So, for the last leg of our journey we flew from Singapore to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia on Java. Jakarta itself is utterly forgettable, one big sprawling heaps of eight-lane highways and modern buildings. Its old Dutch town was smelly and not very interesting and the Monumen Nasional, also known as 'Sukarno's Last Erection' was worth little more than a picture. We did enjoy ourselves though, because we were staying with Joppe and Adama, two friends of ours from Berlin who are now living in Jakarta. They had a lovely house with a pool and made us feel like kings. We also met up with Marc, another friend from Berlin, had some lovely dinners and evenings rich in alcohol.
The four of us took a trip to Carita on Java's West Coast, where we stayed at a decrepit old beach resort, from where we made a day trip to the famous volcano Krakatau. The Krakatau's last major eruption in 1883 is scientifically important because it was the first volcanic eruption ever reported on by mass media around the world. It created ash clouds that were seen in Los Angeles and tsunamis that did damage as far as India. Java's East coast and Sumatra's South coast were ravaged and the event became the subject of many a romantic novel and film. Part of the old volcano is left and a new volcano has been growing threateningly fast since it appeared above water in 1927. Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) is a dark ashen cone with a tiny little tropical rainforest on its southern edge. When climbing it and standing on top of a ridge looking at the top (which is off limits), we felt like being on the moon, wondering about the vents of steams appearing from random places on the ground and the enormous rocks lying around which had obviously come from the crater. Apparently, you can stay overnight on what remains of daddy Krakatau during the rainy season and observe small eruption during the night, although the volcano was sadly silent when we were there.
Back in Jakarta, we went clubbing at one of its upper-class venues and the day after we made a (late) day trip to the botanical gardens in Bogor. The next day, it was time to leave the haven of Adama and Joppe's idyllic oasis and head out to do some more sightseeing around the island. Our first stop was Cirebon, the capital of one of the first Islamic states on the island, of which the Kraton (Sultan's palace) and his Water Palace, a wild water paradise mixed with caves for solemn meditation, can still be visited.
After that, we took a day train across to island to Solo past beautiful green mountains, rice paddies and menacing volcanic peaks. Solo itself wasn't much but we stayed at a gorgeous hotel around a courtyard with banana trees and other exotic plants which had a beautiful pool and free gamelan (traditional music) practice. From Solo, we went on day trips to Candi Cetho, a temple high up in the clouds, and Candi Sukuh, an 'erotic temple' which probably used to be home to a fertility cult, as well as to Sangiran, an important archaeological site where Java Man was excavated but where you could not really see anything.
We spent a night in Surabaya and then went on to Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. If the rainy drive up to the Tengger caldera, a massive volcanic crater created hundreds of thousands of years ago, past terraced rice paddies, rainy tea plantations and beautiful scenery wasn't beautiful enough, the crater itself was amazing. It fills up with fog or clouds most of the time which obscure the three volcanoes in the centre of it. Cemoro Lawang, the village where we were staying was right on the rim and great for foggy excursions. Getting up at 3.30am to pass through night fog on the Laotian Pasir (Sea of Sands) inside the crater and up a neighbouring mountain to watch the sunrise over Mt Bromo et al was definitely worth it.
As we only had one day left before we were to meet my mother and her boyfriend in Yogyakarta, we tried to squeeze in the city of Malang, which did not really work out because of bad connections and we did not see any of it in the end. I did manage to get a massage from a massage centre that trains blind people from all over Java to become masseurs to help them earn a living. We stayed at a beautiful Dutch colonial hotel, which was a positive experience partially making up for the loss of the sights of Malang in the end.
We spent the next few days with my mum and her boyfriend Rob, walking around Yogyakarta with its Kraton and Taman Sari (Water Palace), which unlike the one in Cirebon seemed to be constructed in order to indulge the sultan's sexual fantasies rather than his religious devotion, the beautiful Hindu temples of Prambanan, the somewhat disappointing Buddhist temple of Borobudur and the Dieng Plateau. Yogyakarta was most definitely the nicest Javan city we stayed in and visiting it and the nearby temples with my mum was certainly another highlight of this trip. Let's just not speak of our attempt to climb Mt Merapi, which was cut short due to a recent landslide and torrential rain...
The Dieng Plateau, with its sulphur lakes, red-and-green hills, rice cultivation almost up to the tops of the surrounding mountains and 8th-century buddhist temples was a beautiful final destination for our trip. My mum had unfortunately slipped and hurt her leg, so she couldn't come, which was a shame because she would have loved the serenity of the location. After saying goodbye to my mum and Rob, we got on our last local bus to Semarang - or so we thought. Our first bus broke down shortly after leaving, as did the second one we caught. The third one only took us part of the way before the fourth one finally delivered us at our final destination. We did not really see a lot of Semarang but did do a lot of shopping there!
Please find pictures of Indonesia here: https://picasaweb.google.com/115645655489714063238/Java2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCMz09JCN-fqQwgE
This is the end of my description of our holiday. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it and feel yourselves tingling with jealousy. That was my objective. ;-)
The four of us took a trip to Carita on Java's West Coast, where we stayed at a decrepit old beach resort, from where we made a day trip to the famous volcano Krakatau. The Krakatau's last major eruption in 1883 is scientifically important because it was the first volcanic eruption ever reported on by mass media around the world. It created ash clouds that were seen in Los Angeles and tsunamis that did damage as far as India. Java's East coast and Sumatra's South coast were ravaged and the event became the subject of many a romantic novel and film. Part of the old volcano is left and a new volcano has been growing threateningly fast since it appeared above water in 1927. Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) is a dark ashen cone with a tiny little tropical rainforest on its southern edge. When climbing it and standing on top of a ridge looking at the top (which is off limits), we felt like being on the moon, wondering about the vents of steams appearing from random places on the ground and the enormous rocks lying around which had obviously come from the crater. Apparently, you can stay overnight on what remains of daddy Krakatau during the rainy season and observe small eruption during the night, although the volcano was sadly silent when we were there.
Back in Jakarta, we went clubbing at one of its upper-class venues and the day after we made a (late) day trip to the botanical gardens in Bogor. The next day, it was time to leave the haven of Adama and Joppe's idyllic oasis and head out to do some more sightseeing around the island. Our first stop was Cirebon, the capital of one of the first Islamic states on the island, of which the Kraton (Sultan's palace) and his Water Palace, a wild water paradise mixed with caves for solemn meditation, can still be visited.
After that, we took a day train across to island to Solo past beautiful green mountains, rice paddies and menacing volcanic peaks. Solo itself wasn't much but we stayed at a gorgeous hotel around a courtyard with banana trees and other exotic plants which had a beautiful pool and free gamelan (traditional music) practice. From Solo, we went on day trips to Candi Cetho, a temple high up in the clouds, and Candi Sukuh, an 'erotic temple' which probably used to be home to a fertility cult, as well as to Sangiran, an important archaeological site where Java Man was excavated but where you could not really see anything.
We spent a night in Surabaya and then went on to Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. If the rainy drive up to the Tengger caldera, a massive volcanic crater created hundreds of thousands of years ago, past terraced rice paddies, rainy tea plantations and beautiful scenery wasn't beautiful enough, the crater itself was amazing. It fills up with fog or clouds most of the time which obscure the three volcanoes in the centre of it. Cemoro Lawang, the village where we were staying was right on the rim and great for foggy excursions. Getting up at 3.30am to pass through night fog on the Laotian Pasir (Sea of Sands) inside the crater and up a neighbouring mountain to watch the sunrise over Mt Bromo et al was definitely worth it.
As we only had one day left before we were to meet my mother and her boyfriend in Yogyakarta, we tried to squeeze in the city of Malang, which did not really work out because of bad connections and we did not see any of it in the end. I did manage to get a massage from a massage centre that trains blind people from all over Java to become masseurs to help them earn a living. We stayed at a beautiful Dutch colonial hotel, which was a positive experience partially making up for the loss of the sights of Malang in the end.
We spent the next few days with my mum and her boyfriend Rob, walking around Yogyakarta with its Kraton and Taman Sari (Water Palace), which unlike the one in Cirebon seemed to be constructed in order to indulge the sultan's sexual fantasies rather than his religious devotion, the beautiful Hindu temples of Prambanan, the somewhat disappointing Buddhist temple of Borobudur and the Dieng Plateau. Yogyakarta was most definitely the nicest Javan city we stayed in and visiting it and the nearby temples with my mum was certainly another highlight of this trip. Let's just not speak of our attempt to climb Mt Merapi, which was cut short due to a recent landslide and torrential rain...
The Dieng Plateau, with its sulphur lakes, red-and-green hills, rice cultivation almost up to the tops of the surrounding mountains and 8th-century buddhist temples was a beautiful final destination for our trip. My mum had unfortunately slipped and hurt her leg, so she couldn't come, which was a shame because she would have loved the serenity of the location. After saying goodbye to my mum and Rob, we got on our last local bus to Semarang - or so we thought. Our first bus broke down shortly after leaving, as did the second one we caught. The third one only took us part of the way before the fourth one finally delivered us at our final destination. We did not really see a lot of Semarang but did do a lot of shopping there!
Please find pictures of Indonesia here: https://picasaweb.google.com/115645655489714063238/Java2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCMz09JCN-fqQwgE
This is the end of my description of our holiday. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it and feel yourselves tingling with jealousy. That was my objective. ;-)
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