Goodbye Indonesia

Final Thoughts:

My time in Indonesia was fantastic and it now goes down as one of my favourite countries that I've visited. The people were some of the friendliest I've ever come across, and Rene and I received generosity beyond expectation - the guy we hitchhiked with who bought us lunch, the various people who rescued us from being lost and drove us to where we were heading, Ubay and friends who showed us around Balikpapan and paid for everything, Gustin who spent five days showing us around her local area. Everywhere we went on Borneo and Sulawesi island we were met with the sound of 'hello mister' accompanied by a warm smile; for some of them a rare or first sight of a 'white person'.

We went to tropical islands, on a river trip to the centre of Borneo, and to a crocodile farm. We danced at a funeral, saw a buffalo sacrifice, went to a one-in-five year tribal festival, visited some cities, and hiked up three active volcanoes through the night amongst so many other things. The country was surprisingly westernised and a lot more modern and developed than I expected even if it has a long way to go in places, and whilst being wild enough at times to be interesting, pleasingly lacked the chaos I encountered throughout India. The roads were sometimes pretty crap though, the transport hit and miss, and almost everything left late but we got there in the end.

We spent most of the two months off the tourist trail, coming across only the occasional other foreign  traveller and as anti-social as it sounds, that really made the trip feel special since we got to see the real country, people unaffected by tourism, and many sights that other travellers don't.

With so many islands to visit though we only saw a small chunk of this vast country, no doubt I'll return one day in the far future to explore further.

Indo Insights:

A few little quirky things stuck out in my mind that seemed to be common throughout the country and gave it character:

• Street food - so common throughout the country, sold either from pushkarts moved into place every evening, from the back of specially adapted motorbikes, or from over the shoulder kitchens whereby a long pole holds a small cabinet on each end full of cooking gear.
• Clocks - often wrong - no wonder nothing is on time!
• Population - Indonesia is the world's fourth most populated country with 240 million people, but unlike India which always felt busy, with the exception of Java you couldn't generally tell 
• Pedal fairgrounds - you sometimes see these clever bits of kit ridden to location in more rural areas, then with a pull of lever the bike pedals power a little fairground ride complete with music, which young kids seemed to absolutely love. Enviro-friendly fun.
• Freelance traffic policeman - I was staggered when I first saw this - enterprising locals will stand at busy road junctions with an illuminated baton held out and help direct traffic. In return, the drivers they help will stick their arm out the window and hand them some small change for their efforts. Clever and sometimes essential.
• Islam - Indonesia is a majority Muslim country, which is very obvious from the head scarves women wear and the call to prayer blared out over speakers from mosques each day, but it doesn't seem to dominate life as much as in the middle-east. You see prayer rooms everywhere, including every petrol station which was a first for me.
• Selling stuff in traffic - I've seen this before, but in Indonesia it's very prevalent - newspapers, flowers, and even buskers
• Men's nails - it's quite common for men to leave their thumbnails long whilst having their other short. I still can't work out why though!
• Bathrooms - I've mentioned this previously, but bathrooms in Indonesia are so different to elsewhere; generally clean, with huge trough-fulls of water often used for washing with a small bucket rather than a shower, toilets often of the squat variety, and sinks commonly absent. Soap and a towel are almost never seen.

Typical expenses per day:

£4.50 - bed in a twin room (£9 total) inc simple breakfast

£0.50 - surfboard hire

£0.70 - egg fried rice meal for lunch

£2.50 - two hour bus ride

£1.80 - eight hour overnight economy train ride

£0.75 - nasi pecel street food meal

£12.40 TOTAL

Photos

And to finish, here's the final set of photos from Java, Indonesia - here

Surf's Up

Pangandaran, Java island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: a pleasant and fairly uneventful end to a fantastic couple of months in Indonesia 

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All aboard! Heading to Pandangaran

Despite being a country of many islands and therefore lots of beaches, somehow we'd only been on the sand once in Indonesia. So with just two remaining days to be used wisely, a trip to the coast seemed like a perfect ending to our time in this wonderful country. 

We left our previous destination of Yogyakarta nice and early on the train, and the four hour journey passed quickly and uneventfully. We arrived at the small town of Sidareja ready to catch a connecting bus which was said to be straightforward, but ran straight into problems. The first bus driver said he was going to our destination of Pandangaran, but in fact just dropped us at the depot a mile later. We were then told the next bus would come an hour later at 1pm which was annoying, so passed the time by eating at the only crappy little cafe around where the main dish on offer was curried intestines. Errrr just chicken and veg for me thanks! We went back to the station to be told the 1pm bus had already left at 12.30 and a local told us to wait until 2pm. This was getting annoying, especially as Sideraja was the biggest, smelliest, and most unpleasant hell hole I might ever have been. Another shopkeeper soon came along and told us there were no more buses and we despaired. A few minutes later again someone else told us it would arrive at 3.00 which wasn't a lot better either. It was total chaos and confusion, all hearsay and guesswork by the locals and Rene and I were pretty peeved. Eventually at 2.30pm against all advice a rotten and battered old tin can showed up and we were finally on our way. Better than nothing.

We arrived at Pandangaran, and immediately got the impression this was a nice coastal town. Brushing off the persistent local cycle rickshaw mafia at the bus station, we walked past Tsunami evacuation signs, a sad reminder of the 2006 disaster there that killed over 300 people. We found a nice hotel, and with the tiny bit left of the day went for a wander on the beach. After a spot of illness over the previous week I was nearly back in working order again, and the huge crashing waves seemed to knock the last out the bugs out when I swam in the sea. Just what the doctor ordered I reckon.

Having learnt a bit of Indonesian over my time in the country, about fifty words in fact, I ordered dinner that night in the native tongue, translating the English menu into Indonesian. The waiter was impressed and soon I was munching into a beautiful plateful of fresh prawns. However when I got the bill something serious was up; my food cost three times as much as it should. I politely complained and some confusion followed, only to discover that I'd mixed up the words for shrimp and prawns and ordered a much more expensive dish. I noted to myself not to get too cocky with languages!

We had two full days left, but for once I have little to say about them. On the first, after some chores Rene and I went to explore the town, situated on a small peninsula jutting from the coast. The black sand beach was a bit rubbish strewn but nice enough and we stopped outside a small national park. The Indonesian government in it's wisdom has recently set up a two tier system for national parks so instead of everyone paying the equivalent of £1 entry, the locals still pay that whilst foreigners now pay £11, which is both ridiculous and a little insulting. It barely seemed worth a quid from what we knew, so we protested with our feet and left. Yeah! That showed them! 

Except it probably didn't. 

With monkeys on the road outside and three fairly tame kijang deer eating out of bins nearby we had half the experience anyway, and soon found more entertainment on another nearby beach, watching locals fishing by throwing out fishing nets and bringing in nothing but a catch full of rubbish. It was pretty funny. Nearby were huge groups of locals stood on the road by the sea, pulling in huge trawler nets like a tug of war team, which each yielded about two bucketful's of fish and yet more trash, and a frenzy then followed as they fought to divide the catch between themselves. A bit further along the coast we found the local fish market which because of Ramadan (Muslim festival involving fasting) was pretty quiet. We still managed to find an open cafe behind a fish shop which cooked up a lovely fresh batch of tiger prawns in sauce - the king sized black and green version of your normal prawn and very delicious. We walked back past some young kids playing with home-made bangers which they filled with some sort of fuel and ignited, letting out a shotgun-like bang which almost pierced our ears. The kids absolutely loved it, though are probably completely deaf by now.

That night we found a cafe-bar popular with foreigners and realised how few such places we'd managed to frequent in Indonesia thanks to our route; a nice change. It was our last night in the country and indeed our last night travelling together since Rene was heading for India whilst I was moving towards home. So whilst watching the Germany v Brazil World Cup highlights (the first of the World Cup I'd got round to watching), we mulled over our time travelling in all the out-the-way places in Indonesia, and indeed the past three months we'd travelled together since meeting in Malaysia, picking out the highlights, the tough times and the bizarre situations we'd encountered.

Travelling with Rene had been fantastic and to be truthful I don't think I could have found anyone much better to travel with. He impressed me with general knowledge which belies his 24 years, by always being very laid back, good at problem solving and and by willing to do pretty much whatever I suggested. He amused me with his constant catnapping in every place possible, by walking a mile ahead all the time in his own little world, by staying up 'til all hours on his computer and often falling asleep in front of it, by often sleeping with his rucksack and possessions laid out on his bed, and some of his nerdy habits like hacking into a computer router to reset it instead of just turning it off and on again. And finally he confused me by somehow travelling without what I consider the essentials of suncream, a guide book, anti-malarial pills, mosquito spray, a mobile phone, hat, or an alarm clock (what did he have?!) - yet somehow got away with it. In over three months we didn't have a single argument, and whilst I occasionally stressed or got annoyed about the odd situation, he never got wound up once. So here's a toast to Rene!

On the final day woke up with a half day left before our train to the airport, and since Indonesia is known for it's surfing and the waves in Pandangaran were pretty big, a bodyboarding session seemed like the perfect final activity. Paying the 50p fee to borrow a board for an hour, I headed out into the waves and caught a few, and I mean just a few waves. They were a bit crashy at times and it was hard to get back out to the break but a lot of fun anyway. Pandangaran had been surprisingly quiet for the time of year and our time there brief, but it left a good taste of Indonesia in my mouth.

It was time to leave both the town and the country. A cycle rickshaw journey followed by a couple of hours on a bus led us to Banjar train station, and in the waiting room I briefly chatted with a young solo German guy who'd just left hospital nearby after a bed-ridden week alone recovering from dengue fever, a particularly nasty mosquito-borne illness - the whole experience sounded awful. Our night train journey that followed was also pretty awful, relatively speaking anyway, since only economy seats were available and we spent the night sat bolt upright, face-to-face and knee-to-knee with other passengers. It was far from comfortable and I barely slept. 

We arrived in the capital city of Jakarta at 3am and departed the train when to my surprise an Indonesian guy in his forties showed up and greeted Rene. It turned out to be someone he'd met when he popped to Jakarta a couple of weeks ago to get a visa - an extremely helpful and pleasant, if slightly strange chap who he claimed he couldn't sleep so decided to come and say hello to us. At 3am! Very bizarre. Since the station was quiet and I had a couple of hours to burn 'til the airport buses started running, I slept on some benches for an hour. Mr Helpful however decided we'd be better off going across town to another station where I could catch an earlier airport bus. I protested since I was quite happy sleeping like a tramp on my bench, getting what little sleep I could, and was a bit of an angry bear when stirred but he was insistent so I reluctantly I went with them on a commuter train across town. This guy was supposed to know everything about Jakarta, yet we ended up going half an hour further away from the airport, where I said bye to Rene at a station and caught the bus straight back past where we'd come from originally, totally pointless. I was not amused, even if I knew the guy probably meant well. It was however not enough to ruin my fantastic impression of Indonesia. Little could. 

Pandangaran beach

Pulling in drag nets by hand on the coast

They happen

Tasty tiger prawns at a cafe at the fish market

Kids playing with home-made bangers

Bye Rene!

As Active As They Come

Mt Merapi, Java island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: hiking Indonesia's most active volcano

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Sunrise on top of Mt Merapi

Mt Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia - no mean feat in a country which has 127 of them - and has erupted many times over the years, including 2010 when it killed over 300 people, and again briefly last October. 

We both did a load of research for a few hours to work out the safety and logistics of hiking it independently, and it was said to be safe and stable at the moment so all seemed fine. After the early morning at Borobudor temple and still feeling a little ropey from illness, late that afternoon we packed a light day bag and headed off taking a local bus across the congested city, then a regional bus to a transit point called Blabak an hour or two away. At Blabak though, the wheels fell off our plan somewhat when we found the minibuses we'd read about were no longer running. We had something to eat whilst chatting it over in a little cafe, which also doubled as a well stocked fireworks shop! It was now dark, and reluctantly we decided to take a motorcycle taxi to get there, the only option. After agreeing a price I made the guy let me use his helmet, hoping it might slow him down a bit - it did. In fact the drivers were both sensible and when Rene's driver and mine went side to side uphill, it was barely a five mph crawl! From roughly sea level originally, we climbed and climbed and climbed, and a very uncomfortable hour later eventually reached the tiny village of Selo at about 2,000m altitude, easily finding a homestay for the night and got to bed early,

Dawn climb

Like Mt Semeru which I hiked a week or so before, Mt Merapi required a walk through the night to get you there for dawn when the skies are clearer and the gases less toxic, and so the alarm went off at a fairly ridiculous 1am for a 1.30 start. 

I didn't feel great again, in fact I felt terrible to be honest, and on reflection yes, I should have rested and gone another day but determination can take you a long way and determined I was. The first couple of miles were on road, getting progressively steeper until turning into a narrower track. I hauled myself along slowly and steadily, and for a few miles we climbed a rocky, rooty path through woods by torchlight until around 4am, when we left the treeline and were on the volcano proper. It had been very hard going in the state I was in but I wasn't getting any worse, and poor old Rene had had to listen to a whole lot of moaning along the way. 

We could just make out the silhouette of the volcano as well as the long string of lights from the other hikers ahead of us, and it was a truly intimidating sight, looking almost too steep to be possible. We went for it, accidentally losing the path for a little while and clambering on very loose scree, before finding our way again. The surface was still steep, loose and very slow going. Small rocks sometimes rolled down from the person in front, but 5am brought first light which helped things a little. Strangely I seemed to have flushed any remaining illness out of my system by this point, and in a complete role reversal Rene couldn't keep up with me. Finally, to our delight at around 5.45am we made it and along with maybe fifty other people were on the summit, 2,930m above the sea.

It was an eerie place. We could see into the huge crater below, where gases were coming out of a number of vents and forming dirty clouds above. I looked up at the true summit slightly above, too dangerous to reach, and noted that until an eruption last October it was 40m higher again. The sun was rising in the east, and we were way above the clouds which glowed orange below us. Small vents leaked gases all around us, but not in dangerous quantities. It was quite some place to be, and whilst fairly cold we stayed an hour and a half admiring it all.

The descent went well, and it was great to see the views we'd missed in the dark. By the time we were back in the village though I was done for. The homestay staff bought a breakfast to the room (is it still breakfast when you've been up for ten hours?) and I passed out straight after for a couple of hours. 

If getting to Selu in the first place had been difficult, getting back was harder. We were told that being a Sunday the local buses weren't running, and with no other hikers now leaving we were a little stuck. There was only one thing for it, hitchhiking. For twenty minutes all we seemed to see whilst waiting were motorbikes and the odd lorry, and some locals lazed across the road looking a little bemused by us. Eventually though a guy stopped in a Toyota saloon and seemed like a decent chap so we hopped in for an hour of no talking, but lots of loud power ballads. An hour later we were back in Blabak waving down a bus, then another hour again back in Yogyakarta, shattered but happy and ready for the final stop in Indonesia.

We hiked through the night to see this, and it was worth it

Mt Merapi summit - used to be 40m higher until an explosion a couple of years ago

Mt Merbabu, neighbouring volcano

Mt Merapi summit

Drying tobacco grown on the mountain

Yogya

Yogyakarta, Java island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: a cultural capital, getting ill, and the world's largest Buddhist temple

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Borobudor temple

Yogyakarta is known as the cultural capital of Indonesia. A city of 400,000 or so people, straight-off its noticeably different from most Indonesian cities I've visited since it's got a bit of history, a little style, less rubbish, some world class attractions, and a noticeable amount of tourists. Ah that T word - after months in more off the beaten track places it was strange to be surrounded by other travellers and for a few days anyway, a pleasant change.

Rene and I took the train from Malang, a form of travel I greatly favour after months of bad roads and uncomfortable buses. Flat rice fields and rice terraces lined the track most of the way with a few plantations of tapioca or sugarcane. Homes were sometimes built dangerously close to the tracks and we passed a big dam and hydro project, as well as numerous young kids waving at the train often hanging out with gran or granddad. It seems Indonesia must has massive issues with fare jumpers though, as the ticket inspector came through the carriage with an assistant as well as a security guard each side! Yyyyyes guv'nor!

Arriving at Yogyakarta we were seemingly spoilt for choice on the accommodation front and initially it seemed there was just too much choice to decide, but after enquiring in seven or eight places we actually struggled to find something half decent and at midnight just gave up and picked one that just did the job. The hotel lobby was all I saw the next day since I had big plans to make, as time on my Indonesian visa is running out it was soon time to move on. I won't reveal my exciting plans quite yet, but it took six very stressful hours that day finding three flights that linked together on the right days with the right price, and even then some prices were going up before my eyes, whilst other flights sold out and new ones appeared. With what was left with the day I did something very different and turned into an electronics engineer of sorts. There's dust in my camera which shows up on a lot of pics, and since Rene had the same problem recently and successfully stripped his down and cleaned it, I thought I'd try the same with his help. YouTube is fantastic for showing you exactly what to do, and I got quite a way into stripping it apart whilst following a video, before I ran out of tools and decided to put it back together. It was a little intimidating at first, but quite a fun learning experience and I'll finish the job properly sometime.

Water palace and around

One thing that makes Yogyakarta interesting is that it's still headed by a sultan and hence has a special political status. Sultans have ruled the city for hundreds of years, and the visible remains of this is the Kraton - the palace compound. On our first day wandering about we looked at some of the old buildings outside the palace boundaries, an abandoned house, a very fancy well accessible by an underground passage, some gatehouses and so on. The most interesting was the Water Palace, a complex of pools, buildings and sculptures one of the old sultans had built and still in very good condition. He allegedly killed off his architect after construction was complete, since he was the only one who knew the existence of some secret pleasure rooms. Harsh times.

The water palace

Ramadan had started the day before - the annual Muslim religious festival a little like lent, and Muslims aren't allowed to eat or drink (and some other things) during daylight hours for a few weeks. This therefore meant that very very few cafés or restaurants were officially open, and by 2pm along with the fact it was a hot day, Rene and I were zonked. It took a lot of slow walking and looking to find a little street food stall open down an alleyway, hidden partly by a tarp and was a very welcome find. Fortunately in the days that followed we also managed to find the odd open place so didn't suffer too much thereafter. To finish the day we looked around the huge city market, a fairly interesting if slightly grim dirty concrete building, part full of fresh produce and part clothing. We happened upon an Italian travel documentary being filmed, and watched and chuckled at the presenter grimacing as he ate a cooked bird foetus, one of many being sold by an old lady supposedly for medicinal purposes. 

That evening the effects from lunchtime lived on and by late evening I felt like crap, drained of energy and aching so took an early night. I struggled to sleep though and spent the night tossing and turning with alternating sweats and chills. The next morning I still felt bad, but decided to go out for the day anyway and just take it easy. We took a cycle rickshaw across town to go inside the Kraton - the sultans palace, and had a good look around for a couple of hours. It was a strange sort of place, more a collection of old buildings within a large walled courtyard than a actual palace, and whilst some of the buildings were highly decorative and of architectural merit, some was pretty tatty and rubbish and the exhibits inside plain boring. I still couldn't work out where the sultan himself lived, but since the place shut down at 1.30pm I guessed maybe he was in there somewhere and just got up late when everyone had gone.

The Kraton - the Sultan's palace

A few miles away we visited Pasar Ngasem, the city's outdoor pet market. A guy just inside the gates was selling fighting fish in one litre glass bottles which have to be separated to stop them killing each other, and I accidentally managed to knock a couple of bottles over with my bag, but the guy was very relaxed about it and we chatted away afterwards. He took interest in our travels before telling us about his life as a school teacher and his families speciality coffee business on their plantation, whereby mongoose (which have a good sense of smell) roam the grounds eating only the best coffee beans, which they then poo out whole and get collected by staff, washed, dried and sold as an expensive premium coffee! He's not the only producer and I've heard about this before but forget the proper name for it. Elsewhere in the market we saw the usual cats, dogs, baby snakes, gerbils and rabbits, as well as a wide variety of birds; canaries and suchlike seem to be very popular on Java. Of most interest for sale were some chameleons, mongoose, owls, a the biggest snake I've ever seen in the flesh, so big it looked liked it'd just devoured a small child. Maybe it had.

Back at the hotel I was feeling little better so decided to take a trip to the doctor since the symptoms of flu and malaria are very similar. It was easy to find a doc nearby with a practice within a pharmacy and he was helpful and willing, eventually surprising me by saying he thought it was a common cold, and presented a bill for £3.75 including vitamins and paracetamol, not bad at all! After another somewhat sleepless night I awoke worse the next day with a fever, and spent most of the day barely able to get out of bed. I was well and truly floored by it, and even a fifty metre lunchtime walk to get food just about finished me off. But by evening after some sleep I felt a little on the mend and felt the next day might be salvageable.

Borobudor

Our time in Indonesia was running out. Whilst I probably should have rested again I'm not a big fan of sitting around doing nothing, and I also felt guilty for Rene who had patiently sat around the previous day. So the next morning I felt significantly better, enough for a gentle trip out to one of the main attractions in the area, the ancient temple of Borobudor; the largest Buddhist temple on the world. There seems to be this thing in Indonesia about seeing everything at sunrise and Borobudor was the next on the list, requiring a 4.30am alarm call. We'd reluctantly decided to book a package tour since local transport was too much hassle and along with a pleasant Dutch girl from the hotel called Lonika and a couple of strangers (though never for long) we headed off. Considering the time of day, the city was surprisingly busy, since many people wake up at 3am through Ramadan to pray and eat breakfast before dawn and the day's fasting. The kids were no exception, playing on the streets and setting off firecrackers whilst the mosques were full of worshipers in special white robes. 

We reached Borobudor just after dawn, finding it indeed to be a beautiful time of day to be there and also meant we missed the huge crowds since this is Indonesia's most popular tourist attraction. It was built sometime between 750 and 850AD at a time when Buddhism was practiced on Java (it's not now), and forgotten about for many years, and is built a bit like a wedding cake, with many tiered natural stone layers of carved reliefs depicting scenes. I found most tourist climbed straight to the top without really looking at it a lot of it, making it especially peaceful to wander around. The whole complex was impressive and occasionally worthy of a wow, but didn't move me like Ankor Wat in Cambodia did a few years ago, a similar type of setup. In fact by being impressed but not amazed at this, then raising a brow at the erratic driving on the way back whilst the girls were shocked, I realised I'm getting a bit jaded.

Get me out of here

Back in Yogyakarta, Rene and I decided we'd seen all we wanted around the city and it was time to move on. Even though I still wasn't feeling perfect I'd managed the day so far without problem, but the next step was a whole different ball game. We were heading to hike Mt Merapi, Indonesia's most active volcano.

View from train window ont he way to Yogya

Part of the water palace

Yogyakarta pet market had all sorts of weird things on offer

 

Beautiful sunrise at Borobudor temple

Borobudor temple

Borobudor temple

Borobudor temple

Bromo

Mt Bromo, Java island, Indonesia

In this blog: a reunion, an amazing volcano and a bird market

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The amazing dawn view of Mt Bromo and friends

On Java if you want to see volcanoes you're spoilt for choice, they're everywhere and none are more popular, beautiful or accessible than Mt Bromo, in the east of the island.

It was something that had been on the cards for some time, but not just for me. Rene and I had loosely kept in touch with Ubai and Nila, a kind and fun pair of Indonesian girls we'd met in Balikpapan on Borneo (see 'Make It Snappy' blog), and when they heard we were heading to see Bromo they said they were keen to come along for a short holiday to see it as well (plus see us we guessed!). Ubai runs a cafe-bar in Balikpapan which she set up last year (where we met them) but is also studying for a business management degree, whilst Nila is an account for Total; the French oil company which has rigs near Balikpapan. 

I'd just come back to the city of Malang after hiking nearby Mt Semeru, and the next day it was back up the hill again, or supposed to be anyway. Rene arrived at about the same time as the girls on his way back from getting a visa in Jakarta, having taken an epic 27 hour bus journey that to his surprise didn't really stop the whole time, and he was ravenous having eaten nothing more than the packet of crisps in his bag. The girls had flown from Borneo island to Java, and I expected them to show up by train so waited outside the station. Instead to my surprise they'd gone all out again and rolled up in a smart people carrier they'd hired, complete with driver for four days! Allegedly Nila's boss paid for it to repay a favour, but either way we weren't complaining.

The next day we set off early from Malang hoping to get to Bromo for maybe 9am, and both the girls and their driver seemed to know what they were doing so for once Rene and I left all the legwork to them. Bad idea. I started realising we weren't going the way we should have been going, the road which I'd been on to Semeru the day before, and when I looked it up on my phone I found we were doing a route which was three times longer. A bit of digging soon revealed the driver didn't have a map, and did his job by either taking roads he'd driven before or by stopping to ask. It was a ridiculous way of working for a professional (!) driver but this is Indonesia for you, logic doesn't always win.

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Heading up the mountain he then stopped to buy a gallon container of fuel from a little roadside shack (who knows why he didn't fill up at the station before) and the lady warned the road ahead was closed. This didn't help things. A little further some guys on motorbikes stopped us and said the same before asking for £10 to show us an alternate route. It was a ridiculous price and it all seemed very hooky so I made our dumbstruck driver move on. The road was indeed closed but another old guy offered to lead us by scooter on the detour for 75p, so our driver went with it, even though he could have simply been told the directions. The detour was the most steep, narrow and windy road you could imagine, going along the contours of the volcano through forest and squeezing past other vehicles, and the girls were a little astonished at the sight of it all.

We eventually reached a village that was an entry point to the national park that makes up Mt Bromo, and learnt both that our car wasn't suitable for driving on the sandy tracks at the top, and the jeep tours the locals offered didn't leave until the next morning. By now our two hour journey had turned into four and the cloud had rolled in reducing visibility for the mountain, so frustratingly we decided to write off the day and start again tomorrow. A local set us up with a nice homestay for the night, and we found some lunch in the only cafe around, a horrible little place with paint peeling off the walls, mould everywhere and no running water. We survived. 

I smiled at a local as we waited for a moment outside on the street, a very poor middle aged guy with few teeth left and he ushered for me to look inside his house. I stepped inside for a moment and had a look around, finding it hard to believe what basic, dirty and dilapidated conditions some people have to, or to an extent choose to live in. The village had a Hindu temple we poked around for a few minutes having a look, but apart from that there was truly nothing to do so we chatted away and watched movies on Rene's laptop for the rest of the afternoon. It was a bit of a wasted day and Rene and I both wished we'd done the planning ourselves, but at the same time it was nice to hang out, relax and chat.

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Early start

All the tours to see Mt Bromo coincide with sunrise, so at 3am the following morning a jeep picked us up and we were on our way. Unlike sunrise at Mt Semeru a few days before which was relatively peaceful and people spread out, the viewpoint for Mt Bromo turned out to be a proper tourist trap where hundreds of people were squeezed into a concrete viewpoint whilst hawkers flogged dried flowers and other tat by torchlight. Ubai and Nila were freezing; since it's hot year round at normal altitudes in Indonesia, it was the first time in their lives they'd experienced the cold without it coming from an air conditioner! After an hour, the day broke and over time the sun rose slowly, turning the black silhouette of the hills into a huge cloud-filled caldera surrounded by a number of volcanic peaks, a truly stunning scene as the photos prove. Bromo's serene beauty was it's downfall though. Being one of Indonesia's most popular attractions it attracts so many tourists that there was barely space to breathe, and half of the other tourists (mostly Indonesian) seemed more interested in taking the perfect selfie than actually admiring the amazing scenery around that they'd actually come to see. After the crowds had left it was much more pleasant. Top tip - have a few more hours sleep and get there for 6am if you ever go!

The jeep descended down a road into the caldera, at which point we were heading off-road. Despite being a good 2,000 metres above sea level we were driving for a while on sand, and for a moment it really felt like we were at the coast. This was however volcanic sand and the caldera was filled level with the stuff. The jeep dropped us off and like the rest of the tourists, we walked a little way then up some steps to gaze into Bromo's crater, where a vent pumped a huge constant plume of sulphuric gases out into the air. Rene and I walked along the crater lip for a while and gazed in, whilst the girls had found the short climb enough already.

Mt Bromo was the perfect case in point that the better many attractions are, the more popular they become, the more likely they are to get ruined, and the worse the experience even if it does still impressive to an extent. I'm glad I visited, but it just makes me want to continue visiting places more off the beaten track where the experience is more natural, more your own.

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We went back to the homestay where we grabbed our bags, and our chauffeur (ra ra) took us back down to the plains, stopping a few times for directions on the way much to my frustration - 'just buy a blooming map!' I kept thinking, before remembering not to actually moan since I wasn't paying after all. No-one had any plans so I suggested we go to Kebun Raya, a large area of botanical gardens on the way, planted by the Dutch during the colonial period. Like a bunch of fat American tourists in a safari park, we were driven round the tarmaced roads of the park, everyone staring aimlessly out the window at the well landscaped areas as we went, everyone too tired from the early start to want to get out and walk. Sitting on a bench admiring the view was as energetic as it got. 

We stayed in Malang again that night, and Ubai being ever generous again insisted on paying for a room for Rene and I to share in the pretty smart mid-range hotel they'd booked. Considering the fairly basic places we'd spent months staying in, it was a trip back to the real world, with a sink, WiFi that worked properly, a western toilet and even hot water! Wow! (It's not always that bad, I jest a little). With a few local souvenirs in hand for family, the girls headed off the next morning since they had to get back to work the next day, so we said thanks and goodbye. They'd been real good fun to hang out with and it was a very nice change to travel differently for a few days.

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Despite staying a couple of nights in Malang over the last week I'd seen nothing of the city, so Rene and I decided to stay an extra couple of days. The first was just a chores and catch up day unworthy of any words, and the second day we went for a little stroll about. As far as Indonesian cities go, Malang seem pretty green and pleasant, mostly thanks to Dutch rule until 1949 which laid out some style and order, and a number of colonial buildings remain. We had a look around Hotel Tugu Malang which was full of rare expensive antiques and eclectic decor, went through a nice park, and ended up at the local bird market, Pasar Senggol.

Whilst the market was dominated by birds it had seemingly everything available. We saw all sorts of canaries, parrots, owls, finches, prized chickens, and a million other birds I don't know. There were even a few owls, the legality of buying I'm not so sure of! Unfortunately a few weren't in such good nic, and one guy even left a dead bird lying in the bottom of a cage, pretty much saying to potential customers 'look what's coming'; a mastermind of marketing that guy! Nearby for sale were a number of grown cats were sleeping in their cages like cats do, as well a few puppies, spotted lizards, macaque monkeys and even some mongooses which I'd never seen so close up before. It was really fascinating moseying around for an hour or so before headed for our train, next stop, the cultural capital of Yogyakarta.

You see a lot of this in rural Indonesia

The guy on the left invited me in

The village we stayed a night in

At 3am, heading for Bromo with Rene, Nila and Ubay

Sunrise 

Mt Bromo

Mt Bromo

Old chums now!

Heading across the volcanic sand desert

On the crater edge of Bromo, living dangerously!

Smoking Semeru

Mt Semeru, Java Island, Indonesia 

In this blog: hiking through the night to the top of an active volcano

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Sylvain, my French hiking partner for a few days
on the journey to start the trek

Mt Semeru is an active volcano, and the highest point on the main Indonesian island of Java at 3,676m. One of my main reasons for visiting Indonesia was to see active volcanoes, and I'd read a bit about hiking it. I was quite keen on doing so, but in the end I gave up on the idea when it seemed too expensive and full of hassle, thinking I'd do another one instead. Upon checking in at a hostel in the city of Malang though, I spotted a note from another traveller asking if anyone was keen on joining him for the ascent. My travel buddy Canadian Renė was away for a few days sorting out a visa and I needed something to do, so I left a reply and the following morning was awoken in the large dorm room by a guy by the name of Sylvain. He was a friendly and tall 22 year old French guy who before I'd even opened my eyelids, reeled off fact after fact about what we need to do and where we needed to go, whilst I lay in bed half asleep and unable to process anything he said, even if it was in English. Half an hour later when I was a bit more with it, he started over again and making sense I soon decided I was up for it.

We popped into a local cafe for breakfast, where the friendly-as-you-like middle age owner chatted away and asked to take our photo to put on her Facebook page. Through Malang's heavy traffic we took a minibus across town to the bus station, and another minibus to the town of Tampung. We'd been told that to hike Semeru we needed a medical certificate, a new one on me, so we searched around for somewhere to get this done, finding a small local hospital a sweaty twenty minute walk away in the midday sun. It was the strangest hospital I've ever been in in that there were about fifteen staff but literally no patients. None. They spoke little English but were very smiley and we managed to get what we wanted; a simple blood pressure and BMI reading. We asked them if they knew how to get to the base of Mt Semeru and they discussed it between themselves for a few minutes. Different people made phone calls, and suddenly we were told a jeep was coming to get us. Imagine that, a hospital that doubles as a travel agency.

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The jeep was ridiculously expensive for the distance involved but we had little choice, and the journey absolutely beautiful. We started off passing apple orchards for a few miles before the road climbed into the hills and got progressively steeper and windier, passing through jungle, small villages then eventually vast swathes of land growing a variety of vegetables since volcanic soil is pretty good for that sort of thing. The views were fantastic. We eventually reached the small village of Ranu Pani and found a very basic homestay for the night. Being at around 2000m altitude, we opened our bags to find the increased atmospheric pressure had popped both our packets of crisps, and left other packet bulging!

Decisions for the hike needed to be made, and whilst Sylvain was a really nice and friendly guy, he was also a bit arrogant in his opinions and reluctant to compromise and that irritated me. He was 22 and had been traveling for two weeks while I was nine years older with two years travelling experience behind me, and whilst I'm not always right that counts for something. We argued about how much water to take and I was right in the end, we argued how long it would take to organise the trip and a day was fine as I predicted, and we debated whether we needed a guide, which it turned out was unnecessary as I proposed. I realised how easy it is travelling with Rene. Bring back Rene!

Heading for the top 

We set off at 8am the next day having paid the permit fee - a generous ten times more expensive for foreigners than natives, and strolled past some beautifully kept fields of onions before starting to head up the mountain. For the next three hours the walking was steady, shaded and very pleasant and the trees and shrubs we passed were unexpectedly very different to lowland Indonesia. To our excitement after hearing a rustle we looked amongst some trees below and saw a number of wild black langur monkeys which was a nice surprise. Rounding a corner the scenery changed as we unexpectedly reached a nice lake and stopped to admire it for a moment. Another half mile on the going got very steep for fifty metres before a beautiful scene unfolded before us as we reached a brief summit; a dry meadow lake of wild flowers in a green and pleasant valley shadowed by small volcanic peaks on each side.

About three hours in, a beautiful lake part way up the volcano

The scenery changed constantly all the way

The scenery changed again as we entered a forest, meeting three or four huge groups of Indonesian hikers resting and eating, all keen to say hello and 'where you from?' as we passed as did many that day. We had our lunch a little way on, the first of four meals of peanut butter sandwiches we made as we went along - a treat the first time, awful the last, but saved us carrying a cooker. We hid a bottle of water ready for the descent the next day to save weight and continued on. Despite my thoughts on his analytical skills, Sylvain was a really nice guy, and interesting and knowledgeable guy to talk to - a recent graduate in history who likes ancient history cause it's both less gory and 'cause he can't relate to it, whereas I find history I can't relate to immensely boring. His English was particularly good for a Frenchman (!) and many good conversations passed the time away nicely. 

After a couple more changes in scenery we suddenly found ourselves at the campsite where people stay the night, located at the much cooler altitude of about 2,900m. It was only 2pm and we'd made way better progress than expected despite his purposely slower pace - 'slow and no stopping, that's what my father always says' - I prefer to go at my own pace and stop when I need to, but horses for courses. We had to decide whether to stay there or progress to the next campsite an hour on, but soon good old Mother Nature decided for us by unleashing a downpour. A school group of sixteen year olds excitedly invited us to shelter in their gazebo area and for the next couple of hours they chatted away whilst giving us tea and snacks. Come 5pm we put our hired tent up and fashioned the missing pegs from sticks, and after more peanut butter sandwiches it was lights out at 7. 

7pm is a bedtime I've not seen since I was in nappies, but it was fairly necessary since the alarm clock was set for a record breaking (in my record book anyway) 12.30am! The reason for this masochistic action is that the done thing on Mt Semeru is to hike through the night in order to reach the summit for sunrise when the skies are clear, and it's certainly not something I'd normally do. I was convinced it would take just over three hours to get to the top based on previous experience so wanted to leave around 2am so we didn't get cold at the top waiting. Silvain however was convinced it would take way longer and just wouldn't listen, and I eventually relented, telling him I'd be moaning at him about the cold when we got there early. Even when it came to setting the alarm he pushed to set it an extra five minutes earlier than I proposed before I shot him down for being so pedantic; honestly!

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After just two proper hours sleep cause of the noise and discomfort, at 1am we set off for the summit. From the plateaux the campsite was on, it was now straight up. Silvain had his headtorch on whilst I made do with my little pen torch. The track twisted and turned through forest for an hour and we soon hit rush hour traffic - it was just like the M25 on a Friday night. We overtook hiker after hiker, not because we were going particularly fast but because they were so slow - all Indonesian, so I'm not sure whether to blame it on the shorter legs, the cigarettes (the national pastime I've decided) or just a lack of fitness. After an hour we left the tree line behind and hit the real volcano, from then on it was nothing but loose volcanic ash and small rocks below our feet. Hiking was now slow and really hard work, partly due to the 35% gradient now, but mostly 'cause it was similar to walking on sand dunes, and each step seemed to be four forward and back. Indonesian hikers were now littered everywhere beside the track, either catching their breath or in some cases passed out sleeping despite it being nearly zero degrees at this altitude! We ploughed on (literally) before later my torch battery died. I realised I must have left the spare been back at the tent so had to rely on stray flashed from other peoples lights thereon - hiking a volcano by night without a light is not recommended! It was good it was too dark to see the summit though since it would have been pretty demotivating in your sights all the time. 

Summit

Eventually at 4.20am we were finally there, 3,676m above sea level. There was both the relief and satisfaction of getting there, and the amazing sight of volcanic activity since Mt Semeru as I said before is an active volcano. Whilst she's fairly well behaved there's still a natural vent a couple of hundred metres along from the summit, where she was puffing out gases and regularly spitting out red hot ashes into the air. It was such an exciting sight and totally unexpected, and to top it off the sound was like the jet engines of a plane taxing down the runway. It was truly awesome to behold. 

Unfortunately it was also blooming freezing and a while until dawn so we went a little way down to a sheltered spot, where since we'd made it in 3 1/4 hours as I predicted I moaned like mad to Sylvain about the cold, mostly to remind him to listen to people! The views over the various city lights below were amazing and you could see the silhouettes of other volcanoes in the distance as well. At around 5am we saw glimmers of light on the horizon before a while later the sun started to rise, and what a sight it was, truly beautiful. We were soon able to see both the north and south coasts of Java, various towns and cities, and numerous volcanic peaks in all directions, their upper halves poking through a layer of cloud below and a couple of them smoking away as well. It was just incredible, and well worth all the effort. There were a good fifty people on the large summit now but it never felt overcrowded or like a mad tourist attraction. We couldn't stay forever though so after nearly 2.5 hours we started the descent, the loose volcanic sand now working to our favour as you could move almost effortlessly down through it, almost as if you were skiing. It was strange seeing the things which we'd walked past earlier but not been able to see, the rocky features, the green trees.

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Back at the campsite we dozed for an hour before packing up and heading back to base. I reckon there may have been up to a thousand hikers on the mountain at any one time and most of them under thirty and Indonesia, male dominated but with quite a few females and all very friendly as we passed. We saw just five other westerners on the mountain the whole time though, one of them being a White Kenyan lady leading a tour group which was resting two thirds of the way down. She'd been on the mountain many times, and recommended another route the rest of the way, 2km shorter and more beautiful but with another 600m high hill to go over so went for it. She was right on the beauty, but the hill killed our legs and the route ended up taking even longer! Partly because we ended up lost in thousands of acres of onion fields at the end! To top it off it then rained heavily and we sheltered under the overhang of a shed for half an hour, before some farmers pointed us roughly the right way and eventually we made it back to digs. It was a 14 mile journey over the two days, and I took a very necessary and very long hot shower, annoying everyone by inadvertently using all the hot water. We then had a nice conversation with a lovely Swiss couple for an hour or so who'd also just finished the hike; she a exhibit restorer in a museum and he it turned out, a successful French photographer called Andri Pol - http://www.andripol.com/.

I slept for over ten hours that night, quite a feat for me and woke up feeling very refreshed the next morning, albeit pretty achey. After relaxing for a few hours and poking around the very poor mountain village, we then had to try and get back to Malang somehow. The hire jeep was ridiculously expensive so we ended up doing something even more ridiculous - taking a share jeep where sixteen of us stood, sat and squeezed in an old open-backed Toyota Land Cruiser jeep. Despite standing on my aching legs for the whole way it was good fun chatting and joking with the other Indonesian hikers, and they even sorted us a lift for the second leg back to Malang city a couple of hours later. From smoking crater to smoky city, one heck of a trip.

Even at 3am heading up to the summit at close to
zero degrees, I'm still able to sweat

View over Malang city just before dawn

Sunrise. Amazing views.

The crowds

The smoking (and sometimes exploding) vent at the top
of Mt Semeru 3,676m above sea level

Big gas release, though blew the other way

Looking towards Mt Bromo, smoking away in the background

Descending with Silvain

Mt Sermeru from the campsite at 2,900m elevation

Onion fields at the base, on the rich volcanic soil