At your service, Your Majesty!

DAY 2

We started the tour very early that day, at around 6.30am. Our plan was to visit the Borobudur temple, the Prambanan temple and Rumah Pintar, some sort of children museum that Pak Fendy recommended.

It was an interesting journey to Borobudur! We saw mount Merapi at a far, people on bicycle carrying goods, perhaps to the market. The wind was cool and crisp…wonderful weather indeed.

The magnificent Borobudur temple

"Aaargh...so many steps to take!"

Transported to a different era

Nothing personal, just found this interesting :)

One of the highlight of the day!

Fresh coconut juice straight from the fruit!

About an hour later, we reached Borobudur temple and it still awed me so much after so many years have passed. The old Buddhist temple which was built around 800AD during Sailendra dinasty was as magnificent as what I have imagined it to be. I remembered my archaeologist brother mentioned to me that The Karmawibhangga relief depicts the worldly lust and sins that people do in the world and the punishment in hell, the cause and effect! Yikes. This portion of the temple is mostly covered and concealed from public eye, I think it was because the relief could be quite scary to look at! However, if you wish to see some of the reliefs, you may visit the Karmawibhangga museum just a few hundred metre away from the temple.

We spent close to three hour in the temple complex, including sipping on the fresh coconut juice, and taking the dokar ride and the free shuttle bus to and fro the temple.

Unfortunately, the great weather had turned to grey, and soon it started to rain hard. We had no choice but to cancel our trip to Prambanan temple and instead we made a stop at this simple eatery by the road side (sorry I forgot where exactly it was located at) serving brongkos dish. Brongkos is like a beef stew with black nut or buah kluwak. Tasted just ordinary to me but maybe we just did not try the brongkos at the best eatery there was hehe.

Brongkos

We headed back to the city, spent some time at Malioboro again, this time checking out a department store called Mirota Batik where we could find many variety of foods and stuff from Java and all over Indonesia, mingled with the rest of the visitors while enjoying the unique atmosphere. Be careful of pickpockets though.

We also visited The Kraton of Yogyakarta, the palace where Sultan Hamengkubuwono X is residing and the Taman Sari, a bath palace for the princesses which was built during Sultan Hamengkubuwono I era (around 1750s). Listening to the guide describing how Taman Sari must have been looked like and how it was originally used gave me a mixed feeling. You see, long time ago, the King would sit inside the tower overlooking the pool where all his concubines were taking a bath, splish splash. The King then chose one of the concubines he desired to have as his companion on that day .... yikes!  

Taman Sari

The european style Taman Sari

The long and rich story of Kraton Yogyakarta was much more welcome. Sadly, to be honest, I was not fully concentrated in listening to the explanation as I was busy with my cranky boy. Sigh...

Kraton Yogyakarta

The guards of Kraton Yogyakarta

My impression of the palace was that it was a quiet and humble palace. The complex was cool and pleasant as there were many big trees with huge canopies around. However, I personally think the palace was not kept well. There was much dust here and there but then again, the soil in Yogya town was indeed sandy, thus it was very difficult to keep things dust-free. I guess the guards and the palace-keepers had tried their very best to sweep the floor off the dust :)

We were very lucky to be able to witness the returning of the palace guards to their wards when we visited the Kraton Yogya. My boy smiled widely while posing in front of the guards marching into their compound. Very tourist like! hehehe 

We went back to our base camp dead tired but happy that day :)

Street scene - Yogya

Carry me for I am too exhausted to walk!