Tourist day around Jogja

Today we played tourist... Jess S's mum is over for a week from Aus so I tagged along to see all the touristy stuff..The Buddhist (Borobudur) and Hindu (Prambanan) temples, a silver factory, a batik factory, lunch at an Indonesia-wide famous restaurant... It was really nice. We had our own hired car and driver (Jess' Mums assistant teacher's brother... theres always a connection in this place!) and spent the day visiting the sights outside of the city. Itwas much easier with our own transport, things seem to take so much longer when you have to rely on public transport! Our first stop was a temple called Candi Mandut, smaller than the others but built beforehand and separate fromBorobudur. On this trip Ive seen quite a few temples, which you can walk inside, adn theyre all empty so it leavesquite a bit to the imagination. but this one actually had buddhas inside! Stone ones anyway, and Hindu offeringsof flowers and incense at their feet. It was great, nice to find one temple where the statues hadnt been stolen!Borobudur was nice... not much different to last time... Im beginning to wonder how much consistency there is inpeople telling stories, or if they just make things up or agree just to make you happy lol. We didnt get a tourguide, Mas Wawan, our own guide, a local, filled us in on a few things... slightly contrary to what i was toldlast time...hm. It was really good- yesterday we went to the Office of International Affairs at uni and gotour temporary student cards (never mind that weve already been at uni for more than six weeks, no hurry!), which are wonderful things to have- because were students in Jogja, were classed as residents not as tourists, so wegot in for a tenth of the price poor Jess' mum had to pay :S no complaints... tho not looking forward to goingback as a normal traveller! We got harrassed quite a bit at Borobudur, a bit less than last time tho, because therewere other foreigners there the hawkers had someone else to focus their attentions on. Theyre so persistant, sometimes I just cant believe it! So so frustrating, I bet we said "No, thankyou" about a hundred times today, andprobably about ten to each person! It really puts me off buying anything. There were some nice things, but giveme shopping in peace any day and Ill be much more interested. I do feel sorry for them tho, theyre so desparate, if only someone could get thru to them how rude and frustrating it is to follow someone for ten minutes, walkinginfront of them and shoving your goods in their face and repeating over and over how much it costs, etc. Canteven look at anything or anyone or youre a target! Arg- the safe haven of the car! Strange place.Next was Prambanan, the Hindu temple built on the other side of Jogja. It was only actually built about 50 yearsafter Borobudur (buddhist temple), because Borobudur was so massive and intricate, they say it took over 100 years, three generations, to build it and by that time the Hindu influence had moved in and combined with Buddhism... sothats why Jogja has a lot of both Buddhist and Hindu history, before the Muslims came and pushed it all onto Bali... I really liked Prambanan. It was like Borobudur, lots of carved stones depicting stories, but there are more temples, each relating to a certain facet of Hindu culture. It was a bit sad tho, theres still a lot of damagefrom the earthquake, and we couldnt enter the platform for the main temples because they were still fixing themup. All around the major temples were hundreds of smaller ones and practically all were just rubble and piles ofstones. Massive job, reconstructing temples from the 8th century... I did like it tho, with all the different temples. It was easier to picture what they wouldve looked like when they were built, really peaceful.We had lunch as a restaurant, famous Indonesia-wide for its fried chicken... and it was good... expensive tho! But probably worth it. The Muslims have a few exceptions to their fasting rules: if youre pregnant or sick, youdont have to, and if youre travelling, you also dont have to. Well... we travelled to a different province in Java, maybe that counts?! Besides, its too hard to refuse something when your guide is raving how good it is and how youhave to try this "traditional Indonesian" food. :SWe went to a silver factory and had a look at them making jewellery and statues then wandered into the shop. A guycame up and said "Oh what are you looking for Misses? A ring, some earrings, a bracelet?" so I said we werent sureyet and he started taking me off! He imitated me several times, which really pissed me off so I decided then and there I wasnt going to buy anything! Rude, I just dont get how these people dont understand how RUDE they are! God...too expensive anyway. I could buy the same things in the market for a third of the price :P Bodoh.Cos Jess' mum, Di, is an Indonesian teacher at home, she was sort of doing a documentary of her travels, she hada video camera and was interviewing people and filming everything. So we did a little tour of a batik factory, to see how they do their traditional fabric dying and patterning... Mas Wawan, our guide, delivers food, catering stuff, to restaurants late afternoons so while he had the car, wewent around and delivered a whole lot of rice packages and little food snacks to cafes around the place. Got mehopelessly lost but its good to see more of the city and get my bearings a bit in areas I dont know so well.For dinner we went to my boarding house owner's restaurant... It was really good and much bigger than Id thought. We also had a play with their puppy, whos grown about 4 times as big in a month! And out the back, they have a boys kos too, which wasnt very nice. Happy Im living in my kos in the nicer suburbs... lol.