We arrived in the bustling port of Semarang, on the island of Java in Indonesia – a important trade center for the East India company and in the 17th and 18th century a significant home to many Buddhist s. We had signed up for the Viking’s elite excursion – a tour of the Borobodur buddhist monument the world’s largest buddhist monument/temple which was a full day coach ride to and back. So busy are the streets of Semarang that Viking hired police escorts and treated our 7 coach buses like VIP’s to cut through traffic, ensuring we made it back before the ship departed.
The absolutely magnificnet monument cannot be described easily – it’s huge! each side is about 400 feet long and its a massive interlocking stone block structure that was built in the 800 AD and then was abandoned and left unattended for several centuries (yes centuries) while it become overgrown with vegetation and covered by ashes from nearby volcano eruptions. In 1814 the site was rediscovered. Two restorations took place in 1911 and 1983 to repair the shrine and identify its significance.
I stood in awe of the structure and unfortunately as luck would have it, the monument is closed to guests climbing the monument stairs on Mondays (the day we arrived) so our vantage point was limited from the ground level. Still some of the 504 Buddha statues (mostly damaged over time) and 2,672 relief panels were visible. a pilgrimage to the site and to walk around the narrative relief panels tells/depicts early life of Buddha and as you transcend upward, his rise to nirvana. You could spend days even months here exploring the site.
We had a nice lunch at the visitor center fixed tents since a new center is under construction. Fortunately we finished lunch just as the rains came pouring down.
The 3 hour police escorted return trip to port allowed us to view much of the countryside, rice fields and mountains that are in Central Java – Mountains so high they touched the clouds. Back on Board we headed to our next port of call, Jakarta.
We arrived in Jakarta, a major world metropolitan city midday and since the port is a major trading port, our arrival was delayed by 2 hours for a cargo ship in our berth. We arrived and our excursion was to see the country’s largest Mulsim mosque, catholic cathedral and Chinatown and Chinese sunni temple.
Traffic in Jakarta is worse than Semarang! OMG, the cars, scooters and buses and how they traverse the city is incredible – don’t think of getting a rental car here! It took us 45 minutes to travel just 4 miles through the city.
The Istiqlal Muslim Mosque was magnificent and the largest Mosque in Indonesia – it can have as much as 200,000 faithful praying on its grounds. That makes it the 8th largest mosque in the world. The dome above the central area is 42 meter in diameter. We had to remove our shoes and I also needed a sure to cover my knees for respect. The structure’s architect was actually catholic and the architecture is impectable and filled with symbolism. Truly a sight one must see regardless of your faith.
Immediately across the street is Jakarta’s catholic cathedral with three spires and beautiful naive. We passed through Jakarta’s symbolic Holy Doors which were erected to celebrate the Jubilee. The act of passing through the doors is for christians symbolizing renewal and forgiveness. Gina lighted candles in remembrance of beloved family members that have passed.
We traveled over the China =town where we passed through the narrow marketplace streets (think of a movie where a car chase goes through the streets with stalls on each side). we walked to the Chinese sunni temple with chineese stations for worship. afterwards we enjoyed team and bites of chineese pastries prior to going to a major Jakarta shopping mall.
The mall we stopped at was nice, however we found the time allowed to us was short and the prices expensive.
The following day we decided that going to the puppet show and going to the same mall was not for us, so we woke up late and took the Viking shuttle bus to another shopping mall which was multi-storied with tons of variety -plus we had all the time we wished to spend. the drive was crazy, it was at most 2 miles away and took 25 minutes to get there. We were promptly back on board and at 6PM the ship departed Jakarta. We will have a sea day prior to arriving to our next big stop – one we have been looking forward to, Singapore!
