Zoë Sheng

Chinese-Canadian - 08-Jun-25 -

I went to see the temples at Jambi, appropriately called Muarajambi, in March 2018. By appropriate I obviously mean that the town has been named AFTER the temples that are nearby. There isn't much next to the town anyway. The town of Jambi isn't great either and I had people walk into the room late, quite sure it was a dodgy place and next door didn't look much better. You can fly in easily but the hotels are mediocre, hopefully things have changed though. The townfolk aren't used to seeing foreigners either. I eventually made friends with the hotel reception NEXT DOOR and the two girls asked their friends to drive us there by motorbike. You can probably easily find a ride especially with Grab or whatever, but back then it wasn't easy. The bike also took me to the airport later.

So as for the temple area - it doesn't take long to visit. The official description mentions 8 excavated temples but in reality half are still just knee-high floor plans. There are temples in grander "Siem Riep" style height but one isn't supposed to visit them. You can walk round them and visit from outside and that's about it. There isn't any decoration which wasn't meant to be at the time anyway so you are looking at red brick kingdom. At the time of visit there was no guard, no ticket office, just some signs to read about them. I spend more time chatting with the girls who also visited for the first time. We sat around on the low excavations. You basically just look at the bunch, read the signs that are Indo & English, then...enjoy the scenery a bit. There really isn't a lot to do here. Make it 30 minutes and you are good.

I still think this place is worthy to look at though. It shows the remains of the Melayu Kingdom. You are probably in Sumatara for the rainforests so add this as a small detour. You can easily fly to Jakarta from here.

Darmawati

Indonesia - 07-Jan-10 -

Muarajambi temple compound is an outstanding heritage of culture and nature. The landscape is even gorgeous. Here we learn how the old malay people live and the culture and the development of the culture to date. They even share how to save water and protect landscape with the canals surrounding each temple compound and surrounding whole location which is also functioned as protection system and boundary between the profound and sacral area with the outside part. It is not only the temple, or archaeological heritage within, but also the nature which is soooo outstanding. Here, some artifacts have been found and some ceramics from local and various foreign countries which represent that this area was very important place at that time, for even oreign voyagers and traders. For me, Muarajambi is absolutely worth for being world heritage!.