Yogyakarta & Borobadur: Indonesia wins the place-name game

From Jakarta we took an overnight train ride in which I got more sleep than Ben, and that's just because I lay down on the floor, and that's still not saying much. Once in Yogya (pronounced jogja), it took us awhile to find a cheap room, after which we promptly went back to sleep for a few more hours before preparing to explore the town, famous as a "culture center" of Java. Our exploration plans were foiled, however, by a rainy afternoon and evening which pinned us in our corner of the city. We had good company, though, in the form of Bart and Sabine, a Belgian couple who we met up with again in Malaysia a few weeks later.

Due to a very tight schedule in Indonesia -- we were racing through Java in order to squeeze in a taste of Malaysia before our flight to India -- we didn't end up seeing much of the town itself, but we were lucky in that the rain let up enough for us to spend a day at Borobadur, the real reason we'd come to Yogya. Borobadur is up there with the buildings of Angkor in terms of historical importance and archaelogical tradition. It is the biggest stupa in the world, like a mammoth stone wedding cake with Buddhas on top and intricate carvings of stories and people and places and customs ringing each of the layers. The building was amazing -- we were worried that Angkor would have left us jaded, but we loved climbing around the building and were drawn in by one detailed carving after another.For more shots of Borobadur (and the rest of our Indonesia leg, if you're too antsy to wait for the blog to catch up), go here.