Prambanan

How to visit without overpaying or overheating

Daytime entry to Prambanan doesn’t need pre-booking the way Borobudur’s capped sunrise climb does — you can buy the foreign-tourist ticket at the gate for about Rp 400,000 (~£17). The two tickets worth sorting in advance are the combined Prambanan-plus-Borobudur ticket (~Rp 800,000, ~£34) if you’re doing both temples on one driver day, and a seat for the open-air Ramayana ballet, which only runs on selected dry-season evenings and genuinely sells out. The classic mistake is arriving at midday with a tour bus, when the sun is overhead, the carved spires go flat, and the compound is at its busiest.

Go in late afternoon instead, from around half three. The 47m Shiva temple at the centre catches warm light an hour before the 17:00 close, the crowds have thinned, and you finish right as the evening ballet begins on the stage beside the temples. Allow two to three hours for the main compound plus the smaller outer temples, and wear covered shoulders and decent shoes — the stone steps are steep and unshaded.

Is the foreign ticket worth it?

Aim for the May-to-October dry season, which is both when the light is cleanest for the spires and when the Ramayana ballet actually runs against the floodlit temple backdrop. Yogyakarta is the only sensible base, about 17km west of the temple, so most people hire a car with a driver and pair Prambanan’s sunset with Borobudur at sunrise rather than moving hotels.

The foreign price is several times what locals pay, and that catches UK visitors out — but this is the most dramatic Hindu site in the country, and the combined ticket softens the per-stop cost. If you only do one of Java’s two great temples, Borobudur edges it for atmosphere; do both, and Prambanan is the one to take slowly at dusk, ideally finishing with the ballet rather than a dash back to Malioboro.