Good morning and what a beautiful day I hope you're having a wonderful day as
well look where I am look at this beautiful weather I am in
Borobudur near Jogjakarta Java Indonesia
Welcome to my new accommodation for the night. I've arrived late, late for this
place, it's just about 9 o'clock, got a key to my room I'm gonna keep it
quiet cuz everybody sleeping cuz everybody has arranged to get up at 4 a.m. in
the morning so I don't want to disturb them, so let me show you the room and explain to
you what's going on here.
but what am i doing changing accommodation when I have
perfectly good accommodation in Yogyakarta. Well I'm exploring Borobudur
the temple, and one of the features or Borobudur is sunrise.
Sunrise is at, well, oh let me put that down there for you
there we go
Sunrise is at five
o'clock in the morning and there's about an hours drive from Yogyakarta so I looked
into staying closer just for the night so I can get up and do sunrise and get an
advantage, then I found this place is actually located inside the park and has
its own entrance into the park and you can get in a bit earlier so I can get in
I can have a little extra lie in in bed, which is always good, and I can get here
earlier and the price of the hotel does include my entrance ticket into
Borobudur in the morning as well as breakfast and afternoon tea.
Arrived here
late, hotels closed all the staff are gone.
It's err, nine o'clock
Security guard kindly
showed me in, so I'm just gonna crash for the night, or I'm going to put everything on
charge, charge all my batteries, get everything ready for tomorrow morning
when I'm up at 4 a.m.
4 a.m.
I did pack some snacks so I can have some snacks, and then
I've gotta walk up to the top of Borobudur and watch sunrise
bedtime
Good morning
well actually it's good 4a.m. in the morning
but it's beautifully fresh I think
this is the coolest has been in Indonesia.
and it is ... - good morning
- thank you, thank you very much
and it is time to watch dawn
over Borobudur.
- Good morning
oh well I am in the park. They opened the gate a couple of minutes early, so I can hear all the mullah's
calling for morning prayer
we are off and up, um, I was gonna call it a mountain but I just think it's a
hill. So let's find a way, I've never done this before I've no idea where I'm
going. But there's a little sign there that says Borobudur sunrise.
I'm guessing
this is the way.
Let's hope there's lots of useful signs like this because it's dark.
But I do have a torch
There we go, so.
There's some people there, let's follow them. Hope they're going the right way.
And welcome to breakfast after sunrise at ooh, wobbly table,
after sunrise at Borobudur
temple which is right over there, my breakfast view I'll show in a minute is
overlooking the temple.
Got up way too early
walked up in the dark, it's a very easy walk up, there's some big steps as you go up but
that took 7 to 10 minutes once the gate opened to get up, so very very easy to
get up, then find a position to set up
I was there nice and early because I'm
staying at a good accommodation here which is inside the park so I got here
before anybody else which was great
because by the time sunrise came up it
was busy all the good spots with the nice view were taken
it was a little bit
hazy this morning, didn't get a spectacular colorful sunrise, but did get
to see Merapi, the other volcano, and a third volcano all visible beautiful at
certain points, and then had a look around the temple which I will explain
to you and show you more footage of, if I haven't already.
It did get quite busy up
there and there's a quite a limited amount of space at the actual temple at
the top, so it's difficult to get clear video, photos is a little bit easier with
no people in, so I'll show you some footage of how many people are
up there on the small sort of area.
It is quite an amazing testimony to
construction and it's beautiful location it's surrounded lush green area I'm
sitting up in a pine forest overlooking it and a lot of the area is very beautifully
forested. Big volcanoes and mountains around, it really is something special to
do. I've tried my best to show the beauty of the place and put some footage in
with people in to get a real feel of what it's like as well as enjoying the
beauty of Borobudur.
Amazing temple. Let me tell you a little bit about it, it was built in the eighth
century, about seven to 800 AD
but after a violent eruption of Mount Merapi which
is right over there
a mere 28 kilometers away, I tell you
that's close for a volcano
Borobudur and all the surrounding area was
completely covered in a huge layer of ash, so much so that the temple could no
longer be seen
and it forced the local people from the area, the Hindus and the
Buddhists from this area to move further east and abandon this area.
The temple
then remained hidden and covered with jungle for hundreds of years after and
it wasn't until 1814 when the British governor of the area
Thomas Raffles sent out on expedition to look for this temple that he'd heard, this
mysterious big temple that was hidden somewhere in central Java he sent some
engineers out to go and find it and uncovered this temple he then started
excavating it, the Dutch then continued in excavating it, but it really wasn't
until 1885 that this magnificent temple was finally completely uncovered
it was
so overgrown with jungle and in such a difficult area to get to, and not a lot
of international interest
but 1885 revealed it to its current state, now
even when it was uncovered not much archaeological interest was given to it
at that time, Egyptologists were getting all the attention at that point
and central Java was not an easy place to get to in those days, the 1800s it's
not like today where we get on a plane we got on a train we get on the bus
we get on the moped and we're here wandering around this amazing part of
history in those days it was a major undertaking
so not much attention was
given to it. But in 1907 a five-year program was committed to to restore the
temple to the way that we see it today
sitting on the hilltop
greeting the sun every morning as it rises
surrounded by volcanoes and
the most active of all Indonesia's volcanoes is Mount Merapi which is right
there. It erupted once again in 2010 coating, this is 28km away, it coated
this whole area in an inch thick of volcanic ash
the temple had to be closed
and a huge cleanup operation was launched to clean it up and it wasn't
until later the following year that it reopened to the public.
Thankfully since
then Mount Merapi has rumbled, grumbled, but not erupted
but I do wonder for how long
will this temple once again be threatened by a volcano?