After our unintentional stopover in Kuala Lumpur, we made sure to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare, since we didn’t want to miss a second flight to Yogyakarta. We finally made it to Indonesia, and we’re pumped to start exploring. We got ourselves settled in a hostel and then went out to explore Jalan Malioboro (Jalan being the Indonesian word for street). Malioboro is a major shopping street in Yogya and has tons of stalls and stores. We spent some time wandering and admiring all of the batik clothes and knick-knacks.

While we were out, we made arrangements to do some of the temples the next day, as well as arrangements for later on that week to take us to Bali (and do Mt Bromo on the way). The next morning we woke up super early so that we could see the sunrise at Borobudur. Borobudur is a UNESCO world Heritage site and holds a Guinness Book of World Records record for being the largest Buddhist architectural site. It’s one of the top three temples of visit in South East Asia (right up there with Angkor Wat (in Cambodia) and Bagan (in Burma)).

We arrived in the early morning, and the sun had pretty much already risen over the temple by the time we got to the top, but the early morning mist was breathtaking. By going early, we missed a lot of the heat and the hordes of other tourists who started to arrive as we were coming down. Borobudur is kind of pyramid shaped with intricately carved reliefs all the way up. On the top level, there are domes that surround different Buddha statues. We spent some time exploring the temple and then headed down to where they were doing some of the restoration work on the stone.

After Borobudur, we made a quick stop at Mendut, another Buddhist temple nearby and then made our way to Prambanan. Prambanan is also a UNESCO world heritage site, but it’s a Hindu Temple complex. Originally there were 240 temples that made up the complex, but most were destroyed during the earthquake in 2006. There has been a lot of work to rebuild them, and even when we visited, there were piles of stones everywhere waiting to be built back up. It was like a ginormous jigsaw puzzle.

A little further up from Prambanan there are some other temples, so we hopped on a trolley to check them out. out of the ones we visited Sewu was hands down my favourite. It’s a Buddhist temple complex which was also in the midst of being rebuilt. The main temple and a couple of smaller ones surrounding it have been rebuilt, and there are still some guardian statues in the complex, but much of it remains stacked in piles. All of the stones piled up made me curious as to what the temple would have looked like in all it’s glory.

We were spent after our early morning wake up and a full day of temple exploring in the heat, so we headed back to our hotel to lounge by the pool. The temples are definitely worth the visit to Yogyakarta, but other than Mt. Bromo, there isn’t too much to do on the island of Java. We spent the rest of our time in Yogya enjoying Javanese food, exploring the city and psyching ourselves up for Bromo.

Tagged: Asia, Borobudur, Indonesia, Java, Prambanan, Temple, travel, UNESCO, Yogyakarta