Prambanan and the beginning of the end

Bobby's driver friend, Agus, is a chipper morning person. He chatted with us the entire hour ride to Prambanan Temple in the morning, and I hardly remember what we discussed. I am not a morning person.

Because we left Bobby's at around 6:30am, we were at Prambanan in plenty of time to savor it for a few hours. We made plans to return to Agus by 10am so we had a 60 minute window in which to travel the handful of kilometers to the airport (in case of traffic) and still get there with a two hour window. Not to get ahead of myself, but it only did take 15 mins to get to the airport.

Prambanan is fabulous, and we might have loved it even more than Borobudur. For one, it's easier to take in from ground level; the multi-layer, traveling-through-the-cosmos approach wasn't used for Prambanan (probably because it's a Hindu temple, as opposed to Buddhist). For another, it's set up as separate structures in a common compound, so it's far easier to navigate around swarms of people. "Prambanan Temple" is actually 240 separate temples, all in one site! Since neither Steve nor I are particularly fond of large crowds, and since we had spent the better part of the previous morning dodging 6th graders wanting selfies, we were very pleased to be able to mill about with more flexibility than had the temple been one large structure as was Borobudur. Not least, I think it's pretty cool that the largest Hindu temple complex in Indonesia isn't on the Hindu-majority island of Bali, but, rather, is on Java!

Prambanan Temple 

So we spent lots of time traipsing about the grounds, snapping photos and generally reveling in the fact that we were in Indonesia. Because it still hadn't set in and we were practically on our way out the door. 

Steve

Me

Volcano

Inside Prambanan

There were three other temples nearby inside the "park," if you will: Sewu, Bubrah, and Lumbung. It's incredible that these structures built in the 8th century have survived the volcanoes, typhoons, and earthquakes that ravage the Ring of Fire, but there you go. Really cool fact: Sewu, Bubrah, and Lumbung are actually all Buddhist temples, but are part of the larger Prambanan complex! Just goes to show that religions can peacefully cohabitate. 

Sewu Temple

Sewu Temple

After a few hours of meandering, we decided it was time to head back to Agus. We made our way out through the shopping area. We've noticed that all the temples are set up with a large complex of stalls as the exit. Great way to get tourists to buy things, but they're also accessible from the outside so that the temples can serve as the local markets, as well. We stopped and picked up some tchotchkes to bring back home. Agus scooted us off to the airport in record time and we started to wrap our heads around the trip ending. We were headed to Jakarta and would be flying back home in less than 24 hours.

We hit our first and only snag of the trip when we landed in Jakarta. I'm actually really glad to be writing this after a 3 week cooling off period because we were both STEAMING mad. We had decided to fly to Jakarta in the afternoon rather than the evening in order to be absolutely certain we'd catch our international flights. There had been some late night options which would have allowed us to spend the whole day exploring Yogyakarta and then only have maybe 4 hours in the airport before catching our flights home. I nixed that plans out of paranoia about flight delays and a desire to get a solid night's sleep. Since the Tokyo leg was due to take off at 6am, I wanted to get a solid night's sleep and not feel like a complete bag of... potatoes... on the leg home (24+ hours of daytime). So the plan was going smoothly until we arrived at the airport and discovered that our airport hotel, the one which advertised itself as being located INSIDE THE AIRPORT, was actually a 35 minute drive away. NOT in the airport. And there aren't any payphones at the Jakarta airport, and apparently the Information desk people can't make phone calls for you, so we were stumbling around like assholes trying to get my phone, which we had successfully NOT used the whole trip, to make an international call. It was an absolute nightmare. I think I've suppressed it because I frankly can't remember how we finally connected with the airport shuttle from the hotel except that we had already waited for more than an hour (and apparently he had too, because we were told to wait on floor 2 and he was on floor 3). Ugh.

So anyway, we take this bumpy-ass car ride to a hotel that's located a half hour away from the airport (so we'll have to wake up extra early to get there on time instead of being able to maximize sleep, as planned, and we all know how well I operate on not-enough sleep), get checked in, and find cockroaches in our room. I don't mind mice (until they poop on my cooking surfaces), I don't mind ants, I don't mind dog hair being all over my life. But I cannot do cockroaches, ESPECIALLY when I've been successfully living in random Airbnbs for a week and a half without them and suddenly the overpriced hotel that IS NOT INSIDE THE AIRPORT has roaches. So we're trying to explain to the guy at the front desk what was wrong with the room and he seems to just think we're having room key trouble so he sends along another guy to help us get in, and now Steve is steamed, and I'm suddenly having to be the voice of reason telling him that translating cockroach into English is probably pretty tricky and using the internet to do some of that work for me and FINALLY we get it across to them. So they're super apologetic and we figure well eff it, we're staying. So we get a new room, acknowledge to ourselves that at least 3/4 of our frustration is actually hanger, and head down to the hotel bar to have some dinner. It was the worst meal we had during our trip, but when we asked for a check they explained that they'd comped the expense due to our troubles. So that was very sweet. The poor server was pretty nervous all through our meal which we belatedly realized was because he was expecting us to be dicks because we were mad about the roaches. So then we felt like dicks. Anyway, went for a swim in the pool on the roof and watched a pretty spectacular sunset. We had it all to ourselves and, after all the bullshit, it turned out to be not such a bad way to spend our last sunset in Indonesia. And really, as far as travel snafus go, this one wasn't so bad. 

A lovely photo Steve took of Prambanan, because this should all end on a positive note

Our trip back to the airport wasn't so bad. The front desk guy suggested we leave at 3am(!!!!!!) to be sure we would get to the airport in plenty of time. We were seriously struggling to believe that we needed to leave that much of a cushion to make it there safely, but I wasn't about to doubt the guy and then miss our flight. There was a nasty thunderstorm raging when we woke up, and the poor doorman had to go out and physically flag down a cab in the rain. Our driver must've thought he was on a tryout for NASCAR or something, because we made it to the airport in a flash. No issues with security meant that we were there and ready to go with plenty of time to kill. All the flying we'd been doing meant that I was able to finish 6.5 books during the trip, so that last morning, waiting for our flight, was no different. Besides Steve almost murdering the guy next to him on the flight from Tokyo to Newark (he was a leg jiggler and I thought Steve's head was going to explode), the trip home was unremarkable. First trip to Asia is in the books.