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Via Via Cafe (www.viaviacafe.com) was the recommended tour company to visit this Hindu temple site. Although Prambanan is quite popular on its own, very few tourists bother to visit the other temples in the area. This worked out well for us, since we had these other “hidden temples” all to ourselves.

For the motor taksi ride there, we took country roads, driving past rice paddies, banana plantations and small (but colourful) homes. None of which we would have been able to see (or experience!) by car.

Our first stop was to Candi Sambisari, a site completely covered by Merapi‘s eruption years ago, only to be discovered (by accident) by a farmer in the 1960′s. This temple is devoted to Shiva, and houses the “lingam and yoni”(symbolic representations of the unison of male and female genitalia). You’re supposed to splash your face with the water that drips off of it for fertility. I made sure to keep my distance. The three remaining sides of the temple has statues of Durga, Ganesh and Shiva (as the great teacher) respectively.

We then moved on to Candi Sari a Buddhist temple, although a kala head can still be found at the entrance. Originally the temple was a bright yellow colour, although now only blackened gray stones can be seen. Some of the statues of Buddha still carry traces of the original colour. The temple has two floors and was originally used as a monastery.

Another short drive took us to a temple that had both Buddhist and Hindu themes, Candi Kalasan. The two themes can be attributed to the fact that the temple was presented as a gift to the marriage of a Hindu prince and a Buddhist princess. Three identical pairs of statues (of the honoured couple) can be found in the three anti-chambers of this temple. Most of the exterior still lays in rubble, waiting to be renovated by the Indonesian government after 2006′s big earthquake in Jogja. Two large statues, although I’m not sure of what, face each other guarding the entrance.

The main temple at the Prambanan site is Candi Shiva Mahadeva, a massive, cone-shaped temple devoted to this Hindu god. Unfortunately, this temple too a huge hit during the 2006 earthquake and was off limits to the tourists. The scaffolding also ruined any photo ops of this large temple. Around the outside, scenes of the Ramayana are displayed in great detail.

To the right and the left of this temple is Candi Brahma and Candi Vishnu. Candi Brahma shows the concluding four scenes of the Ramayana and Candi Vishnu tells of Lord Krishna’s heroic acts in the Mahabarata. Now I really wanted to visit this temple and see the statue that it houses so I was really lucky that it was open to the public. I ignored the sign that limits 20 people at a time to the interior, climbed the stairs and had to try four times before I got a good picture of Vishnu’s statue. I then erased it by accident and was stuck posting this one.

Dad, you had better be reading this!

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