Borobodur

Two days ago I went to the little town of Borobodur, famous for its amazing buddhist temple. Instead of going on a tour from Yogya I decided to stay there for 2 nights at the Manohara hotel inside the park. The rooms should have nice views of the temple and you get unlimited access to the temple during opening hours. I didn't make a reservation, cause in Yogya everybody said it was not necessary, but of course the hotel full :-(, so instead I stayed at the Lotus II guesthouse, which has huge rooms with big balconies with views of the rice fields.
The becak driver who took me to the hotel knew a Belgian woman, Wendy, married to an Indonesian and living in Borobodur, so he took me there. She has been living in Indoesia for 4 years now and works for "Anders Reizen", a Belgian company organizing adventurous holidays all over the world. The next day she would actually go to Yogya to accompany a group of travelers. Since it was her last day at home they planned to visit a viewpoint of the Merapi volcano not too far from Borobodur and I joined them...
The next morning I got up early to be at the gate of the the temple in time when it opens at 6 am, hoping I would still see a bit of the sunrise. There is also a sunrise tour to visit the temple before opening hours, but it is very expensive so I decided to go at 6 am. And I was lucky, cause the sun was still rising... There were not too many people yet so that was also a bonus. An hour later there were hundreds of people, especially a lot of school groups and Indonesian families. And of course they all wanted to have a picture with me. The first 5 times it's nice to do, but in the end I had to run away cause more and more people came to have a picture with me and sometimes they were quite rude, not even asking anymore, but simply assuming I'd do it. It has happened more than once before in Asia that people ask me to be in their picture, but never like this, it was crazy... So I went back to the hotel and had some breakfast and I thought I would relax the rest of the day. But in the afternoon an Indonesian family moved into the other room and the rest of the day I heard the four children giggling on their balcony cause they wanted to come and say something but don't know any english. In the evening th father came with all the children and he talked with me for a while, but his english was also very limited. And of course in the end they only wanted to have a picture with me...

Twee dagen geleden ging ik naar het dorpje Borobodur, bekend van zij prachtige boedistische tempel. In plaats van de tempel vanuit Yogya te bezoeken zoals de meeste mensen doen, besloot ik in het Manohara hotel te blijven, een hotel dat in 't park ligt. De kamers zouden een prachtig zicht hebben op de tempel en je krijgt er onbeperkte toegang tot de tempel tijdens openingsuren. Ik had niet gereserveerd want dat was niet nodig volgens de mensen in Yogya, maar natuurlijk was het hotel volzet :-(, dus verbleef ik dan maar in de Lotus II guesthouse, die ook wel reusachtige kamers hadden met een groot balkon en zicht op de rijstvelden.
De becakchauffeur die me naar het hotel bracht kende een Belgische vrouw, Wendy, die getrouwd is met een Indonesier en die in Borobodur woont, dus hij bracht me er naar toe. Ze woont ondertussen al 4 jaar in Indonesie en werkt voor "Anders Reizen". De volgende dag zou ze naar Yogya gaan om er een groep reizigers te gaan begeleiden. Aangezien 't haar laatste dag thuis was hadden ze een uitstapje gepland naar een viewpoint van de Merapi vulkaar en ik ben met hen meegegaan...
De volgende morgen ben ik vroeg opgestaan zodat ik op tijd aan de ingang van de tempel zou zijn wanneer die opent om 6 uur 's morgens, in de hoop dat ik nog een beetje van de zonsopgang zou kunnen meepikken. Er is ook wel een zonsopgang-tour waarmee je de tempel kunt bezoeken voordat 't park opent, maar dat was heel duur dus ik besloot maar om 6 uur te gaan. En ik had geluk want de zon was nog aan 't rijzen... En er waren ook nog niet zo veel mensen dus dat was zeker een bonus. Een uurtje later waren er honderden mensen, vooral schoolgroepen en Indonesische families. En natuurlijk wilden ze allemaal met mij op de foto. De eerste 5 keer is 't nog leuk, maar uiteindelijk moest ik weglopen want meer en meer mensen wilden een foto en soms waren ze behoorlijk onbeleefd, ze vroegen 't niet eens meer, ze trokken gewoon aan mijn mouw en veronderstelde dat ik 't wel zou doen. Dit was zeker niet de eerste keer dat mensen mij vragen om met hun op de foto te staan in Azie, maar nog nooit was 't zoals hier, dit was echt erover... Dus ik ben maar terug naar 't hotel gegaan zodat ik de rest van de dag een beetje kon relaxen. Maar in de namiddag trok een Indonesische familie in de andere kamer en de rest van de dag hoorde ik de 4 kinderen giechlen op hun balkon omdat ze iets tegen mij wilden zeggen, maar niet konden omdat ze geen Engels kenden. 's Avonds kwam de vader met de kinderen even langs om met mij te praten, maar zijn Engels was ook heel beperkt. En natuurlijk wilden ze uiteindelijk alleen maar een foto met mij...

Surabaya and Yogya

After Bromo I went to Surabaya. Surabaya is a huge city with lots of traffic and it's very hot. I went to Surabaya to find the convent where the aunt of my grandmother used to be a nun. At home we have a little book with old pictures of the building and with the old address of the complex of the convent, church and schools. Sadly enough I forgot to take a copy of the book with me, so I only had the address to work with. I decided to stay at hotel Paviljoen, because the Lonely Planet says that the elderly owners still speak Dutch. When I asked the owner if he knew the old address he got out is old map of Surabaya and tried to help me. But the street was not on the map, unfortunately. He also had a list of schools, churches and other official buildings from that time, so I decide to check out 2 of the 3 catholic girl schools. The other one was to far from the hotel. When I arrived at the first school, I could clearly see that this was not the right school, cause it looked very different from what I remembered from the pictures. But a becakdriver told me that that street that I was looking for was not far from my hotel, so I walked back to the hotel and later went to that street the becakdriver told me. But there was not even a school or church there so Im not sure whether he understood me correctly. Afterwards I walked to that other school but that school was again looking very different. So the trip to Surabaya turned out to be invain. Maybe if I wanted to spend more time there and if I had the pictures with me, it would have been easier. But I was happy to leave Surabaya the next day.

I have been in Yogyakarta for 2 day now. And it's a nice city. There are a lot of tourists here, even though I haven't really noticed it on the streets, but many of the hotels are full. I've been walking around a lot. Yesterday I visited the Kraton (Sultan's Palace) where they have free dance performances on Sunday mornings. Today I walked to the Via Via Cafe on the other side of town. The Via Via Cafe is managed by Belgian people and I remembered when the earthquake hit last year the Belgian Radio phoned the manager of the cafe to talk about how bad it all was. When you walk through Yogya today, there's nothing to see anymore of the earthquake, and it's easy to forget that many people were killed and many houses were destroyed. In the Via Via Cafe they have their own little paper in which they write about how they had to rebuild the cafe, but also about how they helped many families of their staff to rebuild their lives...


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Bromo

As I already said before, Bromo was great. I decided to stay there for 2 nights even though it was quite cold in Cemara Lawang and the hotels were a bit above my budget (I managed to get a room with hot water at the Lava Cafe for 100 000Rp but it was not easy). Cemara Lawang is a little village on the outer crater rim with great views of the Sandsea and Bromo, but you can't see Seneru from here. I wanted to see the sunrise from viewpoint 2. You can get there by jeep, but of course I couldn't find any other people to share the jeep with for the first morning. So I decided to see the sunrise at the terrace of the Cemara Indah Hotel probably the best viewpoint in Cemara Lawang, but not as good as viewpoint 2. After sunrise I walked all the way to Bromo, which isn't that far and climbed the volcano, which was a breeze compared to climbing Batur. The firt part you can get a horse, but that is really not necessary and then there is a staircase of about 250 steps. There were a lot of people there, cause all the jeeps returning from the viewpoint stop at Bromo to see the crater. After returning to the hotel to have breakfast, I decided to walk to viewpoint 1. You can only reach it by walking and even though it's not as high as viewpoint 2, the views are nice. It's about an hour walking from Cemara Lawang. The last bit is a bit hard, but it's worth it, amd you'll be completely alone to enjoy the views...
The next morning I was able to share a jeep with 2 Dutch couples. We left at 4 am. When we arrived at viewpoint 2 we could see immdiately that there were about 50 othe jeeps there, and that there were a lot of people. It was actually not that easy to find a got spot to see the sunrise and it was definately impossible to use a tripod to take pictures cause there were to many people and they were all pushing... Unfortunately it was so cloudy we couldn't see Bromo or the sandsea. We could only see Semeru far away. The sunrise was nice though. I guess that's just as life, sometimes it's cloudy and all you can do is wait until the clouds go. Of course I didn't have time to wait for that, I had a bus to Surabaya to catch...



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