Travel Journal

The busride on the public, non-airconditioned bus to Bandung, Indonesia’s third city in the west of Java, didn’t go very smoothly. We left Yogya around 9 am, and during midday, we passed a small village with signs for Benteng (fort) Van Der Wijck, one of the Dutch legacies in the area. One of my fellow passengers told me that the road we were now traveling on had been built by the Dutch, including the nearby railway lines and the many bridges we drove over.

Then, during the hottest moment of the day, we got stuck in an enormous traffic jam, on a tiny road in the middle of nowhere. Some vendors, from the sparse houses we passed, were running outside, selling water, food, or coconut milk. People in groups stood watching this busy traffic that was whizzing past at 1 km/hr, while it was getting hotter and hotter inside the bus. As my clothes were now drenched in sweat, I was a tiny bit relieved to see that my fellow Indonesian passengers were also having lots of trouble staying cool. After almost two hours, we finally cleared the traffic jam, but not before I had witnessed (and smelled) the beginning signs of a burned-out clutch, and I said to myself that I wouldn’t be putting any money on this bus reaching its destination. I didn’t realise how foreseeing this thought was, as after about fifteen minutes, the bus actually broke down, and the driver parked it in front of a house in the middle of nowhere, letting all the 50 passengers off. There was nothing we could do but wait, while some passengers were arguing with the driver, and the person selling the tickets was trying to halt other buses, to no avail.

After five hours, during which some passengers had been able to get onto other (already full) buses, I got on a mini-van that had been called in from a nearby town, together with 16 other passengers and luggage seemingly for 100 people. We left the rest of the passengers behind, as the chauffeur quickly drove off into the dark night, heading for the town of Tasik, where I would need to change onto a night bus to Bandung. As we went over winding mountain roads, people around me started throwing up, but I was too tired to care much about that, and we reached Tasik by midnight. I had a very late dinner, before continuing my journey to Bandung, during which I fell asleep.

It was around 2:30 am when the bus conductor woke me up, and I got out into the cool night, onto the deserted ring road around Bandung. I boarded an angkot, or kind of fixed-route taxi, which took me on a one hour ride into the city center, during which we passed many busy markets, where lots of people were selling and buying fruit, vegetables, meat and fish. Feeling dirty, exhausted, and a little ill because of a cold that I had caught underway, I got off in the city center and started to look for a hotel. That proved to be difficult, as most were booked solid because of the Idul Fitri holiday. It was light by the time I had found one, in that dreamy, half-awake state that, in retrospection, makes you wonder if it all really happened.

From what I heard, Bandung is a pleasant and relaxed university-city, quite cool as it is higher up than most other big cities. Unfortunately, the rain season had announced itself with unprecedented strength, flooding parts of Bandung. Combined with feeling ill from my cold, I decided to take it easy, and therefor didn’t get to see a lot of the city. One day, there was an uncharachteristically strong police presence in the city, but dressed in the unusual green, old army fatigues. I went up to some officers, who explained to me that they were “cleaning up” the city. Naturally, I asked if that involved some large action to apprehend lots of, say, pickpockets, but instead the officers made a gesture as if sweeping with a broom. They meant literally cleaning up the city and removing the rubbish (and good luck at that, boys).

At one of Bandung’s train stations, I bought a train ticket for Jakarta. They have three different classes of train travel here: the ekonomi class, which usually departs from different stations on seperate, slower trains, and then bisnis and the more luxurious eksekutif classes. A relaxed, three hour ride in the bisnis class of the Parahyangan train brought me from Bandung to Jakarta. More gorgeous landscapes underway, Java has some beautiful scenery with its green hills and valleys.

Jakarta, once named Batavia by the Dutch, is Indonesia’s capital, a huge, busy, polluted city that never sleeps, hated by most and loved by some. I’ve spent some time walking huge distances in a tiny part of the city center, gazing at the almost socialist-style (and mostly tasteless) monuments and buildings. As I was walking one evening, a slight drizzle started, which soon changed into heavy rain, and then into a tropical rainstorm, lightning illuminating everyone and everything in a fraction of a second. It was almost immediately followed by the sound of thunder, resonating off the adjacent buildings, a little like the crashing of waves but then amplified a thousand times. The bolts of lightning would follow eachother every five seconds or so, sometimes succeeding the previous one so quickly, that the roaring sounds of thunder would merge into one, big thunderous explosion. The glass in the windows would shake, car alarms went off, while the enormous downpour of rain continued. People huddled together to find shelter at bus stops or under extended roofs of buildings, while the streets were being turned into rivers. This violent display lasted for about one hour, after which the lightning and thunder stopped as suddenly as they had started, and the rains changed back into a drizzle, then to stop completely, an hour or two after they had started.

Born on the countryside, I have always been fascinated by big cities, and more about my explorations of Jakarta will follow.

During the Idul Fitri holiday, when almost everybody in Indonesia has the week off and uses it to visit family and friends, or just go on a holiday, prices for transportation and accommodation skyrocketed (tip: not a good time to visit a country with an Islamic majority). It is a little weird when everyone says to friends, and companies use the sentence as a slogan on banners in front of their office: “Mohon Maaf Lahir Dan Batin", which means so much as “Please forgive me for all my mistakes", but then the prices are still raised.

For tourists, of course, the prices can be even higher. A ‘helpful’ tourist office wanted to sell me a bus ticket to Yogyakarta, my next destination after visiting the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, for around 20 Euros, but instead I got on a public bus, exhausted and in dire need of a good sleep, and paid as little as 3 Euros for the 8-hour journey, or the equivalent of a 30-minute busride in Holland. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my un-Indonesian long legs into account. There was so little space between my chair and the one in front of me, that despite my attempts to find a suitable position, sleeping was just impossible. The express bus stopped a couple of times to let more passengers on until it was full, and then went with reckless speed towards Yogyakarta, overtaking traffic left and right. There were several near-accidents, as the cost of a human life seemed to go down the further the bus was behind schedule. But we eventually arrived at Yogyakarta’s brand new bus terminal in the middle of the night, and I waited until early morning so I could take a bus into the center of the city, to find accommodation. Awake for 27 hours, exhausted beyond belief, sweaty and smelly, I checked into a fine wisma (guesthouse), had a shower, and the moment my head hit the pillow, I was asleep.

Yogyakarta is a nice city, it reminded me of Vietnam’s Hue in the way it has an enclosed imperial palace, called the Kraton, where currently the 10th in a succession of kings (called sultan) is presiding as governor of the greater Yogyakarta area. The sultans, and the city itself with its esteemed education of state leaders (including Soekarno) and other politicians, were instrumental in the support for revolusi, or the overthrow of Dutch rule after the second world war, and reformasi, or the change into a democratic government after Suharto’s dictatorial regime. I toured the Kraton palace area, the renovation of which had been sponsored by Dutch Queen Wilhelmina in the late twenties of the previous century, and went for long walks in the area around it, which seems to be a city within a city. A bird market with thousands of doves, singing birds, chickens and even flying foxes, is adjacent to the Taman Sari, the Water Palace, which the sultans and their families once used as their private swimming pools.

On my second day in Yogyakarta, I visited the famous Borobodur temple, a huge complex 70 kilometers northwest from the city, built in the 9th century AD. It consists of six square levels, with three circular ones on top, reached by stairs on each of the four sides. On every level, many Buddha statues in little chambers, elaborate murals and small chedis. The circular levels have the famous latticed stupas with Buddha statues in them, some incomplete, missing heads or hands, some complete, in a peaceful pose as if in deep meditation. I sat down to gaze at the stunning site and its surroundings of rugged green mountain ridges with so many palm trees. One Indonesian man came up to me, asking if he could take my picture. I thought I didn’t understand him quite well (you want to take a picture of me?), but then his friend sat down next to me, and he took a picture of his friend and me, and then the friend took another picture. Apparently emboldened by the first man, many, many others followed, including whole families with wife and daughters all wearing the muslim headscarf, sitting around me, to be on the photo with this white man. After about fifteen photos, I cracked a joke to the crowd that was now gathered around me, about photos costing lima puluh ribu rupiah, or 50,000 rupiah, and they all had a good laugh, before continuing to ask for more pictures. When I got tired of it, after about 25 photos, feeling a little too much like Tom Cruise, I got up and walked around again.

In the late afternoon on the following day, I visited the Prambanan temple complex, 50 kilometers east of Yogyakarta, the biggest Hindu temple complex on Java, also built in the 9th century AD. Instead of one big temple like Borobodur, this complex consists of several seperate ones, the largest of which stands 47 meters tall. All are elaborately decorated with murals displaying the Ramayana, stories from the Hindu religion. The temples had dark rooms, with statues of Shiva, Durga, Ganesh and Agastya, and one had a statue of the bull Nandi, affectionately touched by many Indonesians. Around the temples, the whole area is littered with thousands of fragments of other temples, now overgrown with grass. I sat down on one of the blocks of stone, and watched the sunset bathe the temples in a dark red colour.

The next day would see me driving around on a rented motorbike, feeling wonderful again to be so free, going through the beautiful countryside, stopping at little villages for food and drinks, talking to the locals (the usual topics being languages, countries, cultures and the prices of common goods). I went on a shopping spree in Kota Gede, famous for its many silver shops, and selfishly bought two presents for myself (two silver hangers with necklaces). I carefully went through Yogya’s busy traffic, exploring the modern part of the city in the north, before going back to the city center, slowly going through the tiny streets around the Kraton, stopping for some food and a coffee at a warung. It was my last evening in Yogyakarta, and I said goodbye to this nice and friendly city.

On the following day, attempting to travel to Bandung, I would have another not-so-smooth experience with public transportation, but more about that in my next post.

The flight to Surabaya took only 45 minutes, during which I had a look at a novelty for me: an invocation card in the seat pocket in front of me, asking the Gods of 5 religions in 3 languages for a safe journey. Interestingly, the Buddhist one was the shortest, one sentence basically blessing everyone and everything.

Surabaya is a big, hot and humid city, with round the clock traffic jams and its accompanying pollution. It is semi-modern in the way that it has its share of luxurious hotels with tight security and gigantic shopping malls with western prices. In between, little alleys with shabby houses, people washing themselves in the dirty water of the rivers next to heaps of rubbish, lots of homeless people asking for money.

During dinner on my first evening, I met some locals, including charming Wayan, who was born on Bali, but now runs his construction company in Surabaya, his girlfriend Tammy who is studying economics, and his employees Herman and Sugen, all a little younger than me. Their hospitality and friendliness was immense, considering me a guest in their city. They drove me around in the huge city that clearly isn’t designed for walking, and made sure, despite my attempts, that I didn’t pay for any of the drinks or food we enjoyed. Wayan’s command of English was very good, but Sugen and Herman didn’t speak any, so they taught me a little Javanese (Bahasa Jawa, pronounced Bohoso Jowoh), which like Balinese consists of 3 social levels, depending on the person you’re addressing. After several evenings enjoying their hospitality, comparing information on both our countries, playing pool and listening to music, there came the inevitable moment of saying goodbye, always a little difficult.

The following morning, I took a public bus towards Surabaya’s main bus terminal in the south of the city. Heads turning when I got on the bus, people smiling and even offering their seat for this strange white man. Buskers would get on, alone or in pairs, playing their guitars and singing Indonesian songs, and then going round with a small plastic bag, asking for a donation. Usually, when one busker got off, another would immediately get on, so during the hour long busride we were constantly provided with music. At times, a very young boy or girl would get on, singing a song with a beautiful voice, making the beat with a wooden stick with several flattened caps of bottles pinned to it. Many vendors got on, throwing little things in your lap, like pens, bags with safety pins, or even little books with law amendments and photos of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s new cabinet members. After a while, they would collect their goods again, or the money from those who had decided to buy it.

I changed buses several times, always the only tourist on board. I stayed the night in the city of Malang, before heading further east towards the tiny village of Cemorolawang, high up in the mountains, at a stone’s throw of the entrance to the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, the reason why I visited this area. It was quite cool, almost chilly, the locals wearing thick jumpers and blankets wrapped around them, some wearing hoods, only revealing their eyes.

The following morning, it was the first day of Idul Fitri, I got up at the ungodly hour of 3:30 am, after hitting the snooze button several times, to do what I had set out to: climb Mount Bromo. I dressed in the warmest of clothes I had, a daypack with essential items on my back, and I stepped out of my very basic room into a dark night with the brightest of stars and planets above me. At the entrance of the park, a mere 100 meters from my hostel, locals had gathered, offering me rides on their ponies, which I declined by saying “Mlaku mlaku!", which means so much as “Walking!". I went down the steep descending road to the enormous valley of solidified lava and volcanic sand, now nothing more than complete darkness, the surrounding mountains outlined by the stars. Very faintly, I could see the white poles marking the “road", ending abruptly in a dry bed where once pyroclastic flows must have gone through. Closer to Mount Bromo, the terrain ascended and became much more rugged, and I had to pause a couple of times, hearing nothing but the howling of the icy cold wind and my own gasps for breath in the thin mountain air. When I got to the base of Mount Bromo, an active volcano flanked by the now dormant Mount Batok and Mount Kursi, the sky had already turned a vague red, as I walked up the long staircase leading to the top of the volcano. The smell of sulphur was now very strong, and when I reached the top, I could see the sulphurous steam evaporating from the cracks in the dark surface of the crater, some 200 meters down. Standing there, 2400 meters above sea level, shivering in the wind, I watched the sky become bright red, and the surreal landscape all around me slowly changed colour. When the sun finally appeared from behind the mountain range in the distance, it immersed the top of the mountain peaks in a bright yellow light, and I gazed at the enormous valley that resembled a moon landscape. Mount Bromo hissed a little, sometimes releasing more steam, sometimes quieting down.

Back down at the base of the crater, the grey ridges of the volcano were now clearly visible, devoid of all plant life, volcanic rocks scattered everywhere. A husband and wife had set up a table with drinks and food at the beginning of the staircase. They were Hindu, their skin dark and wrinkled, and they spoke Bahasa Tenger, which is very similar to Bahasa Jawa. While I waited for the water to boil, so I could finally warm myself to a hot cup of Javanese coffee, they told me that they had witnessed the last eruption on June 4, 2004, when all the locals had to be evacuated to the city of Malang.

When I had finished my coffee, I walked further down towards the black, desert-like valley, to find a Hindu temple, a serene yet out-of-place structure in such a surreal landscape. Flanked by the green Mount Batok, it has no roof, just consists of a walled compound with statues and gates, looking out over the valley and its surrounding mountains. When I got to the inner square, a Hindu prayer had just commenced with 30 people attending, in front of a pillar with a boma face, in the background the massive Mount Bromo.

I walked up to Cemorolawang again, pausing several times to catch my breath and to look back at the landscape. It was around 7:30 am when I got back to my hostel, and had a well-deserved breakfast. As I had decided to leave for Yogyakarta that evening, there was one more thing I still needed to do: climb Mount Pananjakan, and get to the viewpoint at 2700 meters, to get the best view of the whole area.

After regaining my strength at the hostel for about an hour, I started to walk again, through the village, past people working on the fertile land. Of course no rice fields here, but acres with sweet potatoes, spring onions and even corn. Many locals greeting me with friendly smiles, wrapped up women with wrapped up babies in blankets slung around their shoulders, men on ponies passing me. After half an hour, the asphalt road ended, and a small ascending path continued, providing me with a very arduous climb that took more than two hours and led me through the mist of clouds. The views just kept on getting better and better during my very frequent breaks, and when I finally got to the top of the mountain, the viewpoint offered me an amazing view of this incredible landscape. The small village on my left, with roads where I had walked on two hours ago now being tiny lines intersecting the small patches of farm land, and to the right, deep down, the massive black valley with its three volcanoes and the Hindu temple. Far in the background was Mount Semeru, with 3676 meters the highest volcano of Java, emitting puffs of dark smoke.

Of course, the way back down went much quicker, but I was quite exhausted when I got back to the hostel, and over coffee and lots of water, I pondered on how powerful mother nature can be and how insignificant we humans really are.

I had now been awake for 11 hours, done more than six hours of arduous walks and naturally was quite tired, but little did I realise that I would spend another 16 hours awake. But more about that in my next post.

Upon arrival in Lombok’s Lembar harbour, after five hours on the ferry with mostly Indonesian people, I had seen the coast, beaches lined with palm trees and in the background brown, arid hills, quite a difference from Bali. During the trip by tourist shuttle bus to the small coastal town of Senggigi, the landscape changed the further north we got, becoming more and more green.

On Bali, it had been difficult to penetrate the superficial layer of charming people and beautiful landscape, to understand the hardship these people must endure in their daily lives, but here on Lombok, the poverty was clearly visible. Sheds serving as houses, pony-drawn carriages, kids playing with rudimentary toys. There was rubbish everywhere, carelessly thrown alongside the road, on big landfills, or in or near the already very polluted water of the rivers. Many open sewers with their accompanying stench, and I had forgotten how big rats can become. I suppose the poorer the people, the less they care where their rubbish ends up, something I also noticed when I spent some time on the Navajo Reservation in the US state of Arizona, some seven years ago. But don’t they realise the extend to which they’re polluting their own environment, or is it out of sight, out of mind?

Senggigi is an unremarkable, desolate little town, clearly suffering from the slump in tourism. As it was now the rainy season, usually in the afternoon the heavens would open up for about an hour and streets would instantly be turned into rivers. Again, there were many hawkers in Senggigi, who are quite persistant, and the conversation always goes like this: “Hello mister, how are you? Where are you from?” After I answer, they are usually able to name a dozen Dutch football players, after which they ask me to buy some of their goods (mostly consisting of necklaces, armbraces, rings and decorated lighters), and they’re not taking no for an answer. I’ve seen some tourists get very angry at them for persisting like this, but I’m always trying to be polite and to smile, as I understand they’re very poor and see us tourists as walking dollar bills. Still, it’s quite full-on.

Following the advice of a fellow backpacker from Russia, I decided to visit Gili Meno, the quitest one of three Gili islands, just off Lombok’s coast. The husband and wife who owned the losmen I stayed at in Senggigi drove me to Bangsal, where the boat to Gili Meno would depart from. Deeper into Lombok, I finally saw some of the natural beauty Lombok is known for, wonderful green mountains and deep valleys, covered in thick unspoilt jungle. The winding road led us through Monkey Forest, where hundreds of small monkeys sat together alongside the road, eating, grooming eachother, or lazily watching the passing traffic. Bangsal harbour was merely a beach with some small boats, and after wading through the water, I got on the boat, squeezed in between the provisions, together with a dozen locals. After an hour, we arrived on Gili Meno, which is best described as a tiny tropical paradise, population 300. I checked into a newly built bungalow, less than 30 meters from the beach, and of course I directly went for a swim in the lukewarm, deep blue water. It’s magical to swim with a backdrop of the lush green mountains of Lombok in the distance. Sometimes thick, dark clouds would hover over the mountains, you could hear the thunder and see the rain coming down, but on Gili Meno, it remained dry, almost desert-like.

I rented snorkelling equipment for a day, and entered the sea just in front of my bungalow. Unfortunately, most of the coral has been destroyed by a combination of global warming, El Nino, and dynamite- and dragnet fishing by the locals. The beaches and sea bed are full of dead coral, and with the disappearance of the coral, the habitat of thousands of fish and other creatures has also vanished. Still, there were quite some fish present, like beautifully coloured butterfly fish, rabbit fish, enormous tuna, many large turtles, and flying fish, jumping great distances across the water surface. I was fascinated by a large octopus, who hid and changed colour as I got closer, and when I turned around, imagine my surprise when I saw a one and a half meter long white-tipped reef shark (Triaenodon obesus), holding still in the water, just 4 meters in front of me. It turned, and swam towards me, to reaching distance, as if it wanted to take a look at this strange, masked creature in front of it. Then suddenly, it swam past me with great speed, leaving me once again impressed at the elegance of the shark and the gracefulness with which it moves through the water.

As it is now Ramadan, the muslims are not eating, drinking or smoking from sunrise to sunset, and in this last week they are preparing for Idul Fitri (sugar festival), a two day celebration where they visit friends and families, and give eachother gifts (also consisting of sweets and dried sugared fruits, hence the name). Ramadan is a way for them to clear their mind and body, and to remind themselves that there are people less fortunate, who aren’t able to eat a meal every day. As a lot of muslims are still working, they are concentrating by quietly reciting small mantra-like prayers, of which Allahu al Akhbar (God is great) is the most (in)famous. From learning more about Islam, I can see that it is a very peaceful religion, but unfortunately it is so much abused by the extremists who call themselves muslim. And I am amazed at the polarizing influence of the media, as terrorism which is committed by for instance Christians or Hindus is simply called Terrorism, but when committed by (proclaimed) muslims, it is Islamic Terrorism.

After the sunsets, I frequently ate delicious Indonesian food at a local warung, a lovely experience to sit among the locals, who taught me some of their Sasak language (which differs not only on the three islands, but also on Lombok as well). Densi, a very friendly 38-year old muslim who owns the small warung, and spends his time taking tourists on snorkelling trips, taught me more about Islam, as I ate my nasi campur and as he smoked one cigarette after another (no surprise, after not smoking the whole day). His wife cooks the food, and he has two daughters who go to school on Lombok, and one son, who still lives with his parents.

After staying on the wonderful little island for five days, I went for my last swim around sunset, the dark blue water ending in a sky of red, with a large sun slowly sinking in the sea, seemingly passing through the clouds. On the other side, the green mountains of Lombok, enveloped in dark clouds. When it was dark, I went back to Densi’s warung again, and I said that I wanted to see a little more of Lombok. Although he had never been there, he said that Senaru was a very nice place to visit, and he asked if we perhaps could go together. I thought this was a very good idea, and we would meet up the following morning to go to Lombok together.

That morning, Densi and I took the boat back to Lombok, I stored my backpack at a friend’s of Densi’s, who allowed us to borrow his small Honda motorbike with two helmets. Off we went, I drove through Lombok’s beautiful countryside, Densi sitting on the back. Again, the environment was hot and dry, little vegetation and dry riverbeds. We passed hundreds of school children, dressed in brown-yellow uniforms, some of which said “Bule!” ("White Man!") or hello, while waving. We passed through villages, were people waved at me, said hello or “bule” again, which made Densi laugh a lot. After a while, the road went up and the landscape changed, becoming more green, and cooler, with a beautiful view of green rice fields, palm trees and those lush green mountains in the background. After almost one and a half hours, we came to the village of Senaru, where I parked the bike, and we walked on a path that led us down, to see the large waterfalls, which were amazing. The water seemed to come out of the mountain wall, covered in lush green vegetation, plunging 15 meters down with a loud noise. It was quite cool, the water crystal clear and icy cold. As this was the first visit for the both of us, we were both very impressed. We gazed at the scenery for a while, and then laboured up the path back to our motorbike, allowing for several stops as Densi was still fasting. I had lunch at a restaurant before we went back, and we stopped at a tiny village where his sister lives. I sat on the small straw mat under the thatched roof of the hut where his sister and her husband lives, very basic and poor. They were all fasting, but offered me coffee and two sweet bread rolls, which I tried to eat as quietly as possible while Densi went inside to pray.

When we got back to the place of Densi’s friends, we returned the motorbike, and I collected my bags and said goodbye to Densi. I was then ushered onto a public bus as I wanted to go to Ampenam, part of the Mataram city area, the capital of Lombok. The public bus was a mini van that could seat about 10 people, including the driver, but eventually around 18 of us, me being the only tourist, were cramped in this little bus, listening to the loud Indonesian-Arabic music. Closer to Mataram, I changed into a bemo (a converted pick-up truck serving as taxi), which brought me to Ampenam, where I checked into a hotel, while the loud readings from the Kuran of three different mosks descended on me.

The following morning, I went with a 23-year old Boeing MD-82 from Lion Air to Indonesia’s second largest city of Surabaya, on Java, which will be the starting point for my explorations of Java. But more about that in my next post.