The pictures here speak louder (listen carefully) than words. Borobudur was restored in the 1970s. It is the largest stupa in the world, a Buddhist monument dated back 1150 years. Six rectangular levels are covered by lots of Buddha's, many in huge stone bells, and the entire 2,000,000 cubic feet of stone is shaped like a big lotus flower. There were also dragon flies bigger than door knobs and lots of tourists standing around trying to figure out how to take a picture of it all. Did I mention it was hidden for centuries under volcanic ash? Hey, this is a very cool place (not regarding the temperature which appears to be in the 100s). The guide was pretty good (meaning he didn't drone on or make up too much). The guide for one of the other buses was heard explaining that the stone carvings showed the Christian 7 Deadly Sins and perhaps the 10 Commandments. I think he was winging it.
We climbed to the highest level, and I did seven circumambulations of the stupa in a clockwise direction. It was very hot and humid, but the views were super, and the guide didn't come up to tell us to go down for quite a while. Some of my walk was accompanied by Lyn Farmer, a renowned wine and food expert who is traveling with us on the ship. I know he is renowned and and expert in food and wine because, 1) he told me so, and 2) he has an excellent video running on one of the ship's TV channels. Note the image of Lyn on the stupa and Lyn on the video. I knew he looked familiar when we met a few days ago over morning coffee. Nice guy who knows all the entertainment chiefs I do from the cruise lines. He is on the ship to brief the food and wine service staff on a very upgraded wine program that he is consulting on for Silversea. I had coffee with him most mornings in the Observation Lounge.
We sailed at 7 pm for the Karimunjawa Archipelago, 47 miles north of Samarang. Traveling at just over 8 knots we slowly, very slowly arrived before 6 am to his tiny island resort where we swam in the pool, walked on the beach, and had a nice BBQ. The only excitement was the tender going aground on the way back. It was fun to hear the speech from the captain over the walkie talkies berating the Italian officer (in very animated Italian) about screwing up and not listening to the much more experienced helmsman who was training him. The captain sounded more than a bit miffed. We sail in an hour for Singapore where we will arrive for a two day stay after a day at sea. Will report again after we depart for Vietnam unless something exciting drives me to keyboard.
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