Finally, Some Culture! Prambanan and The Ramayana Ballet!

17 August 2010

We were excited to visit our first temple of the trip, and as we approached Prambanan in the outskirts of Yogyakarta we strained our necks to catch a glimpse of the tallest temple in Indonesia. In the hours that followed we strolled between and into the large and small and ruined temples taking in the intricate carvings and the serene sunset atmosphere. The carvings on the sides of these temples are exquisite, though some are admittedly time worn and others have obviously been pieced back together.

Prambanan is constructed of over 244 temples and was built around 850 AD by the ruling Hindu king. It appears to be built with a basalt stone of unknown (to us, anyway) origin. It has been damaged by multiple earthquakes, one during the 1600’s that destroyed many of its temples and another more recently in 2006. Like so many archeology sites, it was slowly but surely “relieved” of its bronze statues, building stones, and various other artifacts by looters. While we had been warned about scaffolding and fencing due to the ongoing restoration of the site, we found no scaffolding and easily ignored the fencing around the main temple.

After enjoying these temples up close for a few hours, we headed over to the Ramayana Ballet which is performed in an open air theatre with Prambanan lit up in the background. We ate dinner at the attached restaurant and groaned at the $15 bill (soooo expensive), but figured it was worth it for the view of Prambanan in the distance. After dinner, we hurriedly headed to our seats for the ballet.

The Ramayana ballet tells the story of a princess who is kidnapped by an evil king and is rescued (of course) by her betrothed prince (or something like that). The beautiful, and unique, choreography is performed to the music of a live gamelan orchestra. The gamelan orchestra is made up of bell like xylophones, drums, singing, clapping, a string instrument, maybe a flute, and a few other indescribable instruments. This, to me, creates music that is strangely haunting. The beautiful costumes, the haunting music, the unique dance style, and Prambanan lit in the distance made for a very lovely evening. I think Nick and I both agree that our favorite moment of the evening was when they actually lit part of the stage on fire as one of the characters burned down the evil king’s castle. Yes, this was part of the show and no I don’t think they would ever let you do that in the good ol’ US of A.

After spending the morning purchasing beautiful batik fabric for Nick’s mom and figuring out how to send them in the mail, we made our way to Borobadur, a Buddhist temple built around the same time as Prambanan. We will wake up bright and early tomorrow to enjoy it at sunrise!