Taking the Big Break

One of the places that I have always remembered fondly from our SE Asia pre-honeymoon twenty years ago was the central Javanese town of Yogyakarta.  It is home to some of the world’s most amazing 8^th and 9^th century ruins of Buddhist as well as Hindu temples.  I also remember Yogya for its great batik, bechaw – tricycle taxi’s, wood carvings, and as the quaint cultural center of central Java.

This time we spent five nights in Yogya, and I enjoyed it just as much.  But to start at the beginning, Mount Kelud had a massive eruption one week before we were to fly into Yogya.  It was a huge ash eruption that caused a lot of evacuations and flight cancellations throughout central Indonesia.  In fact the airport we flew into had been closed for several days just before we arrived and we were fortunate that our plans were not messed up.

We arrived to everyone wearing surgical face masks, and ash blowing everywhere.  There was still a lot of ash blowing around on the roads and everything was dirty with it.  The trees, ground, and every surface outside was coated with a layer of ash.  It reminded me of the Mount St. Helens eruption of May, 18 1980.  I was ten and living in Lake Oswego at the time and we had the same sort of ashfall.

The ash had mostly stopped falling but was still being blown around and everything acquired a fine layer of grit that needed to be wiped off every couple of hours.  All of the outdoor pools, swimming pools and Koi fish ponds at our hotel (in the whole city actually) where muddy from ash and closed.  We were very disappointed because we love to use our pools to cool down from the heat and humidity of SE Asia after exploring during the day.

Our number one site(s) to go see in Yogyakarta are the ancient Buddhist temple ruins of Borobudur, and the Hindu temple of Prambanan.  Unfortunately we discovered that they are/were/maybe closed because of the ash. In SE Asia it is often difficult to get accurate information, even on places only fifteen minutes away. We decided to wait until out very last day to explore these temples in the hope that they would be open by that time.

Luckily for us this is still the rainy season and the rains did come most afternoons for a heavy down pour for a couple of hours.  This was good for us because it really helped the ash get cleaned up and out of the air and off the temples.

Our first excursion around Yogyakarta was a trip to Pindul Caves to go cave tubing.  We all went tubing through a 330 meter cave with three chambers on a slow flowing river.  It was good fun but very crowded with locals. There were bats, cave formations, and of course sacred locations that were good luck for men, and another one for women. The boys, me included, liked the end where we could jump off the rocks into the cave river.

Entering Borbordur Temple area

On our final day we spent eight hours going to the famous Borobudur Buddhist temple.  It is an awe inspiring stupa shaped temple with multiple levels.  Borobudur was built on a small hill and was probably built between 750 and 850AD. It seems to just rise out of the jungle. Unlike twenty years ago there is now a beautifully designed garden and park surrounding the temple. It does seem to be in even better condition than it was previously so preservation and restoration are working here. Because of the eruption, the upper tiers were closed off, being cleaned, but I am still glad we went.

Hindu temple of Prambadan

After a great local lunch we drove on to Prambanan.  This is a large Hindu temple build around 100 years later by different peoples about 60 miles away, to celebrate the return of Hinduism as the ruling religion. Prambanan was also in better condition and more restored then I remember. It was partially closed as well with a worker up on the top of one of the temple buildings with a hose cleaning off the ash with water. This became redundant as about forty minutes after we arrived, the rains hit!  It was a tropical downpour!  We were soaked through in only a few minutes, but we got some great pictures with the threatening clouds all around the temple.

Can you see the guys up there cleaning?

It was a great visit to Yogyakarta, ash and all. After all these years it was different, but still an amazing place that leaves me again wanting to go back for more.