow as visitors to an ancient site. Things like, don't climb on where you shouldn't. Don't take any pieces of it away. Don't draw graffiti on it. Don't scratch your name on it. In other words, treat the site properly so that it's still here in the future for others to enjoy. It's really, really, REALLY sad that it takes reminders like that. And yet, I know how often I see people doing bad things to monuments and other spots just because what they want is more important than being good visitors. Respect for old things just doesn't seem to exist. It's sad. While I was chatting with them about all of that, there were photos taken. The girl was in high school and the boy was in university.

The first time I heard about Borobudur (that I can recall), was in Indonesia the first time I was here. I don't ever recall knowing anything about it before then. And by the time I heard about it, I was in Bali and had no time to go and see it. Since first hearing about it, I have seen a couple of television programs that have talked about the temple, read a magazine article about it, and a newspaper article. Then, while I was in Melbourne, there was a news story about a visit by Richard Gere to the site as well. It was like Borobudur was calling me to come for a visit. Which is the main reason I decided to return to Indonesia. I figured I had to go and see it.

Borobudur was built in the 9^th century or so on a hilltop that was modified to hold it. (I presume this means that the hill was overly hill-like and round for the purposes of the Buddhists who erected the temple, so they flattened it to their liking.) Then stone was quarried from nearby rivers and brought to the spot and used to build the temple. It is about 35 or 40 meters across the base, and 18 to 20 meters high. There are 9 or ten levels that are climbed up to reach the top. The first 5 all have corridor-like walkways around the edges of the temple. Once one reaches the top 4 or 5 levels, however, there are just many stupas amongst which the paths wander. There were roughly 2 million stones used in its construction. Somewhere along the way, it was abandoned to the jungle. And as jungles will, the trees took it over and kind of took it apart. Along comes that old rascal Sir Stamford Raffles (of Singapore fame), who re-discovered it and had it partially restored.

There are some nice reliefs carved into the walls along the galleries of the lower levels. Once again, I am not sure which ones were original and which were restorations or replacements.

Lots of carved Buddhas abound all over the temple.

At the top of the temple were a large number of stupas.

Inside the stupas were usually statues of Buddha. Two of the stupas are open and the Buddha is open to view. One of these two guys is involved in what I think is the iconic photo of Borobudur. The photo is of a shadowy view of the Buddha, framed against nearby stupas at either sunrise or sunset. I never had plans to make it for those times, but I hoped to get a photo in the daylight of that angle. Unfortunately, the volcano Mount Merapi exploded in November of 2010 and sent ash all over the area. The top part of the temple is still under-going restoration to clear the ash away. It is closed and nobody could go up and see the Buddhas any closer. So I had to make do with these photos. Maybe I will be able to return one day and get a better shot at my photo. These still turned out all right.

Notice how easy it seems to be to make it seem as though I was the only one there. There were actually people teeming all over the temple for much of the time that I was there. Patience and just going along the paths where the tour guides don't take people (because so many are on a day tour from Jakarta or Bali and so only have a short time to spend at the temple), make it reasonably easy to get photos without the annoying people in them.

I passed a group of young people several times on each level of the temple. They were taking photos here and there, and at times it seemed either they or I was stalking each other. I even at one point jumped into one of their photos, just to try to be cute. When I was sitting at the bottom again waiting for a clear shot of the temple with few to no people in the frame, one of the group approached and asked to take her photo with me. I agreed, subject to my usual fee, a photo on my camera in return. I don't know what this look on her face was, but she was actually very nice.

On the way back out of the site, there is a maritime museum that shows some of the carved reliefs of Borobudur. These reliefs have some kind of sailing vessel in them. Some anthropologists and historians decided to test a theory that some of the stories told on the temple actually related some of the maritime trade history of Indonesia. They looked at the ship(s), analyzed it, figured out its dimensions, built and then sailed it over the route of a supposed ancient voyage, around the bottom of Africa. (I have been reading of lots of these sorts of recreations of ancient voyages from various nations down in the South Pacific. They seem to be quite impressive.) This is the ship they built.

On the way to the temple, just before reaching the little town of Borobudur, we passed through another little town with another temple. It didn't seem to be very far away, so I asked if the bus would pass back that way if I managed to get myself there. I was told it would, then I was offered a ride back to that temple. For a price, of course. I had decided that I wanted to walk, both for the exercise and because I was tired of being ripped off and the attempts to be ripped off by transportation types. I said no. Most just turned to the next mark, but one guy pursued me for a long way and kept lowering his price to pedi-cab me back to that temple. He just didn't seem to get it that I had made up my mind and that my no was not going to magically change to anything else. Eventually, he did give up though, and I made may way through the couple of villages on foot. They were typical seeming villages.

And I did get back to the spot with the other temple. It was much smaller, but had an interesting tree nearby that gave it atmosphere.

And then it was back on a bus, that did come by and pick me up, to Yogyakarta. I met some other returning foreigners on the way back and they were quite interesting. I even got a good recommendation from an English girl whose roots are Ghanaian to definitely go to Ghana in Africa. I was planning on it, but it's good to have another recommendation that affirms my choice. And despite the annoyance about being ripped off by transportation, I did have a good time at Borobudur. It is a spectacular site.