Things that grow out of the soil...: it was a very rainy day that day

last weekend, we decided to go to borobudur via gunung merapi (the largest volcano in indonesia).

the day, surprisingly, started off rainy. that almost never happens here. it always starts off clear and then often clouds up in the late afternoon. but this day was different.

as we drove up through the mountains near merapi, we came across a little parade.

some of the women were carrying flags.

some of the women were playing drums. i like the drum major's clothes. she definitely stands out among all of the pink.

the road as we drove through the mountains was in rough shape. often times there were people on the side of the road asking for donations i assume to collect money to help fix the road.

we stopped at one point and had the wonderful opportunity to see this woman stepping into a tub full of water and carrots. i'm not really sure why she was doing this, but it was such a curious sight that be jumped out to get a picture.

then to our delight, this woman hammed it up by pretending to eat one of the carrots. i think this was my favorite surprise of the day.

i like the looks that b got as he took some pictures in a small town along the way.

this is a good example of how people can carry heavy loads.

i like this picture because you can see our taksi in the reflection of the window.

the blue blur is a butterfly.

a favorite picture of mine.

we stopped at the ketep volcano center. if it would have been clear, we would have been able to see gunung merapi, but with all the clouds we couldn't see it.

but we did see this very large and cool beetle.

and these gorgeous moths.

a fun purple flower that i found. the petals looked just like leaves.

me talking to a nice couple from bali. b was so impressed with my indonesian-speaking skills (i'm not sure the couple was as impressed).

i like this series. w sees the broom.

w grabs the broom.

w sweeps!

a goofy picture of me.

we arrived at borobudur! it was still rainy there--so you'll see lots of umbrellas. but with all of the rain, it was cool and there weren't a million people there. honestly, i'd take a rainy day there over a hot, sunny, and crowded day.

s borrowed ibu danny's camera again and enjoyed taking pictures.

our first big view of the site.

some of the panels we liked.

this is perhaps our favorite story from the panels. this is the buddah as a turtle. he's swimming in the ocean.

he comes across some folks in trouble on their boat. look at that ferocious alligator.

they get on top of the turtle and ride him to safety.

then the turtle-buddah teaches them.

i love the texture on this one.

no views of merapi.

we made it to the stupas.

a good view of what's inside the stuppas. unsurprisingly, it's the buddah.

i like this one. b took a picture of some visitors' shoes/feet as we climbed up the stairs.

an elaborately adorned horse.

we discovered that borobudur has some of its own elephants.

we went to the maritime museum there.

w was so excited to see this big, traditional-style boat.

dad liked the love is a life shirt.

walking through the oleh oleh stalls once you leave borobudur.

i saw a fruit that looked like a peach so we stopped to see what it was. it turned out, it was not a peach. the woman selling them let us try one. the inside was kind-of durian like in that there were big seeds and you would eat the fruity goo around the seeds. the taste of the fruit was not great, but it's always fun to try a new fruit.

after we left borobudur, we ate at a restaurant b and i had eaten at two years ago. it was a buffet--so we got our money's worth of chicken sate and gudeg.

w having a little istirahat.

we stopped at the mendut candi after lunch. b and i had seen this one before, but we didn't stop at it. it was a lovely little candi that wasn't crowded at all.

another goofy picture of me. when b took this i thought he was just joking. but, no, it turned out that he actually took one.

one of b's best pictures. i love this one. w was entranced by the incense (which he called sense).

a nice, large buddah surrounded by two bodhisattvas.

hanging out around a large banyan tree.

how did we pose in such a fun way?

b being thronged by women trying to sell him things.

after seeing the candi, we walked into the buddhist monastery. it was gorgeous.

we met and talked with this nice monk. he knew english very well.

a neat large green fruit that we couldn't identify.

these large leaves were fun to play with. you could roll the drops of water around inside it.

such a cool perm, bukan?

the sky finally cleared up, so we got some pictures of merapi. isn't that a lovely scene?

b jumped out of the taksi and met a nice woman who showed him this tree.

some additional views.

we drove up into the hilly area nearby to try to get to a river. it turned out we couldn't go to the river, but we did get to see this neat entryway into a town. look at those figures.