Palaces and Temples

Me and the Evil Twin

This was a holiday weekend in Indonesia, celebrating the birth and life of Buddha. Rica, her friend and I flew to Yogyakarta to visit some temples. Rica and her friend took Thursday off too, and I flew in the next (Friday) morning. The flight was cheap - $170 or for first class, and that was expensive due to being last minute - and then we rented a car for about $50/day (which included a driver!) and went zooming around.

The first one was the Sultan's Palace, guarded by two statues which are twin brothers. The one on the left was evil, the one on the right good. Knowing me, I can't keep left/right straight .. I would confuse good/evil.

followed by a visit to his weekend water park:

If you'd like to read more about it .. go here.

And then the first of a series of strange requests occured. Two young girls .. maybe 12 years old .. asked if they could take a picture of me. They gave their camera to a grownup and stood next to me and got their picture. Wierd.

We moved on to Prembanen which is a ninth-century Hindu temple.

It's actually several sites with multiple temples. The main one is pictured above, with a couple more around it. These were found in ruins and have since been rebuilt.

And then it happened again. An older gentleman from Malaysia asked to have his picture taken with me. Of course I obliged ... but .. wierd. Within two minutes, two women wearing shawls (i.e. moslems ... there are lots of them here) ... asked for a photo. Now I'm starting to put some thought into this. Am I a good luck charm or something? There aren't many westerners here, and I have yet to see one with red hair ... so I wonder if they've never seen a redhead before and want a photo.

Another temple site, called Sewu, was a short walk away.

This was still in the process of being built. There are 249 smaller temples around it which are mainly just piles of rubble.

The next day we visited Borobudur, a Buddhist temple, and a big one at that. It has ten levels and lots and lots of reliefs.

This time a group of 7-8 young boys wanted their picture taken with the friendly redhead Norwegian.

I could sit here and write all day long .. about the food, the people, the traffic .. there will be more, but later.