Yogyakarta​, Indonesia

An early morning flight took me to Yogyakarta a major city in Java, the island just above Bali. The country's most prestigious university is in this town and Yogi, a young man I'm supposed to meet, is graduating as my plane is landing. Two of his friends met me at the airport, took me to my hostel, then kept me entertained until time to meet Yogi at the university.

Yogi, his mother and younger brother.

Prambanan is a Hindu temple complex. Yogi's friend, Muhsin, told me the story of how it came about. A king wanted to take a reluctant young beauty as his bride and was given the following request, guaranteed to win her affection. He was to build a thousand temples in one night. When morning came, nine hundred and ninety nine temples were complete. Alas! he was spurned. This enraged him so much that he turned her into a temple, thereby creating the thousandth temple. Its a wonderful story. The modern day temple complex is still in a state of major reconstruction with piles of stone everywhere yet seemingly in some sort of order. There was damage done the last major earthquake which has further impeded progress.

Part of the Prambanan temple complex.

The following day, Yogi and friends picked me up again and took me to the Borobudur temple complex. This one is a Buddhist temple, a huge temple complex with tiers, each lined on both sides with carvings, carvings and more carvings. I suppose there is a lot of Buddhist mythology there but it isn't clear because the boys are Muslim and I know little of Buddhism. We had some fun guessing the meanings of these relief carvings that seemed to be more about the earth, occupation and animals on the lower level and more in the clouds as we climbed higher. Ascension, maybe? We had a MeMeTheWorld mug (www.memetheworld.com) that we put in the arms of Buddhah to load on the MeMe website. We also put my magnet (www.magnegift.blogspot.com) in the hands of various carvings and in the teeth of the lion. Yogi told me that the temple was damaged in a volcanic eruption and the whole complex was wrapped in plastic to protect it from ash. No, folks, I didn't make that up. Yogi volunteered for the project and showed me a photo. My day with the boys ended with a farewell dinner at a popular restaurant serving traditional Indonesian fare. I let Yogi order for me, a really good drink with the non-traditional name of the monster, and an avacado shake with chocolate swirled around inside the glass.Yum.

I had a little time before dinner so I hired a becak driver to take me to what I call the graffitti wall. A becak is one of those rickshaw cabs driven by a bicycle rider who pedals behind it. Traffic was absolutely crazy but that guy nosed into it fearlessly. I felt a little guilty about riding because I could feel the motion of his pedaling behind my seat and knew he was laboring hard, especially uphill. He took me to several places where there was street art, and Yogyakarta has lots of it, through neighborhoods where people were cooking on the street, men playing chess on a blanket, guys hanging out on corners and a dump picker or two. It was all a pretty fascinating ride.

So-o-o much graffiti in Yogyakarta!