East Java Tour

Planning

The plan was to go Bangkok this year but for obvious safety reasons, the plan was called off. I wish Thaksin is still around. After debating plans for a couple of months, Jia Lun came up with a new plan in March to visit Mount Bromo in Indonesia, which is situated in East Java. As he is familiar with the language and cultural aspect of the trip, I thought that it is a good chance to visit our neighboring largest Muslim Republic in the world.

Jia Lun came up with a draft plan one fine Monday afternoon while we were having sandwiches at Subway Harbourfront. The idea is to visit Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city and Mount Bromo, a active volcano. Being guys, it didn't take long to decide. We started making bookings immediately after lunch.

Thursday, 19 June 2007

First Night

We took a cab to Golden Mile Complex at 11pm to catch Sri Maju 利南 express coach at 11.30pm to Kuala Lumpur. The bus took us to Kuala Lumpur with a stopover at Johor via the north-south express way. The journey pretty much sucked as the overweight man sitting behind me didn't allow my seat to be declined fully into a bed. Either I crushed his fat legs or I don't get a good sleep. So I chose love and peace, and suck my thumb instead. The stopover at Johor had the words "tourist trap" written all over it. But it didn't stop me from grabbing a Ramly burger which helped to put me to sleep during the bus journey. I do sleep better with a full stomach, on the contrary to popular beliefs to the opposite.

Friday , 20 June 2007

Day break

We reached Kuala Lumpur at 5am, with the coach driver repeating "KL KL !" in a loud voice to wake us up from our slumber and out of the bus. While the rest of the city was still asleep, the taxi touts outside the Pudu Raya bus depot weren't. They tried to secure their customers as soon as we stepped off the bus. We declined their "offers" and went to a Indian coffee shop nearby for Teh-Tarik. It was far too early, so we went the nearest cybercafe to kill time as our flight was delayed by 2 hours (from 9am to 11am). While checking my equipment, i realised that one of my camera battery was defective. It couldn't be charged. That meant that I have to conserve battery power for that point onwards.

We took the LRT from Pudu station to KL Sentral station to get on the shuttle bus service to Kuala Lumpur Low Cost Carrier Terminal. KL Sentral is a interesting place. It has rail service to Singapore, KLIA and bus services to various destination.

We went for a MacDonalds big breakfast to kill our hunger before continuing the journey to KL LCCT. The coach that we took was way more comfortable than the express coach earlier.

Budget flying

This was my first time to a budget terminal. According to Jia Lun, the KL LCCT is better than the Changi budget terminal in terms of design and facilities.

Almost all the flights were dominated by Air Asia. Being a budget terminal has it's difference. As soon as our luggages were checked in at the counter, our luggages went straight out of the building after traveling 5 meters on the conveyor belt.

Air Asia do not have pre-determined seats for its flights, so we had to wait near the gates before boarding. As soon as the announcement to start boarding was made, everyone rushed forward to form 2 lines to the gates. In order to get a better seat, you have to be in front of the queue. Despite trying to do that, we got somewhere in the middle of the queue in the end.

Our flight was on a brand new Airbus A320-200, and I managed to get a window seat, albeit with the right wing included. I tried their Pak Nasser's Nasi Lemak. Not bad but the serving is so small. The rendang chicken started making that nice warm feeling in my stomach as i spent the 2 hours and 30 minutes flight watching the clouds as they rolled by. It sounds boring and not so me, but i did enjoy watching the clouds until we landed.

Surabaya

East Java (GMT+7) is 1 hour behind Singapore time (GMT+8).

Our landing approach to Juanda International Airport took us from the north of East Java, from the Madusa Straits, towards the city and finally to the south of the city.

None of the horror Indonesia custom stories unfolded as we went through the customs. The stories of greedy and corrupted immigration officers who seek coffee money were nowhere in sight. That's a good sign. Either that they had cleaned up their act or we got lucky. What was in stored for us in the later part of the day was so much different.

Stop complaining at our transport operators !

We took a taxi to Bunurasih bus terminal in Surabaya city and things started to get interesting from there. The bus terminal requires a entrance fee of 500 rupiah (SGD $0.085) and the toilet in bad shape 1000 rupiah (SGD $0.17). A flood of touts greeted us as soon as we stepped into the terminal. We had to fight our way through a river of touts before we found a bus going to Probolinggo, a city 90km from Surabaya.

Unlike our familiar ezylink cards, and SBS-transit air-con buses, things are much less advance there. The buses are actually air-con coaches which does not start moving till the operators deemed that there are enough passengers for the trip. While waiting for the coach to start moving, many street vendors streamed into the coach to sell their wares.

"Tau hu Tau hu Tau hu Tau hu !!" - Fried bean curd vendors favorite tag line.

The street vendors sold things differently there. There are more aggressive to push through a sale. They will drop their merchandise on your lap and hope that you that you will be entice into making a purchase. After a couple of minutes, they will return to collect their unsold merchandise and go for the next round on another coach. For 1000 rupiah onwards, you can get stuff ranging from fried bean curd, fried peanuts, mineral water, pens, to newspapers. I also saw some Indonesia Idol wannabes who came in solo or in a band to busker and a man who according to my translator, works in a mosque seeking for donations.

It strike me on how far they will go to make a sale for 1000 rupiah (SGD $0.17) to 2000 rupiah. These guys are really broke. Fearing for our safety, I did not snap any photos nor took our my phone. I figured that it is not wise to show off too many high value items that have simply too many zeros in value. (approx 10,000,000 rupiah in value)

It wasn't long before a old man tried to light up on my right. Fortunately, the bus conductor told him to cut it out before it could trigger a migraine attack. Oh ya, we had to buy our tickets from a bus conductor. The stuffy 90km journey stretched for almost 3 hours before we found ourselves at Probolinggo.

Dishonest bastards

The coach dropped us off outside the Probolinggo bus terminal. Again, we paid the entrance fee of 500 rupiah (SGD $0.085) to get in. The security guy started to become overly-friendly. He started to try to guide us around the bus terminal. Tired of touts, and in this time, seemingly in the form of a security guy who had nothing better to do, we initially ignored him. As we looked around the bus terminal, we couldn't find a bus to Mount Bromo. Jia Lun decided to give the security guy a try and he led us to a corner of the bus terminal where a few passenger vans were parked.

A sign on top of a spot reads : Bromo. Bingo ! That's the one we were looking for. Jia Lun had spoke to the driver going to Mount Bromo and broke some bad news. Similar to the coach that we took earlier, they would want to want for a sufficient passenger load before moving off, and a passenger van had just left for Mount Bromo. They were asking for 200,000 rupiah to move off immediately for the two of us. This is obviously a rip off, but i agreed to it since we didn't have much of a choice as we were running late and I didn't want to fight over SGD$17 (each) and risk ruining everything else.

The supposedly 1 hour journey stretched to almost 2 hours due to rain. Upon reaching the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park gate post, we were told to pay another 25,000 rupiah each as the entrance fee as written on the sign board. We handed over the cash to our drivers, who started talking to the men manning the post and soon, drove us to our destination : Lava View Lodge.

We got ourselves checked into the nice looking Lava View Lodge and had dinner at the restuarant.

We went out for a walk around the area after dinner to aid digestion. While having dinner earlier, we realised that the passenger van driver didn't pass us any tickets for the national park despited that we had paid for it. We made our way to the national park gate post, suffered mild attitude sickness, and found the inconvenient truth. We had been had. The bastards took the money and ran. Being honest bastards, we decided to buy ourselves tickets again. Ouch.

Nightfall

We tried to go on a trail to the right of our lodges. We bought the knitted caps from 2 boys who were selling their wares along the main road because it was getting really cold. But shortly after starting, we became discouraged by the thickening fog. Our torches couldn't really help much with a 3 meters range. As the gradient of the ground increased, we decided to retreat to the comfort of our room as we couldn't see where we were going.

So we went back to our room without seeing Mount Bromo since reaching the area. It was suppose to be nearby, but the heavy fog was a real killer.

I was thinking of having a nice cool view at the stars filled night (my imagination before coming) but that was written off because of the fog.

The marble floor in our room was stone cold and water was condensing on it. The temperature probably fell below 20 degrees. Many people couldn't believe that Indonesia, being closer to the equator, can be so cold. It's more than 2km above sea level there, and surely colder than Genting Highlands.

Things didn't turned out well either when we tried to take a bath. The heater is gas powered. Simply turning on the heater and tap didn't work. Turning the tap to much or too little will cause the flames which could be seen through a little window on the heater, to die off. If we turn up the heat too much or turn on the heater for too long, it would overheat and die off too. The heater was also leaking gas and we could smell gas in the air. We figured that using a pail to get our desired warm water was a better choice than to kept playing with the controls. That's because as we fought with the controls, the water on our body will turn cold rapidly and freeze us.

We went to sleep early as we had to wake up early for the trip to Mount Bromo (3am local time) for the sun rise.

Saturday, 21 June 2007

Mount Bromo

We woke up and got ready to make the trip to Mount Bromo at 4am to catch the sun rise. We had the option to either take the jeep or the horse to the foot of Mount Bromo.

I opted for the horse ride since I didn't had a chance to do that in Singapore. The fog was still very thick as we walked to towards the restaurant to get try to get our horses. Before we knew it, 2 local Tenggerese men came out of the fog seemingly from nowhere with 2 horses to offer us their services. For 50,000 rupiah (SGD$8.50) each, we got ourselves a puru (horse) and a guide each. We didn't bargain any further as we were told the night before that the puru could cost 50,000 rupiah to 100,000 rupiah depending on how much we looked like 菜头。Either these guys were honest or we looked damn broke. Ok, I take it the honest guys explanation.

My first attempt to mount the horse ended in a total disaster. I pulled myself too fast up the horse from the left and fell off to the right. Nothing was broken, so I dusted off and made a second successful attempt to mount the horse.

The guides, armed with torch lights, begun the trip by leading our horses down a slope which we could not really see ahead for more than 3 meters. It wasn't long when Jia Lun started to regret not taking the jeep option. As the horses missed a couple of steps on the uneven rocky downslope road, I found out by trial and error that the correct way to balance myself on the beast of burden was to use the foot rests rather than the hand grip. By the time we reached a flat plateau, the hand grip was almost unnecessary. I was enjoying myself pretty much here. In the pitch dark night, we ride up what seems to be a hill after a long track. When I looked up into the heavens, a beautiful starry sky greeted me.

We were asked to dismount and climb a long flight of crumbling stairs. The stairs is made of concrete, but many sections were damaged and parts of the hand rail were missing. It wasn't tiring but exhausting due to the low level of oxygen in the air. At the end of the 232 steps, we found ourselves at the rim of the volcanic crater. I am so glad that I no longer have a fear of heights for the sense of vertigo would have surely overcame me. Ok, since I have tackled the flight of stairs successfully, it seems like I am ready to take on the Great Wall soon.

The sunrise was boring. The low hanging clouds ruined it all. I waited for better lighting before snapping more photos. Mount Batok is just next to Mount Bromo. In direct contrast to Mount Bromo's rocky look and pouring smoke, Mount Batok is a dominant volcano with lush vegetation growing all over. Jia Lun went ahead took a long walk around the crater. As i was worried about the effects of the sulfurous smoke on my skin, I decided not to follow him as half the journey was covered in thick smoke. It wasn't long before I started to hate the volcanic smoke whenever it blew towards me. The smoke reminded me of rotten eggs. Whenever I blinked my eyes, the smoke mixed with my tears to form sulfuric acid which irritates my eyes.

At 6am, many more tourist started to join us at the crater rim. Enterprising locals sold drinks, and food eagerly on the long staircase and the crater rim. That makes me felt so dumb for bring my bottled water along with me.

By the way, there isn't much safety features in place at the crater rim. Near the staircase to the base of the mountain, we had around 1 to 3 meters of space to walk before we fall off : into the volcano crater or back down the base of the mountain. There was only a short section with a badly corroded hand rail which didn't seem to be able to take much weight. A few Ang Mo were seen testing their luck by resting their bodies fully on the rail. I was half expecting the rail to give way, sending the goons into the volcanic crater but thankfully, I was so wrong.

It was another 1/2 hour later before Jia Lun completed his trek. He was worn out and swearing that he would never take the dangerous trek again. At hind sight, it's a dangerous trek to make. Several parts of the trek does not even have a walking path. He had to move on his hands and legs at several points. As it was getting warmer, we decided to make our way back.

Our Tenggerese guides and the horses were waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. As we made our way back on the purus, I realised that in the darkness, we had actually traveled through a sandy volcanic caldera ! The view was simply stunning. There is a temple near the base of Mount Bromo but we decided to give it a miss.

After getting breakfast from Lava View Lodge (hey! we didn't see any lava !?), we took the track that we abandoned last night to get a better view of the volcano mountains and the caldera. The dirt track was littered with horse dung. It dawned on me that animals usually just do their big business as they take a stroll. I seen rhinos and elephants do that in the Singapore zoo, so horses aren't any different. We reached a lookout hut after 15 minutes. It has the best view of the national park so far. We got the constantly erupting Mount Seremu to the left, Mount Bromo at the center with it's sulfuric smoke rising all the time and Mount Batok to the right. The caldera could be seen nicely in the photos I took from there. The excellent view there summarised and justified the entire trip !

In the afternoon, we took a walk around the town area, which is down the road towards the base of the mountain we were on. The majority of the people living in the area are cabbage farmers. We gave up walking after 2 hours and caught a passenger van traveling upwards, towards Lava View Lodge. If you plan on visiting Mount Bromo, make sure that you come in the early morning. As in the afternoon till the next morning, the entire area will be blanketed by thick fog. The clueless tourists who came in the afternoon were greeted with thick fog.

Sunday to Tuesday, 22-24 June 2007

Surabaya City

We went back to the lookout point in the morning for a last look at the area. We took a passenger van which we shared this time, down the mountain, back to Probolinggo bus terminal, took a bus to Surabaya bus terminal and finally a taxi to our hotel.

On the bus journey to the Surabaya bus terminal, we saw the Sidoarjo mud flow, aka the mud volcano. For those who didn't know, on May 28 2006, a gas drilling operation went terribly wrong and mud instead of gas flowed out of the earth. The mud went on to flow and cover the immediate area which is only 14km away from Surabaya city.

For those people who complains about Singapore's public transportation system, please do yourself a favour and shut the hell up. It's cheap, safe, comfortable, clean and efficient. My experience with the Indonesian public transport tells me that.

I also observed that they are very few traffic lights in the city. I saw more traffic lights along Ang Mo Kio avenue 8 than in Surabaya city ! The traffic isn't as regulated as Singapore. There isn't any lane markers, jaywalkers everywhere, and everything was based on unspoken codes of conduct.

The hotel we stayed in wasn't too great. The lift is old and badly maintained. It could stop 15cm below or above the intended floor ! The air-conditioning was also very weak. At least the hotel provided cable TV. Discovery channel and national geographic helped to fill in the gaps in our time table.

We got a late lunch at Texas fried chicken at a shopping mall near our hotel. As it was getting late, we didn't explore much. We went for a tour at the nearby submarine museum and our dinner at another shopping mall with a Carrefour hypermart, in which we spent the rest of the Sunday night. We didn't try the street food as they looked unhygienic and unappetising. We didn't want to risk getting stomach problems so we went for the food court instead.

On Monday, we went to the Chinatown area. The Chinatown area is strangely devoid of Chinese. I was speculating that many of them have flee when Suharto stepped down. Nothing much to see there so we tried to find our way to the museum instead. We gave up walking after a while and took a ride on the trishaw but to our disappointment, it was closed.

We spent the rest of the day at a upmarket shopping mall, the best they have to offer there. The upmarket shopping mall is very similar to Singapore's shopping mall. The prices are the same, the goods and services mirrors us, and the food is relatively cheaper. To my surprise, I found a free hotspot, so I eagerly pull out my PDA and started MSNing home. Their video arcade is relatively cheap, 10,000 ($1.70) rupiah per hour ! We had a buffet dinner and caught The Reaping at the movies before going back to the hotel for the night.

The extend of the poor-rich gap is staggering in Indonesia. I saw folks trying to make a living off 1000 rupiah sales and in the next moment, a upmarket shopping mall with free internet access. Many of the rich are Chinese, which makes it hard to wonder why they detest the chinese so much over there.

On Tuesday, we went to Giant in the morning and bought some edible "souvenirs" back home. We took our flight back to Singapore in the late afternoon which was on a Valuair Airbus A320-200 which completed the trip 20 minutes earlier than the first flight at 2 hours 10 minutes. Maybe Singapore planes are more kan chiong and hence faster. The free fried mee hoon provided wasn't great, but well, at least I didn't have to pay for it compared to the Air Asia flight. We went duty free shopping after landing and went straight home after that.

I dropped my stuff immediately when I reached home and went straight to Thomson hospital with my passport still in my pocket to see Helen and Arial Avrielle. In the morning, Helen had gave birth to Arial Avrielle and announced it via SMS.

That rounds up the trip. I would say the Mount Bromo part of the holiday was more enjoyable than the Surabaya city part, so if you plan on going for it, please allocate more time for that !