Wandering Browns

Main entrance from the parking lot/ taxi drop-off I am from a rural area of California, so city living is not really my style. After a few long weeks in the city, I needed a break. I needed fresh air, trees, mountains, and no cars. Our afternoon at Tiantong Temple filled all of those needs.  Entrance gate Located in the mountains 25 km east of Ningbo, Tiantong temple is a large Buddhist temple that was built in 300 A.D. The legend goes that the founder went up into the mountains to pray and then decided to build a temple and monastery there for other pilgrims. Once it was more popular, he needed to build an indoor eating area. He went high up in the mountains to cut down trees for the building, but he was having a hard time doing all of the labor himself. He prayed for help, and a big storm washed all of the wood he had cut and needed to haul down to the temple. In thanks for that gift, he planted 25 km of trees to shade pilgrims as they journeyed to the temple. We ...

Borobudur  Walking up to the temple Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. It was built in the 8th century AD and abandoned later after the island of Java's conversion to Islam. It was first discovered by outsiders in the 1800s and Governor Raffles, an English governor of Java at the time, ordered excavations on the temple. It has undergone several renovations and restorations over the years and was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 80's after its last restoration. It sits near a few active volcanoes, including Mount Merapi which spewed ash all over it in 2010. Fortunately, there was no volcanic eruption while we were there.  Borobudur from the base We set out in the afternoon to visit this great structure. Our driver lent us an umbrella because I forgot to bring ours, as the sky was cloudy and threatening rain the whole time we were there. As we came in the gates, we realized that the foreigner ticket office and the domestic ticket of...