I am well aware that the sensible thing to do at the time would have been to check into a hotel as soon as possible and permit my tired brain a few hours of blissful unconsciousness. In hindsight, it was exactly because my brain was so tired that I decided, with the help of a tourist office on the platform, that it would be a good idea to go on an early morning tour of Jogyakarta's famous temples.
Little more than an hour later, I found myself on an uncrowded minibus with a chemical engineer from Munich and a group of Indonesian tourists from Jakarta. I was able to get forty or so minutes of sleep before we rolled into Borobudur car park.
Borobudur temple is a 8th-century Buddhist monument, and since its creation has retained the title of the largest Buddhist temple in the world. The monument comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues.
Almost as striking as the temple itself was the celebrity me and the chemical engineer were afforded simply because we were white. The overwhelming majority of tourists at the temple were children on school trips from other parts of Indonesia where they had never seen a white person in the flesh before. We were constantly swarmed with awestruck adolescents asking in broken English if they might take a picture with us, since white skin and Caucasian features are fundamentally linked with movie stars and famous musicians.At first the attention was flattering, but it quickly became irritating, and on the way back towards the minibus I began behaving like a flustered Hollywood star pushing through paparazzi to reach the privacy of my trailer.
Immediately after a quick breakfast of fried cloves of garlic, we were on the road and I indulged in another forty minutes of sleep before we reached central Java's second most famous religious monument: Prambanan.
This 9th-century Hindu temple consists of several huge towers surrounding an even huger 47m high tower in the middle. The temples contain statues of the Hindu trinity, Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, while relief panels around their outsides tell the famous story of the Ramayana, and a less famous story of which i've forgotten the name. The latter was rife with Kama Sutra engravings, and the hundreds of oversize sexual organs and impossible positions reminded me of the adolescent graffiti scrawled all over the maths textbooks from School. I wondered if this temple had been left to the Sculpture schools class clowns.
Prambanan, with its tall spires, looked extremely similar to Angkor Wat, Cambodia's famous 12th-century temple. Further inquiry revealed that King Suryavarman II visited Java to study and copied the idea when he returned.
To be honest though, there's no way of knowing for sure whether the temple on view today is similar to the temple that aroused Suryavarman's jealousy some 900 years ago. Central Java is the most seismically active area in Indonesia, and the temple has been brought to rubble and rebuilt several times since then, most recently in 1918 after years of earthquakes and several coats of volcanic ash had all but hidden the temple from view. Dutch colonialists had been carting off sculptures for their gardens and locals had been using the stone rubble for construction materials elsewhere, like grave robbing from an Eastern Pompei.
Whatever the temple used to look like, it was a very impressive sight, although the central tower of Shiva has a very obvious tilt to one side like the leaning tower of Pisa, caused by a recent earthquake in 2006. If one thing can be concluded from a tour of the temple, it's that central Java isn't the right place for architects who dream of longevity.
3am two days later, and I was in the middle of a difficult trek up a mountain in Mt. Bromo national park, which is essentially a single gigantic volcanic crater with several smaller (but still massive) volcanoes inside it. The difficulty of the trek wasn't really a result of the terrain as much as it was a result of the lack of light. Neither I, nor my three Cumbrian trekmates had remembered that there's no light before dawn and had all forgotten a torch. We trudged on, cursing and tripping as we stumbled across invisible potholes or stubbed our toes on invisible rocks, determined to reach the viewing point before sunrise at 4.30.
To our surprise and elation, we made it just in time to watch the sun emerge shyly from behind the high ridges behind us and wash away the thick mist that had filled the giant crater. Standing in the centre of the plain was Mount Bromo, steam pouring out from it's smouldering centre. Mount Semeru looming in the background, and it had recently started erupting again. Every twenty minutes a cloud of ash and steam burst from it's summit. All the active volcanoes could easily have fostered a sense of unease, but it was difficult not to relax with such an awe inspiring view.
On the way back down the hill, we were blessed with the light of the sun and were able to see the paths we had walked. As we suspected, they were covered in holes and debris, and much steeper than they felt while we were blindly walking them. However, our struggle paled into hilarity when we saw the steep farming land built on the slopes of the mountains. Farmers here must have worked out a way to defy gravity, working every day on the punishing mountainside gradients.
Twelve hours, three minibuses and a rumbling ferry later, we arrived in Sanur, a touristy coastal town on the east coast of Bali. I stayed there for four days with the Cumbrian lads I met at Bromo, spending most of that time stretched out languidly on beaches and kayaking through the surf in the warm waters of the east Indian Ocean.
We soon moved to the West coast, even more beautiful and even more packed with Australian tourists, who spent their days surfing on the famous Kuta beach or otherwise drinking Bintang beer on the sand. It is a curious thing that all over Southeast Asia tourist feel compelled to by clothing adorned with huge labels of the beer they drink there, but in Bali this is taken to an extreme. There isn't a group of Australians in Kuta who don't have at least two Bintang garments between them. It isn't rare to see a smiling Aussie sitting on the beach simultaneously wearing Bintang shorts, a Bintang vest and a Bintang hat sipping on a bottle of Bintang from a Bintang beer holder like a mindless living advertisement for the beer company.
It isn't really fair that I make fun of those walking reminders of Bintang's Bali beer monopoly, since I indulged excessively that night in the ubiquitous beer in celebration of Jonny's (middle right) birthday.
It isn't cheap to drink in the clubs and bars of Kuta, hence why we did most of ours beforehand. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) we arrived already drunk into town and found out that the tourists of Bali were only too keen to buy Jonny all the Bintang he could drink in honour of his birthday.
Often, he couldn't drink it and simply passed on the unrequested beverages to the rest of us, who quickly found our uninhibited selves on stage on the second floor of a popular club, breakdancing to Run DMC with some employed dancers. This celebration was brought to an involuntary halt by the bouncer, who watched Jack smack his head on a low iron beam and perceived that I very nearly tumbled into the bar beneath us in a futile attempt to do "the worm". I maintain that I was in control, but my negotiating power was limited in the broad shadow of the 6'5" hulk demanding we leave the stage, so we scuttled away obediently and took our dancing talents elsewhere.
The Next day, the 100m stroll to McDonald's for breakfast (or lunch, more accurately, since it was afternoon) was a challenge for all of us.
Yesterday, we enjoyed a final sunset over Kuta beach before all going our separate ways, one home to Cumbria to quench the growing desire we all share for mother's cooking, real milk and real chocolate, the other two to Thailand to continue their travels, and me to some as of yet undetermined location in Indonesia.
I had met them in the last two week of their two month stay in Indonesia, and they gave me invaluable information and advice about what to do in the vast subcontinent. I attempted to get to Sulawesi, the spidery shape island in the north, but was let down to hear that I would have to remain in Bali for four days for my visa to come through.
Instead, I motorbiked to Ubud, Bali's culture capital, and I intend to cycle around the temples and craft shops here for four days while the irritating bureaucrats in the south tear their way through red tape in my name so that i can stay here a little longer.
Here's a joke in their honour:
What does an immigration officer use for contraception? His personality.
No comments:
Post a Comment