Ubud, Bali

From Ubud

It’s difficult to know where to start when trying to describe Ubud, so I will start at the beginning. We took the ferry from Java to Bali. This, as might be expected, was a rather shabby vessel but the journey was only about 20 minutes (plus another 30 minutes at the other end waiting for a jetty to become free), so no great problem there. We were then met by a car from our hotel and taken on the three hour drive to Ubud. Right from the start, it was as if we were in a different country, which in effect Bali is. The villages we passed though on the way, and the houses they contained, were all much neater and generally more attractive than anything we had encountered in Java. The Hindu temples that are a feature of most Balinese family compounds did much to contribute to the overall picturesque effect.

Bali is largely known as a tourist destination, with a lot of commercial hotel and nightclub development in the resort of Kuta on the southern tip of the island. However, there is another much more laid back side to Bali to be found in the villages in the island’s heartland. Ubud is one such village, located in the middle of Bali amongst the padi fields. It seems that Ubud was ‘discovered’ about thirty years ago by some western travellers who were attracted to its tranquility and the flourishing ethnic culture and art scene that was already established there. Since then Ubud has expended as a tourist destination, with many hotels, spas, and restaurants being built in the intervening years. However, it has managed to retain its charm, and the new additions are interspersed with the original family temples and most importantly, all the buildings along the few main streets that define Ubud back onto working padi fields. Our hotel was a case in point (actually not really a hotel, more a collection of bungalows), with our room overlooking an expanse of padi fields, where we could see the villages going about their business of harvesting rice and tending their flocks of padi ducks. The only sound to be heard at night is the quacking of the ducks before they go to sleep, followed by the croaking of the toads. The end result is probably as near to paradise as one could hope for.

Igen

From Igen

After several hours of travelling though East Java from Mt. Bromo, often over very rough roads, we reached our destination for the next day’s outing: the Igen volcano. We were staying in an old coffee plantation house, which was in the centre of a working coffee plantation, owned and run by the Indonesian government (presumably repossessed from the Dutch after independence). Unfortunately this turned out to be one of the worst hotels I have stayed in on this or indeed any other trip.

We ended the afternoon with a visit to a hot waterfall, heated by the volcano, and bathed in a hot spring. This was possibly the highlight of the evening. From then on things got progressively worse. I was scheduled to participate in a work conference call that evening and settled down in the lounge to receive my call. This was interrupted as a throng of Muslim worshippers filed into a next-door room and proceeded to hold their evening prayer meeting – very loudly. I had to retreat to my room and continue the call standing on a chair so that I could still get a decent cell phone signal. Then it was dinner time, but when we were shown to our table we found that our food had been served about half an hour previously and was now cold. I suspect that it would have been pretty mediocre even when hot. After a beer by the pool (so you want a glass with that?), it was time for an early night in readiness for another 6am wake-up. We did not realise then just how early that would be. Back in the bedroom I found the bed covered in dead bugs, which had to be swept off the damp bedding before I could get into bed. Trying to get to sleep was difficult as the internal and external walls were literally paper thin – made from a single layer of woven palm fronds. I could hear someone snoring (not me for change) at least two rooms away. When a van drew up outside, it sounded like it was parking in the bedroom. I must have gone to sleep at some stage, because the next thing I knew, there was an awful wailing sound coming from just outside the room. Turned out to be the call to morning prayer from the village mosque, AT 4 AM!!! I was just about ready to go and punch someone in the face, when I remembered my noise cancelling headphones. Got these out of my bag, plugged in my iPod, and switched on some soothing music. This successfully blotted out the sound of the wailing worshippers, and I was able to get a bit more sleep before the alarm went at 6am. After a pitiful breakfast, we headed for the Igen crater.

The walk to the top of the crater was about 4.5km. On the way we passed a number of men coming down the track carrying what looked like chunks of yellow foam rubber in baskets slung over their shoulders. On closer inspection we realised that these were in fact large chunks of pure sulphur that they had mined from within the crater. Half way up the mountain we came to a weighing station where the miners have their loads weighed in order to assess the payment they will receive when they reach the bottom. We had the opportunity to try to lift a typical miner’s load. These weigh in at about 75kg, and I can assure you that they are very hard to lift, let alone walk up the rocky slopes of the inside of the crater and then down the track to the foot of the mountain. And they do this run twice a day, wearing flip-flops and chain smoking roll-ups!

At the top of the crater rim the lake was mostly obscured by early morning cloud. However we could see and smell the sulphurous cloud of smoke emerging from the vent at the heart of the crater. The walk down to the floor of the crater was rather steep and treacherous but we got down without mishap, passing several miners toiling up with their heavy loads of sulphur. The sight at the bottom was like something out of a medieval illustration of hell. The sulphur gas from the volcano’s vent was being channelled out of numerous man-made pipes and condensing as a solid yellow deposit. Slabs of this sulphur were being hacked off by the miners and moved to wicker baskets, ready to be carried back up the crater. Every so often, the wind would change direction, and the gas would engulf the miners, so they would have to move rapidly to the other side of the vent to prevent choking. This must rate as one of the worst jobs in the world.

Before we made our way back up the crater, we noticed that the wind had cleared the clouds away and we could get a good view of the extraordinary crater lake. This is a strange turquoise blue colour, due to the high acid content. Apparently it is one of the most acidic lakes in the world. The climb back up was to some extent easier than going down, and we almost ran down the outside of the mountain, arriving at the village café for a well deserved coffee and banana fritters.

All in all, a fantastic experience, making it well worth putting up with the inadequacies of the coffee plantation house of the previous night.

Mt.Bromo

From Mount Bromo

East Java contains many volcanoes, some of them active, and we planned to visit two of them on this trip. Mt Bromo is an active volcano in the Bromo-Tengeru National Park. It is a relatively small mountain located in the Tengeru caldera, formed when the Tengeru volcano exploded several hundred years ago. We were staying in Lava View Lodge, which is a hotel that overlooks the caldera and Mt Bromo. As ever, the best time to view the volcano and surrounding mountains is of course at dawn. In this case, this entailed getting up at 3am and setting off across the caldera in a jeep, followed by a steep ascent up a largely unpaved road, to arrive at the designated hilltop viewing point in time for dawn at 5am. Once our small party arrived at the viewing area, we realised that we were not alone. The viewing spot was effectively a small village with numerous hawker stalls selling food and souvenirs to the hundreds of tourists who had driven in from the surrounding area. Needless to say, the dawn came but Mt Bromo remained resolutely shrouded in cloud the whole time, and we could se nothing. Another few hours sleep needlessly wasted!

So back down to the foot of the volcano, where our horses were waiting to take us (and anyone else willing to pay the asking price of $5 each way) to the foot of the staircase that leads up the side of the volcano. I don’t recall having ridden a horse since I was about six (which remember falling off), but although my assigned nag was several sizes too small, we seemed to get on OK to the extent that the owner allowed me to drive it myself. Once I had worked out where the steering wheel, brakes, and accelerator were, we made good progress up the path to the volcano and got to the steps without mishap. Certainly beats having to walk.

At the top of the steps I got my first view of the inside of an active volcano. No bubbling lava (that last happened in 2004) but lots of sulphurous smoke coming out of the crater. A very impressive sight indeed. After lots of photo opportunities, it as back down the steps, onto the horse, then jeep back to the hotel for breakfast at 7:30 am. The rest of the day was spent driving eastwards towards our destination for the next day’s adventure: the Igen volcano.

Surabaya

From Surabaya

Yesterday we took the train from Yogyakarta to Surabaya. Because we had booked late, we could only get a seat in a 2^nd class carriage, which unlike 1^st class, does not have aircon. Nevertheless, the 5 hour journey was not too bad, and we were impressed by the level of service on Indonesian railways, even in 2^nd class. Good value at $5 per ticket. Their freshly squeezed orange juice was particularly good.

The rest of the day was spent ensconced in our luxury hotel in Surabaya. The city itself has nothing to commend it at all, and any tourists there are generally just passing through. However, the Majapahit Hotel is worth a visit in its own right. It was commissioned by the same person who built the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, and it shares many of the features of that establishment, with ornate garden courtyards and arched walkways. Opulent bedrooms rooms (with UK mains plugs!), cocktails in the lounge bar, and a fantastic meal in their Chinese restaurant made this an excellent place to unwind. We wished that we did not have to leave the next day.

Borobudur

From Borobudur

The temple at Borobodur is supposedly Indonesia's top tourist destination, with some justification I would say, based on our experience today. It is a Buddhist temple, built circa 800AD, on a massive scale. It has some passing resemblance with the features found at Ankor Wat, but is really totally unique.

We got up at dawn to see the temple at its best, without the crowds of tourists that crawl all over it later in the day. (For some reason, many of the 'must see' sights on this holiday require dawn viewing. Not something that I am particularity keen on as it leaves me feeling totally zonked for the rest of the day). Although there is no spectacular lighting effect from the dawn sun, the overall atmosphere was amazing, with a layer of mist lying over the surrounding jungle, and volcanic mountains jutting out on the horizon (see pictures). It is virtually impossible to capture the scale and extent of the temple with a camera. You have to experience it first hand.

We spent some time looking at the thousands of bas relief carvings that cover the walls of the 7 terraces that constitute the temple. It would take a good guide to explain all the stories behind these, but we made do with just taking in the overall feel of the place.

After a two hour dawn viewing, we had a breakfast break (and a short nap in my case) before returning for a second viewing session. The hotel we were staying at is actually in the temple grounds, with admission included in the price, so it was very convenient to come and go whenever we wanted.

At midday we headed back to our hotel in Yogyakarta for a lazy afternoon by the pool, in readiness for the train journey to Surabaya the next day.

Yogyakarta and Prambanan

From Prambanan

Today started with a visit to the Kraton Palace, which is the current residence of the Sultan of Yogyakarta. The palace complex covers a large area of several square kilometers, but only a small part is currently open to the public. This, together with the fact that the daily dance performance was suspended over the New Year period, meant that there was not much to see. The parts of the palace that we were able to view were rather tatty and the whole thing was generally unimpressive. Time then to head off to Prambanan to see the Hindu temple.

This turned out to be a well thought out site, with an attractive park surrounding the ancient temples. The main temple was reminiscent of some of the temples in Ayudthia, but with a Hindu rather than Buddhist slant. Much of the site was still in ruins, but the central temples had been rebuilt and were an impressive sight. Yogyakarta suffered a major earthquake as recently as 2006, which caused extensive damage to many of the structures at Prambanan. Although much work has already been done since then to restabilise the buildings, some of the area was still closed to the public. The museum showed what the area had looked like back in the late 1800's before the Dutch started on their reconstruction efforts. Much of it was just a series of piles of rubble. The task of rebuilding each stupa must have been like working on a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle, with no accurate idea of what the end result should look like. An amazing achievement.

In the afternoon our driver took us on the 90 minute trip over to Borobudur, where we would be staying the night, in readiness for viewing that temple in the morning.

Yogyakarta

From Yogyakarta

If you have been following this blog closely, you may recall that our next destination after diving in Bunaken was going to be Bali. However, after making all the arrangements to fly to Bali and then return to KL from Yogyakarta, we decided to change everything around, so that the new plan was to fly from Manado to Yogyakarta, then work our way eastwards though Java, finally ending up in Bali. This was all very last minute, to the extent that we did not purchase the air tickets for the final leg of the journey until we actually arrived in Manado airport. The end result was a whole day of travelling, starting off with a boat trip from Bunaken to Manado, then three flight sectors, taking us form Manado to Makassar, then Denpasar (Bali) and finally ending up in Yogyakarta in the evening. We had to travel with Garuda, who turned out to be a very efficient and friendly airline, in spite of their dubious safety record (their planes fall out of the sky with alarming regularity). Indonesian airports also surprised us by how up to date they were. Because of the last minute rearrangement, we had not booked anywhere to stay in Yogyakarta, and had to spend ages with an agent at the airport, trying to find somewhere that had rooms at one of the peak holiday times in the year.

For our first day in Yogyakarta, we decided to go on a self-guided walking tour around the city centre. From the railway station, we headed down the main shopping road, which is full of stalls selling batik clothing and other touristy stuff. Interestingly, we were just about the only westerners there. Most of the Saturday shoppers appeared to be locals. Spent some time walking around the massive wholesale market, selling everything from cloths, handcrafts, fruit and vegetables, and most spectacularly of all, a massive array of spices. By the time we got to the Kraton Palace, we were too late to get in, so instead we found a guide to take us around the Water Palace, which used to be the Sultan’s main home.

In the evening we went to a performance by the Ramayana Ballet in an open air arena. The ballet was accompanied by a Javanese gamelan orchestra and singers, and depicted an ancient Hindu story.