My Very First School Holiday...in Indonesia, Anyway

I intended to add more photos to this blog than I will be able to use.  I didn't take my own camera, because I thought it might be disrespectful to take pictures at Borobudur.  I waited to get the photos from my friend Bu Yenni via e-mail, and they have not arrived.  I guess I'm not sure if she has my e-mail address, which would help.  Perhaps I will add them to my blog if they arrive, or make a second post about Borobudur.  It's certainly worthy of more than one.

My day last Tuesday started before 5 AM.  I had been invited to go jogging with Pak Tanto and the Mandarin teachers at 5, and since I woke up early, I got dressed for jogging.

Definitions of "dressed for jogging" vary by culture.  Also, I'm definitely vain enough to have noticed that having tiny friends makes my biceps look big.

Jogging in Indonesia is somewhat different from jogging in America.  At home, "jogging" is a word for "running slowly," and it is more frequently done either by just stepping out your door and running or by going to someplace very close by to do it.  In Indonesia, the word evidently includes both slow running and rugged walking, which is "hiking" in America, and we drove over half an hour each way to get to the place to do it, which turned out to be a small village in the foothills of one of Central Java's volcanic mountains.  I did not do any running at all on this excursion, although I did jump over a very broad puddle, just to see if I could do it (I could).  The vista was very green, with a single, rounded volcanic mountain in the background.  I thought it was nice.

The group was also significantly larger than I had expected.  In fact, there is a "jogging club," consisting mostly of middle-aged men and/or married couples of Chinese descent, in Magelang.  They have uniforms and everything.

Jake Taylor would be impressed.

After jogging, we gathered to eat a traditional Indonesian food consisting of meat in broth poured over rice.  It was spicy, but delicious.  There were also traditional Indonesian crackers, which are sweeter than American crackers, and a hot ginger drink that burned my tongue but was also tasty.

It was then time for me to meet a different set of friends to go to Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in the world, which, to add to its prominence in the landscape, is built on a hill.  (It was a busy day.)

Before going to Borobudur, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni wanted to stop for something to eat.  Having been led to believe that the climb was going to be exhausting, I did not want to eat right before it--I find this is better for me.  They ended up going to a traditional Indonesian fast-food place.  They said that the food there probably would have been too spicy for me, anyway.  It looked tasty enough, but I had eaten breakfast, and I prefer not to eat within four hours before physical exertion, if I can help it.  This always worked best for me as both a long-distance runner and as a football player.

Once we got to Borobudur, I learned that I was required to wear a traditional sarong to ascend to the temple, and that there was an interpretive film visitors could watch.  On the way to the film, we passed dozens of vendors all selling different things.  One of them spoke particularly good English and was particularly friendly.  His name was Oscar.  He was selling a book about Borobudur, and also postcards.  These were actually both things I was interested in buying, but I did not really want to carry them up to the temple and sweat all over them, so I promised him I would buy them if I saw him on the way down.

The interpretive film itself was quite informative.  I didn't recognize the language it was recorded in, but there were English subtitles.  I learned a lot of details about Borobudur, and there are websites that will enumerate them with more authority than my memories of the film, but a few in particular stuck with me:  that the temple was completed around 1200 years ago, that it was built out of interlocking stones rather than with adhesives, that the Dutch played a great part in both its restoration and further destruction, and that the origin of the name "Borobudur," which is a very ancient name, is unknown.  Scholars have a number of theories.  As the most amateur of amateur linguists, the theory I favor is that it is a compounding of a very similar-sounding word for "great" and the similar-sounding word "Buddha."  The other theories require more convoluted explanations and yield less-satisfying translations, but of course you can find them on the internet as well.  Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni did not sit through the film with me.  I suspect they had seen it before.  Instead, they were trying to find a tour guide who spoke English.

After the film, we walked up to the temple, which turned out not to be very far away or much higher in elevation than the parking lot area.

Pictured:  Not much of a walk, by Montana standards

At the end of the walk, there were a couple of flights of stone stairs, which we walked up, before reaching the stone steps to ascend the actual temple.  The steps were guarded by stone lions carved in a distinctively Chinese style.  They were also flanked by rain spouts in the shape of gargoyles.  If I had any interest in ever owning property, I would want the downspouts on my house to be replicas of those, because they were pretty cool.  Borobudur temple itself has ten levels.

Pictured:  a 10-level temple and a level 0 tourist.

Seven of those levels are more or less square in shape, and their walls are covered in 1460 relief sculptures, direct visual translations from the holy writings of Buddhism.  I walked past almost all of these.  Some were in better condition than others.  Many had been defaced by the Dutch, covered with Ochre so that they would show up better in old-timey photographs.  The Ochre speeds the chemical breakdown of the rock, and any attempt to remove it only compounds the problem.  I found myself very upset with the Dutch when I learned this.  The remaining three levels are circular, and they are the resting place of seventy-two "small" stupas--symbolic burial mounds or cairns, each of which contain a statue of the Buddha.

One of these things is a stupa, and the other just looks stupid.

Nine of these stupas were intentionally destroyed in 1985 by some terrorists-for-hire, as a statement about some political cause or another.  Two sticks of dynamite were placed in a tenth stupa, but they didn't go off.  I found myself angry at political people, and people who are older than me in general.  In the center of the highest level is occupied by a massive stupa, which doesn't appear to have a statute inside of it.  It is said that if you circle this stupa clockwise an odd number of times, you can make a wish.  Walking circles around the
top of this monument calmed my anger.  I wished to learn a lot, to teach a lot, and to write a lot.

I also wish the guide hadn't talked me into posing for this picture.  It feels a little disrespectful in light of my merely rudimentary understanding of the Buddhist concept of the Wheel of Life, and also it's just a really unflattering shot.

After leaving the temple, Oscar was there to greet me.  He sold me a book and a set of postcards*, and Pak Iwan was there to inform me that vendors not in a storefront inflate their asking price and expect to sell for half of that, saving me from overpaying and completely embarrassing myself.

After Borobudur, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni took me to a very cool restaurant, which is built in a marshy area and well-hidden from both the sight and the noise of the road.  I got to try a traditional Indonesian fish and two traditional Indonesian prawns, all of which were delicious.  At the restaurant, I met the skinniest cat I had ever seen.  It had recently had a litter of kittens, and it was still the skinniest kitty I had ever seen.  We let it have what we couldn't finish.**

After that, I went home.  I figured it was plenty for one mid-week holiday.




*Some of the postcards are already set aside for family and such, but the first four people who call, e-mail or facebook me asking for a postcard from Indonesia will receive one, assuming the postal carriers hold up their end.
**I had not until moments ago contemplated whether my soft spot for cats all about wanting to have more tiny friends who will make my muscles look huge...but knowing me, it's possible.