Bucket List item: Sunrise at the Borobudur temple in Yogyakarta!

It’s fair to say that I’m pretty inadequate in planning my trips and itineraries. On the other hand, it’s fair to say that I’m the best at still getting to see everything. I wasn’t uneducated on the fact that there are temples in Yogyakarta and Java. But, to randomly book a sunrise tour to Borobudur, not knowing I was visiting one of the seven world wonders, did come as a big surprise.

Besides, I must have seen a thousand pictures of this magnificent temple and its bells. (These are not bells, but Stupas, hosting a Budha statue in each of them.) Every time I saw it, I thought, well, that’s a place I want to visit. That it was in Indonesia? I had no idea, but to then suddenly stand on the world’s largest Buddhist monument was a great start to my day!

Temples in Yogjakarta

The last time I visited such an extensive temple complex was in Cambodia. I did a sunrise tour at Angkor Wat and spent three days exploring the rest of the temple complex. Regarding temples in Yogyakarta, I did stick to Borobudur in the morning and Prambanan in the afternoon.

The Prambanan temple is an 8th-century Hindu complex dedicated to the Trimūrti. Trimūrti expresses God as a creator, the preserver and the destroyer. The temple is the second-largest Hindi temple, just after Angkor Wat. And, to be honest, it feels great that I had to privilege to get that off my bucket list in earlier stages.

Starting the day with a sunrise tour generally means my day is much longer than usual. I like my sleep-ins a lot and have always been more of a night person than a morning person. Therefore, it was only shortly after lunch that I finished seeing both temples.

It’s because I already had a long day, and did very well being a traveller, that I decided to go. After a quick online search, I found a park on top of a mountain outside of Yogyakarta, where they made some Instagrammable viewing points for tourists. The park wasn’t that special, but I was happy seeing all the lookouts! I went back to the hostel, where they hired scooters to get there.

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