Java & Bali

(11/2/2007-17/2/2007)

If anyone reading this goes to Indonesia and has the choice of taking a bus run by the Damri company, then take it. This was the company of the bus that took us from Banda Lampung on Sumatra to Bandung on Java, and it was the best bus we had in South-East Asia. It had Winnie the Pooh blankets and pillows for everyone, working footrests,plenty of space in each row, a sealed area at the back for smokers so they weren't allowed to smoke anywhere else, and despite it being a night journey, which apparently is generally considered an ideal time to play really awful pop music really loudly, there was no music at all! As if all that wasn't good enough, we even arrived at our destination almost 2 hours early! As this was at 4.20 in the morning, we were able to skip Bandung completely and take the first train to Yogyakarta (pronounced "Jogjakarta", or just "Jogja"), which was far more comfortable than a bus despite being a couple of hours late. As Sally spent 6 months here when she was doing her degree, for once we had no problem findingaccommodation, places to eat, or places to do our laundry.

The next day we booked our "travel" (minibus) for the next day, then went for a walk around town, visiting the Sultan's palace (the sultan is still in charge ofJogja ), and the Sultan's water palace where he would bathe with his wives and children and meet his concubines etc. It then started to rain, so we got a bus up to near where Sally used to live and stayed in aninternet café until it stopped, and then it was time for a dinner of ayam bakar (grilled chicken and rice, Sally's favourite). We then had time to collect laundry, do a bit of shopping for journey supplies, and then had beer and pancakes at a bar where we met a crazy Australian from Alice Springs, studying in Darwin. The next day was not very exciting as we travelled by minibus toBromo . The lady sitting next to me kept jumping due to the incredibly bad and dangerous driving of both our driver and everyone else on the road, but after nearly 2 months in South-East Asia I was used to it and just slept. The most exciting thing to happen was when we realised that our water bottle which had been on top of the engine and in the sun had got hot enough to make hot chocolate, which we did by adding chocolate flavoured sweetened condensed milk from thesqueezy, screw-top packet that we'd bought. Eventually, after some winding mountain roads, we arrived at the village near Bromo, an active volcano, and due to the lack of tourists were able to get a very nice room in a hotel.

Others in or minibus had been persuaded to go on a trip to see the sunrise, so had to get up at 4am, but we decided to have a couple of days there, so just got up at 9, had breakfast, and then went walking across a volcanic wasteland of cooled lava to MountBromo , which steamed in the middle. We were escorted by a horse guide who wanted us to pay for him to walk us across on his horse, but wepreferred to walk, so he cantered off after a while. It was pretty hot, there was no shelter, and we didn't return until after 1 so we got quite badlysunburnt despite all the suncream we put on. To get to the rim of the volcano there we some crumbling steps, and at the top there was a fence of plastic tubing to stop you falling into the steaming crater that smelt of sulphur, a guy trying to sell us flowers to throw in as an offering (a few minutes later we saw him climbing down to pick those that hadn't reach out again!), and a lady selling drinks and stuff. In theory you could walk all the way along, but the fence only stretched across a few metres, andsome of the edge looked pretty thin and crumbly, so we didn't. Having seen enough volcano for one day, we went down to the Hindu temple at the foot of the neighbouring extinct volcano, and got a ride back on horses after some bargaining. We ended the day by watching the sunset with an Indonesian expat (the lady who'd sat next to me on the minibus), her daughter, and an Indonesian couple, then all had dinner together before we went to book our onward travel and the trip to the viewpoint for sunrise the next day, which we'd been convinced was worth it.

Sadly this meant we had to get up at 3.40am for our drive in a jeep through the dark, occasionally lit by some cool lightning in some clouds which luckily turned out to be behind us when watching the sunrise. It turned out that it really was worth it, as the huge extinct crater containing Mt.Bromo and it's neighbour was filled with mist, so it looked like a scene from Jurassic Park, the clouds didn't hide the sun but there were enough to look pretty in the red light, and best of all was the even more active Mt.Semira which erupted twice in the 30-45 minutes we were there with a huge cloud of smoke. Once the sun had risen, the jeep took us down to Mt.Bromo for other people to climb it, but as we'd already done that with hardly anyone else there, we didn't feel like doing it with a crowd of tourists, and instead stayed at the bottom, Sally joking with the horse guides, and laughing at the tourists being lead on their horses up the 5 or 10 minute walk to the steps, several with their video cameras out.

Then it was back for breakfast (including coffee which we turned into moccha by adding our chocolate condensed milk) and into the local bus to Probolingo where we had to wait for our bus to Denpasar on Bali, passing the time by letting a nice young Indonesian guy practice his English, who told us he wanted to be the next Kasparov. Our bus was OK, although they refused to give us our complimentary meal that all the Indonesian passengers got, but once we were on the ferry across to Bali we got a great view ofvolcanoes (presumably extinct) silhouetted against the sunset lit sky. Arriving in Denpasar was surprisingly hassle free, as the first taxi driver we asked agreed to use the meter, and the hotel the Indonesian expat lady had recommended to us turned out to be pretty nice and reasonable, with a swimming pool, breakfast and all. Dinner was also pretty good as I discovered a mega-sandwich including chicken, pineapple,avocado, mayonnaise, and more.

The next day was more fun, beginning with a swim in the hotel pool, then breakfast, a quick spell on the internet as at the last minute I decided I didn't want to got to Hong Kong, China, and elsewhere on my own but go to Australia with Sally, so I had to activate a visa and buy a plane ticket, and then we went toWaterbom Park. This is a great place full of waterslides you can go on in tubes, on mats, or just on your own (including a great one called Boomerang where you go down a flume in a tube, come shooting out and up avertical wall then down over a bump into a pool), a "river" you can float around in on your tube, various pools, and bubble tea! When that shut we went shopping for presents and stuff, had dinner, and finished with beer and ice cream.

Our last day in Indonesia began similarly, only with dragon fruit for breakfast as well (a large pink skinned fruit with odd scale-like bits, which inside is white with black seeds, and tastes a bit like the seeds in kiwi fruit), then we had to pack and check out as our plane was that evening. We spent most of the day shopping, with periodic breaks for ice with jellies, cocktails, beer, swimming on the beach, and a tasty dinner of chicken and coconut. Then we got a taxi to the airport for all the joys of checking in, finally leaving just after midnight on our plane, meaning that now Sally and I have travelled together on all popular forms of transport (as well as a few more unpopular ones). A few hours later we were in Australia, and I was (almost) done with long distance travel for a while.