Jogja Day 4 (Part 1)

We were really excited as today was the peak of our visit to Jogja. Any visit to Jogja would not be complete without a visit to at least the great temples of Prambanan and Borobudur. We have booked the hotel tour yesterday and the tour would start at 8:00am covering Borobudur, Mount Merapi from Kaliurang and finally to Prambanan. We wanted to initially go on the sunrise tour but scraped off the idea due to some reasons (ahahah malas nak bangun too early sebenarnya). We woke up at about 6am (I couldn’t sleep after that ghostly experience pun) and had an early set breakfast at the café.

The USD10 Ticket to Borobudur and The Long Walk to the Temple

After breakfast, we waited for the tour van at the lobby while snapping more pictures of the beautiful Rumah Mertua. Borobudur is a two hour drive from Rumah Mertua. We passed by many beautiful places on the way. When we arrived, a group of vulture-like peddlers started forming a barricade and attacking us from all sides. It was a really scary and annoying experience. Most of our energy was spent trying to ignore them but as we say in Malay “Tak Faham Bahasa” they kept begging us to buy things we do not need or want. One of them even waited for us to come down from the temple and followed us to the van. She never gave up and kept urging us to buy some Borobudur t-shirts from her… she even went to offer us 5 t-shirts for Rp10K but we didn’t buy as we didn’t need the item. She finally left after about 45 minutes talking to herself. It was a relief indeed. Life must’ve been really hard for her. We pity her but we anticipated, if we started buying from one, the other would definitely come back and force us to buy their things.

Borobudur Temple Emerging...

Visiting Borobudur would require a healthy and fit body. In that case, I didn’t get to enjoy much as I couldn’t climb the 150 steps to the stupa and enjoy the magnificent view from up there. I had to even get help from KN and the tour guide to climb and get permission from the guards to let me sit under a tree at the foot of Borobudur. Only KN and our guide went up to the top. By right, we would have to walk about 3 kilometers around to the entrance using an exit only accessible via the other side of temple but since I had to be left near the entrance so the guide helped us to get the guards approval to exit by way of the entrance. KN managed to capture some beautiful images while at the top while I get to enjoy these photos from the laptop screen later that night and hear KN’s share of the experience.

At the Top

Part 2 of Jogja Day 4 Coming up Next...