Indonesia and Borobudur

Oct. 31

Last night was the Amsterdam’s 10^th birthday so the Captain offered free champagne all during dinner. I made sure the non-drinkers always had their glasses filled and shared with those imbibing. A good time was had by all!

This morning we awoke early to Indonesia, a land of over 17,500 islands, and the part of the Ring of Fire much in the news lately. Mt Merapi has been active and is very near where we are going and near many crew members’ families’ homes. Semarang, where we are docked, is noted for commerce. These islands lured Marco Pole and the Dutch colonist for the rich and abundant ability to grow the fragrant and valuable spices such as nutmeg, clove, allspice, and coffee, sugar cane , tapioca, rice, rubber trees, and just about anything you can name, they grow. The rich volcanic soil and dependable rainfall makes for a fantastic agricultural bounty.  Religion is rich in history and variety in this vast archipelago. Hindu, Buddha, Muslim and Christian and even a small population of Jews are found here. The population density in Indonesia is centered in the larger cities so traffic is a problem for us to get to our goal of Borobudur the monumental temple considered one of man’s most magnificent achievements. It is about an hour and a half from our dock so the locals have arranged a police escort for our 13 buses to get to and from the monument.

As we travel through the towns I notice here the homes have mostly the red tile clay roof you see more in the Mediterranean as opposed to the thatch and tin we have seen before. Many homes are very poor, but as we travel up the mountain our guide points out that the richer live higher than the poor, and we can tell the wealthy from the poor by the houses that have ‘ water tanks, heating machines and parabolas’. The last thing is a satellite dish for TV. All the way along we hear police sirens and I realize it is our escort as we whip through these congested little towns never stopping at signs or lights, and our guide explains we won’t make it back to the ship in time if we done’ have the escort. We stop for a bathroom break at a coffee house half way to Borobudur and I signal for June to follow me as the guide pointed out extra toilets. We walk down a hill and a smiling man nods his head and says”yes,yes” as he points us into the bathrooms. I go in and the whole tile floor is wet and the toilet is mounted right on the edge of a tiled step, so I can hardly get to the toilet without falling off the step. And next to the toilet is this huge, square tiled tub of water overflowing onto the floor with a plastic bucket floating in it. So I manage to do my business without falling off the step or getting my clothes all wet and then I notice there is no way to flush the toilet. Hence the bucket I guess. So I start putting buckets of water in the toilet having no idea if that’s what I’m supposed to do and then I’m not sure if I should wash my hands in that water and I’m not sure where that water came from and I’m getting pretty grossed out, so I leave. The man is still out there so I try to tell him I don’t know if I flushed the toilet right and he says “yes, yes”.  Obviously his only English word. As I round the corner I see an outdoor sink with soap! So I wash my hands 3 times with soap just in case I didn’t’ do the right thing in there. Then it’s into the coffee shop to try Javanese coffee and buy souvenirs. They are famous for batik, wood carvings, and bronze. Here the pressure to buy is not too high and I don’t feel the adrenaline rush yet.

We board the bus and our convoy continues up into gorgeous lush mountains, past rice paddies, rubber plantations, tapioca which our guide points our looks like marijuana, but is not, and all manner of flowers and spices. We cannot see Mt Merapi as it is cloudy today and has rained as it has every day since we arrived in this part of the world during Monsoon season. Our guide tells us 4 days ago the mountain erupted and Borobudu was closed, yesterday he took a group and they could not see 100 meters ahead because of the ash, but then it rained. Today they have the temple cleared of ash. As we approach from the rear –the VIP entrance, we see ash blowing in the wind. Our guide hands out masks. We descend from our bus and get out first clear view of Borobudur. Today this is the world’s largest Buddhist temple, but was first built as a Hindu temple in the 8^th and 9^th centuries. The bottom 3 floors are square and represent our desires, then the floors become circular and represent our ability to control those desires and eventually we reach the top row, nirvana, where we are released of all earthly and base desire. That’s really putting it simplistically, but if you were Buddhist you would walk the several miles of the inner temple and spiritually take the journey to heaven. At the top is the largest stone stupa in the world, which is the bell-like formations you see in many temples. Inside each of these are statues of Buddha and many, many of these dot the top rows of Borobudur.  Along the lower walls are intricate carvings of Buddha’s life that tell fantastic stories that really have similar themes to all our religions. We climb the deep and uneven steps, masks upon our faces, more entranced with the volcanic ash trapped in all the crevices than by the history surrounding us. I don’t know what is more exciting: the old temple or the new volcano’s eruption and our proximity to that. My friend the schoolteacher is scraping ash off the rocks to take back to her students. We arrive huffing and puffing at the top and I have ripped off my mask to gulp in more air, ash or no ash, I need all I can get. The view into the surrounding mountains is stunning and once again it is hard to imagine how something of this immensity and intricacy was ever built here on a remote mountain and then lost to the volcanic ash and jungle for centuries. It was just rediscovered and restored in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

It began to drizzle so we made our way down, my knees screaming at me the whole way and we encountered THE VENDORS.  Yes, just like in Cambodia these people attack the unwary and unsuspecting. But we were ready. I am with the three Aussie women and we are powers to be reckoned with. The vendors group around you, they cut you off from your friends, they confuse you with different numbers, they follow you right to the steps of your bus and then knock on the window all the way to your seat. And they get you. We sit and pantomime with our fingers what price we will pay and shake our head and look away and then they knock on the window with the same price and we start all over again. I actually got so confused once after a few minutes of negotiations, I yelled backed her first outrageous offer to me, and we both stopped and looked at each other and laughed. I was last on the bus 2 or 3 times because I was still making deals out the front door. People were getting me to go up and make deals for them. One vendor finally was so frustrated she turned away and held the backpack out to me and took my money without looking. I have Javanese fans up the wazooo and no idea what I will do with them, but what a price I got!!! And our wonderful guide thanked us after every stop for buying from the local people. He would tell us how much we were helping them and how grateful he was. Then I felt like a real cheapskate.

And the ride back was a real treat. Our guide told us about his family, thanked us again for coming to his country, and sang the national anthem for us. We once again had the police and now it was rush hour and the towns and cities were really crowded. The sirens in front and behind our convoy were going full blast and all the busses had their flashers going and we were taking these small, skinny crowed roads at breakneck speed. Motorcycles with 4 family members were slipping right under our windows and trucks brushing our bumpers constantly. All the pedestrians were stopping and staring and wondering who these important people were. The police were frantically stopping traffic and whipping thru red lights with their arms waving people out of the way. It was hysterical. And everyone was smiling and waving at us – old people, women, little kids, tough young guys and girls – we were important! And when we got to port instead of having to walk a block back to the gangway they drove right up and dumped us at the bottom of the ramp.

Back on board it’s Halloween. The ship is decorated like crazy and people are running around in costumes. At 10:00PM there is a big party in the Crow’s Nest Lounge. It’s also my son Patrick’s birthday so I get a little teary-eyed and homesick because I can’t even talk to him. But all the Indonesian’s are happy because they have seen their families and I am happy for them as I am far more blessed in that I am just separated from my family by choice on vacation, whereas  they get separated for 9 months because they need to work. Our one little waiter Wede, tells me his mother couldn’t sleep last night she was so excited to see him and when she left she cried and when he called her hours later she was still crying. He won’t see them again until June. These workers sacrifice much to make a better life for themselves and their families. Thank God for all the people of the world who do the jobs, seen and unseen, that support the people they love whether they love their job or not. They are real heroes.

Tomorrow: I meet the dragon! Komodo!