We then continued our journey to Borobudur. On the way, we stopped at the petrol station for refueling, where the guys were calculating on the price of the petrol in Indonesia after conversion. Haha. Then the van moved.
I looked at the sky, there were dark clouds hovering above the area. I was praying hard for clear sky, so that our visit wouldn’t be in vain. After all, the pictures wouldn’t be nice if were to photographed in rain.
Few minutes later, we reached a small town. We then passed a small candi (temple) where the van driver pointed and said softly, “Candi Mendut” and Daniel being our translator, pointed to us and said aloud “Candi Mendut”.
A minute later, we saw the peak of Borobudur! From afar, we could only see the peak but as our van were driving towards it, it became bigger and bigger until it got out of our sight when the driver took a right turn to the entrance and ticket counter.
The moment we got down, the local armed with rock statues, shirts, souvenirs, keychains, and postcards; surrounded us and kept following us! But after telling them, “no, thank you” or “tak mau” while shaking my head, they got the drill and left me alone.
There are two entrances/ticket counters. The open air ticket counter on the left (which looks shabby) is the entrance for the locals. If not mistaken they only have to pay like 9.000 Rupiah (RM3.30). On the right, there’s this closed up building, with air-cond, and sofas and, water and coffee dispenser. That’s for the foreigners like us. How much we need to pay?
11USD or 120.000 Rupiah. And free small bottles of water – can take as many as one like.
So much of difference right? I know, but it’s bearable because after conversion it’s RM44~45. That’ll be the 5th interesting fact I found in the trip.
And we got a guide for 75.000 Rupiah (RM27). His name is Lambang.
Lambang is a rather quiet guy, only spoke when he needs to explain about the temple. But once he got used to our presence, he joked with us nonstop.
From the ticket counter, we’ll need to walk about 10 minutes to get to the temple. The walk was a pleasant one, while the guys kept snapping and videotaking along the way and the girls talking and listening to the guide at the same time. Haha.
When the temple is considerably quite near to us (where the whole temple can be captured with our camera, all of us automatically stopped walking and snapped! Then Lambang said, “come, I show you a better place to take picture”, with his hands doing the photo shoot gesture.
