So this is what being a celebrity is like

We woke up bright and early to get to Borobudur Temple on Saturday, and left the property at 6:15. Plan was for us to visit the temple for as long as we wished, use the free wifi there to send Bobby a message saying we had finished, and he'd come collect us. The trip to the temple took about 10 minutes and the sun was just settling low in the sky. An interesting quirk: there are two lines for visitors. One for domestic travelers, one for international. I believe at least part of this is because domestic visitors pay less, but I have to say our line was MUCH shorter! We were able to buy our tickets as a discounted deal by getting a two-temple pass which would also allow us to visit Prambanan the next day and save a few bucks in the process.

As we got inside, we quickly discovered that we were among a very small handful of western tourists, and a VERY large group of student tourists. Kids from age 5 or 6 through high school aged, clearly on school trips and all wearing matching tee shirts from their various groups. Considering how many kids (we're talking THOUSANDS of kids, all on bus trips, all visiting this massive temple complex) there were, it was a good call by all those various schools. Anyway, as we had discovered on South Bali when we met the college kids in Nusa Dua the day we rented a scooter, Indonesian kids are really psyched to have some native English speakers to practice on. Since they all start taking English in grade school, they're quite proficient, and they all want to just say hello and giggle at our accents. So we're walking into the temple complex, built in the 9th century and the LARGEST BUDDHIST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD, and there are kids everywhere. There are these beautifully manicured gardens, and there's a massive staircase you've gotta climb to get up to it, and then the whole thing is set up as a trek through Buddhist cosmology, moving steadily up through to enlightenment. So it's a series of square layers, topped by circular layers, topped by a dome. We're slowly approaching, doing our tourist thing, and some kids come up, giggling, and ask to take photos with us. We're so pleased because the little critters are so excited, as only middle schoolers who are slightly nervous can be. So en route up the stairs we're probably stopped 5-6 times by various groups of kiddos. When we get up the first giant staircase to get to the ground level of the temple itself, we swung around to the south facing wall, which looked less populated, and climbed from there.

Celebrities

Borobudur Temple from the ground

Relief on Borobudur

 The structure is unbelievably massive. You can hardly fit the whole thing into a camera frame. But we made our way around and slowly up to the circular layers which are covered with these giant domes that look like latticed bells just sitting on the ground. They're called stupa. Each stupa houses its own Buddha statue, and they overlook stunning views. If you Google Borobudur Temple, the stupa are probably what you'll see. As such, the stupa are where all the crowds go for picture taking. Including the kiddos. And by the time we got up to the stupa layers of the temple, they were all wide awake and no longer shy about asking for pictures. When I tell you that we were each asked to take over 100 photos with various folks - mostly kids, but not entirely - it is not an exaggeration. We had so much fun!!! They were so excited, I kept feeling like Bradley Cooper making my way through the site. We kept saying to each other "are you sure they don't think you're famous?" because we were so inundated with photo requests. We eventually agreed to stop making eye contact with people because that at least slowed the tide of requests! Our cheeks burned from all the smiling, but it was such a blast because every person would light up when we said yes like we had just made their whole day. It was a very cool feeling, but it was VERY tiring. There was another couple, Australian by their accents, and they were such jerks that it made us feel even better about being nice. They were rude to the kids and kept griping about how they were going to have to edit out all the people from their photos - um, sorry that the most-visited tourist site in Indonesia hasn't accommodated your Instagram habit well enough. Rude.

Stupa... inside each is a Buddha statue

Stupa are very large

Volcano AND stupa

Anyway, we had tons of fun snapping selfies with the other tourists, but the sun was a'coming and it was getting hot. We decided to roll out and wander the grounds a bit, and then go grab some food in town - it was nearly 10am by that point, so we'd been wandering a while. There was a fried chicken shop nearby that we decided to check out and someone had very casually left an owl tethered to their motorbike outside. Just hanging out on the handles. #casual. After some nosh, we wandered down a side street in the direction of a massage parlor that Google seemed to think existed (it didn't) and past the local Catholic church! They had very kindly left a mass schedule on the bulletin board along with whether the mass would be said in Javanese or Indonesian. There was a 6 o'clock mass scheduled in Javanese, so I made a mental note and we headed back towards the temple. Being so close to the end of the trip, we were pretty well exhausted at this point. Despite the afternoon downtime during the rainstorm the previous afternoon, we decided to replicate it and spend another low key day at Bobby's place. That porch was just too inviting to pass up, and it's not every day that I can enjoy the sounds of wild parrots and glance up from my kindle to see a volcano, so we went for it. Bobby had offered to do a tour of the village he lives in, and to go see a coffee plantation, but we weren't totally sure how to decline graciously (not least because it was going to cost like $25USD each), so we decided that our best bet was to just totally exhaust ourselves by walking the few kilometers home!

Middle schoolers

Who am I to turn down a selfie with this adorable little person?

So we set out. And we've barely made it a quarter mile down the road before Seo, Bobby's girlfriend, pulls up on a scooter and starts rapid-fire apologizing to us because she thinks we've been abandoned by our drivers! We try to explain to her that we've CHOSEN to walk back, that we WANT to walk back, but she's not hearing it. So she scuttles back 50 yards or so to a shop to chat with a guy who looks like he might be one of the scooter dudes who's been driving us around (you can't really chit chat on a scooter - too much wind noise when there's already a language barrier). We chase her, emphatically promise that we're not too tired to walk, that it's not too hot, that we're seriously just dumb bunnies and WANT to walk all that way. So she looks at us pretty skeptically and agrees. It was so so sweet, she was absolutely convinced we were just trying to be polite. So she lets us go, we continue walking along, and about 15 minutes later Bobby rolls up on a scooter with another dude in tow. Apparently Seo didn't believe us :) so we tell him that seriously we're good, he laughs at us for being silly white people out wandering in the freaking hot sun, and says he'll see us back at the house. They are seriously such sweethearts.

So anyway, we dumb dumbs continued walking and only stopped at a little corner store to pick up an ice cream cone and some water, and to reapply sunscreen so we didn't become silly lobster people. Made it back only to realize that Bobby was still going to feed us breakfast! We had forgotten that breakfast was included in the stay, and Bobby didn't disappoint. All kinds of fresh fruit, pineapple pancakes, hot tea, cold water, these little rice balls with chicken and coconut that had been steamed in banana leaves and were SO tasty. Man was it good. And, having already eaten fried chicken, man were we full! It made it really easy to head back to the bungalow, shower, and settle into vegetating. Or that was the plan. I made it as far as the hammock chair on the front porch before I passed out. For two hours. Oops.

The day before, when Steve left to pick up the dinner noodles and I hung out in the breakfast area, we returned to find two little pots of spices on a tray, along with a note explaining that they were freshly ground spice blends that are used in traditional Javanese spa treatments. Just add water, use it as a body scrub all over, and rinse! I had been too invested in my book the day before to try it out, but post-hammock nap, and still stinking from our temple explorations and long journey home, it seemed like prime time to do so. Honestly, it smelled like I was rubbing gingerbread spice mix all over my body - there was lots of cloves and cinnamon and ginger smells going on, and it made my skin feel as smooth as butter. Apparently it was originally used before Javanese princesses would get married and I can see why! Smelling freshly of delicious spice mix, I went to coordinate transit to get to mass. Steve said he'd join me before he napped, but I managed to forget that in my actual conversation with Bobby. So we decided that I'd fly solo to mass, we'd plan to eat dinner at a restaurant just down the road from church, and Steve would meet me there. Then we'd both head back to Bobby's together. I really do need to work on my listening skills.

Borobudur's Catholic Church

Mass was gorgeous. The church band was made up of traditional Indonesian instruments including the gamelan, a percussion instrument that is a bit like ringing a bell by tapping it with a pickax. The church choir sang hymns that were unlike any I've ever heard - mass was definitely true to following the customs of the local population! When M&D and I traveled around in Northern Italy back when I was in college, we went to a mass together in Italian and muddled along with the mass parts. Trying to do it solo, in a language that bears NO resemblance to English (at least that I can tell), was tricky. But Jesus and I spent some time chatting while I didn't know what was going on, and I left feeling great about having gone. Mass ran a bit longer than it does at home so I didn't get out til 7:15 or so. I scooted to get to the restaurant where I was due to meet Steve and as I was walking realized that he could, possibly, maybe, be concerned about my having disappeared in Indonesia without a means of contacting him. Apparently the church left its doors open during mass, so when he drove by it looked like we had already let out for the evening. So he was understandably panicked when I arrived. We quickly worked out the confusion, clarified that I had not been kidnapped by roving bands of school children, and enjoyed a really lovely dinner.

Back at Bobby's, we made plans for the following morning. Bobby had found us a driver who was willing to wait while we explored Prambanan Temple and would then drive us to the airport (which is only about 10km from the temple!). It would be another early morning, so we shot for another early to bed evening.