Highlights from Yogja

• Meet up again with Will and Jess for dinner. I always think we will have to part ways, but then our schedules match perfectly and I get to see them again!
• Ascending the stages of Nirvana at Borobudur temple at sunrise
• Indonesian schoolchildren assault us with English questions at the temple for a school project. Not clear that they understand what they are saying as I try to answer the questions and strike up a conversation, but they are well-intentioned.
• Bus from Solo to Tewangmangu with Julia’s storytelling periodically interrupted by  traveling musicians belting out Indonesian folk songs and strumming on their ukuleles
• First attempt to hike to the waterfall scuttled by a group of angry monkeys blocking the trail. We hid with an Indonesian woman by the side of the road while two competing factions of the monkeys screeched and attacked each other. At least one monkey was deeply wounded with his bloody arm limp by his side. We escaped unscathed.
• Exhausted by the failed attempt at the end of the day, we order room service, drink Bintangs and play cards.
• Second attempt to hike to the waterfall a success. Everyone wants to take a picture with us, because we’re foreign I guess.
• Hike through beautiful farmlands on our way to Candi Sukuh. Julia has to ask every person we see how to get there, because there are so many potentially wrong turns to make on our way. A man on a motorcycle mysteriously appears at every crucial fork in the road to point us towards the temple.