First, I wanna say thanks to Ijo! If there is anything at all you’re uncertain of, or need help with, Ijo is the one to see. Such an awesome bloke! He basically organised everything for last Saturday. A group of us hired a car and a driver for the day, and with Ijo’s help we were able to see the largest Buddhist temples in the world. It was amazing! We went early (530am) to avoid large crowds and the heat. When we got there was already heaps of other students there, from all over Indonesia, most of whom wanted to practice their English for an upcoming presentation or report they had to give at school. It was a little strange at times, it seemed like us bule were more interesting than this ancient temple. Haha. On the way there, Ijo was telling me that for years Borobudur had been completely covered by land, and had been rediscovered and uncovered many years later. There is still debate over when the temple was built, but it was somewhere around the eighth or ninth century. Not only this, but there are many other things that are mysterious about Borobudur, like the meanings of some of the many stone carvings that tell the stories of Buddha.
By this stage we were starving, so it was time for breakfast before heading up to a nearby volcano. Can’t remember where we had breakfast or the name of the volcano!! Haha.. But both were great. Getting higher and higher above sea level on the way to the volcano cooled things down sooo much. But by the time we got near the top and parked the mini bus, clouds were already rolling in. Its amazing how fast they can appear out of no where here.. In Australia, if its going to rain, you get HOURS notice, sometimes even days, the clouds linger before a downpour. But here, it can be blue skies one minute and poring the next. Well anyway, I decided to rent an umbrella from a small stall, but at this point it was only drizzling.. 10 meters away, however, it was pouring. Most were being drenched! It was still fun to climb up this slippery volcano, half in the clouds, with water bucketing down everywhere, as I jokingly sang “umbrella”... Of course we didn’t keep climbing for long, haha, but retreated to a shelter near the base. Sinta invited everyone around to her mum’s house to meet her family, get warm with some hot tea, try some local produce and steal her brothers shirts for those who were wet… haha. The rain didn’t look like it was going anywhere any time soon, so we called it a day. Well… for traveling that is.
The next day was Mitch’s birthday, but we decided to celebrate on Saturday. He took us all to this really nice vegetarian place called Milas. One of the only vego places we’ve seen here. They usually get stuck eating white rice with tofu or tempe. Anyways, Milas has a great menu, HEAPS to choose from, even us non-vegos thought it was great! After dinner we all headed over to a cafe called Tropis. Seemed more like a quiet, open plan club to me, but anyway. Haha. We all sat down and had a look at the drinks list and chose what we wanted. We were all thinking they were expensive.. About 50,000Rp for one drink ($6AUD isn’t much back home.. But it could feed you for a week here.. Haha) but when the staff came out with these jugs half filled with our cocktails… woah! They must have thought we were insane! Ordering so much alcohol! But we thought we were only getting a glass :S haha. So yeah, we just hung out at Tropis, a heap of the pendampings came, so it was good to catch up with Aji (my pendamping), Jimmy and Rian again! Some people were going to caesar, but after waking up at 4:30am… I think 2am was late enough.. Haha, yes, it was a long day.. But a great one as well!
