CLICK.
We took a horse carriage (a dokar) to the Borobudur temple.
Eka was on a motorcycle pulling up the rear for our safety.
Borobudur Temple, a UNESCO World site. This 8th Century artistic and Architectural Marvel takes the shape of a sacred mandala when seen from above. They have 26 relief panels in more than 500 buddha statues. All of the temples we saw were built in one straight line in order for The Devout to ease their pilgrimage during the full moon.
Early in our trips someone mentioned liking to be on Gate 1 because all nationalities could be found on the trips.
Out of the 15 people on our tour I was the only “white” person (non-immigrant) and the only one who could only speak one language. We had six Bulgarians who live in Chicago, three Vietnamese who live in silicon Valley California, two Mexicans who lived in Mexico City, and two Polish people who live near Plant City, Florida, and Tom who is Chinese and lives in Silicon Valley. Tom speaks some Spanish and all the rest are fluent in English, their second language.
So this is one of the first times I found myself a minority in a group of people.
Out of 15 people I was the second tallest which was quite interesting too.
Many statues are headless because when marauding factions came in to steal artifacts, it was too much work to take the whole body. Very sad.
This is the temple that gave us our sandals so their Temple wasn’t marred by the shoes we may have been wearing. They’re quite nice and I’ve taken them home and worn them already.
We had another horse-drawn carriage ride to a local farm in a local Village. The lady was grating some seed or coconut that she mixed with flour and kneaded it by hand, rolled it into tube shapes and deep-fried it. We all ate it, crossing our fingers that the deep frying would kill any of the germs inside that dirt floored cement building.
These are the gas cans that people attach to their stove for cooking. Usually lasts a month.
Here is the butterfly that stuck around quite some time in this open-air Temple. Of course I thought of Jessie.
But the most amazing thing is that we were all on the bus, ready to go, when a little yellow butterfly flew in the back door of the bus, flitted around, came up to to the front of the bus where I was sitting and landed on my window. I knew it was Jessie just saying hello.
When Eka came up with a Kleenex in her hand I almost jumped out of my chair telling her not to kill it. She wasn’t planning on it. She caught it and took it out the front door.
This is a funny story. This woman was carrying around sarongs trying to sell them for 12 bucks US. I looked at a few but they smelled like sharpies with that ink smell, so of course I said no thank you.
That woman followed me from the bathrooms, down the street showing me every color she had, unfurling many sarongs as I kept saying No thank you. She followed me all the way to the doorway of the museum and had to stop because she did not have a ticket.
After 20 minutes of me taking pictures in the museum I look up and see her in the doorway waiting for me. I could not believe it. She insisted I buy one. I continue to say no and had to actually go around her to step into my bus while she was telling me the price was now $6.
A minute later Tom says look out your window. There she was holding up sarongs on the side of the bus until we drove away.
I feel bad she wasted all her time on me that morning and vowed to buy something the next time if I wouldn’t mind owning what they had to sell. I did so, and ended up with a beautiful robe for $6 in another city.
Another lunch with local food. Was a beautiful venue.
This evening our meal was presented by six people Marching in with a baby crib-sized container of food, only after they told us a story.
I have heard about fancy ice cream sundaes with actual flakes of gold in it but I was able to actually partake this evening. Look at the little piece of gold on that fruit. Just crazy!
And that box of silverware was just for me. And that tiny little wooden clothespin holding on the dried lemon was just a kick.