Indonesia Dua

We had to return to Indo in order to catch our onward flight from Jakarta to Singapore, and we managed to find a great flight from Melbourne to Denpasar (Bali) on Jetstar. Learning from our past experience in Denpasar (see A Long Hard Slog), this time we decided to make our lives easier and just stay in Bali. My cousin recommended a hotel that, while a little out of our budget, was still pretty reasonable at about C$35 a night. (Definitely much cheaper than what we had been paying in Aus and NZ.) And since we were arriving relatively late (around 11:00pm), it was nice knowing where we were going. His recommendation was well deserved! The Masa Inn was practically a luxury hotel -- at least three star by western standards -- with two pools, AC, TV, a big comfortable bed with crisp clean sheets, and hot showers. Okay, maybe it's just a nice hotel by western standards, but for us it was luxury. (Goes to show what your standards become when you're backpacking.) We enjoyed the perks while we had them (just the one night and following morning). We didn't give ourselves much time to do much else in Bali, although we did visit the memorial to those murdered in the Bali bombing of 2001. We knew that many people had died, but we didn't really grasp the full scale of the tragedy until we saw all those names.

Bundled against the cold mountain air. Bromo is the grey crater just
over my right shoulder; not the big mountain in the background.
Our first and only stop on our way to Jakarta was Mount Bromo, an active volcano set amidst an incredible moon-like landscape (or so the Book says). We jumped on a night bus and, true to form, it arrived in the town of Probolinggo, our connecting point to Mount Bromo, at 2:00am. And, of course, the 'bus stop' happened to be in front of a travel agency that also just happened to have an agent up at that time of the morning. Since the public bus wasn't expected for another six hours (assuming that it would even run on time), we were left with little choice except to take their expensive shuttle to Cemora Lawang (the town nearest Mount Bromo). So we agreed and handed over our money. We also, after further badgering, signed up for a 4WD trip to the viewpoint that overlooks Mount Bromo and transport to the rim of the volcano crater itself, AND we agreed to buy a return ticket to Surabaya (where we were catching a flight to Jakarta). We knew at the time we should just say no, and sort things out on our own when we got where we were going, but it was 2:00am! And the agent was more than a bit persistant. Although we knew we were paying probably more than double, we consoled ourselves with the fact that at least we wouldn't have to deal with the same hassle when we arrived. And despite the extremely late/early hour, Lee still managed to bargain him down from Rp600,000 (about C$80) to Rp500,000 (about C$65). (That's C$65 for both of us, by the way).

We had a bumpy sleep in the shuttle to Cemoro Lawang, arriving just after 4:00am. We quickly got ourselves sorted (we needed warm clothes!) and jumped in the waiting jeep. Our first stop was at a cliff overlooking Mount Bromo and the surrounding mountains, and we waited there for the sunrise. Bromo looks a little like something out of a Flash Gordon movie, with all the craters and the smoke belching out in sporadic puffs. Very cool. And cold! The mountains get quite cold during the wee hours, and we were glad to have thought to pull out some warm clothes before getting in the jeep. After the sunrise, the jeep drove us to the bottom of the crater. From there we walked up the 237 steps to Mount Bromo's rim for a good look into ... well, the sulphur cloud. And boy did it smell bad! It stung our eyes, throats, and noses. We didn't see any magma, but that was probably a good thing. But we managed to get a pretty good look around before the smell finally drove us off the mountain. After all the excitement, we headed back to Cemoro Lawang for breakfast and kopi susu (coffee with milk), which tasted extra good that morning.

Cemoro Lawang's 'superstore'. Notice how all
encompassing the surrounding darkness is.
We spent two-and-a-half days exploring the mountain village of Cemoro Lawang and their endless cabbage fields before jumping on a bus to Surabaya. From Surabaya we caught an Air Asia flight to Jakarta (which was cheaper, easier, and faster -- so much faster -- than the train) where we would fly to Singapore. Apart from being stressed that we were going to miss our connecting bus to Surabaya, our travel from Cemoro Lawang to the Surabaya airport went remarkably smoothly (remarkable because it involved continuous travel from a minibus to a big bus to an airport bus -- no mean feat in Indo!), and we soon found ourselves in the luxurious embrace of Singapore Airlines.

For more photos, see our Bali & Mount Bromo photo album, and/or our Indonesia photo album.