Jogja

Tuesday night we arrived in Jogja.  Our flight from Bogor was delayed an hour or so and we arrived in Jogja late Tuesday night.  On Wednesday morning we headed out at 8am to visit the Borobudur Temple (Buddhist temple) which is hundreds of years old.  It is SO cool looking!  It is made in a circle shape and is several stores high!  There are intricate carvings throughout the whole temple.  Each of the carvings tells a story.  We took a TON of pictures so those will be posted to FB when we get home.  I seriously just could not get over how cool the temple was.  We had to be the foreigner fee of $15 per person to get in (blah) and wore sarongs.  We were CELEBRITIES there.  All the Indonesians stared at us and would whisper (or scream) to each other as we passed "bule, bule!"  The brave ones asked us for pictures of us or with us.  Some would just take pictures of us "secretly" which was more awkward because you weren't sure if you should smile or pretend you didn't notice.  Some even took videos of us.  We must have taken pictures with at least a hundred people.  It was hard to go a few steps without being bombarded.  Apparantly it is very cool to see a white person.  I thought it was pretty comical at first but after awhile we tried to walk fast past people so we could get through the temple in a decent amount of time!  We took pictures with adults, children, whole classes, etc.  Sometimes people would follow us (mostly kids) and giggle and whisper to each other.  They were so excited!  Girls would scream when we said it was okay for us to take a picture with them and they would jump up and down in such excitement!  They always at the end would say "thank you Mr, thank you Mrs.  Good to meet you."  Or sometimes "It has been a pleasure to meet you" (very formal and obviously a phrase taught in school! :])  We had some people take pictures with our camera too so we have proof of our short-lived celebrity status.  After leaving the Borobudur temple we bought a carving of the temple.  It's very cool!

After Borobudur we stopped for lunch then headed to the Prambanan Temple (Hindu temple), which is also hundreds of years old.  This one is several different buildings that look like towers.  There have been a few earthquakes in Jogja, one big one in 2006, that knocked down a lot of the temples.  We have a picture of a lot of the ruins.  The main temple still is not open to go in because stones are still falling.  We were famous at the Pramabanan temple too although we only took pictures with probably 75 people instead of hundreds since it was later in the afternoon and there weren't as many field-trippers.

That was a looong day for us!  Lots of walking and it was VERY hot in the afternoon.  So much humidity!

On Thursday in Jogja we went to an old Dutch Fort (which was OK but not nearly as cool as the temples) and the Sultan's Palace which is still in use today.  The palace was cool and our tour guide spoke very good English and gave us a lot of cool information.  After the Palace we headed to the Batik Art Gallery (both our tour guides at the Dutch Fort & at the Sultan's Palace recommended we go there).  On Wednesdays & Thursdays only (lucky us!) the gallery is open to the public.  A teacher of batik showed us his students working on some batik pieces and explained the process to us.  Some pieces can take months to make!  Afterward we browsed the gallery and bought two pieces to take home.  They're fabric but usually you frame them so we'll have them custom framed one day and then hang them in our house.  They are SO cool and I can't wait to show them to everybody when we get home!

Thursday afternoon our flight to Surabaya took off.