BOROBUDUR

Borobudur Temple is located in Magelang Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. It is the world’s largest Buddhist Temple, which made of 55000 m 3 of volcanic rock that’s more than 2 millions blocks of carved stone and has galleries measuring 2500m. Borobudur is the name of the temple, and also the name of the area around the temple which is called Borobudur Sub District. It is situated on the south side of Magelang Regency, the Province of Central Java, Indonesia. Approximately 41 kms from Yogyakarta.

It was a very high season for tourism due to schools holidays, but we had to attend a national conference in one of university inYogyakarta. My bad luck that I had to search a hotel door to door, fortunately we found a room even the owner said for only a night not more. But it was enough, while I thought we would go right after the conference.

After the conference it was so late, it was impossible to get back to Jakarta by bus or train, so we spent a night in hotel, an decided to see Malioboro night life, then I thought tomorrow morning we will find bus or train, when flight was to much impossible for the very high rate in this high season. In the morning we joined a queuing in front of ticket window at train station, not more than 20 minutes we found that train tickets were sold out, and we got nothing to go back to Jakarta. The sound of my cell, give me a fortune to joined robotic team from my university that had a competition in Jogjakarta also. They would come to Borobudur in back trip to Jakarta. It was a very good moment for me, since my high school I have not seen Borobudur again.

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Jacques Dumarcay a France architect stated that Borobudur Temple was built at the victory of Syailendra dynasty, it is about year 750 - 850. We followed a tour guide that speaking loudly to explained the story of Borobudur to 3 Japanese Tourists. Sometimes the tour guide spoke Japanese, could not barely knowing what he said. Then we decided to find other tourist group which is in English language, ha ha ha.. so we could understand what the tour guide said, and free of charge. By the way we can find a tour guide in any language around Borobudur Temple. They mostly talking about the history of the temple to the story which carved on the stone all around the temple.

In desperately to find something for my kids, we saw an old lady selling kids toy, a very ancient kids toy, its called 'gasing'. Well its look great to teach our kids to ancient toys... so I decided to buy 2 'gasing' for only Rp. 5000. Wow, how wonderful, i will teach them to know a traditional toy, than some kind like electronic toys.

We walked back to the bus station where our university's bus waiting. We crossed a grassy land, and guess whats that grassy land name! It is Gunadarma Land (wowow... that my university name.. yes it is, because it took from the name of the architect of Borobudur). On that Gunadarma grassy land, there walked slowly 4 or 5 elephants.. they were carried passangers, to entertained tourists who like to enjoy the ancient transportation. Then we passed the souvenirs market, which is offering many souvenirs like statues, cloth, toys and many more, mostly are traditional but not much different than any souvenirs in Malioboro market Yogyakarta (next time i will tell about Malioboro). So we didn't interested to buy anything from there.