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We arrived a little late at 6:30 am with high humidity and a little rain at Semerang on the north side of the island of Java. The tour today was driving to the Borobudur Temple which is nearly in the middle of the island and a 3 hour drive each way with a rest stop half way and lunch after our temple tour.
After waking up this morning with a wake-up call at 5:15 am I discovered that Margaret was feeling under the weather so we quickly decided that I would go it alone while she rested and finished up her new Angry Bird level. I had a quick breakfast in La Veranda, gathered up my camera equipment and headed to the Constellation Theater to get my bus ticket.
It was raining lightly but, fortunately, it let up just as we were getting on the buses. On the dock a local group was performing traditional Javanese dances and playing their music dressed in their fancy clothing. Very nice!
Click here for the detailed Borobudur Photo Gallery.
There were six busses each with about 32 people on board. Nice, air conditioned and comfortable. Our tour guide spoke decent enough English and had a good sense of humor, starting out by saying that “my name was Jane, like with Tarzan”. His real name was Jean. We had a police car escorting the front of our bus caravan with its lights flashing. Still, the trip was a bit exciting at times as we wove our way through what many times were narrow streets in very busy villages.
We drove through crowded city streets past densely packed houses, most which had businesses in the front. Lots of activity on the streets. Halfway we stopped at a coffee shop that was quite nice. They sold the cat poop coffee in addition to all standard fare. $10/cup for the good stuff, $2 for standard cappuccino.
The busses dropped us off about half a block from the temple. We had to put on a sarong to cover our lower body, whether you had long pants or not. We followed the guide who stopped at key locations to give us background on the structure.
Borobudur is the most famous tourist attraction in Indonesia and the oldest and close to the largest Buddhist temple in the world having been built in about AD 800 during the golden age of silence. It was planned that it would take 60 years but it ended up taking 200 years. Around 1000, it was covered in ashes following an eruption and was covered for over 800 years until it was rediscovered by an Englishman in the early 1800’s.
The temple is built from 2 million sandstone “lego” blocks from 5 km away. Built with 10 levels it has no rooms inside and is 36 meters high. The temple is located on an elevated area between two large volcanoes which are clearly visible. There are actually three Buddhist temples in this area and they are on a straight line.
In the time they were building it they discovered that it wasn’t going to be able to support the weight so they had to put more square stones around the corners, covering up some of the reliefs. The lower 6 levels are square, each about 8 feet smaller and the upper three are circular. The top level, which is called Heaven, has 72 bell-like structures called stupas surrounding one large central stupa. Each of the 72 enclose a Buddha statue. It seemed that only one of them still had the head so I tried to get a picture of it by sticking the camera through one of the holes. Hopefully it came out. There are actually three symbolic levels of the structure which represent the three realms of Buddhism, Kamadhatu (the world of desires), Rapadhatu (the world of forms) and Arupadhatu (the formless world).
A total of 1,460 stone carving relief panels on each level tell various stories/myths about Buddha. They are about all kinds of things and far too much detail to get into in an already too long short blog post. Let’s just say it is like Aesop’s fables in a way with many of them giving advice on how to lead a good and honest life.
The monument has been restored twice, once around the turn of the century, just on the first level and another time in the 70’s by Unesco on levels one through seven.
On the bus ride we saw fruit with pricklies on the outside called something like “durian”. The old saying is “Smells like Hell, Tastes like Heaven. We also found out that in Java the people who work in the rice fields get about 25% of the crop as pay, the owner keeps the other 75%.
The bus ride back was uneventful with the obligatory restroom stop for fifteen minutes. I made some new friends and hope to get together with them on the next leg. It is amazing how much traveling these people do. One couple had some great ideas for an overland trip from China to Russia on a train. Not sure if we’re up for it but it sounds absolutely fascinating.
Trip Summary » Travel with Dale & Margaret - […] Semarang, Indonesia […]