South East Asia on a Hamstring – January 24
Borobudur and Prambanan – January 24, 2000
Temple day! Our first stop was Borobudur, a famous large Buddhist temple. We took photos and climbed to the top. We all received hilariously serious certificates of achievement for this from the ticket office.
Little schoolkids engaged us in small talk. We were swamped with them. All they really wanted was for us to take photos together, but they didn’t want to be rude and ask right out, so they tried to be polite about it.
On to Prambanan, the biggest Hindu temple complex in Java. It impressed me a lot more than Borobudur as it was enormous and has barely been excavated.
The rain started pouring suddenly and we all dove for cover. Some high school kids sheltered Joanne and I with their umbrellas. We practiced English with them and then their teacher arrived.
The teacher was barely older than the kids. His English was excellent but strangely formal. He preceded each question with a polite “please, may I ask you?”
“Please, may I ask you, what is snow like?”
“Please, may I ask you, what do you think of Bill Clinton?”
It was very charming.
The rain cleared up and we finished looking at the temples. Headed back to Yogya, where I headed out for dinner alone at Via Via. The waitress looked confused when I ordered tortilla chips and then said, “ah, tor-te-la chips.”
No one in this part of the world speaks Spanish. It’s been a real surprise to me. But then, why would they? The Americas and Spain are a world away.
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