I finally got to visit Prambanan Temple - also known as one of the most beautiful Hindu temples in the world (according to a website I've read before - couldn't remember the URL though)!
And yes it is indeed beautiful... :)
Once I landed at Adi Sucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta and met my companion at the waiting area, we went straight away to Prambanan - it's only a 30-minute drive from the airport.
It was a pleasant day, a lot of cloud, so it was not as hot as it usual is in a tropic country.
The entrance fee is 30k IDR (~3.2 USD), there is also another type of fee which includes the temple at the back of the park (Candi Boko, etc) - I don't remember the exact price, but I think it's around 45k IDR (~4.8 USD).
Right after the entrance gate, there's a simple map showing the few temples in the huge archaeological park.
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Prambanan is the one in the center
There are 3 smaller temple complex at the rear part of the park |
As you can see, there are 6 temples in the main (Prambanan) complex, the entrance is right in front of 3 smaller temples, and behind each smaller temple, they are (from the left) Brahma, Siwa, and Vishnu temples - the names of 3 main Hindu Gods.
We went straight away to the main complex, and boy, I am hugely impressed seeing how beautiful these temples are. They really live up to the expectation as one of the most beautiful temple!
One thing to note, better be careful when climbing the steps to enter each temple (except Siva - visitors are not allowed to enter), they are quite steep and a step can be like twice of normal stair step.
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| View from the complex entrance |
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Right: Siwa Temple (the main temple - the biggest one)
Center: Brahma Temple (there's a statue of the God Brahma in it) |
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| 3 smaller temples (the one in the center is much smaller) |
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| the exit gate (at the side near the Vishnu temple) |
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| view of all the temples in Prambanan |
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| view of Ramayana Ballet stage from Brahma temple |
The path actually splits up to the children playground and to the
back complex of the park - which will lead to the other temples, as we
only bought the ticket to Prambanan, we took the path to the children
playground, where there was a local band playing old songs in one of the gazebo.
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| local band playing old songs |
We kept walking pass the playground and went into the museum (entrance is free).
The museum itself is not as special as I expected it would be. It houses a lot of statues, stone jars found in the complex, but it really lacks in terms of presentation. There are possibly hundreds of statues displayed in the yard, but it seems that they are just put there without any historical presentation value as I would expect from a museum.
Same thing for the displays inside the two air-con buildings, they are considerably lack of historical information. Some of the photos come with one or two sentences along with them,and I learned that Siva temple was found in a very poor and destroyed condition and also that it took decades to rebuild the whole complex, but overall, I still feel that I didn't get to learn much from them.
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| a gazebo housing a set of gamelan right after the museum entrance |
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| the yard is full of statues |
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| gamelan |
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| Brahma statue at the back of museum |
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Inside the first building in the museum.
Center: the photo of Siva temple when it was first found - it's remarkable that they managed to rebuild it to what it is now | |
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Inside the second building.
Center: Miniature of Borobudur temple made of wood. |
Right before the museum exit, there's a small building where we can watch a 20-minute movie about Prambanan (paid additional 5k IDR per person), and since we were already there, we might as well just watch the movie.
The quality of the movie sucks very much so. But luckily the content is quite interesting. It explains quite detail what Prambanan temple means to the Hindus at the time it was built, what the main Gods are, and how the relief at the side of the temples depicts the story of Ramayana, etc. But it did cross my mind that it would be better if the video was shown BEFORE the visitors entered Prambanan complex. Sigh...
After leaving museum, we followed the path to the complex exit, and passed by a small field where they keep a herd of deers. They also sell deer's food for visitors to feed them.
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| deers!! |
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| a stretch of small food stalls |
The exit forces us to pass by food stalls, and a market selling all kinds of souvenirs, ranging from small key chain, shirts, handbags, accessories, wooden statues, etc, and of course, batik!
We didn't by any souvenir though, but I think tourists might be tempted to buy some as they are quite cheap - by western standard.
That concludes my first visit to Prambanan - I'm not sure there will be a second visit, but if there is, I will visit the whole complex (not just Prambanan), and I will surely pay more attention to the relief of the story of Ramayana. :)
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| the relief in one of the temple - it's very beautiful and detailed considering they carved them using minimum tools (compared to tools available now). |
