Dieng
In spite of chaotic preparation one day before the trip, my friends and I successfully flown in to Yogyakarta from Jakarta on Friday night. Ato droved us to Dieng, Wonosobo that night and arrived there at around 2 am. We stayed awake during the four hour ride from Yogyakarta to Wonosobo so Ato could drive in full consciousness. Hence, having to wake up at 4 am to start our journey at Dieng plateau was tremendously grueling. We had a quite short-lived trek on a hill to see the sunrise and the mountains view. The sunrise with its mountains view is picturesque as predicted. However, the predictability of the view had made it less stunning.
What amazed me were the facts on how the local people use the steam from the craters, which are abound here, to generate electricity, get relatively wealthy from harvesting potatoes and other vegetable related plants, and learn English with its Dieng history every once in two weeks for free to prepare themselves as guides for foreign visitors. I am grateful for them to live far above poverty line thanks to the economics benefit from the crops and decent infrastructures. Alas, there is a trade-off for that. The crops have been replacing the forest over the hills. As far as your eyes can see, mostly there are only crops on the hills. It rather contradicted with our guide, Mr. Wow, effort to convince us that his hometown is scenic. His zeal to show Dieng’s beauty to us was mind-blowing, but sometimes it was bothersome when all you wanted was the quietness in front of the scenery. It is a dual view from spending seven hours in Dieng plateau. It might be not comprehensive enough.
Borobudur
5 am and it's time to go for sunrise at Borobudur temple. I bought “visiting Borobudur before 6 am opening hour” trip for about Rp200.000 at Manohara hotel. It's regrettable that the sky was cloudy hence we were not able to see the sunrise clearly. On the other hand, I could take some pictures of Borobudur with its moon-set view. The view of stupas’s shadow iluminated by the moonlight in the dark with trees as the background was stunning. Unfortunately, I only brought a pocket camera that mediocrely capture the dark view or was it because I coudn’t use it optimaly? By circling the upper side of Borobudur, I could look at diiferent views such as mountains, forest, and a big tent. A big tent? Yup, the tent was used to celebrate Vesak day a day before. I only joined in Vesak’s celebration on the afternoon, while my friends also joined at night. Indonesia’s president also joined the celebration at nigt. He stayed at Manohara hotel which located inside Borobudur’s complex, hence the hotel was fully booked. It was great to be able to celebrate certain religion’s holy day without being a member of the religion.
At 6 am, Borobudur’s gate is opened for public with far cheaper entry fee around Rp20,000 compared to the price visitors should pay if they want to get inside before 6 am. You should pay ten times higher to get the tranquil atmosphere at Borobudur temple, but I still think that it’s worth paying. There were already quite a lot of visitors who also want to see the morning view of Borobudur or just want to take pictures among the stupa. The most disturbing thing was the voice from a loud speaker warning the visitors for not climbing the stupas. However, seeing people try to climb the stupas was more irritating :)
We were off from Borobudur around 7 am. An old man showed me a point where I can grab the whole view of Borobudur. He himself makes a living by taking other people’s pictures at Borobudur site. I hope he still have a lot of customer in spite of the increasing usage of digital camera.
I went with Sondang, Dian and Fenti on this trip :)
