Java

  Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia
Saturday, August 16, 2008

Leaving the island of Nusa Lembogan was the same story : one public boat at 8 am and everything and anything on it ! Once in Sanur, I had to take a taxi to the bus terminal in Denpasar as my plan was to go to Mount Bromo in Java. Leave Bali for good and get to the next island. Indonesia is made of 17,000 islands, apparently, a lifetime to know them all, I do not doubt that...especially considering the lack of public transport and/or the lack of roads. As usual, thinking the early start would help to make it all the way in one day, but no, that was not early enough I guess. That traveling day was one of the hardest and longest of my trip...so far. While at the bus terminal in Denpasar, I got hassled to get on a "direct" bus to Bromo with toilets and A/C. Appealing, but the bus was not leaving until 4 pm and it was noon by the time I arrived at the bus terminal. That bus was not getting in Bromo until 5 am (they said) and it was not a sleeping bus like in Vietnam, it only had seats so for 13 hours which surely would be about 17, I did not think that was a good deal ! I thought I could do better than that and took the local bus to the Java ferry terminal, north of Bali. It was close, on the map, but far in time. It took four and a half hours to get to the ferry. Four and a half hours squashed in a non air conditionned very old bus with people smoking clove cigarettes. It is not forbidden to smoke in public transportation in Indonesia. Well, I thought that was bad, but I did not know what the future had in store for me in Java.

The ferry ride was just under an hour and went quite smoothly. I was the only "boleh"(foreigner) in the bus, idem on the ferry. By the time, we reached the harbour in Java, it was getting dark and I was still not arrived at my final destination...well what I did not know and it was better this way is that I was still far from it ! When you arrive at the ferry terminal in Java, unless you have your door to door bus service booked to another destination or you've got family picking you up in a car, you are screwed. This was obviously my case. Starting to walk around desperate for somebody who was speaking a language I could comprehend and after a while, managed to get a motorbike to give me a ride ro the bus station, 10 km away.

Lucky enough, there was still a bus to Probolinggo, the "entrance city" to Bromo,

The volcano

even after 6 pm and it was was just about to leave. I hopped on and here I am, in an even older bus than the one in Bali, two persons per seat, my bag between my legs, chickens on my knees, a sick woman on my left, a crying baby on my right, and that wonderful smell of clove cigarette all over the smoky bus. I told you that was one of the worst trip but still very entertaining. As a local bus, I got stared at by every single person in that bus, it stops everywhere and anywhere all the time. There is no real bus stop in Indonesia, so everytime, there was somebody who seemed to be waiting on the side of the road, the bus was slowing down to pick them up. This non stop stopping and going allows groups of homeless people to hop on and off in order to play lovely indonesian songs, shouting in the middle of the alley, already filled with standing people...and animals sometimes. The trip was supposed to be four hours, but you know it, it was seven. The seven longest hours of my trip. And to top it of, I got hungry as I have had no time for dinner or just buying food and tired as well, but that was normal.

I finally arrived at about 1 am in the bus terminal of Probolinggo which is nothing else than a big parking lot in the middle of the highway. For once you would say yes to their favourite question "need transport?", there are no motorbike, nor taxis, nor bejaks, not even a donkey! Hum a bit tricky, better start walking around to get out of this dodgy parking lot. I did not walk more that ten minutes, and that was enough with my heavy backpack at 1 am after seventeen hours in public transsportation, until I found a hotel. That was a crappy, smelly, dirty place, but who cares, I was happy to find a place to crash for what was left of the night.

The next morning I walked back to the parking lot/bus terminal to get to the actual mount Bromo as I was only in the border town. What a surprise : you have to take a green minibus which is not leaving for another hour and it takes two hours to get to Cemoro Lawang, which, this time, is in walking distance to Bromo. Great ! I only hoped it was worth it and it definitely was. The local minibus ride to Bromo was a story on its own. Same story as the others, clove cigarettes, noisy, smelly, hot, stuffed but on top of that, they must have been doing a competition on how many people can fit in a minibus. It was amazing to see how you were squeezed in between people and things and you would still see about ten people waiting on the side of the road and the bus would stop to collect them. At some point, I could not stop laughing when I was having trouble breathing, we were already 30 in the minibus and 7 more people jump on. yes, they did not really jump in, they were hanging at the window, holding at the open door and on every step of the ladder. It was not a double decker minibus, but it was used as such as about as many people were seating on the roof. That was crazy and a lot of fun. I loved it !

Mount Bromo is over 2,500 metres above sea level while Probolinggo is on the beach, well harbour. The bus was making thunderstorm noises to be able to bring up the 70 people that were hanging onto the bus. I thought we would have to get down to push at some point. The good news was,(yes, there are some good news, or kind of) it was starting to be a bit chilly, natural A/C was well appreciated... until it got cold, very cold. Once in Cemoro Lawang, the people that are normally hassling you to use their "transport" were replaced by gloves, hats and scarves vendors. Well needed. I froze my butt of all night and as usual, still no hot shower, that was very hard.
Apart from that, the landscape is amazing. You feel like you are on a different planet.

The landscape at mount Bromo

Mount Bromo is a volcano still in activity, smoking and surrounded by other volcanos and hills and mountains in a desolated lava empty space. The dust is so thin, it gets everywhere, I ate quite a bit of it. I went for a hike cause that is what you do when you have spent about 20 hours in transportation to come to Bromo. You normally start at 2:30 in the morning in order to view the sunrise from the top. I decided I had seen enough sunrises for now and instead did my hike at 2:30 in the afternoon. This is when I realized that Java was on a different time zone than Bali, not that it made any difference to me, but Java was an hour behind Bali time.

At the hotel, I met up with hundreds of French people but also with an Javanese guy who was from Probolinggo but pretended he was now living in Biarritz in France. As we were speaking english and he speaks very good english, I did not believe him at first. Then we spoke french and he was completely fluent, he mentionned all those places and stated all those names in Biarritz, so that was true, he was living in Biarritz and had been there for the past 11 years ! What a small world ! Before leaving he was a tour guide in Bromo and he was simply on vacation here to visit family and friends. We went on a hike together and I had a fantastic time going to places I would have never been on my own. It was hard though cause it was steep and on dust but good exercise.

The hike movie

We were nearly the only ones on the volcano at that time, I guess because all the others were sleeping, knowing that they had to get up in the middle of the night to see the sunrise with 700 more tourists. I heard some people in the hotel say that they could not even find a spot to watch the sunrise because there were so many people on the volcano !That early in the morning, who would think that ? I was perfectly happy with my private afternoon tour. In the evening, I got invited to a friend of my Indonesian expat. Live music, good food, very nice people, it was excellent !

As I only had a week left on my visa, I had to get going so I took the first minibus back to Probolinggo the next morning in order to catch a means of transportation to get to Surabaya. The main reason I was going there was to cut the long journey to Solo and Yogyakarta as I was not ready for another 17 hours traveling day. My Biarritz tour guide was visiting friends so he came with me and we actually ended up spending a couple of days together and that made my life SO much easier. No need to speak anymore, no need to look for buses or trains or being ripped off, he was doing it all for me ! A real pleasure, I felt like I was on vacation! Traveling with a local that speak javanese and looks javanese makes a huge difference.

After Surabaya, big town with little interest apart from a huge and very modern shopping center. It was nice to go to a movie and see Batman, excellent film and I have to say I was very happy to see the amazing Kirk Originals glasses that Gary Oldman was wearing. Apart from Batman, I saw the first other boleh for a long time. An english guy of course who we kept on bumping into in the next couple of days.

The rice cracker factory

We then took a seven hours train to Solo but with friends chatting, playing anf laughing, it was a different story.

The tofu factory

In Solo, we rented bicycles to tour around the countryside.  We got to see plenty of local places such as the gamelan (music instrument) factory, tofu making, arak making, batik. It was great.  I learnt so much and it was really, really interesting. Those "manufactures" were so old fashioned, everything was handmade, it was fantastic.

My last stop in Indonesia was Yogyakarta, famous city for its temples.

Borobudur's buddha

Indeed, Yogyakarta is surrounded by two little brothers of Angkor wat : Borobudur and Prambanan, both amazing and in a completely different style. Borobudur is a ninth-century Buddhist monument that is decorated with thousands reliefs and hosts 504 buddha satues.  Just the dome at the center of the top platform is surrounded by 72 buddha statues seated inside perforated stupas. 

Prambanan 3

Prambanan is a Hindu temple built in the 9th century as well. Unfortunately, it got destroyed by an earthquake in 2006. Damage was significant. Large pieces of debris, including carvings, were scattered over the ground.Impressive and so unfortunate.