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

Sulawesi Photos

Sulawesi was truly a crazy old island to travel through, and I think the following set of pictures prove it pretty clearly! See the album here

I Sea

Makassar, Sulawesi island and Surabaya, Java island, Indonesia 

In this blog: the only white face on a long cross-sea ferry, and a trip to a cigarette factory

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Despite only making a couple of stops on the Britain-sized island of Sulawesi there was little else in the south to hold my interest following the amazing previous week in the Tana Toraja region, and the following few days were a bit of a slow, frustrating and slightly boring mix of buses, boats and trains but as ever with Indonesia, things are never completely dull.

Countryside on the way south from Rantepao

Rene and I heading to Makassar

Heading South

From Tana Toraja, Canadian Rene and I took a bus south to Makassar, a ten hour journey on one of the most luxurious buses I'd ever been on and set off just twenty minutes late, a total contrast to the discomfort of previous Indonesian journeys. The scenery was beautiful the whole way, starting with small rolling valleys scattered with Torajan houses with their majestic curved roofs. The scenery became more mountainous after a couple of hours with grassy and rocky peaks either side of the bus, and with the freezing cold aircon on the bus I felt like I was on top of those summits. It got me thinking 'cause this has happened many times in Asia - just like we Brits see heat as a luxury, it seems to me that Asians particularly in hot developing countries see coldness as a rare luxury and completely overindulge on it when they have chance. Eventually the landscape flattened out and for a few hours we saw nothing but huge green paddy fields both sides of the road with villages every so often, the houses having a very different style of architecture again. Strangely the driver drove for six hours straight with no toilet or lunch stop so by the time we got to Makassar I was both bursting and famished in equal measure. It didn't help either that we were dropped at the depot somewhere way out in the suburbs in the dark, but after a bit of walking and guesswork we flagged down a passing share taxi that was heading to the centre and all was well.

Makassar itself was to be nothing more than a transit point I decided. It was a big messy sprawling city with only a few places of interest to the traveller, so for the night and morning we were there I decided to eschew sightseeing and catch up on a few things instead before catching the boat. I was heading next to the main island of Indonesia; Java, and having found all the flights way too expensive plumped for the ferry instead. After all, with so many islands in Indonesia ferries are the lifeblood of the country, so it would be an experience in itself I decided. And it was. Rene had to go to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta for a few days to apply for a visa for India, so it was back to solo travelling for a few days, but just as we said cheers for now and checked out of the hotel, we were hit with a bill for the minibar. We'd not touched it but they were insistent we pay, and things got a bit tense for a few minutes. In the end I had to get to the port and left Rene to sort it out, thankfully for them to admit it was their fault I learnt later.

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All Aboard

I really wasn't sure what the ferry experience would be like, but knowing that the economy class consists of hundreds of people sleeping on mats in giant rooms, I paid a bit more for a second-class cabin. I was a bit taken aback at first stepping on the ship, finding a dirty dimly-lit corridor full of people and boxes of luggage rather than the nice big lobby I ridiculously imagined. It was a confusing jumble of stairs and passages, but thankfully a staff member led me to my cabin which turned out to be exactly what I wanted; simple, functional and clean. Everywhere I wandered on the ship there were people, every passageway, open deck, corner, stairwell and bench contained folks laying on the floor, on their way back to see their families or earn their riches in another part of the country, unable to afford anything better than the most basic class. 

Everyone stared as I passed and initially I felt pretty uncomfortable but soon got used to it. Even opening the cabin door involved someone moving out the way to let me past, and unsurprisingly I was the only westerner out of the hundreds if not thousands of people on this ship. Now normally on the streets, where people have at least something to do I might get the odd 'hello mister' in my direction, but here people had nothing whatsoever to occupy their attention and I became even more of a curiosity than normal to them, with heads turning, whispers muttered and 'hello mister where you come from?' echoing constantly. Unfortunately England had been knocked out of the World Cup the day before and when I told them my native place I was constantly reminded of this fact! Indonesians really do love football.

The only free space on the ship

People everywhere on board

Leaving port an hour later than scheduled, it was quite pleasant sat there on the floor of the upper deck, watching Makassar disappear into the distance then small islands pass by, as well as huge cargo ships and tankers. The only place I could really get any space though was sitting in a lifeboat which I spotted hanging off the top edge of the boat with no barriers across, a perfect place to read and relax. Peace! Space! Once the sun had set the Muslim 'call to prayer' played over the ship's PA system, and I headed for a shower and food. Despite meals supposedly being included in the ticket, for some reason the second-class restaurant (nice name!) wasn't serving that evening and sent me downstairs to economy class, where I squeezed my way through the cattle market of people only to receive an overpriced plate of tepid rice and what might possibly have been chicken. Luckily it was all back to normal the next day and I got a decent feed. 

Despite it being a twenty-four hour crossing time passed surprisingly quickly and I actually quite enjoyed the experience. My plans of getting up-to-date with writing as well as finishing a book slipped away unfinished, and mid-afternoon we floated into the harbour at Surabaya - a huge industrial city of smoking chimneys, big factories, storage silos, and hundreds of parked-up cargo ships. 

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Docking at Surabaya

I knew Surabaya had little to offer but hadn't got round to planning further ahead, to know where I was headed next so decided to stay a night. The port was a bustling frenzy of people and baggage squeezing into packed minibuses and cars, but strangely none seemed to go to the city centre. The language barrier made it even more confusing so tired of asking I set off on foot, eventually finding a share taxi which took me at least come of the way to a hotel before I guess-walked the rest. The room was nothing special with a lack of windows, no shower and a sink tap which didn't work, but choice was limited and it had to do. After the food on the ship I craved western-food, and with the biggest range of grub I could ever imagine available in a huge nearby mall I found just what I wanted. I'd planned to leave town straight away the following morning, but after some research a couple of interesting-sounding sights changed my mind. 

I've mentioned before that Indonesians are massive smokers, some of the biggest puffers in the world I reckon. Its a dirt cheap hobby here, and adverts appear everywhere on the streets, media and even train station departure boards. Whilst I hate smoking myself, the ever-so-Indonesian tourist attraction of a cigarette museum and factory tour sounded too interesting to miss so I took a becak - a cycle rickshaw - to the House of Sempoerna a couple of miles away. Sempoerna are one of the most popular brands of cigarettes here, and in this factory about four-hundred women hand roll up to four-thousand tobacco and clove mix cigarettes each per day. Unfortunately I arrived on a Sunday, a day which they'd somewhat considerately taken off, so saw just an empty factory and a video but it satisfied my curiosity just about enough anyways. The adjoining museum was funny even if it didn't indeed to be, full of curiosities, paintings and photos of people smoking and some company history, all in an old-fashioned 'Guinness Is Good for You!' manner that blissfully ignored the fact that smoking has killed the odd person. 

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I took another becak (for novelty value mostly) to the Arab quarter of town which was full of busy narrow passages full of traditionally-dressed Muslims shopping or heading to the nearby mosque, but apart from that not a lot of Arabian feel in reality. It was interesting enough but didn't really grab me so I continued to a Chinatown nearby. Surabaya is the first place in Indonesia that I've seen any Chinese faces, but in reality the district is just like any other these days. The streets were pretty grotty and the Dutch-colonial era buildings crumbling, but the huge fish market was really interesting, a hive of activity. Men carried in huge plastic drums of fresh fish, and there was a real variety on offer that I'd not really seen before, including stingrays and barracuda. Next door was a huge shed where women sorted and shelled garlic cloves and around the corner an interesting chicken market, and I wandered amongst it all for a while seeing a few quite unique sights.

I'd planned to leave town on a 4pm train to the city of Malang, but ran out of time and decided on a later one instead. Heading to catch that one I arrived at the wrong station, and after a race across town reached the correct place one minute late. Now, I've been on time for everything until now, yet every single bit of transport I've taken in Indonesia has been late leaving - sometimes twenty minutes sometimes a couple of hours. Yet here I am, one minute late, and it had already gone. Almost  predictably though, when I caught the next train it left nearly an hour late! In the meantime though I headed for some food, on the way catching a free open air rock gig then on the way back, spending a quarter hour looking around an ex-Russian submarine used by the Indonesian Navy, now retired in a city park. Missing the train wasn't so bad after all.

Boarding the ferry from Sulawesi to Java island

Digs on the ferry

Oil rigs way out to sea (and yes I need to get

the dust out from inside my camera!)

Welcome to Surabaya

Sampoerna cigarette factory

Outside the fish market in Surabaya Chinatown

Torpedo tubes on the ex-Russian, retired Indonesian navy submarine