Borobudur

We booked an early morning tour to Borobudur for this morning so it meant waking up and being ready for 5am. It took an hour in a car to get to Borobudur which is a large temple that would fit in well in Angkor. I slept most of the way so had to wake myself up when we got there. Luckily, after we purchased our tickets we were given a free drink so I had a coffee to make myself feel more lively. It was a nice time of day as the sun had risen but it was still cool. We decided against a sunrise visit as it was more expensive and the sunrises recently had been very foggy so pretty crap. We walked straight to the top of Borobudur itself and looked around. There were stone Buddhas that had covers on them which were evenly placed around the temple, more spreading down to the lower levels. It was a nice temple but after Angkor I fear I may never be impressed with a temple again. 

Further round the grounds there were three elephants tied up for some unknown reason although they did have room to roam around. I still don't know what to make of keeping elephants chained up. They may be safe from poachers but surely they should be free to walk about when they want to. There was also a view point up a hill next to the elephants that we walked up as we had some time to kill. However, we didn't expect the exit to take at least half an hour to get out of through little stalls selling food, drinks and souvenirs so only just made it back to the car on time to be taken back to the hostel. 

It took longer to get back due to traffic so we arrived back at our hostel nearer midday. As we'd had a very small breakfast of bread with chocolate sprinkles that the hostel had packed up for us we were very hungry. We headed east to a street full of lovely looking restaurants and settled for one we'd read about in our guide book that apparently has a really good Balinese chicken curry. Obviously, Matt ordered that and I had a mix of things that included a tasty chicken leg, some delicious pieces of beef (although a tad chewy), green beans, rice, a prawn cracker type thing and something I thought was similar to a hash brown just with peanuts added to it. Everything was amazing and we were well impressed. After playing quite a few games of cards I finished my meal with a brownie from the restaurant's bakery. It was too sickly and far too dry. The ones I make are way better. 

We walked round the restaurant area for a while, checking out the competition and seeing if there was anywhere good we could go for tea. As we'd been up since 4, the casual stroll tired us out and so a nap back at the hostel was needed. These are starting to become common. By the time we'd woken up it was nearly tea time. We sorted out our laundry that had just been returned to us and headed back to the nice foodie street. We'd picked out a place called Via Via that wasn't too pricey and seemed to have good Indonesian food. However, when we got there the queue for a table was rather long (it must be good) and so we decided against it, heading down the street to a place that looked okay. I had chicken satay sticks with rice that was just the same as I've had before (nice but boringly the same) but I was more bothered with keeping up to date with the football score what with it being the start of the season. Travelling with someone that is football crazy means I will always know what's going on. 

After tea we walked back to the hostel (a good 20 minute walk) and watched a film in the lounge (Spider-Man). I was still quite exhausted from the early wake up so it was nice to just relax for a bit.