Island Hopping Indonesia

From Yogyakarta in central Java, we travelled to Mt. Bromo, an active volcano in the east. On the bus, our scam radar should have been blinking as the driver smiled at us a little-too-much... but instead we got off when we were told to at a "tourist information centre" which tried to sell an onward travel ticket for some obscene amount of money. Why did we get off? The last onward minibus was to leave for Mt. Bromo at 4pm, in 15 minutes time (!), so we hurried through the afternoon heat, laden with bags; a pack of taxi drivers stalking us. It turned out we weren't far from the terminal, and arrived just as the minibus was pulling out - but even as we tried to get on, we were stopped and told we needed to charter another minibus. Not likely, we thought, and finally elbowed our way on! Phew!

We had a few hours kip in a ragged little hotel in the village of Cemoro Lawang, some 1700 meters above sea level, and rose at 2.30am to meet with a couple of people for a torch-lit hike up to a high viewpoint. As the sun came up, the view was astonishing - not just for the sunrise, but for the early morning clouds which form a strange lake within the giant caldera from which Mt. Bromo protudes smoking away. Mt. Semeru sits in the background occasionally spitting out gas. A few hundred other people had taken jeeps another way up to the viewpoint, but that's cheating really - and on the hike back down we watched the cloud lake evaporate slowly as the day grew brighter, even if we were a bit surprised in daylight by how dangerous the hiking route actually was.

Cloudy Caldera

As we got back to the village, passing Tengger tribe-people who make a difficult living from farming in the uneven landscape of a volcano, we made our way down a path on the steep-sided caldera and crossed the fantastical "sea of sand" - now free of clouds - to the steaming Bromo crater. The sea is a little spaghetti-western with poncho-garbed tribesmen on horseback offering lifts, and becomes surreal as you pass a blocky Hindu temple and take a path enscribed into a lava flow. The crater of Mt. Bromo sounds more impressive than it looks; sounding like an enthusiastic kettle and looking like a sauna - but the sulphur is a veritable assault on the old nose.

The Sandy Sea of Sand

We took the afternoon bus out to Surabaya airport, but our plans went a little awry as the flight we wanted to Flores island was fully booked - so we instead had to get another few hours sleep in a nearby hotel and be up for a 6am flight east to the famous island of Bali, which gave us an aerial view of the ring-of-fire, a landscape of active volcanoes which make the tiny towns and cities that sit on them look a little silly.

Next stop was Ubud, the "cultural capital" of Bali, a town (or really; a series of villages) where homes look like tiny temples, full of carvings and decorative architecture and many with family shrines. Each morning the streets are dotted with banana leaf trays of rice and burning incence to avoid while walking. The island of Java was predominantly Islamic with amped up daily prayers from mosques at all times of day and night, but Bali is Hindu - which seems to mean less beef, more pork and nearly everything is the cause for a ceremony or celebration.

Java from on high and Ubud passing by

The home stay we stopped at for a few days was like lodging in a palace. It was nice to start the day there with fruit and jaja giling-giling (mini rice crepes with coconut shavings). The gentleman owner was, like most residents of Ubud, a musician - and we were invited to see him play in a 30-strong gamelan orchestra for a series of dances. The dances were a kind of shaking paranoid shuffle, with elaborate costumes and masks, and the music was a riptide of percussion and strong pentatonic tones with looping melodies. Many of the timbres were unusual, with some bells sounding like guitars and ringing bamboo instruments giving warmth. It was so wonderful. So much so we actually had a little lesson on Balinese percussion elsewhere in town - not that they will be letting us join the orchestra anytime soon.

Another great show is the Kecak fire dance. It looks as tribal as things get but was only actually created in the 1930s by a German painter to tell a story from the Ramayana to the groovy tune of a ritual trance chant. No instruments, the first two acts are just 80 voices in complex patterns of chanting, singing and shouting. The fire dance comes in the third act and features a guy with a broom kicking around some embers. Still fun - but a little worrying on the front row.

Music!

Around Ubud

To the south of the town area is the Sacred Monkey Forest, which is a forest with lots of monkeys who may or may not be sacred. They are very naughty. One minute in and a monkey had stolen my water bottle - failing to grab it he just stuck his teeth in and drank! The forest is full of broken temples and ancient carved bridges - all of which are a big violent playground for the critters... monkey babies were stolen and new baby monkeys probably conceived without even the semblance of shame. A couple of lady monkeys took a liking to Kath, and climbed over her dress to look for tasty morsels in her hair. I tried to persuade them off but one bared her teeth, and neither of us fancied rabies so we just pretended to calm down. The monkey must have found few morsels as she did jump off, thankfully, and we scampered out of the forest sharpish.

Little furry balls of evil

A short bike ride to the north of Ubud is the less violent phenomenon of "The White Herons of Petulu" where every sunset thousands of herons fly back to roost in a tiny village called Petulu. We got there with a little time to spare, and watched wave after wave of birds returning home. It's not so much spectacular as just strange how many birds try and fit in so few trees when there are plenty of other trees outside the village. Anyway, if you do visit then take an umbrella as things get a bit messy under those trees.

For an adrenaline fix we thought we'd try something new - white water rafting! It's a little like teamwork kayaking in unsuitable water, and for this the cascading river Agung around Ubud was perfect. There were more than a few meter high drops and our guide kept 'accidently' leading us under waterfalls. Great stuff! To remind us we're in Asia, the porters then carried all the gear and deflated rafts upon their heads to the van.

Herds of birds and daft rafters

Still needing a tad more adrenaline we booked a day of mountain biking with Bali Bikes, and ended up on an epic ride. It turns out that much of northern Bali is in a giant caldera. We were given a lift up to the rim and then rode around the edge for a little while, the sound of a joyous ceremony drifting up from a town below, the ocean to our left and the giant Mount Batur in roughly the middle of the caldera to our right. Soon, we were on gnarly single-track and I realised how rusty I was with technical riding as I skidded down on my knees. I took it a bit slower after that as we passed chilli, choko and coffee plantations. As the ground flattened out the surface became slippy with volcanic dust and ash, and then we were riding over lava flows from 50 years ago. The ride was only about 35km but was pretty rough and finished beneath the mountain at Lake Batur.

Bicycle!

And then it was time to move on, so we took a flight east again to Flores island. The plane was small and the airport at the little fishing town of Labuan Bajo wasn't much bigger. The town is a gateway to the Komodo national park, famous for it's dragons, and we stopped one night before shipping out to a nearby island to see how jurassic things could really get...

- Jon

Labuan Bajo

Indonesia - Racing across Java

Finding a smidgen of money left after Vietnam we decided to head to Indonesia based on glorious photos on the internet. For visa purposes we needed to book a flight out of the country before we arrived, limiting us very firmly to one month of traveling. The trouble is, Indonesia is a huge sweeping archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, and there was no way we were going to see it all. With some difficulty, we narrowed it down to three areas: first Java, the central most populated island; then the iconic backpacker destination of Bali; and lastly the Komodo national park.

Arriving in the capital Jakarta we were instantly hit by the tropical heat, even coming from Hanoi's humidity - neither of us have been anywhere this equatorial. The city is a massive 290 square miles and famous for its traffic jams. The old port of Sunda Kelapa was our first stop. It is the home of a magnificent fleet of huge wooden junk ships, the last such working in the world. Their masts and bows loomed over the harbour, which was busy with sailors loading and unloading cargo and cats strolling down gangplanks. It was dusty and noisy; nice to see when so much stuff is just put on for tourists.

Jakarta

It was my birthday while we were in town, so for a celebratory adventure we set off to Taman Mini Indonesia theme park, 18km from the city centre - by public transport. It certainly was an adventure! The well-organised Trans-Jakarta bus systems allowed an easy first 3 transfers, but then we arrived at a huge and hectic terminal full of buses, coaches, taxis and angkots (brightly coloured minivans) everywhere and no clue as to where our next bus (a T-15 mini-metro) was. Dodgy taxi drivers hassled us, we were pointed in 3 different directions and then a tropical thunderstorm broke over us! We sheltered in a noodle stall, wondering if we'd ever make it out of the terminal never mind to the theme park.

The noodle shop people pointed to an angkot and 15 minutes later we found ourselves dropped off at a mall called 'Tamini'. Maybe we got off too early? Another angkot stopped and we asked for 'Taman Mini Indonesia' - but the driver told us we were already there! We went back to the mall looking for some kind of secret back entrance but there was nothing. We must have looked very worried by this point because a passing family took pity on us and invited us to share their taxi. It must have just been the name similarity that was making everyone send us to Tamini mall!

Taman Mini Indonesia, when we finally got there, was amazing. The idea is to showcase the multitude of Indonesian cultures, environments and histories by condensing as much of it as possible into one park. Sounds a bit nuts - which it is - but in the best way. It's fantastically well put together, with full scale representations of island architecture, brilliant museums filled with art and information (all in English too), working temples for each major religion, gardens, cable cars, a Disney-esque castle(!), full costume parades with traditional music and mud-covered dancers, and a huge map of the archipelago terraformed in a lake!

We had a great time exploring, particularly the large dome-roofed exotic bird sanctuary which housed peacocks, owls, hornbills and cranes among hundreds of others. Jon posed with an extremely affable Brahminy Kite, and I tried to take non-blurry pictures of it all, with limited success. We were at the park for 3 hours and didn't see half of it - maybe we can go back sometime.

Taman Mini Indonesia

The next stop after Jakarta was Bogor, the city of afternoon rainstorms (get inside!). Our hostel had dirty sheets, a cold shower and cats fighting the rats for the scraps in the hallway bins. Still, the view of looming volcano Mount Salak's sloping sides was worth it.

Bogor - The looming Mount Salak and slow moving traffic

There is a world famous botanical garden, right in the centre of town, founded in 1811 by unusually forward-thinking British colonial type Stamford Raffles. You can easily spend a day there walking about (which we did). The zoological museum was a surprise - it's got a full blue whale skeleton plus taxidermies of some of the other local wildlife - including leopards, mongooses, bear-cats (?!) and a worrying number of venomous snakes (apparently 'abundant in our rice fields'). The garden itself features over 3000 species of mostly-tropical plants, has an orchidarium - I never knew vanilla was an orchid before - and is home to a colony of flying foxes (a type of big fruit bat) who all roost noisily in one tall tree. Really cool!

Bogor Botanical Gardens

Getting to Mount Salak proved a little challenging - internet information was sketchy to say the least, but with some notes we caught two angkots to a village near Mt Salak, where we popped into a tiny nasi padang place (rice with a buffet style selection of different toppings). The lady there was quiet at first, but then started chatting in broken English. We told her our plans, and she told us we were heading to entirely the wrong village and got us on the correct angkot to the hiking trail. Good job we met her!

From the start of the Mt Salak trail it was easy to find our way past a popular waterfall and towards Kawah Ratu ('Queen's Crater'). The track was steep and slippery at first, climbing through thick forest, but it widened after a kilometre or so. We saw lots of pearly insects but nothing bigger, although after the Bogor museum we were very cautious so as not to step on any leopards.

The path, or stream, started to go downhill and the jungle began to look distinctly primeval. There was the occasional whiff of sulphur on the breeze, but it took us another half hour to reach the crater. There, the jungle suddenly died away leaving a bizarre hole, full of columns of steam and strange blue-ish water from loudly bubbling pits. It was awesome. The smell of sulphur was so strong we started to get headaches, though.

The Kawah Ratu, me and a pearly insect

Moving fast across Java, we caught a night bus to the city of Bandung, caught 4 hours sleep in a dorm, then caught the early morning train to Yogyakarta - unwittingly ending up with first class tickets to enjoy the spectacular mountain scenery.

Yogyakarta is Java's cultural centre and base of operations for many ambitious art students, who cover the walls with elaborate graffiti. Batik is famous here and there are studios and shops down most main roads. We had a go at making some - it involves carefully drawing your design on cloth with wax, using a rather awkward little tool with a tendency to drip hot wax on your arm. The design is then tidied and painted with bright ink, which the wax blocks. The piece is then varnished and washed in boiling water to reveal the bright white lines in the final picture. Fun, but very labour intensive!

Learning to Batik and first class scenery

Yogyakarta also has a lot of music - some traditional, some street performers (particularly on the main shopping and youth hang-out street Malioboro), and some enthusiastic rock cover bands. We saw the latter at Grin Cafe which asks people to draw while they're there and then exhibits the best work. The Malioboro street performers range from buskers playing homemade guitars to groups playing xylophones and full-on bands with drum kits, singers and bamboo percussion. It gets very crowded along there in the evenings, especially with all the rickshaws and horse and cart taxis!

In the heart of the town is the old sultan's palace, the Kraton. We went to see the section called the 'waterkasteel' (the Dutch name for water palace), which is partly ruined but still has two bathing pools filled with water in a strangely Romanesque enclosure (apart from the exotic carvings). Apparently the sultan's concubines used to bathe here while he surveyed them from a tower... *ahem*. Surrounding the waterkasteel is a pleasing array of twisting backstreets with colourful houses and kids playing with kites, which was great to get lost in.

Yogyakarta

A local very odd speciality is a coffee called kopi joss. This is prepared at stalls near the train station, which lay mats down for their customers to sit on the pavement. They put local ground coffee into a glass, top up with hot water and quite a lot of sugar, and then finish by dropping a red-hot ember from the fire into the brew. This creates a dramatic hiss and (as you might expect) a strong smoky flavor - although it's best to remove the ember before drinking! Not quite as refreshing as an Indonesian avocado and coffee smoothie, mind.

- Kath

Coal and coffee.  Mmmmm.