DAY FOUR, part 1: Prambanan

We woke up early enough to see our last Balinese sunrise. It was only a little bit prettier than the one I saw by myself our first morning. We checked out with no problem, and got to the airport in plenty of time. We flew to Jogjakarta, a city in the south of Java, which is the island west of Bali. We arrived about half an hour before Mutia's flight from Jakarta, so we chilled out at the airport Dunkin Donuts. We were met by Lingga, our guide for the day, who spoke excellent English.

Mutia got in with no problem, and we all piled into a van with Lingga and a driver. The plan for the day was pretty ambitious: Prambanan, the palace of the Sultan of Jogjakarta, and Borobudur. I'll explain each one as I get to it. Mutia had made these arrangements back in Bali with Ketut, and we paid in full at the hotel, so everything was taken care of.

The first stop was Prambanan, located about 10 minutes from the airport. The site is separated from the road by a large green space, with the trees and open air intended to buffer Prambanan from the pollution of the city. As our van parked, several peddlers swarmed us. Lingga warned us that, while they are doggedly persistent, they will leave us alone if we simply tell them thank you and walk away.

As we got out of the van, they heard us speaking English, and the group immediately began haggling with us in English. "Hey, mister, this very nice present, okay?" followed by price quotes. Some were selling sarongs, painted dolls, and other trinkets. I ignored them pretty easily. One guy, though, was carrying blowguns. He took out a folded-up version, assembled it, showed me the dart, loaded it, and fired it into a nearby log--all as he was walking along with us. He mentioned they were made in Borneo, and kept going on and on about how the darts were real. Here I made my first mistake: I listened to him. My attention kept him right with us. I soon made my second mistake: I asked how much he wanted for one. I really had no intention of buying it, since I had very little room in my bag, and I wasn't sure how understanding an airline would be if I tried bringing a "souvenir" blowgun onto the plane. But I asked all the same, and he started out at $20, but quickly came down to $10. Here I tried to break the spell, and went with Lingga's advice. He kept at it, though, and in my desperation to get rid of him, seeing that we were coming up to the gate, I told him "maybe after." He immediately went away.

Prambanan is a collection of Hindu temples dating back 1,200 years. The compound consists of three zones of temples. All that's left of the outermost zone is empty space, as the original buildings were all made of earth and wood. The middle zone originally contained four rows of 224 individual temples, each one occupying a few square meters. The central zone contains the most important temples. The three largest temples are each dedicated to one of the three main Hindu gods: Bramma, the Creator; Wisnu, the Protector; and Siwa, the Destroyer. (I'm using the Indonesian spellings of the names, because those were the ones given to us by Lingga and everyone else who talked about them. I have no idea how similar--if at all--Indonesian Hinduism is to Indian Hinduism. All I'm doing is recounting what I was taught by the people I met.)

There are also three large temples, one for each of the main gods' vahana. From what I understand, a vahana is a creature that a god is closely associated with. They're often called mounts, since the gods are often depicted as riding their vahana. The three temples are for the Hamsa bird, a swan associated with Bramma; the Garuda, a birdlike creature associated with Wisnu; and Nandi, a bull associated with Siwa.

The Siwa shrine stands at the center, and is the biggest in the compound. Inside, it contains smaller shrines for lesser gods associated with it. Wisnu stands to the north of Siwa, Bramma to the south, but neither of these contain smaller shrines: they are dedicated to each main god alone. All three shrines face due east.

There are reliefs carved along the balustrades of the Siwa and Bramma temples which depict the Ramayana legend, which we had all learned from watching the Kecak. Reliefs on the Wisnu temple's balustrades tell the story of Krisna

Lingga explained that the temples were assembled from interlocking stones. Each stone was carved specifically for one temple, and would fit with only the stone designed to connect to it. This style required no mortar or other adhesive, allowing the temples to be simply assembled. As she explained it to us, and showed us the various stones lying around the site, I couldn't shake the image of gigantic LEGOs.

The seismic activity of the region puts any construction at high risk, and when Prambanan was "discovered" by Europeans in the 19th century, most of what remained was rubble overgrown by the jungle. The only temple left standing was Siwa's, which I find kind of ironic. Restoration began in 1918, with crews sorting out the rubble into groups of interlocking stones. From there, they would simply begin reassembling the temples (again, I think LEGO building makes an excellent analogy here). Over the centuries, locals had made off with some of the stones for use in homes and such, so they had to be tracked down and returned to the site. Thanks to the efforts of the restoration, almost all of the main compound has been rebuilt. There are still intermittent piles of stones in the middle zone, representing incomplete sets of blocks for temples.

There was a big earthquake near Java in 2006 that caused serious damage to the compound. When we were there, the main site was open, but the central complex, with the six main temples, was cordoned off. There was scaffolding around Wisnu's temple, but the other two looked fine. The whole place looks simply amazing. Upkeep of the site has been leased to a private company, which allows them to do what they want on the land. On the day we were there, some kind of game show was being filmed more or less in front of the main temple compound. We were able to ignore it easily enough, but it did sort of mess with the effect.

As we were heading out of the temple compound, we noticed some of the same peddlers we'd seen earlier, waiting for us at the exit. At the front of their group was the guy I'd told "maybe after," calling my bluff. I really didn't want one, but he took that to mean it was too expensive. Even after Mutia helped me explain that I didn't have any room in my bag, he kept lowering the price. This went on for the entire ten-minute walk back to the van. His final offer was fifty cents. He went from $20 to fifty cents. As tempted as I was to buy it just to show everyone what a deal I got, I didn't like the idea of forever being reminded of being a cheapskate.

So while it isn't as cool as buying a bargain-basement bona-fide Bornean blowgun for fifty cents from a street peddler at Prambanan, I can still talk about the time I refused to buy one.