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Amanjiwo “Peaceful Soul”

It’s 1998. The Indonesian rupiah is decimated. And just like I benefited from a weak Italian lire and a strong US dollar in the mid-eighties and stayed at the stylish Cala de Volpe in Sardinia, I am now staying at Amanjiwo, one of the “cutting-edge” Aman Resorts in Indonesia. The architects designed the complex magnificently to be located within sight of the 8th century Borobudur Temple here in Central Java. Walk in the front door, and there the temple stands in all majesty before you on the horizon.

We  visit  the  Borobudur  Temple  at  sunrise.  

Besides  being  the  highest  symbol  of  Buddhism,  the  Borobodur  stupa  is  also  a  replica  of  the  universe.  It  symbolises  the  micro-­cosmos,  which  is  divided  into  three  levels,  in  which  man's  world  of  desire  is  influenced  by  negative  impulses;  the  middle  level,  the  world  in  which  man  has  control  of  his  negative  impulses  and  uses  his  positive  impulses;  the  highest  level,  in  which  the  world  of  man  is  no  longer  bounded  by  physical  and  worldly  ancient  desire.  

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I visited this area for the first time nearly thirty years ago. Unlike the rest of Asia, nothing seems to have changed. The local people can still acknowledge you with genuine smiles of welcome, and appear to be very happy with their farming existence. The batik national dress is still what most of the people wear. The towns still reflect the Dutch colonisation in the building style, but the villages largely feature the old Javanese style of high roof with plaited cane walls. Markets look like markets with colourful chillies and greens, and rambutans and ducks and all matter of produce stacked high on stands under makeshift plastic covering to keep out the sun and rain. Islam is the predominant religion of the island, even though two of the world’s biggest and oldest Buddhist and Hindu temples remain here. Indonesia’s second city, Yogyakarta is accessible from the outside only via Jakarta or Bali on Garuda Indonesian Airlines, so the beauty that that isolation preserves might stay that way for some time to come. Amanjiwo is not a resort that you can measure by number of stars. It’s a ‘flight of fantasy’ constructed in stone in the middle of Javanese rice paddies, surrounded by equatorial jungle, and in the full view of a majestic and still active volcano. The style of the hotel has been modelled after the 8th century Buddhist monument at Borobudur, which you can see clearly in the distance. UNESCO has listed the monument as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The fantasy starts at the battered Yogyakarta airport in the air-conditioned mini-bus with freshly laundered, white cotton seats. I have just flown in from Frankfurt by way of Jakarta, and my friend, David Brentin has arrived from Bali. The hotel’s representative, Santo, in cream robes, offers us cold towels and iced drinks on a tray, before setting out on what he suggests as the ‘scenic’ route to the hotel, some 80 kms away. Dutch colonial influence is still evident in the buildings on the outskirts of Yogya, but pouring rain adds to the mystique. We pass through rice paddies fringed with bananas and coconuts partly obscured by wisps of mist, and over bridges with raging brown rivers racing below. Approaching Borobudur, the side roads narrow and wind through small villages of simple, old, weathered Javanese houses with high roofs and woven bamboo walls. Smiling locals in Javanese dress add a colourful touch. Chickens and ducks scamper along the side of the road and under paw-paw, banana, and the unusual rambutan trees – laden with reddening bunches of spiky ripening fruit. As we descend down the long driveway approaching the hotel, the first sighting of the Borobudur monument is quite dramatic. The architect has positioned the central arch of the main circular building in a direct line to the top-most stupa of the monument just a few kilometres away. At a point in the driveway, my attention and excitement is torn between the vision of the monument floating, framed in the archway, and the imposing architecture of the hotel building itself.

Excitement aside for the moment as we sweep under the portico to be greeted by an easy-going, bare-footed manager François and his wife Olivia. The tone for the stay has been set – trousers are out, and so are ironed shirts! After a glass of champagne in this magical, stone, rotunda of the central building, David and I are escorted through the open-sided dining area and down the stairs towards the suites. Use of the stupa in the overall design of the resort has been adapted from the bell shapes in

Buddhist architecture. Amanjiwo mirrors the appearance of the one thousand-year-old Borobudur

monument clearly visible on the horizon. A mono-tonal garden of mango trees and other green tropical shrubbery separate two crescents of thirty-six individual enclosures cut out of what used to be rice terraces. Flowering vines shoot skyward from behind stone walls of the suites.

Entrance to Amanjiwo

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The best is yet to come. On entering our area, there before us is the swimming pool and a day bed in the shade of a thatched roofed pavilion. Sensing the privacy proffered, and wondering what to do about my suitcase that had been left behind in London, I give momentary thought to the notion that not only would trousers and ironed shirts be out, but also who needs anything on at all in this paradise? The madness becomes madder when I am see the interior layout of the room, magnificent under a high domed roof in the shape of a stupa – and then a sunken tub amongst the flowering vines at the rear.

How can a hotel of 36 rooms hire the best French pastry chef? That is my question over the lightest croissants and muffins in the morning out in our own pavilion. What a terrific addition the mandarin adds to the freshly squeezed orange juice too. I learn from François that the pastry chef is a local, and he adds that special touch to all the Indonesian food to represent just as it is eaten at home in

the villages. We have lunch by the 48-metre horizon pool where the mirrored water seems to disappear into the green yonder. I re-live an old treat from the Sixties in Sydney when the KLM manager would entertain at ‘The Tulips’, a Dutch/Indonesian restaurant in Sydney. I repeat my all-time favourite from those times - nasi goreng, complete with satay sticks, fried egg, and just a dip of my fork in the hot chilli before running it over the rice. M-m-m. In the evening, we savour other Javanese delights while seated under a gold leafed, high ceiling in the open sided rotunda in the main building. We venture out from the cloistered existence of Amanjiwo always with the assistance of Santo. Of course, most that we learn is through the eyes of this happy and eager twenty-three year-old. I temper that with interesting chats to François and Olivia, and an evening spent in the home of an old Australian friend Warwick Purser, who lives in a small kampong on the other side of Yogya. The villagers apparently are still fascinated by Warwick’s fattened donkey, whose only work is to draw the andung carrying the occasional guest on a slow familiarisation tour through the rice paddies. We arrive at sunset and are suitably rewarded. Warwick has restored a century-old, high-ceilinged Javanese ‘pavilion’ as a living area and dining room. This is surrounded by three houses, in which he lives and conducts his export business. The local feast exceeds the talents of the chefs at the hotel. This is how life should be lived – but then again, I think I may have to find a way to add air-conditioning.

A specially arranged pre-dawn visit to the top of the Borobudur monument to await the sunrise provides unusual excitement. In the pre-dawn light, all we can see is the yellow silk vests we have been asked to wear in preparation for this moving experience. The anticipation builds as the sky lightens as the ball of sun slowly appears. We listen to Santo passionately telling the story of Buddha as we walk around the carved stone reliefs on the four sides of the monument, creating an almost religious aura. On a sightseeing morning into Yogakarta, the Bird Market is clearly the highlight. The Sultan’s Palace is tired, and by the time we reach the huge Hindu temple complex built in the ninth century at Prambanan, it is too hot to listen too intently to the guide. Lunch on

Michael and David in yel low si lk vests await the sunrise at Borobudur

David looking out over the other 'rooms' in our hotel

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the way home in a recommended local chicken restaurant delivers a delicious, deep fried half chicken, cold drinks and salad, for less than A$2 a head at the hugely deflated exchange rate. The local markets in Borobudur are smaller but much more interesting and colourful. The vivid memory of awaiting the sunrise atop the monument of Borobudur yesterday, and the ever-present reminder just over my left shoulder, fade into the twilight as we lounge lazily in our pavilion with a cup of plunger coffee – a welcome refreshment after doing five lengths of the main pool this afternoon. Gardenias are all that permeate the jungle-cleansed air in our enclosed stone courtyard, and now, from a prone position, I ponder a slice of jungle up the hillside. I see not much more than faint reliefs of the occasional solitary palm as mist wafts down the hillside towards us. The tranquil

sounds of cicadas in the rice paddies and the scratching of David's pencil as he sketches next to me have been usurped by the wails of the muezzin in the nearby village. So, as rain and nightfall are not far away, I will drag myself into shorts and T-Shirt for dinner. After this excellently executed fantasy in the rice paddies, I wonder what atmosphere the Aman Hotel, muted for development on one of the soon to be redeveloped old finger wharves on the other side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, will exude? – Certainly not bare feet under the dinner table! Michael Musgrave, 1998

The Borobodur Temple complex is one of the greatest monuments in the world. It is of uncertain age, but thought to have been built between the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century A.D. For about a century and a half it was the spiritual centre of Buddhism in Java, then it was lost until its rediscovery in the eighteenth century.