I had always wanted to visit the Borobudur temple. I remember reading about it from somewhere, probably an in-flight magazine or a text book from my school years, and I remember how I got awed by the picture of mysterious stupas that sit timelessly atop a complex structure. It was exactly the reason why I flew into Jogja for.
So after spending half a day wandering off the temple complex of Prambanan, I returned to the hotel to pack up before ordering for a Grab that would take me right to the town of Borobudur. The Grab would cost me around IDR150,000 which was a fair price for a one and half hour’s ride. The excitement was growing as I headed towards the Magelang regency where the temple of Borobudur is located in.
Now came the interesting part. It was while on the Grab when I suddenly felt like checking out the entrance fee to Borobudur temple. I did hear about the revised new entrance fee but I had to reconfirm so that I could avoid being shocked in case it had really doubled up as I remembered it was if I had read it correctly. That was when I found out – while reading through one of the websites – that the temple complex doesn’t open its gate to visitors on Mondays!
It was way past 2 pm when I arrived at the hotel near Borobudur so I had to rush to the temple or I’d miss Borobudur entirely on this trip since my flight back to Malaysia would be morning Tuesday – the day after the next day!
Rushing to the entrance to Borobudur, I had to ask around before I managed to get to it and the existence of the massive market outside of the gate didn’t quite help. I rushed to the ticket counter and this time I didn’t pretend to be a local or anything – so the entrance fee was IDR450,000 (around RM136) which was not cheap for a single entry. It was a full tour though, meaning I could get up to the 9th tier of the 10 tiers there were while most of the visitors would only be allowed to roam around the temple without getting onto the tiers – unless of course they paid extra for it.
The tour had consisted of 6 foreigners – which I later found out was a couple from Germany and three buddies from China (or probably Taiwan, I didn’t get to ask since they stayed away from the tour group most of the time). We were led by a female tour guide, which was a Muslim wearing hijab. I was taken aback by how passionately she explained to us the history of Borobudur – from the time it was built, to the discovery and the recovery efforts, to the detailed stories behind the wall carvings. I mean, some Malaysians that I knew even told me how entering religious places of others than (those of) Islam was haram (forbidden) but of course different people have different ways of looking at things especially when it comes to religions.
I had to climb up a few tiers before I came upon the famous stupas of Borobudur. I was told that Borobudur had just been re-opened to public quite recently since it was closed due to the pandemic, with new admission fees and rules have been introduced. I was told how back then the visitors could roam freely all over the temple complex so it was always so crowded with estimated 35 thousand people came visiting every single day so it was easy to imagine how crowded it was. Now that they have put restriction to the entry to the tiers – unless you pay accordingly, like I did – the whole temple was almost deserted.
Deserted it might be – to an extent – but some of the visitors seemed to be all over, inter-framing photos and everything in between. A group of teenagers who were there for example wouldn’t bother to pave way for even a single clean photo without their stupid faces inter-framing, as if the temple belongs to their stupid grandmothers or something. They’d stay around for so long, taking all kind of stupid poses with stoned faces and wouldn’t even bother to consider any of our requests for a clean photo. Grrrr!
So we were there for a couple of hours or so, which was more than enough to cover the whole 9 tiers but one and I had to say that Borobudur is certainly an amazing place to be. It was not only the temple itself but the beauty of the surrounding that could only be enjoyed from the upper tiers of the massive temple. After taking tonnes of photos and exchanging goodbyes to the tour members especially the tour guide itself, I made my way to the exit while ignoring the resilient peddlers that came to me in hordes along the way.
The town of Borobudur seemed to come so much alive as dusk fell, with all the shops and restaurants and roadside hawkers opened in full force. After all, it was weekend so everybody seemed to come out of their shells to enjoy the day before coming back to whatever works that they have to do through the weekdays the next day. Indonesia might be a melting pot for a diversity of food, and yet I always find myself coming back to the same set of foods every time I travel to this country.
Not that I did not try this time, in fact I found myself going back and forth all over the small town of Borobudur trying to find something at least out of the ordinary to eat. And yet I could not find anything that suited the current demand of my tongue and stomach so in the end I settled for a bowl of hot Bakso – another ordinary food that I keep coming back to every time I travel to Indonesia. Later when I felt like eating again, I went to a Nasi Padang restaurant, which was probably one of only a few proper restaurants in the town of Borobudur. Needless to say, I would be returning to this restaurant a few times all throughout my stay in Borobudur.
In my effort to find something interesting to fill my last day in Indonesia the next day with, since I have already done the Borobudur a day earlier than it was originally planned, the guest house owner suggested that I went to see the sunrise from a place called Punthuk Setumbu. I was joined by a middle-age American who was on his solo mission to travel across the globe on a bicycle. The owner was very kind to take us to the entry gate for free, which was the starting point of a little bit of hike to the viewing point. I only wished I was going on my own, because I found the overly chatty American quiet distracting me from doing the hike in peace.
I was usually open to having a good conversation with a stranger especially when it involved something as interesting as cycling solo across the globe, but somehow I was not in the right mood to have one this time, or rather I did not want to be distracted. He told me how happy he was to have a conversation with me because he hasn’t had a conversation in English for quite some time. He told me how he had a good time cycling across the Malaysian Peninsula from Thailand all the way to Singapore – and how Malaysia has the best food, even better that Thailand where his expectation for food had fallen short. “May be because Malaysians prepare their food from their hearts, while the Thais prepare their food just for the sake of preparing them” he told me, whatever that had meant.
So after hiking up for about 15mins, we arrived at the viewing spot where a small crowd of people had already gathered up. It wasn’t long before the sun began to show itself up from behind the silhouettes of the mountain range, exposing two distinctive peaks which the American told me were Mount Merbabu and Mount Merapi. I’ve been to quiet a number of places for sunrise viewing but there was something about watching the sunrise over Borobudur that was magical and mesmerizing. The hues were distinctively red – or rather orange – sparkling and glorious. I only wished I could see the Borobudur temple from there but I don’t think I had seen it.
So coming back to the guest house later, I spent most of the day lounging around at the guest house, while trying to catch up with incoming emails and work stuff at the office back in Malaysia. There wasn’t much to do in the town of Borobudur anyway (I Googled), so taking a little bit of time to catch up with work while on vacation did not seem too bad of an idea to pass the time after all.
I spent the later half of my last day in Borobudur by doing a little bit of shopping, mostly tyring to get the best deal out of the pushy hawkers at the open market near the temple itself. I only realized I had bought too much when it was time to pack them all into my hand-carry suitcase. For a moment I got panicked, and even thinking of abandoning some of the clothes that I had bought, but later decided ‘what the heck? Let’s try to do the magic at the airport and see how far I can go. It was time to put all the experiences and skills from years of traveling to a good use’. Heh.
I spent the last evening in Borobudur sitting around on one of the public benches overlooking the main junction and watching the world go by. It was Monday so it wasn’t as busy as it was on the day before, and yet there was always something that I could pin my eyes onto before panning to another.
I knew there was an option of going to the Yogyakarta International Airport from Borobudur on a mini-bus called DAMRI but I did not like the idea of sharing my last ride in Indonesia with strangers so I decided to pay the driver guy who was attached to the guest house to take me to the airport on the same rate as a Grab driver would take. It was around IDR300,000 (RM90) for about an hour and a half ride across beautiful farming villages with paddy terraces etc. which made it all worthwhile.
Checking in through all the counters including the immigration and security checks at the Yogyakarta International Airport had gone so smoothly. Despite doing all I could to ensure that my luggage would be accepted in without any extra charges, I was both baffled and relieved when it went through so smoothly it was not even weighed like they usually do back in Kuala Lumpur. I returned to KL and later Sabah with a suitcase full of mostly cotton T-shirts in addition to the souvenirs that I knew would not even go out of the boxes when I arrived at home later.