Hindu Temple Site

Preview of Jasi's blog at TravelPod. Read the full blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasi/1/1242781800/tpod.html This blog preview was made by TravelPod using the TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow creator. Entry from: Yogyakarta, Indonesia Entry Title: "Java" Entry: "Hi all! As many of you are aware, I am back home now is sunny Colorado. I got home last Thursday and have been trying frantically to organize myself since then. I wanted to take some time though to share about my travels in Indonesia. This will be a two-part series. Maybe I should give a little background before I start. Indonesia is made up of lots and lots of islands - very small ones and very big ones. According to Wikipedia there are 17,508 altogether. They stretch from just north of Darwin up to the peninsula where Malaysia is that sticks down from Asia. The four main regions are: Nusa Tenggara (the islands to the east of Bali until East Timor), Bali (the most touristy island), Java (the skinny one in the middle where there's lot of culture), and Sumatra (the big island at the top of the archipelago). Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world with pockets of Hindu and other religions. Bali and the southern part of Java are Hindu, the rest is Muslim. Not many tourists visit Indonesia anymore because of recent bombings in Bali and in Jakarta, but that didn't stop us. We had sixteen days to get from Bali all the way up to Padang, Sumatra. I can't tell you how far that is, but trust me, it's quite a trek. Since we had such little time, we decided to skip out on most of Bali - it's just overridden with tourists and not what we wanted to see. We did stay two nights; enough to see that it was dirty, over-priced, the surf was ****, and had all the familiar fast food chains. We quickly got on the bus/ferry ride that took us into Java. Our first stop in Java was Probbolinggo. It is the starting point for going up to Mount Bromo - an active volcano next to a quaint Javanese village called Cemoro Lawang (pronounced che-more-o-la-wong). We met a French Canadian couple in Probbolinggo and decided to travel up into the mountains together. It was a bumpy three hour ride, but the view was fantastic! And the village was really, really nice. The greatest part was the weather was cooler!!! Anyway, we hiked to Mt. Bromo that afternoon. It gets foggy in the afternoons but we went anyway and it made for an eerie sight. When the fog lifted occasionally the scene was even eerier...we were in the Sea of Sands surrounded by black volcanic sand and no plant-life. There was a Hindu temple at the base of the volcano and then about 240 steps to the top. You could look into the crater and every sense was involved. You could see the steam and sulphur coming out, you could smell and taste the sulphur, you could feel the acid rain coming down through the cloud of sulphur, and you could even hear the hissing of the steam. And might I mention there was no guardrail! It was a very surreal experience and something that I'll never forget. We caught a minibus the next day with the Canadians and a new couple, from Spain and South Africa - a very international bunch! We were bound for Yogyakarta - the cultural center of Java. I had been looking forward to this part since we decided to go to Indonesia. On one side of the city is a Buddhist temple and on the other is a Hindu temple - both from the 9th century! I really like my ruins. We decided to explore Prambanan first - it's the Hindu temple. With the help of our guidebook and the locals, we managed to avoid paying for a tour and got public transportation instead. Very proud of ourselves for that. The temple grounds themselves are several acres. There was an earthquake a few years ago that toppled many of the structures, but most of it has been rebuilt. The part that I liked about this temple was that it was all the original stones and reliefs. Well, probably a few had to be re-made but they pretty much just found all the pieces and put them back together. It had a real old, spiritual feeling about it. The stones are black (presumably volcanic) and against the green land and the blue sky, it looks really cool. And there ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasi/1/1242781800/tpod.html Photos from this trip: 1. "Fields in java" 2. "Cemoro lawang" 3. "Temple at bromo" 4. "Climbing the stairs" 5. "Bromo's mouth" 6. "Relief" 7. "Prambanan" 8. "Prambanan2" 9. "Prambanan3" 10. "Graham and prambanan" 11. "Tree relief" 12. "Buddhas at borobudur" 13. "Buddha2" 14. "Borobudur" 15. "Gamelan instruments" 16. "Gamelan instruments2" 17. "Lotus and buddha" 18. "Christian" 19. "Mt merapi" 20. "Our guide" 21. "Jakarta" 22. "Jakarta2" See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00c3-e8b4-2db2?ytv4=1