Hotel Santika Surabaya

Today is my last day in Surabaya, I have purchased my train ticket to Semarang. Prices are still up and I had to pay for the full fare to Jakarta. The ticket for executive class from Surabaya to Jakarta is 440,000. I am told that the prices will be going down on October 4th!!!

... been buying some very tasty pastries to have with my morning coffee in the room. The room is very comfortable and when I compared it to other similar hotels in more or less the same area it was very comparable (it seemed somewhat better value) and was the only one offering free internet access from the room.Although I did not check the room at Ibis Hotel in the old part of Surabaya and close to most tourist sites it also seemed to be very ...

... Madhya Pradesh, India: Bicycling the Temples of Khajuraho: Riding rickety old bikes, Zoe, Ankit and I spent a day amongst the pastoral plains of Madhya Pradesh, peacefully and continually amazed by the ornate sculptures lining every inch of the sandstone temples of Khajuraho. We graciously accepted an invitation from our friend Rakesh to have lunch with ...

... accompagner de 200 personnes et presqu'autant de jeep. La populace ici. Pas de levee de soleil, trop de nuage. Nous voulons rester plus longtemps avec espoir de voir mieux, disension au sein du groupe du jeep. Donc on nous avons ete abandonne sur le sommet. Mais un jeune samaritain (un gars de la beauce) nous a donner un lift. Ouffff, 10km de moin dans nos jambes pour la journee. Vive l'entraide quebecoise. On le remerci car on a eu droit a une petit eclairci qui nous ...

... we could chug back to "civilization" where we had to repeat the honoured guest routine! We were scorched, and pretty tired from all the smiling and nodding....so we treated ourselves to a fish and chip supper at one of the malls. Tonight at the end of our Indonesian lesson we made an arrangement to meet our teacher (who also has other businesses) in Lombok at the weekend to see his seaweed, lobster and fish farms!!! Watch this space!

... who have lost, or never had in the first place, the foresight to remember that every single indonesian in the travel industry geared toward tourists, is trying to rip you off. in our sleep deprived half sanity, we ended up not only overpaying for a bemo ride up to cemoro lawang, a one-horse town on the lip of the crater of the tengger massif, but also on a premature decision to book bus tickets to our next port of call in yogyakarta. at any rate, we made it to cemoro ...

... I sat down watching the sky melting. Eventually, darkness has slowly descended on the plateau below and the hills have become miniature shadows in the distant. I saw the steady stream white smoke from the bottom. It's as if God was puffing on his pipe. I continued to circle the mouth of the crater and ended up where I started. To be so close to nature's wonder such as this is breathtaking. I remembered a song by Incubus, "Wish you were here." P.s. I ...

We all headed to Surabaya. Tons of family met us at the airport. It was getting late kind of, so my parents took us to dinner with almost ALL of our relatives (9 on my dad's side minus 2, 8 on my mom's side minus 2). Cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews ...

... in Executive Class where we read our books and looked out of the window, and then took a becak to our chosen hotel which was fine, although certainly on the basic side and not particularly geared up to Western tourists (most of them being more sensible than to travel Java and heading straight to Bali!). We'd indulged in the breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental that morning so efficiently that even by 7.30ish that evening, we still weren't particularly hungry but ...