Yogyakarta, Central Java - Indonesia

if you look closely, you can see the outline of a buddha sleeping it is said that after building the temple of borubudur, buddha himself came to the mountains to rest

it must be the earthquakes, but my friends and i based here in jakarta just sort of decided that it's about time, yet again, to explore indonesia besides the usual trip to bali. we decided, we will go to yogyakarta (jogja as the locals like to call it).

actually around the month of may last year, this particular part of indonesia suffered a massive blow from a 7.o magnitude earthquake, so we kind of figured that it will be highly unlikely that another earthquake in this part of indonesia will strike. we know as well as everyone else that this reasoning is so stupid. but seriously, we went because of the ever so famous 'borubudur" (buddhist temple, the largest single buddhist temple in the world) and "prambanan" a hindu temple. indonesia's history is so rich and varied - it has gone through various conflict-ridden changes as leaders changed and the result - a diverse history as diverse as the beautiful paintings i bought along the streets of mario boro (yogyakarta's "quiapo")

first stop: borubudur

maira posing by the carved walls of borubudur (can you just imagine that they built this place using animal power and slave labor, stacking all these lava blocks one by one and then afterwards carving on them?)

second stop: prambanan

we reached prambanan at night and we were just plain entranced (here with bobby, trinka and maira)after dinner with the fantastic view of prambanan at night, we watched a Rama and Sita play at the open-air theater. all the foreigners there, including us, were just transfixed. the ballet was pretty long though.the following morning, we decided to go back to see prambanan in daylight
can you just imagine how people mill about this place a thousand years ago?

third stop: The Sultan's Water Palace

Well, this place channels Rome to me. Anyway, our guide was saying that during that time, the Sultan actually had more than 50 wives and around 73 children. Everyday, he will peer though his turret and choose a wife to spend the night with. Wow.

Nice shot Trinks :)