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We went to Borobudar temple yesterday and it was the most surreal experience ever! We walked up the ridiculously steep stairs to the top of the temple and sat down to catch our breath (this is what too much fried rice does to you) and a guy sat next to us to have his photo taken with us, which we thought was a bit strange but smiled anyway. The next thing we knew there was a crowd of people waiting to do the same thing, mainly families shoving their children in front of us and then comign to have family snaps with us. Now i know we may be a little strange but I hadn't quite realised the extent until yesterday-there was even a queue at one point, despite the fact that these people had the most beautiful view and temple around them. So we fought our way through the crowds and started walking around the temple but were stopped about 20 times for more photos with whole families and school children, and some people were even taking photos of us taking photos of each other which was a bit odd. I think we just assumed that they get a lot of tourists because of the temple but i suppose a lot of them may not have seen any people from outside Indonesia, which made us a bit of a tourist attraction i guess. One man said to us 'You like like television models' which was nice, but then we met an old German man who was having the same attention, so I think he meant that we were white like a lot of people on television. Most people were very polite though and a few children just wanted to talk to us in English.
The temple itself was beautiful-it's about 6 tiers high and so intricate-every single stone has a different carving on it and it has the best view of a steaming volcano and the city. We had a really nice day too-it was so so hot that we sat in the shade for about an hour after walking around, and Sam was like a kid at Christmas taking photos with his camera (or Colin as it is now called).
We decided to take the local bus instead of an organised tour bus, partly beacuse it was three times the price and partly because it departed at 5am and we didn't want to commit to going if it was rainy. Everyone was quite friendly at the bus station and pointed us in the right direction when we got a bit lost. They were a lot more friendly and genuine than the people we've experinced so far which was very refreshing.
We're having a lazy day today and may look into going to Prambanan either today or tomorrow.
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