We flew into Kuala Lampur airport and stayed there for about 1.5 hours, then carried on to Yogyajakarta and arrived at 1700 hours on the 5th. the temp was about 30 degrees and it had to be 100% humidity... awesome! We grabbed a cab and went to the hotel, which is the "sister" hotel to the one where we got engaged at in Havana. This hotel is every bit as beautiful as the one in Havana, and if you have about 3 minutes to kill, I decided to shoot a little walkthrough of the place...
Ok heres the deal with the walkthrough video... it is a little bigger than the kickboxing one and the connection we have here in our hotel is a littel slow, so as of right now, I havent been able to upload it to share it with you all... but take my word for it, it is beautiful, and we will have either pics or videos up shortly :)
Well, yesterday, we headed out into the throng of activity on the main market streets, and found a great little place for lunch... rice for me and noodles for Catherine, and a couple of beers for each of us for about 6 bucks... yummy! After lunch, we booked ourselves a tour of the nearby temples for tomorrow, and then headed to our hotel to cool off in the pool. It was another 30+ degrees and 80+% humidity and the pool felt great!
Well now it is a new day, and I started this post yesterday, but because of the slow download issue, I will tell you of our tour of the Barabradur temple today. I have seen a few temples in my life (Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras, as well as some great temples in Japan) but I have to say that this one takes the cake. Barabradur is a Bhuddist temple built in 750AD and after it was built, the area became largely Muslim, so the temple was not put to much use. Aside from alot of Bhuddas missing their heads (likely at the hands of the local Muslim faithful) this temple was in spectacular shape. It is a worldwide heratige site so it is constantly being upkept, and the grounds around it are spectacular as well. Here is a quick link if you wanna see a little more... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur
We arrived just after dawn and started the 5 km trek to the summit, 5 km if you do a clockwise ring around each level, which we did. If you walk up the temple in this fashion, you will be able to view every one of the hundreds of hand carved wall pieces, each depicting a piece of the story of how the Bhudda reached enlightenment. While we kinda lost the plot of the story, we did see some awesome stone work, cool skinks and geckos, and lots of neat bugs. Our timing couldn't have been better, because as we reached the top, we were greeted by many school kids out on a "greet the english speaking person" tour. They were all very polite and giggled at our repsonses to their questions. We made the climb down and took in a early lunch at the bottom in the market... have you ever had pinapple pancakes?? Yummy!!
Right now we are back in our room, having another Bintang and working on getting some pictures up on this blog so you can get a sense of how things are going for us here. Till we get that figured out, I am gonna put this post up so you all know we are doing great and having a great time.
Lastly, just a note on the beer situation here... the people on Java can not only make fantastic coffee (ever wonder why we call coffee Java?) but they brew a pretty fine Pilsener call Bintang. This beer far exceeds any of the yuck in Bangkok (like Singha which we did sample often) and I would say its on par with most of the good Canadian brands like Kokanee. No, really, its good!
Ok time to wake Catherine from her afternoon siesta and head out for supper.
Chat soon, Tim
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