I Get Up - When I'm Down

I must confess that sometimes, I can be a bit of a nerd. (To people who know me quite well this isn't much of a confession...)

My geekiness often manifests itself in different ways; I'm a massive sport fan, and although not being able to follow it very closely whilst being on my travels, I've always considered myself as having a pretty good memory for results, statistics and athletes across several of my favourite sports. I really enjoy writing (having a blog naturally helps) and I like reviewing places I've visited or writing articles about things in the news.
With entertainment-type things too, my interest is somewhat 'uncool' as I have a large collection of Cd's, DVDs and video games which I spend my time using rather than doing things that a 'normal' 30-year-old would do - In my head, I think I'm still a teenager.

When some people set out to go travelling, their aim is to experience different parts of the world, by immersing themselves in the culture. Whether this is by spending time with local people, getting themselves in the heart of the action through volunteering projects or immersing themselves completely in history of their destination, the people I know who have travelled usually come back with a unique insight into something they've learned whilst being away.
I'm not sure quite where I sit in between those three categories, but I tend to find myself aiming more at being a tourist considering I always seem to be looking for something - that and the fact I have taken almost 3000 pictures since arriving here less than a month ago. There always seems to be something connecting me to landmarks, not only here, but in the places I usually visit in the UK as well. I like visiting and photographing places, monuments, stadiums. I enjoy having these types of things scrolling across my desktop background.

I've always had a bit of a thing for photography, and since the era of the digital camera, I have always aimed to capture pictures of the places I've been or things I've been doing, to help create a memory of that moment. I always keep tickets and receipts of places I've been as I love mementos, and I've tried where possible in each phase of my life to include these in some form of scrapbook.

In the same way though, I feel like it's important to also remember to experience the things you're doing as well as photograph them. I've never been someone who takes pictures of my food or someone who stands at a concert with their camera held high recording what is going on.
Pictures and videos do make for fantastic memories though, and I hope that I have been creating plenty whilst I am on this trip.

Particularly if I'm going somewhere new, I always like to take one photo to show where I've been. It's not always easy though, and this is where sometimes trying to write a travel blog can be difficult as there are certain situations where you can only put the reader in your shoes by describing rather than showing what exactly you're talking about.

Whilst having a look through my itinerary last night when looking for hotels, I am coming upon the visit two two very famous capital cities, both of which I have differing levels of knowledge on.
Later this week I will be travelling to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, and so far I have no idea that I'm going to see and do whilst I'm there (suggestions welcomed), where as next week I will be going to Kuala Lumpur, and I have an almost page long list of things that I want to see, including the landmarks of the Petronas Twin Towers, and the KL Tower.
In Jakarta, obviously I'm going to have to use my brain a bit more, a bit like in the Philippines when I was in Manila, there aren't any hugely world famous landmarks of note that I can spend a day seeing, and I enjoy the challenge of piecing together my movements, when the choices of what to do are plentiful and not always the most obvious.

Here in Yogyakarta however it's a much easier decision; well it was once I decided where abouts to go during my time here. Not in the city, but very close to it, there are two UNESCO World Heritage sites, the first of which I decided to visit this morning.

I woke up today feeling slightly better than last night when my nose was running so much that I thought it was going to slide right off my face. Unfortunately the air conditioning unit here is currently not working so I had to sleep with the fan on all of last night as it tends to get rather warm when you're in a room where you can touch both walls with your arms outstretched. 

It actually didn't look too bright this morning when I got out of bed, but as I learned in Bali, sometimes the sun will appear just as it gets to about 11.30-12pm and from that point onwards, it beats down on your defenceless body for the rest of the day. I asked the girl at reception last night if she could explain to me how to get to my destination today, and she said that I should catch the bus, and ride it to the end of the line, and by which point I would have reached Prambanan.

In went and grabbed three drinks before setting out this morning as I figured it was going to be a warm one, and then I took a ten minute walk down the road to the nearest bus stop. I have to say that for a country where English is definitely not the first language, I haven't had too many issues communicating with people here. Most of the signs in shops are in both languages, and when you go into a shop, all the people behind the counter seem to be able to tell me how much things cost using English numbers.
It seems funny to me though because every time I go to pay for something, you usually get a nervous look from the person as if to say: "Sorry, I don't think I'll be able to communicate with you, I'm going to sheepishly hope that you speak Indonesian."

Bus stops here are quite interesting - to me anyway. They are set out like a normal bus shelter, but are raised off the ground to the same level as the bus door which means that you're on a bit of a platform when you enter one. There's a little turn-style to get through as well, and rather than buying a ticket, someone feeds a card into a machine which gives you access.

I explained to the man working where I wanted to go, paid my 3500 Rp (about 18p) and he told me that I'd need to catch the first bus, go one stop, and then change to get the 1A bus which would take me to Prambanan. 

When I got onto the bus, he very nicely told the conductor where I was going, and after the first stop I got off and waited patiently for the right bus to come along. About ten minutes later it showed up, and I boarded, not having a clue how long it was going to take, but knowing that because it was the last stop, I could hardly end up in the wrong place.

Along the way I noticed a couple of useless bits of information about the bus. Firstly, there were some seats next to the driver which people could park themselves on when the bus was beginning to get a little crowded with people. I later read that these are often reserved for 'foreigners' so that the driver can let them know the correct place to get off.
Secondly, the conductor on the bus stood up and announced the name of each stop to the passengers as it was coming along so they would know when the right time to get up was. And thirdly, I presume for statistical reasons, the conductor also wrote down at every stop how many people he had on the bus, and indicated to the people in the shelter, how many people were departing so they could write it down too.
All very useless, but shows that I was paying attention.

We drove straight down Marlboro Street, and then headed towards a town called Solo which I'd read is very close to both Yogyakarta and Prambanan.

It took about thirty-five minutes before we eventually arrived at our destination. I wasn't the only person getting off the bus at the terminal stop, but I seemed to be the only person armed with a camera ready to visit one of the country's most famous sights.

As I haven't already, I will explain that Prambanan is a very important religious monument, not only in Indonesia, but throughout the world. Hopefully my pictures of it will jog a memory that you have seen it before, but it is sometimes confused with Angkor Wat because of the shape of temples.
It was built in the 9th century, and is a series of stone Hindu temples which hold significance to the religion.

It is a UNESCO World Heritage sight, but also a tourist attraction which I had read is very popular - particularly on weekends.
On the Internet there are plenty of websites which advise people that the best time to travel there is in the morning because of how busy it gets, but I certainly needed all the sleep I could get, and therefore wasn't going to get there for when it opened at 6am.

Having disembarked the bus, I asked a policeman the right way to go as it wasn't entirely obvious where Prambanan actually was. He told me in sign-languaged Indonesian to continue down the road and then turn left. As is seemingly the norm for everywhere I go these days, I had to cross a ridiculously large road to get to the right place, but I spotted the temple through the fence and continued on until there was a sign towards the entrance.

I went up to the main gate to buy a ticket, but the guy pointed me in the direction of the 'special foreigner entrance' so I re-traced my steps and eventually found where I was meant to go in. I brought a ticket for this, and the other place which I intend to visit tomorrow so it cost me a whopping 345,000 Rp (17.50), hopefully they will be worth the fee. Prambanan is another one of those places where it's OK to charge extortionate prices to foreigners. I think for Indonesians it was only about 100,000 Rp for them to get in, but I guess that's how capitalism works in these parts of the world.

Heading in the direction of the information centre, I picked up a map which showed that the main temple was to my left, and there were a few more further down the road if I had time. I decided to start with Candi (which means temple in Indonesian) Prambanan itself so I followed the trail of people headed in that direction and almost immediately I was blown away by how incredible it looked.....

I'm not sure if it's just me, or if anyone else it gets it, but sometimes when I see famous monuments the thought runs through my head of  "Wow, that's exactly how the picture I saw showed it would look", which is what exactly I was thinking as I started snapping away. There were a few people headed for the main temple complex, but I wanted to appreciate it further from the outside so I took a walk around the perimeter, seemingly finding better and better angles with each step....

As I mentioned in my previous blog about the churches that I saw in Cebu City and Manila; I can't pretend in anyway to be religious, but I can admire some magnificent architecture, and this was certainly amongst one of the best examples of design that I'd ever seen.

As I was walking round the third of the four sides, I suddenly turned and realised that in my awe at the temple I hadn't realised that in the distance was one of Java's many volcanoes, so now I was totally taken by point my camera at two different landmarks instead of just the one....

I finally completed my lap, and it was now time to head a little bit closer, but first I read some information about the 2006 earthquake, and 2010 volcano eruption which both affected the temple itself. The earthquake caused some instabilities in the temple, and it took a rather large effort to rebuild some of the stone slabs and carvings which were dislodged. As I climbed up the steps to get closer towards it, I have to say, that even though the information board used the word 'devastation' it wasn't looking too shabby at all....

There was an option to hire a tour guide for an additional fee, but having spent nearly all my money on the entrance fee to cover today and tomorrow, I decided that it would be wise to be my own tour guide, and pick up as much information as I possibly could from the boards which are sporadically placed around the complex.

I didn't really understand at first, but having come home and looked it up, I get a general idea of the structure. Unfortunately I didn't bring my helicopter with me today, so I can't demonstrate an aerial shot of the temple, but I can attempt to explain using the pictures I did take..

So above, you can see seven of the major eight temples (one of obstructed by the rest of them)...

The three tallest in this picture are the main temples, Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma...

The biggest and most outstanding one in the middle is the temple of Shiva.

Around the outside of the major eight, it is believed that there were 224 other temples, but these currently look like this....

...partly due to the earthquake, and partly because they are over a Millennium old.

These smaller icons formed a concentric circle around the edge of the site at one time, so from above if complete it would look like this...

Overall, I was most taken in by just how spectacular not only each one looked, but how impressive they were individually. I started by walking in an anti-clockwise direction, missing out the Shiva temple, and saving that for last because it was the biggest.

When you go to a place that is as exceptionally constructed as this, it's easy to overlook the small details, but I paid careful attention to look at the outside and inside of each one I entered to see if I could spot any of the major differences, apart from their sizes.

Engraved on the outside of each temple, is a story of the God it is dedicated to, and these look to have been left entirely intact from their original construction. It was pretty amazing looking up at the structure from the stone platform that each of them had, and peering at all the decoration that completely covered every inch of each temple.

Inside the biggest three, there was a carving of the God it is  dedicated to, and inside the Shiva temple when I eventually went in there, there are actually five stone carvings of different relics.

The Hindus clearly have a great deal of respect for their religious monuments, as on almost each one there was a mine with a brush taking off any dirt and moss which was growing on it, no wonder they appear to have stayed in shape so well.

After looking around for a good hour and a half, I decided to make a move to a couple of the other temples. The first two that I came across were broken down, and appeared to be being rebuilt in some shape or form. I presume these were damaged by the earthquake.

The last one I came to was Candi Siwa which was in some state of disrepair, but there appeared to be some structures which were still in tact.

Although obviously not as impressive as Prambanan itself, Siwa had some temple guardians on the side which were in very good condition, and I read up on a sign that this was actually Buddhist temple which explained the slight differences between the two.

After seeing everything that I had to see at the temple I made my way back towards the exit, and in the direction of the bus. I wish I'd have taken a picture of this now (a phrase I utter to myself too often) but the exit actually wasn't an exit at all. In fact it led you through a little market where people tried to sell you every single temple souvenir they possibly could. It was a bit of a maze even by following the signs and took me a good five minutes to actually get out of the place, and start walking back down the road to the bus.

I was planning on grabbing some dinner on the way home, as there aren't too many restaurants near where I'm staying so I asked the bus to drop me off at Marlboro Street. It seemed to be an awful lot quicker on the way back, and I arrived at about 4.30pm and headed into the mall to find somewhere to eat dinner.

 There was a bit of a food court upstairs and I eventually decided on a restaurant called Mak-Mak which advertised itself as Thai street food. I had some Chilli shredded chicken and rice which smelt amazing and turned out to be pretty fantastic tasting as well.

I eventually got back to my hotel about 6.15pm and set about trying to stay out of my room for as long as possible!

The Hindu Times
Oasis (2002)