Java

It was in a tuk-tuk back from Kota, the former center of Batavia near Jakarta's massive dirty seaport, where I had been taken around for an hour by an old fisherman in a small wooden boat seeing the many schooners bound for Kalimantan loading and unloading their goods. We were driving along a stinking canal which I knew I had crossed earlier by foot; I recognized some of the remains of Dutch colonial architecture. The twilight actually shed a favourable light on the crumbling state the entire Kota area was in. We drove into more and more unknown territory near Chinatown and I anticipated that we would get onto a main road at some point, but we didn't: we kept taking turns, small street after small street, winding our way through then stuck in the midst of other traffic again and it struck me as remarkable that there was a seemingly never-ending procession of street shops, stalls with lights lining the canal, people sitting, walking, working and what more. The sweltering heat of the afternoon was still holding as darkness descended quickly now, I lost track of where we were, and while I was breathing the fumes of traffic on Jakarta's eternally clogged roads suddenly a cacophony of sounds from all directions emerged as all mosques in the area started their (all different) call to prayer. It was chaos, but right there and then I felt a sudden and pleasurable calm descending on me. I felt I was back in Asia.

Malaysia and Singapore were different, for sure. Jakarta is immense, a giant urban sprawl which stretches out far beyond the city's boundaries. It's crowded and it's dirty. Arriving by plane, I think I have never seen such a thick layer of brown smog hanging below the clear blue sky. There is not very much to see either, actually, which is why many tourists skip it entirely. Yet there is the old center of Batavia, the former capital of the Dutch East Indies, now hidden in the far northern part of the city, where of course many new dwellings have appeared in modern times, but where old buildings keep being silent witnesses of colonial times and, except for some renovated museums, seemingly left deteriorating since.

As for the colonial past and the Dutch involvement therein, I'm from the postcolonial generation. I've never felt any sentiment of 'Ons Indie' when thinking about Indonesia, nor felt some 'special bond' with the country. The histories of our countries are unmistakably intertwined, of course: 350 years of colonial presence leaves its traces (and not only in Indonesia). Most visible perhaps are the words in Bahasa Indonesia that derive from or are similar to Dutch. Other traces, nowadays, are mostly left to museums and some remaining architecture (oh, and the 'bitterballen' at Cafe Batavia). The colonial connection (in contrast to only the historical) was at its most profound though when I was standing at the balcony of the 'Gouverneursgebouw' in Jakarta looking out over the central square where people lazed around in the afternoon sun, being the only Western tourist amidst curious Indonesian tourists asking me where I was from (and nodding approvingly when I said Holland, as if confident that I would know my history). Walking past poster-sized maps with Dutch notes, the room where the 'Raad van Schepenen' held office, paintings of governors with Dutch names and Dutch gravestones, even as a staunch postcolonialist at that balcony I briefly imagined myself in 'our' Gouverneursgebouw, thinking of the many Dutch arriving into these unknown lands, towards unknown destinies, centuries ago in unimaginably different times, and I was not at all sure whether I would sign up for such adventure at that time.

From Jakarta I made a beeline through West-Java, via Bandung, another multi-million people's city which I visited just as a stopover for a day, to the small town of Wonosobo in Central Java. The urban conglomerations of Jakarta and Bandung are actually on the verge of being connected, though the cities are 3 hours by train apart. The island of Java has a huge population of 136 million people (it is one of the most densely-populated places in the world), but out of the cities the grey urban sprawl turns out to give way to beautiful scenery, an all green, at some points hilly plain littered with majestic conic volcanoes on the horizon. The train ride from Bandung to the town of Kutoarjo took 7 hours and at least for the first 3 or 4 hours the scenery was just stunning. Rice paddies, small rice terraces where the terrain was uneven, palm trees, banana plantations, all greener than green, and many farmers in the fields harvesting or sowing rice (they get three rice harvests per year here; just imagine for a moment how much rice is needed to feed the population).

It was a long day traveling to Wonosobo; I had to take another bus for 2 hours and then again a minibus where they tried to break the typical'how many people can we fit into a minibus' record, which was actually fun this time, because the people were all so friendly. In Bandung as well I had received all smiles, "hello mister!"-'s, and later in Central Java the photo opportunities and 'interviews' would become popular: school girls sometimes with an actual school assignment (in the touristy places) asking for a short interview, but even without an official assignment many locals who wanted to take their picture taken with me. In Wonosobo, the ladies from the cramped minibus even walked me to the guesthouse I wanted to stay in.

I was visiting Wonosobo for the Dieng Plateau nearby, which I did the next day. Wonosobo lies at about 1000m, so the climate is nice, a little cooler than the plains. Dieng lies at 2000m and is really cool (well, not compared to a Dutch winter, of course, but you need a fleece there). Dieng means 'Abode of the Gods' and there are some solemn old Hindu temples in the midst of the plateau. Yet it's more about the overall scenery. The plateau is part of a large volcanic complex and is itself surrounded by higher mountains. On the route up to Dieng, elaborate hill terraces are used for growing all kinds of 'cooler climate' products such as potatoes, cabbage, carrots, etc. On the plateau itself you can walk around the small village and there are some nice crater lakes in the area and an actual active crater with boiling and steaming water and little vents of steam all over the place. After I think a 2-hour walk around the area it started to rain though and when the mist was also coming in the view was gone, it got cold, and I went down to Wonosobo again.

There is nothing else to do in Wonosobo, but it was nice to watch small village life after the megacities of Jakarta and Bandung, so I just walked around for a bit and had dinner in the evening in what seemed to be a popular food court. There I met a 30-year old local couple from Wonosobo and a friend of theirs, who invited me to sit with them. While we talked a bit the man invited me to their house after dinner. He lived nearby, so I agreed. It is of course always great to be invited into a home and get to know more of the local culture. Nur and Latifa had a nice house where they lived with their two young daughters. We drank tea and talked about Holland, Java, differences, similarities, etc. I really enjoyed. It was an illustration of the general friendliness I found on Java.

Next day I went to Borobodur, the third of the great monumental triad of Southeast Asia (the others are Angkor and Bagan). Most tourists, it seems, take day tours to Borobodur from Yogyakarta, which is relatively nearby, but I was coming from the other direction, so I went to and stayed for the night in very small Borobodur Village. Borobodur is best seen very early in the morning, so I visited some other temple that afternoon and just walked around for a bit. I wondered for a moment about the grey sand everywhere, but then of course: the ash from Merapi was still in the streets! At Borobodur next morning they were still cleaning it too, with little brushes. The stupa was, as expected, very impressive, while its setting in beautiful and quiet green surroundings and (as I was there early morning) the presence of few other tourists, added to the atmosphere.

Still in the morning, because I got up so early, I had arranged to go with a guide on the back of a motorbike to visit some beautiful rice terraces about half an hour away. After the motorbike ride, it was a 45 minute hike up the terraces, where the views were indeed superb.

In the afternoon I went to Yogyakarta, which they often say is the cultural heart of Java. About half-way I passed the village of Magelang, where we got into a bit of a traffic jam and although bus windows were blackened to keep out the sun and it was a bit hard to see at first (it looked like road construction work), the damage suddenly became abundantly clear: it was one grey mess of mud, stones and even huge boulders lying everywhere. Bystanders looked how people and machines frantically worked to clear up the mess. They said it was Merapi, but Merapi had been silent for a while, so I only understood what happened later when they explained it to me: apparently the enormous amounts of ash from Merapi has clogged rivers and pressure is still building up in rivers at various places and this had been a burst of one of these rivers throwing debris over a large area, destroying a bridge, part of the village and the road. The road had just been reopened 2 days ago.

Yogya, as it's called by the Javanese, was wonderful. It is a good-sized city, much smaller than the megacities of Jakarta and Bandung with mostly low-rise buildings and it has a pleasant and busy centre around Malioboro Street, which leads to the kraton: the sultan's palace combined with the old walled city areas that used to be part of the palace in the past. The backpacker's area is right there in the centre, too: a maze of narrow winding lanes littered with homestays and restaurants. I just happened to find a very nice homestay there, an old renovated house belonging a very friendly family, with only 4 rooms, a nicely decorated hall and an inviting small terrace upstairs looking out over the roofs of the neighbourhood. Two German couples were staying in the other rooms upstairs and we got along very well, so we went out to eat or see things together a few times or had some beers on our private terrace in the evenings, which was fun. I stayed there for 5 days, just taking in the sights as they came by just walking around during the day. The sultan's palace was actually a bit less kingly as I had thought (it was not that impressive), but that was made up by the very nice gamelan (traditional Javanese orchestra) performance there. I had some very good Indonesian food in Yogya too, which, to my great surprise (because good Indonesian food is easily found in the Netherlands), is actually hard to find sometimes, as most of the street stalls only sell the ubiquitous nasi goreng or ayam goreng, bakso (a kind of meatballs), and chicken soup. In Yogya I had my favourite stall, though, delicious!

One day I ventured out to Prambanan, an impressive complex of Hindu temples 17km from Yogya. The Lonely Planet suggested you could take a bicycle and avoid the main road, cycle through some nice scenery, and I thought why not. It was already hot when I left Yogya, but Sebastian (one of the Germans) and I had ordered a snake curry (!) the day before, so with an elaborate meal of cobra curry and fried python the evening before, I felt I had the power! :) Although I had never heard of Prambanan before, the temples were actually very impressive and I would say not to be missed. It was an interesting setting as well if you're into Hinduism: I don't think anywhere else I've seen such an orderly representation of the entire Hindu Trinity with temples for Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and their 'mounts'. Normally it's either Vishnu, or Shiva, and Brahma-temples are exceptionally rare.

Because it's rainy season here as well, at some point it started to rain. Not problematic, as normally it would only last for an hour or two, so I sought shelter near a temple and waited it out. Yet today it was different. It didn't stop. I had a small umbrella so finally I walked to the entrance where I parked my bike, but it only started to rain harder and harder. I had some of these ubiquitous plastic raincoats to cover me as well, but it was the kind of rain that you can't even cross a street with an umbrella without getting drenched. It was exceptionally torrential and it retained the same strength for hours and hours. I was weighing my options; it was after 5pm now and it would soon be dark. If I would need to cycle back in the dark (along the main road then, I assumed), I might as well still wait till the rain at least subsided a bit, as I would barely be able to see things on the road in this watershed. I decided to make a run for an internet cafe and wait there. When I came back to the temple entrance I guess 2 hours later, finally the rain had become 'regular' I discovered my bike was gone! Ouch. It was dark, still raining, and the entrance guards had all left. What to do?! In the internet cafe and around I had only found non-English speaking people, so my hopes were thin. Yet fortunately, when I went into the nearest shop to ask what may have happened to my bike, the owner said 'wait' and after 5 minutes a girl came down and to my utmost surprise she spoke fluent English. She took me to another office of the temple complex, which directed us to another place nearby again, and yes, the officials had taken my bike there (they take all remaining vehicles after closing time; I didn't know that of course). If it were not for the girl's help, I would probably have had to take a taxi back and either go look for the bike next day or report it as stolen. Thank you Cantika!

From Yogyakarta I went to Solo, the other important sultanate in the history of Java. Solo has a similar 'kraton' as Yogya, and actually two palaces (there has been some ambiguity in the past over who was the rightful heir to Solo's throne). In the second palace, I watched the Wednesday morning practice of traditional Javanese official kraton dance, a highly formal, stylized dance, which was beautifully performed, sometimes including an interesting 'correction' by the teacher. The first palace was not exceptionally interesting, except for a very interesting rendez-vous with royalty early morning when I was waiting for the palace doors to open. I had been talking for a bit to the palace personnel in their traditional costumes waiting to get into the palace as well to go to work, and I made some pictures of the men (there were no other visitors at that time yet) when suddenly a young pretty lady appeared with her 3-year old and she asked me where I was from and whether I wanted to see her village. Apparently showing my confusion about 'village' right here in the center of Solo, she smiled and said 'My village is there, I'm a princess, the first daughter of the sultan, I live here.' I had just stumbled upon a real princess! She asked me how I liked it here and we talked briefly, but then her becak (rickshaw) arrived to take her out to breakfast. In the afternoon I explored the neighbourhood of Solo: I had hired another motorbike guide (because it was supposed to be very badly signposted) to go to the slopes of Gunung Lawi, an extinct volcano, and see tea plantations (I love the sight of tea plantations) and two actually quite interesting temples.

Then Surabaya, the second largest city of Java, but apart from an Arab quarter in the centre of the city, which was quite nice, it's not of much interest. It is one of those well-known cities though that I just like to pass through, not so much to 'tick it off', but to have an image of it when you hear of it again, if only by briefly traveling through and just staying one night. Moreover it was a nice train ride from Central to East Java, as from Solo I wanted to slowly make my way to Mount Bromo, the Ijen Plateau, and then Bali. On this route I continued from Surabaya to Malang, again by train. Malang lies at higher altitude and is actually a pretty nice city with a cooler climate and tree-lined boulevards, which made it popular with the colonial Dutch as well, so there are quite some Dutch-style villas still to be found.

Then I finally made my way to Mount Bromo, supposedly the most beautiful volcanic setting on Java. And still active sometimes, such as now. It seemed as if the entire volcanic belt in the region had become active at the same time, since Merapi was surely not the only one. In Bandung it was not possible to visit a volcano in the vicinity because it was too dangerous, and I had heard that it was also not possible to climb Bromo right now. Yet going to the usual access point for Bromo was still possible, so I made my way from Malang to Probolinggo. From there the road winds up to the small village of Cemoro Lawang (with a view of Bromo) at around 2000m, but public transport up the mountain depends on demand. Coming from Malang I arrived at 1pm, had lunch and waited for a while to see if other people would show up, but in the end it didn't seem like a minibus would be going. I actually wanted to see Bromo in daylight today (next day I would also see it, but then at sunrise) so I finally agreed going up the mountain on the back of a motorbike. This would take 1 hour and we were underway for I think 5 or 10 minutes when an enormous downpour started. Not again ... I was starting to get fed up with the rain now. I was soaked, drenched, my feet were swimming in my hiking shoes, right at the time when I would finally need them for a couple of days: next day at sunrise to hike up to a viewpoint to see Bromo at sunrise and then after tomorrow at the Ijen Plateau. I was not happy, also because I knew from Dieng that nothing would dry at cold and moist 2000m (but I actually managed to hang my things near a small fire pot in the guesthouse's kitchen).

Yet my mood would change in a moment. In the heavy rain going up the mountain I thought I had heard thunder too, which did not seem too unlogical for a monsoonal outburst. When I arrived and the rain had stopped, though, it occurred to me it hadn't been thunder. It was Bromo. It was bizarre, it was thundering and roaring though I didn't see it yet but when I looked up the street from the guesthouse I saw the smoke hanging in the air. I took a (cold) shower, changed into dry clothes, and walked up the street. After about 100m, an uncontrolled 'wow' escaped my mouth as I saw the scenery unfold, which the LP guidebook aptly describes as a 'lunaresque landscape of epic proportions and surreal beauty, and one of Indonesia's most breathtaking sights'. It was. The mountain that I went up from Probolinggo to Cemoro Lawang by motorbike is actually the ancient Tengger caldera. Over the centuries Bromo and two other volcanoes have emerged from the bottom of this old caldera, stretching 10km across. Standing in Cemoro Lawang village, the viewpoint being at the lip of the Tengger caldera, one looks into the immense ancient crater, which is indeed a lunaresque landscape of volcanic sand, and from this huge flat terrain surrounded by the towering cliffs of the crater's edge, three conic volcanoes rise up into the air: Batok, beautiful (non-active) Kursi, and right next to it black, wide-cratered Bromo, which was thundering, roaring and spewing black ash into the air. It was one of the most impressive natural settings I have ever seen. At night you could also go to the viewpoint where some locals would always congregate as well, huddled in sarongs or blankets, because Bromo's activity was clearly a special event for the locals too. In the darkness you could sometimes see red-orange 'fire stones' coming out of Bromo's crater, even going out of it a couple of times and rolling down its sides.

I got up at 4am to be brought (the guesthouse offered a minibus) to the viewpoint for sunrise at nearby Mount Penanjakan, where we hiked up to a further viewpoint not reachable by car. Unfortunately during sunrise it was cloudy, but we kept waiting for a bit and we had half an hour or so that it cleared up mostly and the sight was again phenomenal. Coming back down from Bromo turned out to be as problematic as going up, as most people were on a combined tour of Bromo and Ijen and were picked up by a minibus, as it turned out, so the public minibus didn't go. I had actually signed up for a minibus 'tour' to the Ijen Plateau while in Probolinggo the day before. It had been difficult to get up to Bromo, but it was supposed to be far more difficult to get to Ijen independently, as the road to Ijen was supposed to be very bad. Additional advantage was that the organized minibus could go down from Ijen on the other side (an even worse road, which public transport could not take at all), which is the way to get to the ferry to Bali. As I had agreed to be down in Probolinggo at 11am, I finally had to take a motorbike down again for an hour. It was all kind of a hassle talking with the minibus driver, then negotiating with the motorbike driver and the travel agency, but from that point I was glad I could now rest assured of transport all the way to Bali.

I traveled with a Russian couple and it took us about 5 hours to get to Ijen. The road was pretty bad indeed. Ijen (meaning Lonely Mountain) is again a volcanic plateau at about 2000m altitude, surrounded by volcanic mountains. The plateau is thickly forested, thinly populated, and actually the primary location for growing the famous Java coffee. Arriving at the guesthouse, then, we were of course welcomed in the cooler climate again and amidst coffee plantations we could enjoy a freshly brewed cup of real Java coffee. I went to bed early that evening, because for the second day in a row, we would be getting up at 4am the next morning, now for Kawah Ijen.

Kawah Ijen is a magnificent turquoise sulphur lake at 2148m altitude. It was still an hour by car from the guesthouse and then a steep 3km hike up to the lake. While hiking up, a steady trickle of men came down with heavy baskets on their shoulders carrying large and bright yellow blocks: sulphur. Ijen is a major sulphur gathering centre. When I reached the top, it was unmistakable: the sulphur fumes were blowing me in my face and hid a good view of the lake. Walking a bit farther though, the wind changed, blew the sulphur cloud away and the beautifully turquoise crater lake revealed itself. It was indeed a magnificent sight.

I had been walking uphill with one of the men who gathered sulphur and he told me I could come down into the crater, but there was a sign somewhere that said it was forbidden, so I thanked him and said I'd just walk around it, and I got even better views. When I came back, though, there were some more tourists and they were going down into the crater now (or most were actually coming up). When I met a German guy who had been here before with a guide from Bali and the guide assured me going down was fine today (it depended on sulphurous activity of the lake), I went down with them. From the crater lip I had already seen continuous heavy sulphur smoke coming from one point at the bank of the lake. The smoke would go up and depending on the wind it would either go up and out of the crater directly or it would fill the crater with smoke. As we went down the steep, rocky path, together with sulphur gathering men coming up and going down all the time (it is unbelievable; they carry 75 or 100kg of sulphur up this steep path and then 3km down the steep hike I went up earlier).

I breathed through my fleece, which I held in my hand, when the smoke became heavier, and as we descended into the crater it did. At some point it became so thick that I just wanted to close my eyes and wait, but according to the guide it was better to continue now, as the smoke would be less at the bottom, which was true. Arriving at the bottom, the German guy said, only semi-jokingly, 'welcome to hell'. And measuring up the scene in amazement, with some naturally instilled fear of this hellish smoke filling up the entire crater, seeing these men work there, I actually thought: yes, if I would imagine a hell, this could be it. It was otherworldly: hot yellow smoke was gushing through pipes coming down from a huge rock (the German guy explained the pipes could not be of iron or steel, as the sulphuric gas would just 'eat that away'. At the bottom end of the pipe the smoke would condense into a yellow liquid and drip to the ground. As it would harden, a worker would defy the smoke, scrape it up and put it somewhere nearby to harden out as a massive block of sulphur. When you looked around the scene, it looked like another planet: yellow rocks, yellow gas, men working with a propped up cloth in their mouths, their eyes squeezed, the turquoise lake was 'breathing' sulphurous damps too, and if you looked up the crater wall, everything was covered in mist.

I had a natural tendency to not stay here for too long and When I had seen enough and made my pictures, I hurried up as the sulphur clouds were increasingly filling the crater and I just wanted to get out. I hiked down the 3km path, breathed fresh air, and then had the luxury of a minibus going down the plateau to the ferry dock for Bali, a steep and rocky road down which we needed to take very slowly and which I can fully understand is impossible for public transport. On the ferry to Bali, still with a bit prickly eyes (that would go away over the next hour) the impressive image of the sulphur hell was still with me for a while and actually dominated the surreal beauty of the turqoise lake. It was one of the strangest things I've seen and I still cannot imagine these people working there every day.

Yet it was an impressive sight and experience and I must say I really loved Java. It had just everything: thousand-year old and contemporary culture, extraordinary and beautiful nature, very friendly people, good food if you look for it, few tourists (also because of low season probably), a bit older and more interesting other travelers, some adventure, and finally some hassle and frustration to feel that you're actually traveling :)

Bali, in all probablity, would be altogether different again.

All the best,

Arnoud.