I’m writing this post from a women’s leadership forum in DPD, the regional parliament building (these representatives are elected similar to Congresspersons, with their region electing them, then they work out of Jakarta in something similar to Congress. This is in contrast to DPR, which is elected on a party basis—the people vote for the party, the party gets a percentage of seats in the house, and they pick who those seats go to. So DPR is more party-controlled, has more power—all funding power—and DPD lobbies for regional interests).
[Editor's note--this was written in the morning. During lunch, Julia and I were mobbed by women and their business cards. Pictures and more on the experience tomorrow!]
Anyways, this is interesting for a number of reasons. Only one member of DPR is here, a few members of DPD, and a few representatives for the women’s commission and the media. Julia and I both have our computers, but once my battery dies…I’m on my own!
There are a number of things I want to blog about, but I am well overdue on Bromo, so I will start there, and see how far I get. Julia and I left the office around 4 PM Friday for our 7 PM flight, on Lion Air. We stopped by my kost to drop our laptops, and went to the airport from there. We were there by 5:30, and at the gate and through security not much later. Then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Lion Air kindly gave us plastic cups of water (like THIS) and a little chocolate bun to hold us over. We finally took off close to 10 PM. So much for having some time in Surabaya to eat at a restaurant in the city and get some sleep tonight! At least we had three seats to the two of us—though the amount of people coughing and sneezing on the plane canceled out any good feelings about that.
I finished my book, and we read the sole English-language article in the Lion Air magazine—on Bromo! I actually tore it out to help with this blog post.
Once we got to Surabaya, we wandered around for a while trying to find a Bluebird before someone explained to us that you have to go to a counter and get a coupon for a specific brand of airport taxi. He took us to our hotel, which had a 24-hour restaurant where we ordered—wait for it!—GRILLED CHICKEN and STEAMED VEGGIES. Yes, plain and healthy. And just what we had been craving. We collapsed into not-so-clean sheets behind a door that only locked with one of those push-locks in the knob and got almost 8 hours of sleep?
The next morning we enjoyed the included breakfast at the hotel. I ate mostly fruit, because the toast was white and they had no peanut butter. I tried asking for peanut butter and they brought me a knife. Very helpful. We also had so scrambled eggs, avoiding the fried rice, fried chicken, and fried noodles.
We met our driver in the lobby and headed off for Malang, and unremarkable city on the way to Bromo. The best part was the gigantic bird market, which also sold hamsters, mice, bird food (including live maggots and crickets), and marine life, like turtles and fish. There were hundreds of different types of cages, tanks, decorations, seeds—really, anything you can imagine. It was quite fantastic. This market was next to the plant market, which sold seeds, pots, plants, vegetables, bonsai….I’ll let my pictures do the talking:
Next, we went to lunch at a restaurant a friendly Surabayan woman in the airport had recommended to us, as well as Lonely planet recommended to us. I will let this picture of my “ham sandwich” serve as an explanation (pull out your microscope!):
This is apparently the best restaurant in Malang, serving Dutch food. FAIL.
Before lunch, however, we got into an argument with our driver. Keeping in mind that when I am hungry, I get cranky, we asked him to go over the rest of the plan before we ate so we could plan our time accordingly (eat fast, relax, etc—though as a rule, restaurants in this country are SLOW). He said we have to pick where we want to go—Bromo or Pandarjakan, because the road between the two has been destroyed since January by volcanic ash, and you have to take a very long way around (three hours).
Wait a second. We bargained the price on the phone with his boss assuming we would be going to both places; the boss told us it was possible (our co-worker and the boss also told us it was possible, in the same weekend, to visit Ijen—a beautiful crater lake FIVE HOURS AWAY. This.Is.Indonesia.—instead of the truth, people tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. Sigh.). After getting very firm with him, we worked out a pan that ensured that we could in fact visit both places—actually, the next day, we ended up having extra time and spent an hour at a terrible designed knock-off market. We think he just wanted to save the gas and pocket the change. Who knows. But we were proud of our victory.
So on the way to Bromo, we stopped at a gorgeous waterfall just before sunset. Again, I will let the picture speak for itself:
We then grabbed some grilled corn for dinner (note: this is only available in the mountains, though people all over the country love it, and not only is corn available in Jakarta, grills are too (for sate), yet no one puts the two together outside of the mountains. This.Is.Indonesia) and sat back for the three-hours treacherous mountain ride to our homestay in Tosari, a town 45 minutes from the Penanjakan summit. They proudly bragged about their hot water, and then didn’t give us towels. I usually travel with one for situations like this, but not this time. So much for the hot water. The people in the room next to us got up at 2 AM or so for the 4 AM departure, so we didn’t sleep much that night.
We got a wake-up knock at 3:30 AM, chugged some Javanese coffee (where you put some finely ground coffee into a cup with hot water, stir, and don’t drink the sludge that settles at the bottom), and got in a Jeep with the owner’s son, Koko, for the ride to the summit.
Forty minutes later, we fought off ten or twenty hagglers trying to rent us jackets (really, it was not that cold—maybe 45 degrees F?) and walked to 100 meters to the top. There, we struggled to find a spot to watch the sunrise amongst the crowd. Tons of locals (it was a holiday), tons of bule, quite a few impromptu fires that could not be safe, and a few people trying to look brave in T-shirts and shorts.
The view was breathtaking, both of the sunrise and of Bromo, Y, and Z mountains in the sea of sand towards the west of Penanjakan. However, the amount of people who not only asked to take photos with us, but also tried to get in our photos when we took photos of each other, really started to grate on us. After we got in the Jeep to return, the first thing I did was look up the Indonesian word for “why” (“kenapa”), which became our catchphrase for the rest of the trip.
Check out the sunrise:
And the view:
We returned to the homestay, grabbed out things, made coffee out of cappuccino packets and hot water in empty water bottles (note: this melts the bottle and is probably not safe; don’t try it at home!), and settled in for the three-hour ride to Bromo. It was a beautiful drive, first going down through the mountains, then back up, to the national park. We hired another Jeep (for 2/3 of the price of the first one, and only 1/5 or so of the distance—and this was after Julia’s bargaining) to take us through part of the Sea of Sand, where we got out and walked the rest of the way to the foot of Bromo. Along the way, we had to refuse the offer of riding a horse at least ten times (size of Bromo horse:size of a horse I would feel comfortable riding::size of average Indonesian (5’4): size of Christine (5’11). These horses were also foaming at the mouth and looked ready to collapse (in fact, one had collapsed). I started yelling “Kenapa? Jalan-jalan!” every time they asked “Why? I am walking!”) We walked past the temple in the Sea, which used to be open for tourist but since the January ongoing eruptions was so full of ash that it was closed.
The climb to the top was an experience. We had to cover our mouths and eyes (scarf and sunglasses) because of the ash spewing everywhere, and the former staircase was so covered in ash that we made part of the climb on our hands and knees. But we made it to the edge of the caldera, a place that would certainly be closed (and probably closed for a 3 mile radius) in America. Safety, schmafety. Check it out:
The way back down was just as difficult, and not only were my eyes, nose, and mouth full of ash, so was my camera lens—it wouldn’t even close. Right when we reached the bottom, I slipped and fell a little. I was completely fine, but a man came running towards me. “Oh, he is going to ask if I am okay,” I thought. “How nice.”
Nope.
“Miss, miss, can I take a picture with you?” Julia yells at him “Why?!?” He replies, “for the memories!” “What memories? You don’t even know us!” Sweet. “Oh, what is your name? Where are you from,” he says in an attempt to…get to know us? Right. We storm away and refuse to take pictures with anyone the rest of the trip. None of them did anything nice for us—offer directions, help, even ask how we are, but demand—usually not asking, but demanding—that we take pictures with them. I may be jaded, but I am done with the photos, especially for teenage or twenty-something men. Absolutely done.
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful—the drive back was shorter than expected, our flight was on time, Batavia gave us food and water on the flight, and before we took off I had a fairly decent pastrami croissant-sandwich at Dunkin Donuts:
Bluebird took a while again to get a cab, but we got home at the reasonable hour of ten PM, and I actually got some sleep. I’m still recovering, though. I am taking this weekend off, hope to get some sleep, visit some markets and batik stores, and plan an Aceh trip. Oh, and perhaps pick classes?
So that is Bromo! I am typing this in word and it is three and a half single-spaced pages. If only lawyering briefs were this easy and this much fun to write…The rest of Sabah and maybe even Cambodia still to come!
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