prambanan
i'm a hearty advocate of cycling; blissful in oxford, bumpy but serene in angkor, hair raising but negotiable in manadalay, all in all a nice way to see the world. until you get to java. cycling down the main yogya to solo highway to get to the prambanan temple complex should have been relatively simple, an 18km jaunt down a straight, flat, road. what it turned into however was a game of hunt the hapless brown cyclist, whilst he simultaneously has forty cigarettes injected into his lungs. the cycle lane gave me hope until i realised that, far from being for my benefit, it was for maniacs on scooters who wanted to drive on the wrong side of the road but not sacrifice any speed. the net result was constant swerves into the outrageously busy main road and numerous i can see a white light moments. all good fun, but in a shit scary way.prambanan itself was impressive enough: it actually marked the last in my fairly in depth tour of south east asian monuments, and was everything i'd come to expect. grand in scale and ambition, the buildings matched by exquisite bas reliefs... everyone goes on about angkor, but java is certainly no mere bridesmaid. sadly i had to deal once again with my bete noir. sartre once said that hell is other people, but this may have been a bit overly reductive: put it down to him being french, probably just had some controversial cheese. hell is other tourists is actually unfair too. most accurate is hell is east asian tourists, or basically the (rich) chinese. loud, inconsiderate, clambering over priceless structures like they're ikea climbing frames, and generally ruining the ambience of some of the most amazing places in the world. bastards. still, not even they could spoil another chilled out sunset.
off to indonesia's most active volcano tomorrow: if allowed, i'm going to climb it. going to see some red hot liquid magma and i can't wait!
posted by bicrom @ 12:54 pm
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