Yogyakarta: We flew from Singapore to Yogyakarta on the Indonesian island of Java. We had a layover in the capital city of Jakarta, but we decided to bypass a true visit to Jakarta based on feedback we had heard from other travelers and so we would have more time in other places. We successfully navigated our way through eager taxi drivers onto a full public train from the Yogyakarta airport to the city center, The train looked ancient, but it was super easy, cheap, and just as fast as a Grab (Asian Uber). Once we got to Yogyakarta city, it was close to 9pm, dark and one of our first big "culture shocks." Between the amount of people out so late, the chaotic traffic, the street vendors, and the lack of crosswalks on the roads, we immediately had to get our bearings. Our hostel was only a 12 minute walk away according to Google, but after about 5 minutes of trying to navigate our way there and realizing we were too exhausted and scared to cross the street, we surrendered and called a Grab. It was pretty funny, because the Grab driver we got was standing next to us with his car (at first we thought he was scamming us, but he really was just the closest driver!). The driver took us down a very narrow street/alley that were were surprised cars were even allowed on (we would soon learn that things aren't really "allowed" on the roads here, people just do what they want) and we were at our hostel. Arriving at night originally had us feeling like the city was a little sketchy, but as we stayed longer we got more comfortable and realized we were just starting our true Southeast Asian adventure (no offense to Singapore, but it definitely did not prepare us for what was to come). After we checked in, we met some of the people staying at the hostel who were about to leave to go to a viewpoint of nearby volcano Mt. Merapi to see the active lava flowing at night. They invited us to tag along, but we were tired and wanted to get sleep so we declined. We regretted not going that night later because that was the clearest night to see the volcano and we wouldn’t get another chance to see it due to cloudy weather the remainder of our stay.
The next day, we relaxed in the morning, enjoyed the free, basic breakfast provided by the hostel, and started to meet some more of the people staying there. In the afternoon, we walked around and grabbed lunch at a local restaurant that the hostel recommended and tried Indonesian food for the first time (well, for the first time in Indonesia- one of our favorite places to eat in Minneapolis is owned by a Javanese family). As we walked around the city, we started getting more comfortable in the chaos, and even crossed a few streets! We learned that you can't wait for the entire street to clear, but you cross a little bit at a time as things clear. You also need to walk straight, commit, appear confident, and look drivers in the eye. Oh, and always cross in front of motorbikes/small cars and NOT buses! Easy peasy ;).
That evening, we learned that there was a holiday going on, so we walked to a parade downtown to celebrate Yogyakarta Day. The holiday celebrates the 260th year of the formation of the city. We joined a crowd of hundreds of onlookers to watch a parade with traditional outfits, music, and dancing. There were also lots of strange street food vendors that we did not feel comfortable in trying quite yet, but we had fun looking at all of them.
Our hostel offered free family dinners on top of breakfast which was great for the budget and to meet new people. Funnily enough, we ended up meeting so many Dutch people at this hostel it became a running joke. It felt like we were two of like five people at the hostel who weren't Dutch. We later learned that Indonesia is a big destination for the Dutch, and they have a WhatsApp group where they share recommendations and this hostel had become popular with the group. We could see why, as we were coming to love the vibe of this hostel. After dinner most nights, Laura, one of the owners would usually stop by and chat with all of us, share recommendations, swap stories, and most importantly, bring one of her foster snakes. The snakes were cute and friendly, and Mel had fun hanging out with one for a while while Carson mostly watched from a distance. After dinner, we played Uno with a bunch of new friends and had fun learning the rules people in other countries use. Pro tip - never play Uno with the French unless you want some crazy rules; they swap cards with the person to their left anytime someone plays a 0. That night, we went out to a local bar that had live music and listened to a local band singing English pop songs. It wasn't a karaoke bar, but the singer saw Mel singing along a little to enthusiastically in the crowd to Maroon 5 and passed her a mic for a bit.
On our second day, we decided to take a batik art class with two of our new friends - Juliette from France and Daniel from Atlanta. Batik is a traditional art form which produces colored designs on textiles by dyeing them after having first applied wax to the parts to be left undyed. While the exact origins of batik are hard to pin down, the art form has deep roots on the island of Java with evidence of its use dating back over 2,000 years! We signed up for a class at a batik workshop where we made our own batik drawings on 12x12 fabric. While traditional batik can be done freehand, none of us felt confident enough for that, so we chose from pre-stenciled designs. Carson chose one with cranes and Melissa a house on stilts in a river surrounded by mountains. To start, you place a piece of blank canvas on top of the stenciled drawing so that you can see the stenciled lines. Then, you trace over these lines with hot wax using a "pencil" with a small cell that lets wax drop onto the cloth. You have to refill the wax very often from a pot of hot wax next to you. Tracing the lines with the hot wax was harder than it looked and took a lot of patience and finesse. Once we were done outlining, our amateur work was passed to an older woman for touch ups. She was clearly an expert at this, and we enjoyed watching her and other people in the studio work on their own complex pieces. Daniel's piece was being reworked a lot so we kept joking to him they were redoing his whole piece. After our wax was dried and touched up by the professional, we dyed the background. For this part, you put on latex gloves and paint the colored dye where you want it. In theory, the hardened wax lines prevent the dyes from leaking through to other sections of the canvas, but we all definitely got some leakage. The dying part was challenging as well because it was hard to visualize how the art would look when finished because the wet dyes were not the colors they would be when dried (e.g., the blue dye looked red). We did out best, and then let the dyes dry in the hot sun. After they dried, we painted on additional colorful details making sure we were painting in between the wax lines. Once we were done with that we placed the cloth in an acidic water bath for the dye, then in a boiling pot of water to melt off the wax, and finally hung the final products up to dry. We were all a little skeptical about how they would turn out, but the outcome was surprisingly good for all of us and much better than we imagined! This was such a fun experience and we were glad to learn more about this ancient art form and have a unique souvenir to bring home. After class, we stopped for lunch at a small restaurant that was recommended by one of the employees at the batik studio. we ordered her recommendation which was Ayam Goreng (fired chicken, veggies, rice) and orange water. We went back to the hostel to relax the rest of the evening since we had a big day ahead. The next day we hired a private driver to take six of us to the Borobodur and Prambanan Temples.
The six of us left early from the hostel, and our driver drove us a little over an hour to Borobudur Temple. We couldn’t see the temple yet from the parking lot, but we took a small shuttle to meet our temple guide, since we had pre-paid for the tour that allows you to actually climb the temple versus just seeing it from the grounds. After a change of shoes to provided flip flops, we were heading toward the temple. The flip flops are given to each visitor that climbs the structure to help protect the temple from containments and damage. We learned that Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world! It was built in the 8th and 9th centuries and is massive. It's composed of over 2 million volcanic stones that were cut and laid without the use of mortar. The structure appears to be a rising pyramid, but was actually built in three tiers- a pyramidal base with five concentric square terraces, the trunk of a cone with three circular platforms and, at the top, a monumental stupa (a bell-shaped structure). The temple dimensions were like a square cake with stacks but all the stacks seemed to be slanted making the structure not appear as tall. The temple is also covered with reliefs carved in the stone that tell stories of the Buddha's life and teachings. In addition to the central stupa at the top of the structure, there are more than 70 others around the temple holding statues of the Buddha, and there are more than 500 sitting Buddha statues around the temple complex with their hands in different mudras. We really enjoyed visiting this temple and appreciating the stonework and architecture that went in to building it. It was fascinating to learn more about Buddhism and how all parts of the temple were designed in such a symbolic way. The temple location itself was also very beautiful as well with the rainforest and mountains sprawling in the background.
After our tour of Borobudur, our driver took us to a lunch spot that included an Indonesian buffet. The food was delicious and we overloaded our plates at the buffet since everything looked so good. We tried some new food like spicy veggie soup and leaf wrapped fish. After lunch, we drove another hour to the Prambanan temple complex. The Prambanan temple complex was built in the 9th century and is the largest Hindu temple site in Indonesia and the second largest in Southeast Asia after Angkor Wat. The complex originally consisted of 240 temple structures, although these were of varying sizes. The biggest temple is dedicated to Shiva, the destroyer, and the two smaller ones which sit on its right and left are dedicated to Brahma, the creator, and Visnhu, the sustainer. The tallest temple of Prambanan is 47 meters high! Since these temples are Hindu rather than Buddhist, the construction was different. The temples follow the more traditional Hindu style and are multi-tiered, tall and pointed structures. We were able to walk inside and see statues of the god it was dedicated to. Similar to Borobudur, there were many statues and reliefs in the stone work communicating various stories and teachings. Unfortunately, we didn't have a guide for this complex, so we did not get as much information about these, but we were still able to walk around and appreciate it. After exploring the main temple of Prambanan, we hurried to the north part of the complex to see another set of large temples that are still being restored. The complex was much larger than we expected, so we only got to see a fraction of it as we walked around. Fortunately, we were gifted with a beautiful sunset over the temples before heading back to our hostel where we were dropped off just in time for dinner. We really enjoyed visiting these temples and learning more about the religious history of Java and Indonesia. We thought it was very interesting how close together these massive temples of different religions were to each other. It was also especially interesting since Islam has been the dominant religion on Java for centuries. It really demonstrates the long and diverse history and influences on the island and Indonesia as a whole.
After family dinner at the hostel we joined everyone at a bar that offered all you can drink beers for 75k rupiah (about $5 USD). The catch for this was that you have to drink in a designated area and you have to repay if you go to the bathroom or leave the designated area. We all made sure our bladders were empty before going in and then passed the time playing cards and drinking beer from the towers it was served in. We had to add ice to the beer since it was served way too warm, but we couldn't complain too much for the price. When the all you can drink was over, we sang acoustic karaoke which had very limited song options (no Spice Girls or Backstreet Boys!). We called it a good day and headed back for the night.
The next day we did more trip planning in the morning and then went out for lunch at another local spot where you sit on the floor in front of your table. For lunch, we tried rawon which is a delicious beef stew. We also got our first taste of the incredible juices in Southeast Asia- Mel got a mango juice and Carson got a snake fruit juice. For dessert, we also tried Roti Bakar based on a conversation we had with Laura at dinner. It's a traditional dessert/snack of toasted bread, chocolate, and.....shredded cheese. We were skeptical, but honestly it was really good.
After lunch, we visited a history museum called Vredeburg that was an old Dutch fortress. The museum was really unique and had handmade dioramas depicting historical events which was something we had never seen before. The museum focused on the Dutch colonial history and independence movement. We also learned more about the city and history of Yogyakarta, which is the capital of the "Special Region of Yogyakarta." Yogyakarta is the only Indonesian royal city still ruled by a monarchy, and it has a long history of being a cultural and educational hub of the country. As we were leaving the museum, we ran into a few school field trip groups of kids that were about elementary school age who were really excited to see and talk to us (the girls especially squealed a lot at Carson). We posed for countless selfies and group photos with them, and slowly made our way back to the hostel where we booked our next adventure- a tour of Mount Bromo and Mount Ijen in eastern Java.
Malang, Mount Bromo, and Mount Ijen Tour: The next day we took the train at 9:30am and got into Malang in East Java at 4:15pm. It was a long ride, but very punctual. After arriving, we re-met up with two of our friends from the Yogyakarta hostel, Juliette and Livia, and headed to the colorful village of Jodipan which was a short walk from the station. After some quick sightseeing of the colorful buildings along the river, we took a Grab to our hostel and went to dinner at a local place nearby to get Soto Ayum (Indonesian chicken rice soup). Melissa, Juliette, and Livia all really liked the soup, but something about the texture put Carson off so he didn't finish his. Livia told us how badly she had been craving a McFlurry, and pretty soon we all were craving one, so after dinner we hit up a mall nearby for some cheap McFlurries (<$1). We said goodbye to Livia since she was going on a different tour to Bromo/Ijen, and the three of us headed back to our hostel to get rest for an early pickup to start our tour.
The next morning we were picked up with Juliette along with three others (Lauren, Anouk, and Bob) who would be joining us. No surprise at this point to learn that the three of them were Dutch! We were given a delicious Beng-Beng candy bar (which was the name of the tour group) and we were off to our first stop, Tumpak Sewu waterfall. We stopped the van at the waterfall parking lot and were provided breakfast next door. We then had a guide lead us down to the waterfall. After a short descent we were at a viewpoint where you can sometimes see a volcano (Mt. Semeru) in the background, but it wasn't visible today. The waterfall was massive and bowl shaped with many streams coming off the top and giving the impressions of dozens of waterfalls. We then continued hiking down a steep path to the base of the falls, including trekking through shallow streams until we made it. The waterfall was very powerful from the bottom and we were getting rained on with water droplets. After appreciating the views and taking photos, we hiked back up the steep trail to the same restaurant where we had breakfast but this time for a basic but filling lunch. After lunch, we settled in (with another Beng-Beng) for the long drive to our homestay near Mount Bromo. The homestay was very quaint and cozy in the mountains and had a nice courtyard where we enjoyed a beer from the market next door. We assumed the homestay would have dorms or multiple rooms, but we were all surprised to find out that the sleeping arrangement was actually just three rooms with a double bed in each. Since Carson and I were the only couple traveling together, we opted to have Carson share with Bob as the only men of the group, and Mel bunked with Juliette instead. It all worked out, but was pretty funny at the time! The homestay was otherwise uneventful, aside from the massive grasshopper we saw near the bathroom that was almost the size of Mel's hand. We had an early dinner cooked at the homestay and went to bed early for our 2am wake up to see the sunrise at Mount Bromo.
At 2am, we took our day packs and jumped into two old Toyota jeeps to climb to the viewpoints of Bromo National Park. The jeep ride was really fun aside from the gas fumes we were inhaling in the back, and our driver was faster than most (apparently he races his jeep on the side which made sense). It was pretty crazy to see the hundreds of jeeps heading up the mountain in the dark all to see this volcano! We stopped at King Kong Hill and sat in a small ramshackle restaurant drinking tea and eating fried bananas and waiting for sunrise. When it was time, we started our short hike to the main viewpoint, and it was very windy and ash was flying everywhere. As the sun rose, you could barely see Mount Bromo at times, but as the wind died down we still got some incredible views. The site was still one of the beautiful things we had ever seen, even though our guide kept telling us it wasn't a very good day and showing us better sunrise pictures haha. The volcanos are active and you could see vapor coming from Bromo and occasionally the largest one that was a long ways away, Mount Semeru. We jumped back in our jeep and got stuck in traffic for about 2 hours before descending back into the valley of sand/ash. Our driver was driving around the sand like we were in the movie Mad Max, which was super fun. He dropped us in a parking area for us to hike up to the rim of Mount Bromo. Hiking to Bromo wasn't too challenging other than walking through loose sand and having the high winds blowing sand in your face. There were a lot of people walking up the steps and horses taking people by. Eventually we made it to the rim where we were able to look down into the center of the active Mount Bromo volcano. As you can imagine, it smelled pretty bad from the sulfur vapors that were constantly purged from the volcano, and the sound the volcano was making was so strange and something we had never heard before. We walked back to the car, grabbed lunch, and then headed to our next guesthouse located near Mount Ijen.
For Mount Ijen we had to wake up even earlier and left our homestay at midnight for a three hour car ride to the National Park. We then had some tea to warm up and waited for our guide to begin our sunrise hike. We donned our headlamps and were all handed half-face N95 masks before starting our uphill climb in the ash to get to the top of Mount Ijen. This was much more of a hike than Bromo, and after 1.5 hours of walking uphill in the dark, we were at the rim trying not to get blown over by the intense wind. Mount Ijen is known for its blue fire, acidic crater lake, and sulfur mining. The blue fire is visible by hiking down from the rim to the bank of the crater. The electric blue flame is caused by natural phenomenon where sulfuric gas, ignited by high temperatures, creates stunning blue flames. We didn't go down to see the blue fire since the area was closed off due to increased activity in that area. We also might have opted not to even if it was open because we didn't know home much we trusted the gas masks we were given to be that close to such high sulfur content! Fortunately, we don't feel like we really missed out because we got an absolutely epic sunrise from the rim. We turned our attention to beautiful Mount Ijen that started to glow with color, and the stunning blue-green crater lake at it's base. The crater lake of Mount Ijen is the most acidic lake in the world, with a pH of around 0.5!
Mount Ijen also has a history of sulfur mining and there are still Indonesian people that mine sulfur near the lake which is an extremely difficult and dangerous job. According to our guide, the miners bring up 50-70 kg of sulfur at a time and make only about $10 a day, and the safety precautions are lacking. A fair amount of miners have since switched from mining more tourism-centered work, which includes literally bringing people up the mountain in push carts that they called "Lambos" for a lot more money. We did see quite a few tourists taking this mode of transportation up the mountain to get the views. The mountain and crater lake were one of prettiest nature sights we have ever seen. After sitting and enjoying the view and avoiding the mini wind tornados, we ran back down the mountain due to the slick sandy conditions. At the bottom, we enjoyed breakfast as the guides were singing karaoke. We then drove one hour to the port and waited for our boat to take us to the island of Bali.
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