Ijen Crater

This past weekend we spent over 8 hours (one way) to get to our newest weekend location. This was Ijen Crater, an active sulfur mine, where (i assume) active lava flow under the earth is heating up and expelling sulfur at a high rate. Sulfur comes out in the form of gas, and the technicians have build pipes to channel the sulfur into one area, where it condensates into a thick yellow liquid and then oozes out of the tubes, where men are waiting to let it cool, then chip big bricks of it off and carry it up and out of the crater to sell.

The view of the valley in the morning (5am)

The trip started bright and early and we drove for hours, only stopping for the bathroom and when getting lost on the way. We arrived just before sundown far far away in the Ijen area at a little home stay hotel. The car ride actually went by fast, as we kept ourselves busy playing games, puzzles, listening to music and napping. Good company makes the trip fly by. Also, usually when we hire cars there are 7 of us crammed into every possible seat to make it cheaper, but only 4 of us went this weekend, so we had room to spread out and really enjoy the trip.

Hooray for acidic sulfur lakes!

Once at the hostel, we walked around the little town set up next to it and looked around at the local scenery. In the area are lots of agro-tourism places and farms where the tourists can sleep and enjoy lazy afternoons in a semi-cooled atmosphere. We hung out at the hotel, played cards and had some dinner before an early bedtime.

The yellow color is sulfur that has crusted all over the place over the years

We woke up at 330 to some coffee and tea and a snack before driving 40 minutes to the entrance of the hike up the side of the crater. It's not a particularly hard hike, and its uphill the whole time. You see some miners also making the trek. Its about an hour or so to the top, where the wind really picked up and we were being blown around. By this time, we had befriended a miner, who was 25 and had been working there for 3 years. We spent the whole walk up chatting with him and asking about his life and working in the mines. Its really hard work, and dangerous, and extremely bad for your health as you are inhaling toxic fumes and the sulfur burns your eyes and lungs, and they do this trip multiple times a day, for weeks and years at a time with only a week off holiday every couple weeks.

Our guide being bad-ass with his gas mask

At the top of the hill, you see how the edges of the crater have gone barren to the toxicity of the sulfur, and can see down into the crater. There is a lake there, which is as warm as a bathtub, and an area where the steam is billowing out. We then climb down into the crater for about 25 minutes to the bottom, where we can see the men mining the yellow rocks and using gas masks and masks in feeble attempts to keep the smoke out of their eyes and mouths.

A death cloud taking my unsuspecting friends

As I mentioned, it was windy, so on the way down it was a nice easy walk, the wind blew everything away from us, and you could hardly smell the sulfur. Luckily, the winds changed, and the clouds floating over the turquoise waters turned, and soon we were enveloped in a cloud of toxic smoke. Your eyes start burning worse than if you rubbed an onion in them, and you have to cover your mouth with a piece of wet material (shirt, scarf, hat). Anything to stop the sulfur. You end up holding your mouth so tight you forget to breath, and when you gasp for air, it chokes your lungs and you start coughing uncontrollably. But, the winds change again, and soon you are enjoying the views, watching what is going on, and almost forgetting about the near pass-out/vomit episode you just had. Then the winds change again. Its a scramble for cover, behind rocks, away from the wind, anywhere you think it may help. We spent about 25 minutes doing this happy/hell change due to the prevailing winds, until we all hit a stage of near vomiting and an inability to see that we aborted the plans and escaped to higher grounds.

My eyes after the event (and after the hour hike down)

It was really cool and I wouldn't have changed the experience for anything. It was worth my eyes burning an additional 2 hours and feeling nauseous for the drive back to the hotel. The miner we befriended was really great, and funny and gave us all the information he would with his English, and even game me a piece of sulfur he broke off from the mine when we arrived at the bottom.

Some Sulfur art the miners make to sell

We then checked out a local waterfall, which wasn't too bad, before we started our 8 hour drive back home. Once again the trip went pretty fast, and we napped as much as we could, because we were all exhausted after the early wake up, hike and sulfur attacks. It was another great weekend, and I cant believe I'm doing so much stuff out here. In a couple days I continue my trips, but this time have 9 whole days of vacation, and a group of us are heading into the jungle for animal sightings and trekking. It should be a lot of fun!

The waterfall near our guesthouse

Kaliandra

For the weekend, 16 fellow teachers and friends loaded up in Bemos (public minivans, with bench seats) and drove about 2 hours up to a mountain resort called Kaliandra. It's set in a beautiful mountain slope, with dramatic peaks soaring up above you and  gorgeously landscaped grounds wrapping around the side of the mountain.

One of the best things about the place is simply its location, and clean air (Surabaya, where I live, is quite polluted). You can see the stars, it gets cold at night, there is fresh air, the smell of trees and flowers, and you can hear wildlife. It was just a great way to relax and spend some time out of the city. The grounds are huge, and in the middle is a private residence, which looks like something out of a hollywood movie set in old england in the 1700's. A manor house. It was unrealistic compared to what we're used to seeing.

The ground have gardens, organic food growing, some exotic animals (private owners) two pools, two restaurants, great views and a chilled out environment.

They have loads of stuff to do also, as they cater to big groups, and you have the ability to do ropes courses, learn Gamalon music (type of music) you can do Batik, which is a traditional way to make materials and designs. We chose to do the Batik the next morning and it was really hard, and we all make horribly done patterns. You start with melting wax, and using a special "pen" to apply designs in wax. Note that it's hot, it drips everywhere, and most of us ended up with a "dotted" look to our painting, not to mention wax all over us. Once you finish the wax, you dip in in dyes to make the colors, and then you put it in hot water to remove the wax, so that the design you made is white against whatever color background you decided upon.

We went for a birthday of one of the teachers at my school, and she had a wonderful time. She was really happy to spend a weekend out of the city, relaxing, reading books and hanging out with everyone for the 2 days of freedom from work.

The place we stayed was a bungalow made for 6 people, with a private room upstairs and a communal 4 person bed taking up one whole side of the house. We ended up with 7 people downstairs sleeping like sardines, and the birthday girl and her boyfriend got their own private room. The bathroom was really great, and opened up for lots of sunlight and breezes, and there was a tub outside we filled up and smashed three people in to watch the stars and enjoy the coolness of the night in a hot tub.

It was one of the places I know Nancy and Diane would have really enjoyed. Guess you'll just have to come out to Asia and see these places for yourselves! That's all I have now, as it's Friday, I have class all day and leave at 630 in the morning for my next adventure. See ya!

Solo

This past weekend I went to Solo with two teachers from my school.  One of their boyfriends lives in Solo as a teacher, so she went to meet up with him, and the other teacher and I just wanted to explore Solo and the temples around.

We took the train at 7 am, which would have been fine if I hadn’t decided to have a house party the night before, and made everyone stay up past 4 am.  Needless to say we were exhausted on the train and passed out nearly the whole time.  When we arrived on Solo, we found a nice little place to stay where were the only ones.  It cost $6 between us, so can’t complain on that front.  Basic, clean and nice, with mandi showers (which is where you bucket shower by dumping buckets of water over yourself).

Flowers at our guesthouse

We spent the first afternoon walking around Solo, checking out some traditional clothing called Batik and also checking out markets.  The best was the bird market, where they had thousands of animals, mainly birds but also some bats, owls, we saw a monkey and some dogs and cats, some snakes and squirrels, chickens, hens, crows ravens, sparrows, etc etc.  Its not the best conditions for the birds, but I’d never seen an own up close that I can remember, or even a bat almost 2 feet long, hanging wrapped in itself.  There was also some adorable dogs, very well kept and clean, which were starving for attention so we pet them and hung out with them for a while.

Little stone masturbating man

We ended up going to a “open green” area of all dead grass and watching kids play on the carnival rides set up and did some shopping at the makeshift market they had set up.  For dinner we met a couchsurfer and two of his friends to eat and then go to the night market.  We sat next to Warong Cobra, where you could pick your cobra, they kill it, skin it, and take off the meat which you can have fried up or made as sate (on a stick).  It was interesting to watch them kill and de-meat the snakes, but we didn’t want to try eating it. 

Temples in the hills

After dinner we walked to the night market, which had some live music and loads of local crafts for sale.  They sell some pretty hilarious stuff in these markets so it’s always fun to check them out.

Stone carvings at the temples

The next day we spent touring the temples about 40 kilometers out of Solo and up into the hills, where the weather was nicer.  After spending a couple hours not being able to rent motorbikes, we took the bus, in the wrong direction and had to get off and loop back through Solo on the way out.  Luckily for us, performers get on the busses and sing songs and play their little instruments so it was an entertaining ride.  One band even got off with us and helped us onto the returning bus.  We then asked them for special songs to play that we liked and made sure to tip them extra (instead of coins worth pennies, we gave them 5,000 rupiah, about 50 cents)  They were really appreciative of us and our enthusiasm.

One of the fountains at a temple

The temples were really beautiful and had views overlooking canyons filled with little villages and tea plantations.  It was a great afternoon and we ended up missing the buses back to solo and took the motorcycle taxis all the way back.  We then caught the 2 am train back to Surabaya on Monday morning and were back home, ready to change, clean up and head to work for the day.  

Jump fighting on top of the mountain

On a side note, for the past week I was fasting for Ramadhan, to try to experience a piece of Indonesian culture.  During Ramadhan, the people of Islamic faith abstain from food or liquids (not even water) for one whole month.  Obviously if you are sick, pregnant, breast-feeding, too young (though children at 5 or 6 start full fasts) etc you don't have to fast.  It wasn't as hard as I though it would be, but I had to completely change my lifestyle.  I slept in until the last minute and stopped doing anything remotely physical.  I only wanted to try it for a week to see how it was, because this week I'm back to eating at normal hours and hopefully back to the pool and gym.  I was the only person out of 3 who made it the whole week (we had three foreign staff attempt the fast).  I won a free dinner :)  

Wisata Bahari Lomongan

For my birthday weekend, a group of friends and I drove about 1.5 hours northwest of Surabaya to a little beachside amusement park and resort.  This amusement park isn’t what you would think of as a typical one, with giant rides, and thousands of people.  It had a couple rides, ones that were small enough to fit into my backyard (no joke) and lots of different types of amusement activities.  They had a haunted hospital (with dead baby in crib section) they had a water park area, where you walk through a maze and people in a control tower control water guns hidden all over the path. 

Going tribal

There was a “cat house” which consisted of a zoo-like walkabout of domesticated house cats.  If you were a prize winning cat, you were giving a room with aircon.  They had motorbikes to ride (for people under 50kg) and a whole carnival section for children 7-12.  There was a pool and some waterslides, a restaurant out on a pier, some fake penguins and real turtles, kayaking, a beach area and playground.  They also had a wild west section, complete with arcade shooter game, bull riding, novelty photos on a horse with Indians and bow and arrow shooting.  I believe they also had horse-drawn carriages, as we saw a stable of horses.

The band.

We watched a 3-D movie about a kid going to school, and shot some platic balls out of a giant gun to hit targets.  We went to the amphitheater, and they got me on stage singing one of our favorite Indonesian songs.  Luckily, there were 12 people in the audience, us being 8 of them.  There was even an “exotic albino” section of different albino animals from squirrels to peacocks, porcupines and snakes.

Riding the bench into the zoo

There was also a cave, mineral museum, and zoo which we say the day before.  The zoo was depressing, but still fun to walk around, and see some animals, and the cave was extremely hot, had too many colored lights around and music blaring.  Peaceful nature at its best. 

Me and Kevin performing to the sold out theater, singing Indonesian songs to which we only know 1/3 the words...

The resort we stayed at was really nice, and right on the ocean.  We got to sit out and watch the sunset, and eat breakfast overlooking the vast blue.  We got an 8 person dorm room with bunkbeds, and at night we sang karaoke with the hotel band (again I was up on stage) and had a great time.  It was a quick weekend, but very fun and was a great way to spend the big 2 5.

I have enjoyed all the traveling I have been doing, and seeing different things all around east Java.  

Bali

My first experience to Bali was over a long weekend.  I had three days off and planned to spend it in North Bali checking out the sites and relaxing by the beach.  Instead of flying, I took the night train from Surabaya, got off at 5 in the morning, walked to the ferry to cross to Bali and then took a bus to my hotel in Lovina, north Bali.  It was effortless, and 1/6^th the price of flying, so I was happy.  I even beat the people who flew and were meeting me.

The waterfall we checked out

The place we stayed at was simple and nice, with good gardens and right on the black sand beach.  It had a pool and restaurant, and was a couple minute walk to the “main” road that had some restaurants, shops and bars.  We spent the days doing daytrips into the island, checking out the lakes and temples around north Bali, and some mountains.  It was really relaxing and fun, and with a big group easy to rent cars and drivers to take us around.  We saw some cool temples, and even some tombs carved into the stone.  The scenery was either dramatic mountains and jungle, vibrant green rice patties terraced on hillsides, or beachside paradise.  It’s understandable how Bali has such a draw for tourism.

The last day, we ended up in Kuta, having a seafood dinner on the beach, with all the tourists.  We ended up having some drinks in Kuta at night, which is the Isla Visa of Bali, filled with drunken young Australians.  The scene was a little too much for us, as we had an early flight, work the next morning, and were overall exhausted from our trip.

Sporting the sarong and sacred belt look

There is still so much more of Bali, and the surrounding islands to see, so I expect I’ll be going back to check it out soon enough.  Bali was a really nice place, and is a Hindu island, and very different from the Muslim island of Java.  It’s nice to have a contrast so close and convenient to us.  I’ll have to go back and try the surfing in south Bail, and some of the temples there are said to be amazing. 

The funny named but good smelling flower

It was another great weekend, and makes the weeks fly by.  Living from one weekend to the next is how I like it out here, doing fun adventures and travels every weekend is great.  It makes the city nice to come home too, without realizing it may not have the most to offer.  Also, when we do stay in Surabaya for the weekend (which I havn’t done in a really long time) it seems nice and full of things to do.

Until the next trip!