Jo and Steve's emigration: Inglorious Mud

Jo felt that if she didn't do Borobodur she'd regret it for the rest of her life, and it was in a Lonely Planet top 5 SE Asia must see things, so that sealed it. It was an early start to catch the sunrise and the hotel wake up call didn't materialise - down in the bar a man with no t-shirt on was fast asleep on the floor, perhaps he was supposed to do it? Our driver looked like Penfold from Dangermouse, in a zany batik shirt. When we got there it was frightfully early and there were no other cars in the car park or any shops set up. We had a clear walk into the ticket office and on to Borobodur.

Borobodur is built in the same stone as Angkor Wat, and they were actually built around the same time (800 ish AD). Borobodur has 9 levels and is shaped a bit like that child's toy where you build up the circular layers of a pyramid. It was fun to do the Buddhist thing and walk clockwise around each level. The naughty Muslims went anti-clockwise!

The buddha's foot

Buddha in his spaceship

We couldn't spend long on the top level as it was chock full of people all wanting photos with us.

Our adoring fans pose with Cilia from Denmark

So we walked back. They had separated the entry route from the exit route, and the exit route took you on a tortuously long slog through the stalls selling Borobodur key rings and the like. When we came out of the exit, we didn't know where an earth we were. There were now a million cars in the car park, and about a thousand stalls had been set up. The place looked nothing like it had when Penfold the driver pointed out where we should meet. We were a bit lost, but after a bit of blundering around, including Jo falling over in our haste ("Look, it went right through my trousers", she exclaimed later), we caught sight of our fellow Borododur traveller, Cilia from Denmark. Penfold obviously had no faith in us and had gone off to look for us a full 5 minutes before the designated meeting time.

We then rocked the boat a little on the way back when we didn't want to go in the smaller temples. As a punishiment, the driver made us swap cars and we had to drive back in a very feminine car with fluffy cows everywhere and a driver who thought he was still riding his moped such was his over ambitious idea of what kind of gaps in the traffic he could squeeze through.

We had a train to Surabaya to catch that evening, so we spent a long day skulking around the mall foodcourt as it was the only place to sit and wait, because all the cafes are closed for Lebaran. On the way to the station a big SUV ran over my bag! I know, dear reader, I couldn't believe it either!! But there was no lasting damage, except in making me briefly insane with annoyance and nearly getting me run over by a horse drawn cart in my mad dash to get to the station and get the hell out of Yogyakarta!

Sidoarjo, a town about 30km from Surabaya, is the site of a natural disasaster where, in 2006, a naughty oil company drilled for gas and punctured rock strata deep down, releasing huge torrents of mud which to this day continues to pump forth every day at some rate. It's now the world's largest mud volcano and is on Wikipedia under Sidoarjo mud flow if you are interested. I only came across this reading National Geographic but it is the most awesome sight, the scary thing is that the experts think the mud will continue indefinitely and that it has reactivated some ancient fault line and some of the town will cave in.

Yes, those really are the remains of someone's house.

The locals have made not one, but three, very dubious looking DVD documentaries in Indonesian and some of them got angry when we didn't buy it, although the droves of Indonesian tourists didn't seem to be targeted in the same way, so we had to leave. A special mention to Andreas, a cool local guy who we met at the train station and who came with us out to the mud volcano, we would have really struggled otherwise. He'll be reading this, so cheers Andreas!