But I just think it falls short.
We are at one of the 2 main temples that you can visit from Yogyakarta.
Now a lot of people go see Borobudur, which is about two hours from Yogyakarta.
Being that that's 2 hours away and it's $25 to get into, we decided instead that we would only
visit one temple. We are here at Prambanan, which maybe I'm close to saying correctly,
and we only have caught a peek of it in the background, right back there, and wow it's
huge! It looks amazing. This is a Hindu temple here near Yogyakarta, and we haven't seen a Hindu
temple since we left Bali, so I'm pretty excited to go look at it. Let's go! All right, let's go.
This temple actually dates back to the 9th century. There are early mentions of it in writing
around the mid 850s, and it is just hard to imagine how they might have built something
so large, so tall, and so complex as this with the tools that they would have had back then.
It really is a sight to behold in person. I also noticed that of course everything
is in gray and black, and I wonder, was it color then? Was it white? I don't know.
Well, we've been here about 10 minutes and we've already had
2 groups of people request to take their photo with us. It could be that we're
dressed very differently, which we are. We're generally taller than the locals;
maybe that's it? We don't know but it's kind of fun to take part of.
This temple is massive. It is actually the largest Hindu temple
in all of Indonesia. There's Bill for scale.
The problem is basically this. This thing is massive, and you can't fit it all in one shot.
I'm not zoomed out at all. It's way over here on this side and it's way over here on this side.
It's big, which is actually interesting because we've spent some time on Bali, and the temples
there aren't as big, even though Bali today, at least, has far more Hindus living there. Here
on Java, Hindus would be the minority. Not only is this temple the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia,
but is the second largest in all of Southeast Asia. Which one is the largest? Angkor Wat - which
of course we haven't been to, because we've only been to Singapore and Indonesia. Someday I hope
to make it there so we can compare it to what we see here, because this is pretty amazing looking.
Unfortunately, this is about as close as you get to going inside the temple,
because they are closed for COVID, but at least I can get this close to the stairs.
In the other main temple in this area, you can't really get this close, so thanks Lisa & Josh for
the heads up. We really appreciate you saving us time and money. The temples are actually
arranged like a mandala, which we're familiar with. Mandalas have become pretty popular
but they date way, way back. We're just going to keep the tally going - three times now we've had
our photo taken with a group of people. These two spoke a little bit of English, so I said to them,
"why do people want to take their photo with us? Do we look funny?" "Of course, mister."
Okay, so now we know. [laughs]
Sort of interesting that outside the main temple, you're sort of free to wander
among the ruins that are out here. Not many people are choosing to do this,
but it also is interesting, and you don't really get a feel for how spread out this complex
was without visiting the outer areas. It must have been just massive back when it was built,
and all of these structures around us that we're walking around now were still standing. I mean,
I'm surrounded by ruins and what still remains. Gosh. Increasing our count by one more!
We are wondering if this is one of the ones that's been rebuilt. It's
very different color than the rest - doesn't have the black or soot-y kind of look on the
outside. Well, I think we have our answer as to what color the temple was back when it was built.
This is what it looks like now. I'm thinking this is what it looked like then.
Wow, it was probably amazing when it was that color! It looks like they're using part original
stones to rebuild this temple, and also creating the ones that are missing. Here it is, a work
in progress. It's good to see restoration still taking place on the stunning temple.
Five now. Five times. No grout, pretty straight lines. It's just amazing. I'm wearing a hat!
To be honest, I think that this is one of those places that the photos and the videos just don't
do it justice. You have to actually come here to appreciate the size and the intricacy of the
stonework. We've done our best to capture it in video, but I just think it falls short. You know,
there are a lot of places like that in the world where you go there, and it's just even more
magnificent in person than what you expect. It has to be experienced to be appreciated, I think.
Larger than life? Larger than we expected, for sure. So here's a map of the whole area and that's
not the interesting part. The interesting part is there's campgrounds here and here. This is the
temple. Campground, campground. We saw that there were lights on the temple, and we're imagining the
nighttime light up view of it might be really great - or possibly sunrise. We were literally
like 4 feet from the door, looking for a toilet on our way out, when the sun decided to peek out from
the clouds that had been hanging above us all day. We are probably missing our train back so that we
could take a little bit of video and photo of stuff behind us. If you appreciate our loss
do us a favor hit that subscribe button below. Thanks, it means a ton to us.
Okay, maybe we didn't miss our train. It's a 17-minute walk back and it comes in 17 minutes,
so we are trying to make it. We'll see. We just made it!!