Bat Poop and Ballet: The Prambanan Experience

After rising with the sun at Borobudur, Martha and I headed to Prambanan (which you might remember from my travels with Meghan and Liz-  check out that link for more background on the temples and some of the local stories about their construction), a series of Hindu temples built around the same time period, for the sunset.

Here's me and Martha, sporting the layered look, in front of the main temples at Prambanan:

Martha in front of one of the complex's hundreds of small temples:

Some of Prambanan's cool carvings:

Martha and I got to rock some hard hats in order to enter the main temple, which was closed to the public when I went last year with Meghan and Liz due to structural issues stemming from recent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.  Now it's open, but only to a limited number of people and you have to wear the hard hats for safety.   

The main temple is dedicated to Shiva, the destroyer, and is encircled by carvings depicting the Ramayana, the Hindu epic.  Below is the Shiva statue inside the temple.  She's looking quite, um, arm-y:

Here's Rama, hunting the golden deer:

Me and Martha on the steep and uneven steps up the temple.  These steps, and all of the uneven, unstable, handrail-less steps and sidewalks across Indonesia, were the bane of her existence:

Tiny Martha, big Shiva temple:

After checking out the main temples at Prambanan, we rode around to a few other temples in the area, including the Buddhist Plaosan temple complex, set in the middle of the rice paddies:

This group is comprised of 2 main temples surrounded by hundreds of shrines, statues and stupas, many of which are currently just piles of rubble.  Inside the temples are three rooms, each with two Bodhisattva statues,(below).  I only noticed the statues by using my camera's flash, because, much to my dismay, these temples were also pitch black and full of bats that had just woken up (since it was dusk).  Creepy and very Indiana Jones-y feeling to be in there by myself (Martha opted not to climb the steep and uneven stairs, see above):

She did, however, pose for some shots in front of the many (headless) Buddha statues on the temple grounds:

Here we are with guardians of the temple, the Dvarapala, fearsome giants with a mace as a weapon:

After we were done with the temples, we had quick dinner and then headed back to Prambanan, specifically to the massive outdoor theater, the Tri Murti, for the Ramayana dance show (when I went with Meghan and Liz we also saw the dance performed, but at the indoor theater).  Lucky for us, some of the dancers were available for photo opps pre-show.  Martha was able to put some of her signature awkward hand poses into action!:

There was a small group of gamelan performers ushering us into the theater with some hot jams:

Ah, the beautiful temple at night:

The outdoor theater spectacle was pretty amazing...  with the temples as the backdrop, the full gamelan accompaniment, and over 200 dancers?  Pretty impressive.  My only complaint: the bats circling overhead.  Normally I wouldn't find them to be an issue, but that particular night I got pooped on by said bats not once, but twice.  Is bat poop considered good luck?  

Prambanan: The Ramayana Ballet

 While at Prambanan, we decided to take in the temple's famous "ballet" version of the Ramayana epic.

During the summer the dance performance is staged outside in front of the illuminated temple... unfortunately when we were there it was being performed inside, but it was no less impressive.  

Sorry for the blurry photos... the lighting was tough.

The dance was performed to the sound of the gamelan orchestra (you can sorta see the musicians sitting in the back) with two female singers. 

Rama wins the archery tournament and gets to hang with Shinta:

The costumes were pretty complicated- lots of layered fabric, jewelry, headpieces, masks and wigs.  

I think this is Rahwana below:

Shinta, her sister and assorted lady friends, dancing a complicated dance that necessitated kicking their purposefully long sarongs out from under their feet in time with the music:

 

Rahwana, in pursuit of Shinta, who's hanging out with her sister.

 

Shinta, thrown into the flames for Rama's "purity test":

Rama + Shinta 4-Eva:

Fin:.

Prambanan at Sunset

The same day that we saw Java's massive, ancient Buddhist temple, Borobudur at sunrise, we also saw Java's massive, ancient Hindu temple, Prambanan, at sunset.  Pretty amazing bookends to a day otherwise mainly spent lounging by the pool at our hotel in Jogja!!

The guidebooks all seem to downplay Prambanan in favor of Borobudur, but we think that they're both worth doing, especially since they're both so close to Jogjakarta.  Getting to see yet another monument to another religion that's had a major influence on Indonesia was pretty amazing.

 

Built shortly after Borobudur in the 9th century, Prambanan was meant to honor the Trimurti, the expression of God as the Creator (Brahma), the Sustainer (Vishnu) and the Destroyer (Shiva).  Unlike Borobudur, which is one large structure, Prambanan is a series of temples.. three main temples surrounded by 240 mini temples.

  

There is a local legend (the Rara Jonggrang legend)  about the circumstances surrounding the construction of the temples.  The tale as told by our guide was a little bit hard to follow, but I confirmed his telling using ye olde interwebs.  The gist of it is that there was a prince who fell in love with and proposed to a princess who rejected his proposal (because he had killed her father, the king) unless he could build her a thousand temples in one night.  Faced with this daunting task, the prince conjured up a bunch of demons who helped him build 999 of those temples... as he was about to get started on the 1000th temple, the princess pulled some supernatural shenanigans herself and faked dawn with the help of her handmaids by getting the daily rice pounding started.  That set the prince off, and he turned the princess into stone... she became the final temple and largest temple, the Shiva temple. 

Now, our guide told us, kids are superstitious about bringing significant others to the temple, lest a similar situation occurs...

Like Borobudur, Prambanan has been damaged over time by earthquakes and volcanoes, and was abandoned for hundreds of years before being pieced back together. 

The carving above, our initially a bit surly but ultimately amusing guide explained to us, was frequently used throughout the Prambanan complex... a lion, with two wish-fulfilling kalpataru trees on either side, flanked by kinanas, or half-human, half-animals.

Our guide was pretty savvy about the ideal photo-taking locations on the complex. 

The temples are ringed with carvings that tell the Hindu epic, the Ramayana (probably the Javanese version, which is significantly different from the original Hindu version).  Our guide took the time to describe to us some of the highlights of the story, including the part of the story where Rama subjects Sita to the "purity test" (AKA throws her into the fire).  He joked that nowadays, the husband would be pulled into the fire, too.  Oh, that joker.

Meghan caught the above shot of the temple with a plane flying overhead...

Even the waterspouts were carved with these elaborate dragon heads (above).

The temples are surrounded by hundreds of these lotus shaped bells.

You could enter some of the temples, but others were still closed off since the earthquakes had rendered them unstable.

The guide said that this guy, above to the left, is a priest, and that you can tell because he has a long beard.  The longer the beard, the wiser the priest, said our guide.  Our guide also instructed me to take a photo of this guy above to the right because of the great detail.  He does know what he's talking about, it seems.

This one, he assured us, was a must see.  He insisted that I take a photo.  Look closely, he said.  It's "artistic, not pornographic," he repeated.  Then he pointed out the fella's giant third leg.

I tried, only mildly successfully, to capture the temple after the sunset: