JAVA

My plan after Ubud had been to go up to Lovina, which is in the central northern coast but Richie convinced me to stay along with him and travel to the island of Java to see Mt. Bromo. He had to go down to Kuta (southern central coast kind of near the airport in Denpasar) to drop off his motorbike so we packed up and headed down. The two of us, along with our two huge backpacks and a couple small ones crammed on the bike, managed to make it almost all the way down to Kuta, before getting pulled over by the Polisi about ten minutes outside the city. After some conversation and a bribe of 100,000 rupiah, we were back on our way.

Kuta Beach waves

Richie's friends gave him these two dinosaurs before he left so he posed them into his pictures throughout his trip so I scammed a photo of my own.

Just another day in paradise...

These guys made this amazing sand scultpure of a woman

Sunset soccer on Kuta beach

We spent a day at Kuta beach and then it was off to the ferry in Gilimanuk. A half hour later and we were in Java and on a bus to the volcano. Along the way, we met a guy from Holland named Jasper, who had been traveling Southeast Asia for the past eight months. He was headed in our direction so we all decided to go together.

The ferry from Bali to Java. Our bus is next to the blue tarp. We had about six inches to get in and out.

We arrived at Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park that evening and the next “morning” we woke up at 2:30 and started on the trek up to the sunrise lookout. It was soooo hard but totally worth it! It looks out over Ganung Bromo (2329 meters) Ganung Batok (2440 meters) Ganung Kursi (2581 meters) and Ganung Semeru (3676 meters). I thought after the first 10 kilometers we were done with the trekking but not even close! After getting some photos of the volcanoes from the lookout, we headed down and around to hike Mt. Bromo itself. At the top you can literally look down into the crater and see the steam come out and rise to encompass you. The whole experience was my favorite part of my entire trip!

Sunrise at the lookout

That's steam coming out of the top...

Bromo is the short one with the wide opening which we climbed

Richie, Me, Jasper

We stayed in a hotel on the cliff on the left. After hiking up to the lookout, we made our way down and across the valley and up Bromo. It's a lot further than it looks and it's in the sand!

Bromo on the left and another mountain on the right. Richie and Jasper are in the distance.

My rock statue

Mt. Bromo and the boys

When we made it back to the hotel, Richie headed off and I decided to stick with Jasper on to Yogyakarta to see this amazing Buddhist temple called Borobodur. We got to the bus station and hired a small bus to be shared with another guy from Thailand and set off on a ten hour ride to our destination. In the middle of it, our driver pulled off to the side of the road for a “short” nap. When he woke up, he wanted to wait for sunset because it was Ramadan and he had been fasting for the day and wanted to eat and pray once the sun went down. Before I knew it, the short break turned into two hours before we were on our way again. We got to our destination at about midnight and checked into Hotel Lotus, where the cockroaches hissed from the corners all night. That’s what you get for $3 a night I guess. We were able to sleep, kind of, for a few hours before it was time to wake up and head to the temple for sunrise. Our wake up call was a guy with a gong walking up and down the halls singing into a microphone his chants and prayers. We could hear the Muslim prayer chants all around us in the darkness of the Buddhist temple too. The whole experience was very surreal. It was strange to think that what I thought was only going to be a trip to Bali had turned into an adventure to Java to see two of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. I am so glad that I decided to do it all!

BOROBODUR: