Temples of Yogyakarta

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El- So our ride to Yogja was in a minibus with air conditioning, and it was just for us. It was a very eventful journey. Firstly we got dropped off for lunch by the driver at a restaurant where the menu was all in Indonesian and no one, including the driver, spoke a word of English. So Kris stood up in the middle of the restaurant and started doing the birdie dance to try and get across that we wanted chicken. Haha, it was hilarious. As if this was not bad enough we then stopped in the middle of nowhere in the dark where the driver beckoned us to the side of the car. We saw there was a flat tyre. So Kris and our driver overcame the language barrier and changed the tyre, while I errrm....held the torch and took photos. Haha we're not quite there with gender equality yet.

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Kris- we eventually arrived in the backpacker area of yogya, it was almost 10 and considering we had been awake since 2 for the volcano we were shattered! we got digs in a nice hostel witha pool and nice ambience. we sat over a mie goreng and water and, just staying awake, finished food before retiring to bed! the rooms were pretty good, we had a tv mini fridge and hot water shower for less than a tenner so a fiver each. you can get cheaper rooms but i could do with the comforts after the journey and in anycase due to the waisak festival all the cheap rooms had gone!

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El- Yogja was a very different place to Bali! We set off on our first day and within minutes had been whisked off into a Batik art gallery. Conveniently enough it was the last minute, of the last hour, of the last day of this exhibition. Anyway we were fairly confident this was not true, but we bought one anyway that we really liked. Later on comparing prices with other tourist we can safely say in Kris' words "we'd been had". We may as well have "Mugs" tattooed on our foreheads, cos they see us coming a mile off. But we are gradually learning to be a bit more streetwise as our adventure goes on. Other activities in this city involved sampling street food, shopping for Batik products and looking for the Indonesian football shirt which was a complete wild goose chase. But more importantly we went to see the temples.

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Kris- before the temples i have to tell of the story when i went searching for any indonesian football shirt! i jumped in a taxi to some street that apparently sold the indonesia national shirt in a shop called villour sport.  after 20 or so mins my taxi driver (who spoke a little english "football, yeah hahaha!") decided the shop didnt, exist.  getting back on the road proved problematic so i ended up playing traffic cop by jumping out in to the road to let the taxi driver out, the beeping cars were not so impressed with my goodwill gesture! i then asked if i could go to fc yogya stadium...i should have said shed! this place looks like a mixture between a non league ground, as in its falling to pieces, and an eastern european concrete stadia that has been left abandoned. the state of the game here is a huge contrast to the premier league.  we pulled into this scruffy looking motel of a place only to find i was talking to the players and coaching staff!  they mis translated that i was a newcastle supporter who wanted a yogya shirt as i was a support/reserve player for the toon who wanted to wear the shirt of yogya! they put me on the phone to the club manager who was half way through giving me a trial before he realised what i really wanted... he didn't seem too happy! oh well the temples...

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El- Oh back to me! I just handed the temples over to you. Well anyway we started at the Buddhist temple, the Borobudur. I had been here many, many years ago but could not remember it too well so we went there the day after the Waisak festival, which turned out to be a great move because everyone had been the day before so we had the place practically to ourselves.

Kris- the temple is great! it is massive, you can walk around all the levels and as it was so quiet huge lizards were crawling in the stoned carving corridors.  it has various levels i think having something to do with levels of reincarnation.  the hundreds of buddhas are pretty cool especially the caged ones at the top which if you can touch bring u luck! we both touched them.  this was before posing with loads of random people for photos, we were basically the only westerners there so we looked a bit different i guess. the day ended with a little meditating not that we knew what we were doing.

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El- Yeah it was a really good day! The next day was Temple number 2. We were taken on a tour with two lovely, but slightly eccentric Americans. I had never seen the Prambanan temples before and I wish I had seen them 2 or so years ago before the earthquake of 2006 because now, due to the structural damage, you cannot get within spitting distance of any of the temples...that is unless you agree to follow some crazy local into a secret entrance he knows into one of the boarded up temples.

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Kris - yeah this crazy dude was shaking on the scaffolding and then telling us he worked with the reconstruction team. its safe to say we were not with a proper guide.

El- After the tour he gave us the rather large hint that he wanted a tip by saying "My home is broken, the earthquake broke my home" so when Kris reached for his wallet he said "I'll have 20,000RP". The cheeky monkey. In the evening we went to the Ramayana ballet which was a ballet based on the story of Rama and Sita. It was very complicated and not like English ballet. But there was a bit where the monkey lit the stage on fire which was great! I kept hearing the word "Mint!" coming from Kris who was sat next to me.

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Kris- yeah my first ballet and it was mint.  i think due to the culture of this ballet it was a good one to watch as it was very martial arty and the story was very engrossing due to its colourful hindu links.  i cant say i am gonna go watch ballet again but this was not just men in tights!

El-So that concludes our trip to Yogja...next stop Kuala Lumpur...