Today is September 11th 2013. It is 5pm. I am in Jogjakarta, in a student dorms, hosted by a young couch surfer named Paul.
Ha! Such a good feeling to be back on the Indonesian land.
I landed in Jakarta on September 7th.
There, I got hosted by an amazing host, Janice, who is friend of Marylin from AU. I couldn't have been in better hands. Well, not only does Janice work for USAID and so has such interesting projects and initiatives to talk about, she is incredibly well traveled, but also a great cook! So yes, I got spoiled again. :-)
My first evening in Jakarta, we went to a Georgian Supra diner at some US embassy people's house. Wow! What a night filled with super conversations, delicious Georgian foods and wines, and amazingly well traveled and cultured people.
The following day, a rather lazy day, was all eating and chatting about life and work. So inspiring and motivating. Janice, your life/job rocks! Marylin, your friends rock!
So after a 9 hour train ride which left at 7am from Jakarta, I finally made it to the mysterious-sounding city of Borobudur.
And there guess what?! My luck again.
I had connected with a couch surfer named Dina to find out about where to stay for cheap and what to do in the town. Well, Dina, aside from being super well traveled, a very experiences scuba diver, and speaking English as well as I do, she also happens to be the UNESCO manager of a project aiming at developing and promoting tourism in the Borobudur area. Ha! Could it Ge any better?!
So I got a long description of the best places to dive in the country, a full speech about the area, its history, resources, challenges, and so forth. Dina even took me to all the nicest places for sunset, delicious foods, and artisans villages. What luck I got! She even took me to a all mushroom restaurant. Wow! Unbelievable mushroom sate, just as if it was chicken sate, but with mushroom. A pallet firework!
I must say though, that while Borobudur's site entrance fee is higher than that of Le Louvre, yet in all honesty, the site does not compare even close to what Le Louvre has to offer. However, when visiting some little side museums about the history of the temple, and when realizing all the work that has been done to restore the monument to what it is today, I am speechless of respect for the people who did such work.
Around 25 million tourists visit the monument each year. Multiply that by $20 and you get $500 million. This is a huge amount of money which we don't seem to see being reinvested at al in the development of the site of the town. And yet, you can see that the villagers are close to the poverty line, and fully rely on souvenirs sold to tourists on the side of the street to survive. Sad...so much profit made and all pocketed by some rich individuals in Jakarta.
Overall, the Borobudur region is under rated by tourists. The monument is far from being the only thing interesting to see there, and you absolutely don't need to have loads of money a ne stay at those $800 per night ultra luxurious hotels yo have a magical there.
Just make sure to give a call to Dina, and she will be the best of hostess.
Selamat jalan!
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