B2WC - Bike to Waisak Ceremony (day 3)

This is the English version of this post.

The heavy rain that fell the night before (that made the Vesak ceremony a bit chaotic) and fatigue made Ranz and me cancel our plan to ride uphill Punthuk Setumbu again to enjoy the spectacular scene of the sunrise. Our main reason was very clear: we were lazy to wake up early and climbed uphill by bike while the weather was still cool and sleepy eyes. LOL.

in front of the board name TAMAN WISATA CANDI BOROBUDUR

after our morning “ritual” (in the bathroom LOL) and packing our luggage, plus having yummy breakfast from the landlady of the guest house where we stayed for a night, we left the house around 07.30. We spent some time to take our own pictures in front of the board’s name TAMAN WISATA CANDI BOROBUDUR – for our documentation – we dropped by at one shop to buy a pair of legging for me (my only legging were wet due to the rain last night and I did not want to wear shorts biking hundreds of kilometers.) After buying some bottles of mineral water, we directly moved on to Mendut temple.

Ranz greeted Stephan without realizing that he was a foreigner :)

three of us at Mendut temple, photo taken by one security guard

continuing our trip

What a surprise for us on our way, we met a bikepacker from Germany named Stephan. Then three of us continued our trip together, luckily Stephan hadn’t visited Mendut temple. There, we still could find some offerings and some other ‘traces’ of religious ritual ceremony done one or two days before. Stephan found it interesting when he saw many foreign tourists there while during his trip along Sumatra island for some weeks, he only saw one foreigner.

From Mendut temple, Ranz and I accompanied Stephan to look for the location of Ngawen temple located in Ngawen village, Muntilan, around 6 kilometers from Borobudur temple. Honestly, we never heard about Ngawen temple yet, we knew it from the map brought by Stephan. In fact, it was not that easy to find the location of the temple, we had to ask some villagers several times till we arrived there. Fortunately Ranz and I always love visiting temples so we were just happy to look for Ngawen temple’s location.

the only complete building of Ngawen temple

one ruin 

the sewage, the water is from below the temple

Ngawen temple is a Buddha temple, built by Syailendra dynasty (the same as the dynasty building Borobudur temple) in the ninth century. There are supposed to be 5 small temples in that area, but when we went there, we only found one complete temple, the others were just ruins. One unique thing from this temple is there is water source below the ground.

Stephan enjoyed eating Indonesian cuisine

both Stephan and me in front of the food stall

From Ngawen temple, we continued our journey, biking to the main road connecting Magelang and Jogjakarta. On our way, we dropped by at one modest food stall with Padang food as the main menu. (Padang food is a kind of food with cassava leaves as vegetables cooked with coconut sauce plus chillies.) The price here was quite cheap, one meal only cost Rp. 7000,00. Stephan in fact enjoys eating Indonesian cuisine so he didn’t find it difficult to eat in Indonesia. He also found it surprisingly cheap and he said, “Perhaps because I eat it together with you guys. If I come here to eat alone, perhaps I would have to pay more expensive. I have experienced it several times.” I found it funny but I also felt uncomfortable to hear that. :(

entering a bridge connecting Muntilan (one small town between Magelang and Jogja)

Stephan in action while stopping at one traffic light

We were lucky since our following trip to Jogja, the track was going down so we didn’t have to pedal hard. One friend informed us to take Stephan to a place where bikepackers in Indonesia like to visit when they come to Jogja – Pak Jo. His house is located near Malioboro, one most well-known road in Indonesia. We arrived at Pak Jo’s house at 14.30. Unfortunately Pak Jo was not at home. Since Ranz and I had to be in a hurry to continue our trip to Solo, we had to leave Stephan around Malioboro. It is one most visited tourist resort so it would be easy for him to find a room to stay nights.

arriving at Pak Jo's house

Ranz and I planned to continue our trip to Solo by train unfortunately we missed it. In order not to arrive home too late, we went to Solo by taxi (thank god we rode folding bikes). From Solo, I took a bus to go back to Semarang.

*This article was translated so that the story could be read by Stephan and his family members/friends.

GL7 15.00 050613