Early morning, Vento woke me up at sunrise. She drove me to the first floor to grab a quick but huge breakfast and she dragged me to the bus station. It was hard to follow her as she is a two meters long legged girl, and I’m more the 30 centimeters kind…

However, we finally arrived at Borobudur, late morning.

First scam directly at the station. BOOM!

The matter is not how not to be scammed at all but how to be scammed as less as possible! It’s not a big deal in the end, it’s always few little money gone into somebody else pocket. They probably need it more than I do but if you let that happen too much, you start to loose self respect (no, I still don’t consider myself as a walking dollar, sir. Thank you sir.) and a coin, plus a coin, plus a coin… You ‘ll understand too quickly that it’s a lot of money that you won’t use for activities or to eat during your trip and that might reduce it for few weeks in the end.

The 3km away that everybody declamed at the bus station were actually a 1 minute and a half ride on a scooter. Again, it’s not important but it pissed us off and we felt like beginners.

When we entered the site, we met a small blond girl that we will call “miss good plans” for the moment (she explained her “fake student card pass” trick) but who revealed to be “miss I kick ass cause I’m traveling from Australia to the Netherlands on a big bike”. A gem for the Wanderlust Queens Project, that, I tell you!
    
  

Borobudur, is the biggest buddhist site in the world. It has been built in the VIIIe and IXe century during the Syailendra dynasty. (Funny that it is placed in one of the biggest Muslim country in the world!)

The architecture match the Cosmology Buddhist conception of the universe: the universe is separated in three spheres: kamadhatu, rupadhatu et arupadhatu. The first one represent desires in which one we are slaves of our passions. The second one are the forms, in which we are still under the spells of the Name and the Form. And finally the sphere of the forms detachment, where no names or forms exist anymore.

All of it is a reflexion of the ancestors’ cult about how to accede to Nirvana. Borobudur is a Buddhist mountain-guide book to reach heaven.
Thank you Unesco for the informations!
  
    
    
  

Under a baking sun, we climbed slowly the three or so floors, harassed by the students in red who all wanted a picture with us. I can’t deny that during the three first shot sessions, I felt like a mega star. After that it’s kind of polluting your visit…