Wandering Browns

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...

Scene from our drive Austin's project again has some delays, which left us with a free weekend. We are hoping to go to Bali later this week after getting an official temporary release. Here's to hoping that it comes through!Anyway, Saturday morning came around and we found out we would not be able to just up and leave for Bali like we were planning. We had to wait for more official approval and stuff, which was not going to happen over the weekend. Finding that out around 8:00 am Saturday, Austin suggested that we go to Yogyakarta for the weekend. There is a ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there, so we could go to church, and there were some ruins that I really wanted to see. Plus, we wanted to get out of Cilacap for awhile. We have literally done everything there is to do here. At 8:45 am, I looked up hotels in Yogya. There happened to be a Hyatt Regency there where we could use our accrued hotel points to stay there instead of money! Yay! Au...