Indonesia — Bali & Java

I made it! I finally managed to get a whole weekend off to go to Indonesia. To be a little be more concrete – Bali and Java.

My journey started on Friday around 3pm when my plane left Changi airport in Singapore. The Tiger Air flight took me to Denpansar which is the biggest city on Bali and is located in the very south of the island. From there I took a taxi for 540.000 Rupiah (=25 euros) which took me to the north west. Four hours later I arrived at the Reef Seen Divers Resort which has an unbelievably great reef right at the beach (only 10–20m away).

On the next day our trip continued to Java (by using the ferry) where we checked in at the Ketapang Indah Hotel (very lovely). Our driver was by the way the same that picked me up from the airport – a super nice guy called Taslim. During our dinner a cordial french couple (which is on a 10-month! world tour) asked us, if we had been to Ijen already and we told them, that we are going there in a few hours, so they decided to join us. We were really happy that we met those guys and we also had a very good time with them.

At 00:30am our guide (Yus – also super nice and very friendly) and the driver (a different one this time) brought us to mount Ijen, where we took a 1.5h hike up to the edge of the crater. It was a place that looked like hell (besides the hundreds of Indonesian tourists that liked to take pictures with us). We could barely see and breathing was a pain. But fortunately it became better after about half an hour. So we decided to go down to see the blue flames and the lake. Luckily we did not see what was around us because the chasms looks a little frightening when I saw them on the way back up. Down there we saw the miners breaking down sulfur and putting it into baskets, which they carrying up the crater (2h walk) and then to the next village which is 3km away. These baskets weigh from 70 to 90kg while the people carrying weigh sometimes even less than that. It really seems to be one of the hardest jobs in this world.

Before going back to the hotel I drank a real Indonesian coffee in the kitchen of the restaurant there. The kitchen was almost as impressive as the crater. Very busy people coming and going all the time, while the food, the guest ordered, was cooked over the fire.

The last stop on this day was a coffee plantation including one a Luwak that eat and digest coffee beans, which then become a luxury good. Don’t ask me why. I bought a pack of this coffee and it does not taste better than the one I buy at the Nylon Coffee Rostery in Singapore. I also don’t like the fact, that these animals are caged.

The next day we got form Bayuwangi to Surabaya and from there to Singapore again. This trip was so short but so intense at the same time (and still a bit relaxing), I think it definitely was one of the best ones I ever made.

Fotos can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasdori/sets/72157649249971641/

Originally published at thomasdori.at on November 12, 2014.