The Borobudur Sunrise Mistake at Punthuk Setumbu
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In order to catch the Borobudur Sunrise, we departed our villa at 3:30am! That’s really quite an early morning but luckily we have driver Lasiman to drive us there. The journey takes approximately 1 hr 30 mins and we continued sleeping in the car. After 1hr 30 mins, we arrived at our destination and Lasiman woke us up. We blur blur followed him to purchase the ticket and went with the crowd. The entry ticket cost Rp 30,000.
We trek up for around 15 minutes to arrive a spot where everyone is standing. This is where things start to feel weird.
Credits: The History Hub
We wanted to go catch the sunrise from INSIDE the Borobudur temple which is the photo above.
But …We ended up here at Punthuk Setumbu.
Up there with hundreds of people, we were puzzled. 😳😳
Where is the Borobudur Temple?
Must we walk further? Is it must walk down?
But everyone is crowding around here. What is going on?
Punthuk Setumbu?
No, we want to go inside Borobudor.
Then, we checked our tickets and googled our location.This is then we saw that the Borobudur temple was around 5km away from us. Can we walk there? That’s not where we wanted to be. We really wanted to U-turn and go to the INSIDE of Borobudur but it was too late for anything, the sun was slowly peeking out. 🌥
OUR MISTAKE😭😭
We said we want to go to Borobudur Sunrise but ended up at a lookout point. You may laugh at us but please learn from our budoh mistake if you want to go Borobudur Temple, specify to your driver you want to go into the Borobudur temple. Otherwise, you may end up like us waking up early yet disappointed. We were really upset that we are not inside the Borobudur Temple, but bobian lor. Since we are already there, we decided to explore Bukit Punthuk Setumbu.
For those of you who wants to catch the sunrise from INSIDE the Borobudur Temple, you can book from Manohara Resort.
Bukit Punthuk Setumbu Borobudur Nirwana Sunrise
So here we are at Bukit Punthuk Setumbu which is one of the Borobudur sunrise watching hill located at Tapping Mountain. 🏔
Bukit Punthuk Setumbu is about 400m above sea level. It takes around 15 minutes to get to the peak of the hill where hundreds of locals and tourist would be waiting eagerly with their cameras for the sunrise. 🎥 🎥
The sunrise at Setumbu Hill is known as Nirvana sunrise, whereby you can catch the sunrise with the Merapi and Merbabu volcano beside the sun. Supposedly, we can see the Borobudur from Setumbu Hill but it was too hazy. We didn’t manage to have a perfect view of the egg yolk. ☀ Thus, do not expect to see a full sunrise.
Being at the wrong location was disappointing enough! To add on to our sadness was the muddy ground and the number of people squeezing with us. 😭😥
People vs Sun
There were a huge bunch of people with us at Punthunk Setumbu. We had a hard time finding a good spot to view the sunrise. This is where short people like be become more upset. All I saw was people. 😭😭
Even taking a welfie is challenging! We tried our best and perhaps people was part of the sunrise view.
See sunrise become see mud!
Check out our shoes! Every step you take adds on more mud on your shoes. Candyce described her life up on Bukit Punthuk Setumbu as depressed because her new shoe was covered with mud.
Mud Shoe
MUD OR SOLES?
That looks like a super thick shoe sole but it was actually covered with mud!!
⚠Don’t wear your new shoes or the shoes you love here else you will end up with mud shoes.
PHOTO TAKING AT PUNTHUK SETUMBU
NOTCHBAD TEAM AT PUNTHUK SETUMBU!
Just when we were about to leave the hill we spotted a super long queue and decided to check it out!
It was a photo taking point!
This couple came well-prepared with paper to sit on the platform 👍👍
We thought we are cool enough to have team t-shirt but we realised our team t-shirt doesn’t stand out because there were many couples with couple tees. HAHA! 😂😂
We hesitated awhile before queuing and decided not to give it a miss! The view was beautiful!
Nice photos brighten up our mood! 😊
On our way down. we discovered a small treehouse beside the convenience stall!
This would be a great spot for those of you who wish to climb less because we think that the view from here would be as nice as on top! Plus, you don’t need to squeeze with everyone! We wished we found this earlier! And FYI, there is a toilet beside which Towkaynew pooped without having tissue KEKEKE 😂😂 BETTER BRING YOUR OWN TISSUE!!
Honestly, we would forgo the sunrise at Bukit Punthuk Setumbu as there are probably other better sunrise spot in Indonesia. After all, it was too foggy for us to see the Borobudur temple. We could only vaguely see the structure Borobudur bell in the fog. It may not be an ideal place for photographers as it was totally packed with people and the sunrise view was ordinary. We really wish to be inside the Borobudur Temple Complex during sunrise.
Ultimately, we still visited Borobudur Temple.😊😊
Hi! If you catch the sunrise from inside the temple, will you still be able to see the bells? You get what i mean?
Yes, you will be able to see the “bells”. If you are fast, you can take photo of the bells with the sunrise which is the main intention of many people. It is one of the awesome sights, unfortunately, we missed it! 🙁