My Dream Come True - A Visit to Borobudur

Friday, May 22 

Got up early to catch a 10am flight from Bali to Java.  Arrived at 1:30 pm at our hotel in Yogyakarta (pronounced Jojakarta) and raced to have lunch before a 2:30 pm departure for Borobudur.  Our hotel is lovely – a three storey faux colonial era building with pool and a coy pond running through the lobby and dining area.  Origingally few in our group were interested in going to Borobudur this afternoon due to the heat, but by the time we arrived in Yogya we had a bit of cloud cover.  In the end about 10 people decided to go.  The ride took over an hour due to traffic and we had heavy rain on the way.  Quite a welcome relief.

Borobudur, a World Heritage site, is the largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. Borobudur remains a sacred site for Buddhists; in fact on May 9^th (the Buddha’s birthday) monks from all over the world came here on a pilgrimage.  Borobudur was built around 800 AD and is earlier than Angkor Wat.  The temple was completely destroyed over time by earthquakes but was rediscovered by Sir Thomas Raffles in 1814.  It has been rebuilt several times by various archaeological teams including, most recently, UNESCO.  The temple has nine levels, or platforms, and the pilgrim is intended to circumambulate clockwise from level to level beginning on the bottom level and ending at the top.  Along the way one learns the teachings of the Buddha and the path to enlightenment.  It rained again as we toured the site. Although we couldn’t see a sunset we had lovely misty views of the surrounding hillsides and volcanic peaks.  We got back to the hotel exhausted around 6:30. 

I raced to spa for a 7 pm massage.  This is only my second one in Indonesia but I feel confident in saying that Indonesian massages are wonderful.  They use a technique that is a combination of Thai (flexing and bending) and Swedish (traditional massage) with some reflexology and pressure point massage thrown in.  It’s great.  This spa puts beautiful flowers in a bowl where you can see them when lying on your stomach.  Soothing gamelan music plays in the background.  All very wonderful and relaxing and much needed after all our running around.