Yogjakarta, Java, Indonesia

A holiday weekend meant a chance to get out of Singapore for a short vacation. The destination was Yogjakarta, Indonesia. This is a place I've wanted to see for a few years and recently it's become much easier to reach since one of the budget airlines started up a direct flight to and from Singapore. In 2006 there was a large earthquake causing damage to many of the buildings and historic temples- it also coincided with massive mud slides and an eruption of Mt. Merapi nearby.... direct flights from Singapore were stopped making the trip a little more involved and difficult to see over a weekend. There's a lot of interesting places to see in Java- from cities, historic sites and temples, and volcanoes. The main reason people travel to Yogja is for the Buddhist and Hindo temples of borobudur and Prambanan. The damage from the earthquake at Prambanan was still evident as about half of it was still closed off and under repair.

Horse and carriage is still commonly used for transportation around Yogja, alongside cars, bikes, and scooters

Wile walking around the city we came across a group of kids customizing their bikes on the street- these were like low-rider bikes I'd see in San Diego- you never know what you'll come across in Indonesia


We had a better view of Mt. Merapi from the city.... after driving all the way up the view point we found it completely clouded in and raining with no view to the peak at all. You should see a giant volcano where the cloud is



Borobudur - A Buddhist temple build somewhere around 750AD and used for many centuries. It was eventually abandoned then rediscovered in the early 1800's by Raffles during his posting in Java. Souvenir hunters looted the temples for artifacts - many of the Buddha heads have been stolen- for years until a effort was launched under UNESCO in the late 1970's restoring it to it's current form.






The holiday weekend happened to Vesak, a Buddhist holiday celebrating the birth, enlightenment and passing of Buddha. As Borobudur still functions as a Buddhist temple, there is a massive pilgrimage there over the holiday. We decided to see the temple the day after the holiday as over 10,000 people are usually expected to visit during the festival.

Prambanan, a Hindu temple from the similar time period around 800AD- it's also a UNESCO site and had been extensively restored by the mid 1900's only to be seriously damaged again during the 2006 earthquake. Even though about half of the complex is still closed for repair it is an impressive site none-the-less.