Yogyakarta Part V - Final(The Pictures of Prambanan Temple)

Prambanan Temple.

Isn't it awesome? The weather was fucked up at that time that it blew up my intention to take the famous sunset pics of Prambanan temple. But looking at this pic I took, I'm not less disappointed. It looks a bit spooky, don't you think? Try to remember Hogwarts. :D

Anyway, Prambanan temple was told to be built by a young prince that wished to marry a very beautiful princess from another kingdom called Rara Jonggrang. The princess unfortunately was not willing to take his proposal but her father insisted her to accept it instead, for the sake of getting two big forces into one and avoiding a war between both kingdoms. Being a clever princess as she was, she asked the young prince to build a thousand temples in one night. He promised he would and started building with the help of demons and gods he was friends with.

The construction did not seem to be a hard one for he had already built 999 temples before the dawn. The princess soon ordered all women in her kingdom to work with their rice processor (traditional, of course), hitting it with big sticks in rythm. That tricked the cocks and they started to make sound of kukuruyuk (cock-a-doodle doo, in English) eventhough the sun had not risen yet.

The young prince was very upset and mad that he destroyed almost all his temples into pieces. The ones left were 3 main temples of three great gods, i.e. Shiwa (god of destroyer), Brahma (god of creator), and Wishnu (god of protection) and their vehicles temples. Later on he knew that the princess cheated on him so that he turned her into a statue, looking just like her.

---


Baby Krishna.

In Wayang world, Khrisna is described as a very smart guy, it started when he was still a little child. He's a decendant of some god and therefore inherited a super power of noticing a bad intention of people around him.

One day, a baby-milking woman (not his own mother) was about to feed him. Some bad guys who tried to harm him put some potion on her nipple where Khrisna should drink his milk from, so that the little poor baby would die instantly afterwards. Sounding impossible as it is, he knew it. To get himself out of death, he bit the woman's nipple so hard it was cut from her breast. Bleeding heavily, she slowly died due to losing a considerable amount of blood. Khrisna himself was safe.

I heard this story some while back when I was at school learning our culture and I remember I admired his courage and brilliant brain for detecting the danger. It was like years ago and I completely forgot it until a guide explained the story to some local tourists near me. A different thought I was having then was: Why didn't he also die from tasting and most probably swallowing the potion he had in his mouth?

*shrug*
It's still an interesting story to discuss, though.

---



Once upon a time, there was a little girl who dreamt to go and visit all places in the world. She did the best she could to make it happen. She worked very hard, almost forgetting her own health, to achieve her oh-so many dreams. Apparantly so far she made her way through traveling to some cool places.. and there she was.. smiling wide for her victory.

I can tell that she is actually the real winner of all.

Hehehe...