The two taxis arrived at separate times, the first on time at 6am, so the first group set off then, knowing that since there were native Indonesian speaker with the second group, they'd be able to catch up.
Of course, mother nature being herself, it would have been the perfect day for a sun rise, with blue skies and small clouds to pick up colour. We joked about that as we headed towards the temple, and when the driver arrived, since the other driver was 10 minutes behind, we just headed to the tickets spot. All of us had to head to the Foreigner entrance, and pay the entrance charge of about 210,000 IDR which gave us access to both Borobudur and Prambanan temple complexes.
The Borobudur temple itself was pretty amazing, with lots of the Buddhist stories being told in picture relief all around the temple. I get the impression that nobody else fro the hostel had recognised that there was anything like that and just looked at the overall views, though Alvaro came along with me while I tried to work out what the stories were all saying.
It seemed like everywhere we turned, some school children were asking for selfies with us, and they all had the questionaire forms that I had been interviewed with at the mall a few days prior.
After about 4 or 5 such incidents I realised that I could probably charge them 10,000 IDR per photo, but we never managed to suggest it, until the school children were about to leave, and their teachers came up to also ask for selfies.
I advised them it was 10,000 IDR per photo and they had a good laugh at that! We exchanged some language information, and I learned other ways to say 'thank-you', which I forgot to write down!
Alvaro and I were the last out of the main temple complex before we headed to the museums, and finally made it back to the car, where everyone was waiting for us!
Our next destination was to be a surprise that Jack from Bhumi hostel had recommended - he called it the Chicken Castle, and we weren't entirely sure what to expect. The driver knew where it was though, and so off we went, two cars together, to Gereja Ayam.
When we got there, we discovered that Gereja Ayam, or in English, Chicken Church, is a church that had been built in the 1990s, but abandoned, and it was meant to look like a dove. There was now work being done on the church, with an information video about it. We all headed to the top of the stairs to get photos from the head of the 'chicken', and then explored the area under the church, which included prayer rooms for all the different religions.
Myself and two others waited outside for the rest of the people as we found a side door out of the basement, and we spent about 20 minutes waiting before deciding that nobody was coming. We went back in to the main entrance and found the others all inside the church waiting for us to get back from the basement! After that miscommunication, we all headed to Rumah Makan Bale Kambang for food. This was a new restaurant where we all sat in a covered pagoda place in the middle of a lake, which had nice fish swimming around.
We all ate our fill there and dscovered that the fruit juices they provided had almost no flavour at all, to the extent that they only really tasted ok with sugar added to them. There was much speculation as to how they managed to achieve such a tasteless drink, but nobody was brave enough to ask the owners their trade secret.
We all got back in to the cars, and made our way to Prambanan. It appeared to have been perfect timing for this too, as it started to rain very hard. As the journey took a couple of hours, we were able to tune out a bit, and the rain had stopped when we reached the Prambanan temple complex. The taxi driver did stop along the way at a smaller temple but we decided not to pay to go in.
At this point, alot of the street vendors were trying to sell us their Batik cloth, and Rico made fun of them all by trying to sell his one to them.
We made it to the Prambanan temple complex, and headed in, most of the guys were already bored of temples. Ell and Sebastien couldn't find their ticket though, and ended up issing out. We spent some time trying to get them in touch with the taxi drivers who had gone to park the cars at the exit, but never heard back from them.
After we had gone round Candi Prambanan, we discovered a place offering archery. We all had a go, and after I had got through my set of arrows, I decided to go and explore the other temples. As I started on the way, a muslim girl on a motorbike offered me a free lift to Candi Sewu, the furthest from the car park. This was another Buddhist temple, but was mostly in ruins. It felt like I was in the set of a martial arts movie, and could easily imagine figures like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan doing scenes there!
The next one was Candi Bubra, which was much smaller but still a Buddhist temple.
The last temple was completely covered in scaffolding so not really accessible, and called Candi Lumbung.
After viewing these, I made my way quickly through the museum which showed the restoration of the temples in the area, as many of them were found in a poor condition, and then deteriorated further during a recent earthquake.
I was the last person to the cars, and the rest of the group asked if I had met a girl, so I confirmed I had met the girl on the motorbike!
We headed back to the hostel, and enjoyed the local Nasi Goreng after paying the drivers for their days work - 600k per car, divided by 13 people, less than 100k - not a bad deal!