Eat, Pray, Shop

Ubud was horrid and nice at the same time. The “Eat, Pray, Love” book and the subsequent movie, one of the episodes of which takes place in Ubud, did the town no good. Apparently in just under two years Ubud has transformed drastically. Nowadays a typical visitor is a 30-something yoga woman with a broken heart in search of either spiritual enlightenment or a true love. The centre of Ubud is one touristic trap with myriads of shops, restaurants and spas. Add constant nagging by taxi drivers, restaurant staff and spa girls and it becomes unbearable at times.

It is very beautiful though. Everywhere you look you find the polished eye candy. Rivendell like bridges, moss clad statues, numerous picturesque temples, evergreen rice fields and a deep canyon that cuts through Ubud. In particular Monkey Forest is impressive – a piece of jungle, full of stunning architecture and cheeky monkeys ready to steal your belongings, right in the middle of the town. Once you get out of the horrid centre for a second and venture into rice fields, it gets really tranquil with almost Zen like qualities. Even hawkers out there are laid-back and fun to chat with. A coconut seller was so eager to show me to a swimming place in the river and what most amazing did not expect any money for that. A rare quality in such a place.

Ubud has left me with mixed emotions. On one hand I like to forget Ubud as a commercial nightmare, but on the other hand I would not mind to spend more time in the suburbs enjoying the slow life and beautiful scenery.

A fairytale like bridge in Ubud

Rice paddies in the surroundings of Ubud

This is how rice grows

Even palms are premium in Ubud

A thirsty dog

The typical Bali

A picturesque path on top of the Ubud canyon

A monkey family chilling in Monkey Forest

A thirsty monkey. Surprisingly enough it did not like coke that much

More monkeys

No monkeys wild or not were spotted beyond the sign

Statues and monkeys

A lonely monkey

Moss covered statues of Monkey Forest. The park has got dedicated staff that cleans up the moss.

Waiting for a ride out of Ubud in the early morning.

The sulphur mines of Ijen

The first time I learned about Ijen was in the movie Samsara (the sequel to Baraka). At that time it was just an exotic location some place far away. In a hostel in Jakarta I saw a clip from the BBC documentary “Human Planet”, which featured similar footage from Ijen. It put Ijen on the map for me, but still we had no concrete plans visiting it. Nor we had any idea it was possible to visit it. On the way to Bromo, we made a stopover at a tourist agency, where a cunning businessman told us about Ijen and happily sold a package tour to Bali via Ijen. Even though it seems we paid a little too much for the deal in the vulnerable mental state after an exhausting 10 hour journey, Ijen was totally worth it and in fact it was the highlight of Java for me. As with other volcanoes the best time to visit Ijen is during the dry season (from May to October). Although we couldn’t enjoy the views over Ijen due heavy impenetrable clouds, a trip down the crater fully compensated it.

The road from the nearby village to the crater is about 3,5km. All the way up.

Despite the warning most of the tourists descend down the crater and guides readily offer their help

There are about 200 miners working at the mine

Workers start early in the morning before the sun rise and make two trips a day

Miners carry loads from 75kg to 90kg

Up to 300m from the bottom of the crater and then 3km back to the village

Most workers do not wear proper respiratory protection. Some workers wear flip-flops in this quite demanding terrain

The water of the lake at the bottom of the crater is hot, but very acidic. Swimming is not advised

The bottom of the crater is full of toxic sulphur fumes

Quite a hell down there, but at the same time it is amazingly beautiful.

Sulphur fumes cool down into the solid form, which is collected by the workers.

There is no work automatisation of any kind. A simple mechanical elevator would help a lot, but no, everything is done scrupulously by hand.

Once out of the crater the load is weighed and then must be carried back to the village

Workers typically make $13 a day

Unlike it was pictured in Samsara, the atmosphere is very cheerful. Workers sing, make jokes and bum cigarettes. Protip: bring a pack of cigarettes with you for additional karma.

Bromo-Tengger-Semeru national park

Java has not got that many attractions given its size, but one of the must see things is Bromo-Tengger-Semeru national park. Situated in the East Java, it is a 12 hours intense bus ride away from Yogyakarta. The entry point to the national park is Cemoro Lawang, a sleepy village with not much to offer. Half of the village population is focused on farming potatoes and onions, while the other half caters tourists. It was windy and cold, especially in the night-time. Made us forget sometimes that we were in fact in a tropical country and not Lapland in the summertime. Here I experienced for the first time an altitude sickness with head-aches and fever. Any kind of exercise like walking uphill made me feel very out of shape. That took place at the altitude of 2500m. I shudder to think what it feels like at higher altitudes.

The volcano itself and the surrounding Moon-like landscape is simply stunning. Numerous travel agencies organise sunrise tours to one of the viewpoints, but we skipped that and opted for a day-trip to the crater and back. A wise choice in the retrospect as there was nothing to see in the morning due to heavy clouds. The crater itself is shrouded with sulphur vapours (read: the intense smell of rotten eggs everywhere). Although there is nothing much to see inside the crater apart from the vapour, the view over the valley was well-worth the exhausting walk through a dust-storm and almost a ruined camera. Note for the future dust storms and cameras do not mix, no matter how stunning scenery is.

Cemoro Lawang, a village closest to Bromo. Cool climate and highland lifestyle.

At times it feels like Russian countryside with crumbling infrastructure

And potato fields

Except that locals carry things on their heads

The entrance to the Bromo valley

Bromo on the left, Batok on the right

The mighty Batok. I have never realized that a volcano can look like in cartoons

There was a dust storm so we had to improvise with the gear

The river bed that flowing lava made back in the day

Local teenagers come here with their scooters for a day-trip

A view over the valley from the top of the crater. There is something beautiful that they built a temple in a place like this. If the volcano erupts, it will be most definitely destroyed.

Local teenagers insisted to take a picture of them.

And this is what walking through a dust/ash storm does to you.

Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta is a huge improvement over Jakarta, but not of that much interest on its own. The landscape of the city is dominated by Mount Merapi, an active volcano that tends to erupt now and then (no such luck this time). The volcano is climbable both independently and as a part of a tour, but due to periodic rains we gave it a miss. What makes Yogyakarta worth a visit are nearby temples of Borobudur and Parabanam. Both are lovely, but Borobudur is truly majestic (as featured in the movie Baraka). Otherwise, the city is full of dubious sights, tourist shops, restaurants and travel agencies. It feels right for a little while, but gets tiring very soon. Two full days there and we were so ready to continue the journey.

Horse-cart is one of the modes of transportation in Yogyakarta. Bumpy, expensive and slow. Hardly recommended.

Each bus-stop has dedicated staff selling tickets, guiding passengers and just hanging out. This is what you get when you have vast human resources.

Eating Street food on Jalan Malioboro.

A bicycle lady selling mysterious drinks.

A cute caged owl in the bird market of Yogyakarta

And some geckos too

Asia weirdness: color dyed chicks. I have no idea why.

Borobudur temple in all its glory.

Stupas on top of Borobudur

Each stupa contains a statue of Buddha

Headless buddhas. There are a lot of them.

Locals chilling (sleeping) in the temple.

Rainy Parabanam temple

We made it to Parabanam just before the closing and it was heavily raining too, but on a positive side there were few tourists. I shudder to think what it's like on a good day.

Jakarta – the start of the journey

Having heard so many negative things about Jakarta, my expectations were pretty low. However upon arriving Jakarta did not seem all that bad. The first impression was that it was another Bangkok – oversized, noisy, polluted and with way too many cars on its roads. Which is not such a bad thing, at least in the context of Bangkok. On a closer look, the biggest problem of Jakarta turned out to be a lack of anything remotely interesting to see or to do. Kota Tua, the old town, lacks any charm and is just plain dull. Same goes for the national monument. In fact all the empty space around it is way more interesting given it is such a rare thing in the otherwise crowded Jakarta. Architecture wise the only notable thing about Jakarta is anonymous statues scattered around the city and Istiqlal Mosque. The latter is the biggest mosque in South East Asia, big enough for 100000 people. With its brutalist architecture it is a curious sight, but I guess it would be more entertaining to visit it when it is full.
Getting train tickets to Yogyakarta was a highlight of the short stay in Jakarta. Two days and it was more than enough of spending time in traffic, constant noise and filthy infrastructure. In this respect Jakarta reminded of Ulan Bator, but fortunately unlike in Ulan Bator getting out of the city was dead simple. The clerks in the train station ticket office even spoke English and a debit card was one of the payment options. Such a rarity in South-East Asia.
Later in the travels we met a Dutch couple, who skipped Jakarta altogether and proceeded from Jakarta airport to Bogor, a neighbour town. Apparently it is nothing special, but is a huge improvement over Jakarta. Or even better fly straight to Bali leaving Java behind.

Traffic on a typical day in Jakarta.

An example of one of many statues in Jakarta.

Brutalist architecture of Istiqlal Mosque

This is how people chill in the mosque.

Jakarta is a city of cats. Some of them are rather naughty.

Cats everywhere

Kota Tua, the old town of Jakarta

My ego traps

a journey into the centre of the heart

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Tag Archives: Indonesia

Eat, Pray, Shop

The sulphur mines of Ijen

Bromo-Tengger-Semeru national park

Yogyakarta

Jakarta – the start of the journey