Week 57: Sunlit caves, erupting volcanos, and 9th century temples

 Yogyakarta falls into the category of places that don't get a lot of travel buzz but probably deserve it. At least it wasn't anywhere near our list of destinations to hit. As fate would have it, a nerdy history podcast that I listen to did an episode on it in same week that a local Malaysian coworker returned from a trip there and shared her stories. Jo and I both have legitimate Indiana Jonesian envy and really dig ancient ruins. So after learning that the largest Buddhist temple in the world was found nearby as well as a huge 9th century Hindu temple complex contemporary with Angkor Wat PLUS a chance to see hot lava coming out of an Indonesian volcano (it had erupted the week prior to our trip) and we were hustling to figure out how to get there

Yogyakarta is smack in the middle of Java, and like so many awesome places, easily accessible from Penang on a long weekend. 

The city center where we stayed was about 90 minutes from the brand new airport - which totally had the feel of a place anticipating future tourist growth, with friendly folks everywhere trying to help us...not the kind of help where they're hoping to get you in their unmetered taxi, but sincere help. In general, I feel like Indonesian vacation are totally underrated. Its got a lot of the same great things as Thailand, plus the advantage of less plentiful hookers and weed. The drive to the hotel had us passing lots of interesting stuff, I thought this improvised bike-cart had a ton of character.

Most everyplace we went on this trip came with a pretty substantial drive to get there. Which was fine because instead of a high-character bike cart we had an air conditioned car. One such adventure took us about 2 hours into the middle of nowhere to a cave. Not a cave that you could walk directly into, but one that started at the bottom of a sinkhole that required being lowered into, like this

Which provided a refresh to me of why I fell a little bit out of love with rock climbing years ago...a climbing harness under full weight of man provides an undesirable pressure. Jo was all giggly at this point, I was ready for them to get us down as fast as the could without us creating a crater at the bottom.

Inside the mouth of the cave it looked like this

We hiked in about 3/4 mile and came to a subterranean river that ran by below our vantage point and disappeared into a hole...also if you look close it appears somebody lost a helmet 

River however was just a sideshow - the main attraction was the hole in the ceiling - we waited for the sun to move into position until it shot thru and looked like this

Once the show was over we headed back to the cave entrance and awaited our turn to be hoisted up. The ride up was just a repeat of the way down, although somehow less agonizing. What was interesting was what we discovered once on top - they way that we were pulled up. 

Since we were out in the middle of nowhere, the crew was the members of the local village, who come out once a day to form two teams, and alternate with each other on the tourist retrieval.

I think it was better to have discovered this after we were already back on top.

Seeing red-hot lava spewing out of a volcano has always been (and still remains) a top ten bucket list item I hope to witness some day. We heard that Mount Merapi was doing it, and we're looking to get close enough to see the magma. We booked ourselves a bouncy tour in a vintage jeep and headed up mountain

On our way up our guide stopped us a several spots that told the story of a eruption that happened in 2010 that destroyed villages and killed about 350 people. Including a bunker that they've build since to prepare for the next one

And for some reason, at every stop had a pair of owls, this guy with the eyebrows:

And his big-eyed friend 

We learned part-way into the tour that the government was restricting access to the eruption site. So lavaquest went unfulfilled. But the tour was a blast, including some offroading in the river and some really great scenery

Visiting temples in Southeast Asia is easy to do - they're easily found and can share a similar architectural style. Which also means that after you've seen a few they can start to look the same. Borobudur is definitely an exception. It is massive. And requires special sandals to be worn to keep from eroding the 9th century steps that were only reclaimed from the jungle in the last century

Up on the top there are 78 stupas (bell-shaped structures), each with a seated buddha inside. Or in some cases most of a buddha, as some where beheaded by colonial souvenir seekers. Place had the cool vibe of antiquity. Super memorable. 

Lucky us, there's also Prambanan - a similar vintage Hindu temple complex nearby, in process of restoration from a big earthquake. it was also fantastic and much more of a choose your own adventure type experience, vs the curated and hosted tour of Borobudur.

There's something really special about touching things as ancient as places like these. I'm not sure I could put a name on it, but it includes an appreciation for those that have come before and put in the work to leave a legacy. I don't imagine that the ancient rulers of Java thought twice about whether a tourist would visit their temple 1200 year later. But I'm grateful for their craftsmanship and effort anyway.

I give Yogyakarta 5 stars. 

I'm also dumping a couple more pictures that I thought were cool here at the end of the post

Week 54: Sailing to the Dragons

Komodo! In elementary school I had no idea what country it was located in, but I definitely remember as I went through my dinosaur phase being excited to learn that there were still dragons that ruled the remote parts of the world somewhere.

In this instance, his lizard highness is taking a more passive approach to ruling his part of the island, but still managing to look majestic.

To get to Komodo, you need to fly to the Indonesian town of Lubuan Bajo, which is on medium sized island to the right of Java. Also, apparently abbreviated on maps sometimes as Badjo...generating an obligatory humorously raised-eyebrow look from me to Jo as we arrived and learned this.

Although we got to pose with some of the largest reptiles on the planet, they aren't the only thing to see...Komodo is a world-class dive location, and makes many top 5 bucket-list scuba destinations for its incredible variety of pristine coral and crystal clear waters.

To get to the dive spots we elected to do a 5 day liveaboard on the Situju 7 (Situju also means 7, so I guess the boat is the 77... very lucky) - shown here over Jo's left shoulder

It as awesome as I imagined a pirate ship would be, including our very own brass porthole in our quarters

Unfortunately, the anchor winch motor wasn't functional, but the crew had it under control. All we were missing was an Indonesian shanty

Along the way to the dive sites, we stopped at several really spectacular destinations. One that's achieved instagram fame is Padar island. 

What's cool about this place is that from this summit you can see three distinct bays, one of white sand, one of black sand, and one of pink sand

We got a closer look at the pink sand beach the next morning - there's a bunch of red coral offshore that gets ground up with the sand and turns white sand pink

The diving...I could go on and on with superlatives about our experience. We did a total of 12 dives over the course of our sailing, and I can honestly say it was breathtaking in a way that I'll never forget. Our conversation after each dive was one of wonder, and our conclusion was that if everyone on earth had the opportunity to spend 5 minutes seeing what we saw...they'd never throw another piece of trash in the ocean again. The closest comparison I can draw is the visual intensity of the movie Avatar, with the variety of exotic life and vividly colored immersion.

Including a couple videos without snipping out many stills this time - of course even with a red filter on my gopro the camera at 60' deep doesn't do justice to what we could see with our eyes

The coup de grace was a closeup with my favorite animal in the whole world - who was hiding under a rock and literally came out to give us a show by flashing her colors and patterns for a minute before retreating back under her coral shelf

Everything about this trip to Indonesia felt more than a little exotic. To wrap this I'll include a couple of pics taken from our boat as well as from our cute little hilltop hotel that overlooked the harbor.