July 9 - Prambanan and grubby dinner

The largest of the three small temples, still pretty big.

A monkey relief on the main tower complex.

Hanuman burns huts with the towers in the background.

July 9 Day 145

                The next morning our Indonesian breakfast was excellent.  In the middle of the plate was a pile of coconut rice surrounded by various vegetable and meat dishes as well as some chili sauce.  It was restaurant quality and came with a plate of sliced fruit to share. 

                As we sat down to it one of the people running the hotel came and spoke to us.  He was an older white guy with a mustache.  He was from Andorra but his family moved to Africa and then to France.  We spoke a bit in French but his English was better than our French so we mainly spoke in that.  He was proud to be one of very few people to have Indonesian citizenship, apparently very hard to get.  He was a font of knowledge about Indonesian politics and history and his perspectives were really interesting if occasionally factually suspect.  We had a long chat with him so breakfast took a long time.

                Our tour was in the afternoon so we got stuff done in our room and had a simple lunch until it was time for our pick up.  In the van were two other people, one who didn't respond to a hello and another who did but then turned around.  Not a chatty small group.

                Prambanan is a Hindu complex not far out of town but traffic meant it took quite a while to get there.  At the site we talked a bit and the non-hello passenger was an American doing development work and the other woman was a Philippine nurse also working with communities.  We planned to meet up so that we could find our van together after the sunset.

                Meg and I walked down a pathway away from the main temple to three other sites considered minor.  The first two were smaller temples in good shape but the third was a huge temple surrounded by dozens of stupas and smaller temples with impressive brutish statues guarding the entryway.  At this site work was still going on and the ground was littered with stones looking for their homes.  You could walk through the main temple and many of the carving were in great shape but looking out on the symmetrical fan of crumbled stupas was the main attraction here.

                On the way back we stopped at the archaeological museum.  The curation was all in Indonesian but it had great pictures, including more nice old ones of the initial reconstruction of the temple.  We paid 50 cents to see a video on the temple which was mainly a summary of the Ramayana story which we would see in the dance performance later that day.

                Indonesians, like Indians, love to have their pictures taken with westerners.  On the way back from the temple was a nice version of this, where a girl asked for the picture politely and then we took one with her on our camera.  In the museum was a nasty version, where an arrogant guy in sunglasses motioned to me to move aside and then tried to get his friend to take a picture of him with Meg.  Meg gave them the back of her head and fortunately the slimy guy moved on. 

                We bypassed the zoo, video games centre and archery area to head to the main temple.  his had a large approach to the complex of six main temples and several small ones.  These were in great shape, covered with reliefs and many statues filled their alcoves.  It was also packed with tourists awaiting the sunset with us, many of them taking a long time to pose for their selfies and pictures and blocking the way for the rest of us.

                The sunset was a good one, with unreal colours and good light all around.  We met up with the American woman and helped each other get pictures and discussed the meaning of some of the carvings on the buildings.  After the sun was well set we headed to the parking lot and after a bit of a search found our driver.  Our party had expanded by three people, a German couple and a Romanian woman.  Together we went to a place picked out by our driver for dinner before going to our show.

                The restaurant was a typical local place and everything was going quite uneventfully until Meg pulled out what she thought was a dark vegetable in her spinach but turned out to be a big black grub.  She showed it to the staff, who apologized, brought her some tofu and didn't charge for the meal.  The rest of us mainly lost our appetites and carefully checked our forks before putting anything into our mouths.

                It was  a quick drive to the performance space, which used the lit towers of Prambanan as a backdrop to the danced performance of the Ramayana.  We had first class seats, which was actually the third level of priority.  These were close to the action and they gave us cushions to keep us from sitting directly on the concrete shelf.

                The band was huge with a few gamelans and many xylophones.  The stage was huge and teh costumes were striking, with subtitles off to the side being very useful for figuring out what was going on.  They had a bunch of kids cast as monkeys which won the audience over.  The first half was super long, 90 minutes.  We figured they wanted to end with Hanuman the magic monkey setting fire to a palace where two actual straw buildings went up in real flames.  You're not going to see a performance like that in any country with a fire code.

                At intermission we didn't buy anything and the guys next to us left so we were able to double up on our cushions.  The main characters were there to take pictures with but didn't look sweaty so we figured that they were stand ins for the real cast, who were having a well-deserved break.   The second half was only 30 minutes and ended in more pyrotechnics.  After it was over the performers stayed on stage and the audience could have their pictures taken with them.  The line was long and it was late so we just headed to the parking lot and hoped the rest of our group did the same.

                We gathered everyone together fairly quickly and the drive back to town was a little quicker.  We had to go to the tour office as our driver wasn't able to get a Visa machine in the parking lot and we hadn't paid yet.  Six people were there working even though it was almost 10, so we thanked them and hoped that they'd be able to get to their families soon.

                Our hotel was dark but the night guy popped up form behind the counter from the mat he was sleeping on to take our breakfast orders.  Indonesian breakfast again, for sure.  Back in our room we pretty much fell over and had a good sleep.