Don’t Panic, It’s Volcanic

The Far East

Well, this is a different world, I can tell you.

I’m in Ketapang, also known as Banyuwangi, on the far east coast of Java. It’s not far across the strait to Bali, but it feels like a long long way away.

This town’s a transit town. The main highway heading down to the harbour and ferry terminal is busy, full of cars, motorbikes and big smelly trucks. It’s super noisy. This is the sort of town that I don’t feel like hanging out in for too long at all. I mean, I’m sure there’s some interesting parts, but I just haven’t been able to find any of them.

I had a beautiful ride from Pemuteran this morning, through Bali Barat National Park. It was so nice to ride in the forest for a change, nice and slowly, to listen to the chattering of the birds and the noisy screeching of the hundreds of monkeys in the trees. There were so many of them, they were all over the road, sitting, playing, chasing, going apeshit at each other, doing their monkey things, with their monkey minds.

These cuties are crab-eating macaques, and they’re pretty common in Bali, Java and Sumatra. There’s a lot of them in the Monkey Forest in Ubud. They acquired their name because they often frequent the coast, and include crustaceans in their diet.

They’re the smartest creatures ever. They use rocks to crack open nuts, they wash their food sometimes, wetting it and rubbing it in their cute little hands, or they peel things like sweet potatoes with their teeth. Positively cultured.

More grandiosity, Balinese style

The ferry between Bali and Java was a breeze. There were loads of signs on the road leading to the harbour saying TIKET ONLINE. So I stopped and bought a ferry ticket for myself and my bike, it was a grand total of, wait for it, AUD1.70. Crazy.

The ticket had a bar code on it, I followed the “SEPEDA” signs (bicycle), scanned my ticket, and Ade’s yer uncle. I rode right on board, didn’t have to wait, parked up, tied my bike to the wall of the ship, and headed up to the cabin. We left not long after.

Interesting fashion statement, hijab + baseball cap. I like it.

Everyone hustles for a living here. These guys were shouting out to people on the ferry to throw them banknotes. Locals were throwing them Rp 1000 notes (about 10c) from right at the top of the 3 storey ship, where I was. They’d dive and fight each other for the notes.

Bye Bali. I miss you already. Java beckons in the distance.

That noisy highway through Ketapang

My first squat toilet since I left Bali. It also happens to be my first toilet since I left Bali.

That's not a coincidence.

It’s the future.

Freighted

I feel so naked.

A big part of me is gone.

But somehow I feel really light as well.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time to ride to Yogyakarta before my visa runs out, so my only real option from here is to take a train, with my bike.

So I happily went off to Ketapang train station this afternoon to arrange all that, and, lo and behold, they explained to me that I can’t take my bike on the train, as it doesn’t fold up, and exceeds their size restrictions.

How inconveniently bloody logical, organised and efficient of them.

I tried to remind them that this is actually Indonesia, not some fussy so-called developed country like Australia, and that here no one cares about rules and regulations, so what on Allah’s earth are you bloody going on about. But it was all to no avail.

Hmmm. So I had to come up with a Plan B.

I found a freight company, not far from the railway station, and arranged for them to freight my bike all the way to Yogya. It was pretty easy tbh.

So it’s gone. I’ve delivered my bike to them, I shed a tear or two, and then I bought a train ticket to Probolinggo for tomorrow afternoon. I want to visit Mt Bromo, an active volcano, while I’m in that neck of the woods.

So, hell’s bells and bloody cockle shells, I’m suddenly a regular backpacker again.

Well, at least for a few days anyway.

Wingin’ it on the Probowangi

It’s pretty comfy on this train, I gotta say. The seats are large and soft, uniformed women and men keep coming past selling food and drinks, and everything’s all very clean and organised.

Clean and organised Ketapang Station

Train attendants

I even ate some of that lonely piece of chicken in there. They'd chuck it anyway, it's not like I was contributing to a traumatic chicken death. It tasted quite good actually.

Shame the aircon on here is set to minus 50. What on earth is that all about? Are all aircon controller jobs around the whole world now filled by polar bears? Is that why there’s so few of them in the Arctic these days?

Nothing particularly against Kereta Api Indonesia (the Indonesian national railway company), because ridiculous aircon settings appear to be a serious universal problem no matter where you go, from Aussie buses to Thai taxis to European planes to supermarkets and shops all over the bloody place.

Not that we have to worry about electricity consumption or anything.

Luckily, I brought my Singapore Airlines blanket on this train. I’m so happy about that.

I’m heading to Probolinggo, a medium sized city on the northeast coast of Java. And to get there, we’re travelling right through the guts of the eastern tip of this massive island. It’s stunningly beautiful.

As it’s rainy season, the land is absolutely pumping, it’s in its prime, and is painted in the most lush greens you’ll ever see. We just passed through a big expanse of untouched misty tropical rainforest, with tall hills thickly carpeted with trees, vines, and all sorts of other amazing plants. There’s tiny villages in there too, the locals growing veggies, fruit, cassava, and, of course, coconuts and rice.

And, the thing is, I don’t even have to pedal to see it.

It feels so different being on a train. It’s fast. It’s direct. But from here, the scenery feels a bit like it’s out there, sorta like I’m not in it. Well, not in the same way as I am when I’m on my bike.

But I’m absolutely not complaining, this is a beautiful way to travel, sitting on this old classic train, that’s been very well used, and, it appears from its condition, very well loved.

Tbh I was sorta glad to get out of Ketapang. It’s one of those places. For the life of me I could hardly find anything decent to eat. Every warung I asked had no fresh veggies. One had some greens. What do people live on there?

I guess they eat at home.

So two of my meals consisted of fried up 2-minute noodles, with an egg, plain rice and a bit of sambal. Maybe some tempe. That’s what was on the menu, and it def sounds better than it was.

Yeah, I know. I obviously haven’t yet adjusted to not being in Bali anymore, and need to stop being such a fussy bastard.

These help

And these

Probolinggo

Shit! The most unbelievable thing just happened!

A wild electrical storm just hit, while I was sitting here in my hotel room. I was messaging on my phone, which was plugged into the wall, when a lightning strike hit so close that the flash blinded me, my phone fizzed, gave me an electric shock and fell out of my hands, and the thunder was instantaneous and completely deafening. It scared the bloody shit out of me, which has a good side, because it indicates that my recent "Bali belly" experience appears to have passed.

I’m not sure whether the fizz and shock I heard and felt was actually through the phone, or whether it was in the air, because the lightning strike was so close. I’ll need to ask a physicist about that one.

Then the rain came, hugely torrential, and a strong wind blew it all over the place. I tried to watch the storm from my balcony but the storm really didn’t like that idea, so it threw rain at me horizontally, and the wind made it really hard to close my hotel door again, so my room floor got saturated.

Yeah, it’s rainy season alright.

There’s actually only two seasons in this part of the world - the wet season, and the very wet season.

Well, that’s not actually true, but I really wanted to say it because it sounds cool.

It is actually true for the next island over, Sumatra, especially in the southwest. I remember a local there telling me that many years ago. That’s his theory and I’m stickin to it.

But it does rain a bucket here, especially at this time of year.

I actually love this little city. I arrived on the train last night, and the place was pumping, in the most wholesome cute family way. The railway station’s right across the road from a big park, and a bunch of amazing rainbow coloured buses and little wheeled trains were driving around, full of wide eyed kids and their parents, there were other little rides for the kids, food stalls, music, a colourful fountain that had changing lights, and all sorts of cute things for families to do.

So I walked to my guest house, which wasn’t too far away, dropped off my luggage, and then came straight back.

My next car

I saw a waffle stall. What could I do? I chose the chocolate and Nutella option.

Mrs Waffle

And her two kids

I hung around the park, and watched the world go by. Quite a few people chatted with me, they in broken English and me in fractured Indonesian.

The park, with the central mosque bringing up the rear. The new moon is bringing up the rear rear.

Snap-savvy woman to the left

I used to have this game when I was a kid. It’s just two hard balls, like snooker balls, tied to each end of a piece of string. The idea is to hold the string with the balls hanging, and move it to make the balls bounce together. If you’re good at it, you can bounce them top and bottom in quick succession, and keep it going. It takes a while to get the hang of it. Loads of kids have them around Bali and Java. Not just kids actually. So simple and so fun.

Lucky she's wearing a headscarf, at her age

I almost reported this one

My next next car.

Kid artists

And a doting grandpa

Mt Bromo

What drives tour companies to get people up at 2am and then drag them to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise over a volcano?

And what drives people like me to actually go along with it, and pay good money to do it?

Well, it’s the picture in the head, the idea of the experience, I guess. It sounds like amazing fun.

The thing is, it’s rainy season here, and I was almost certain it’d be cold, cloudy and probably wet way up there at the top of Mt Bromo, 2330m above sea level.

And I was right. It was cold, and it was very cloudy.

But luckily it was only a little wet.

And of course it was so bloody amazing, my head pictures were right.

We headed up into the hills in a regular car, to a small town, Cemoro Lawang, a couple of hours drive away from Probolinggo. It was super steep in parts, the car struggled at times, with the driver, his teenage daughter, and four of us tourists weighing it down heavily.

I helped significantly by getting everyone to lean forward as we were going up the steep bits.

Once we got to the town we transferred into a nice bright red jeep, with a new friendly driver.

I took this pic later in the day. It was totally dark when we first got in, and I didn’t even notice the jeep’s colour. I also happened to be sleepwalking at the time.

Then we headed up, and drove across a huge plain of grey lava sand, interspersed with native grasses.

We headed uphill again, parked, and then climbed steeply up in the mud, on foot, to a lookout point on Gunung Penanjakan.

All of this was in the pitch dark.

We all sat there on the wet sand, slight rain falling on us, trying to pretend we didn’t mind the cold, or the fact that we’d paid money to get up in the middle of the night to sit on mud in the rain at the top of a freezing cold mountain, and look at nothing.

Luckily Remi from Holland, and Juan & Isri (sorry, not 100% sure of their names) from Kuala Lumpur, were great company, and we chatted about all sorts of things. Remi and I even started chatting about relationships, of all things. My Allah, you’d think we’d keep it a bit more shallow at moments like these.

Anyway it slowly got light, but the cloud didn’t lift.

Incredible view of nothingness

Non-artist’s impression of what may have been behind the clouds

Heading down at last

So down down down we went, drove back onto the plain, by which time it was light enough to look around, and realise how amazing the place actually is.

Then Remi and I climbed to the crater rim of Mt Bromo itself. It was incredible.

Old lava channel

We could have taken one of these horse-dogs up, to the base of the pilgrim’s staircase, but if I sat on them my legs would touch the ground anyway so I couldn’t see the point.

Remi moving through the portal

Offerings for the Vocano God, who’s called Sang Hyang Widi Wasa, and is worshipped by the local Tenggerese people through pilgrimages and festivals on various auspicious days every year.

Stairway to Hell

As we got near the top, the air became drenched in sulphur dioxide, a poisonous gas that volcanoes can emit. It was intense, you can’t really breathe it in. The further we climbed, the worse it got, stinging our eyes intensely as well. It was super windy, so the gases were blowing all over the place, but were pretty constant.

We got to the very top, the edge of the crater, and this was the amazing view:

Me smiling as if I’m happy. Notice I’m nervously clutching my shawl, which I used to cover my mouth and eyes, to stop myself suffocating from the deadly gases. Lucky I had it. Otherwise I would have been blinded and choked, lost my footing, and would've spectacularly plunged to my death over the edge of the precipice, whilst still smiling at the camera and calmly reciting Buddhist mantras.

Remi being a copycat, carrying a gas mask on his back

Every now and then the gases and cloud would clear a little, and we’d see glimpses of the inside of the crater. See it?

If it wasn’t so gassy and cloudy, we would’ve seen something like this. This is taken from the exact same spot, you can tell by the rocks.

And our sunrise might’ve looked like this. But hey, our wet muddy foggy mess with a view of close grey cloud was so much better, I’m so happy.

It was wild up there on the crater lip, it was really invigorating somehow, in a superhero kinda way. It’s a pretty weird feeling to know that at any moment you could suddenly become another statistic, become the victim of a random volcanic explosion or a deadly gas cloud.

But realistically I guess I have way more chance of getting killed on an Indonesian road than from a random volcanic belch up there. After all, there's 25,000 road deaths here every year, and only a few deaths from volcanoes.

Eventually, down we went.

Check out the sulphur corroded walls of the temple

So cool and colourful. Maybe Milena might wanna use this method on some of her art works. I never alter my photos btw, these are the real colours.

The number of jeeps up there was unbelievable. Zoom in to see the circus.

But hardly anyone climbed up to the top (not surprising, considering what it was like up there, and the fact that Indonesians don’t know how to walk, they can only ride motorbikes from a very young age). Remi and I were alone for almost the whole time we were up the top. Later Juan and Isri joined us for a bit.

It was a stunning drive back. Amazing forest, and hugely steep deep valleys. I’ve never ever seen produce grown on land so steep, without terracing, anywhere in the world. I honestly don’t know how the locals do it, how they manage to irrigate effectively, defying gravity like that. Let alone the effort required to work such ridiculously steep land. But I admit I have noticed that their legs are beefy ez, bro.

Much steeper than it looks. Well actually it does look pretty steep, well it’s even steeper than that.

Doin’ The Biz

Yeah, so it’s between Christmas and New Year, and even here in this Muslim country loads of people have time off, and are train-setting around the country, taking up all the ekonomi seats that I’m supposed to be in right now.

So I had to settle for the more expensive Biznis class on this train from Probolinggo to Yogyakarta.

I’m not exactly sure how this class is any different from economy though. The seats are the same, pretty much. There’s just a few less of them in the carriage. The food in the trolleys they roll past is exactly the same. I’ve tried them both. But in this carriage the food’s more expensive, even though it’s in exactly the same packaging. The tricksters!

The only difference I’ve noticed in the different classes is the people. In here they’re all so bloody refined and quiet. No families with kids laughing loudly and spilling chips and nasi all over the place, playing around and calling out as if they’re actually alive.

No, it’s decidedly funereal in here.

Stick that in your latte and drink it

We’re passing through Surabaya now, Indonesia’s second largest city. This part of the city is poor, and the daily lives of those who live here are completely exposed to anyone on the train who cares to look.

Ramshackle tiny shelters roll past, closely flanking the track. They’re made of rusty scavenged pieces of tin, tarps, cardboard, wood and other bits and pieces. Tied together with jute, or bits of nylon rope, or nails.

People are burning rubbish. There’s a lot of it around. Kids are washing naked, women are doing laundry, dogs are sniffing around looking for some sort of action. There’s a lot of conversations. An old man on a bicycle negotiates a muddy wet track. People wear ripped, dirty clothes and old thongs.

According to Oxfam, Indonesia is now the sixth country of greatest wealth inequality in the world, and that disparity has been growing rapidly for years now, at the fastest rate in Southeast Asia. The Indonesian vice president even recently named it as the fourth most unequal, it’s getting worse.

The four richest men in Indonesia have more wealth than the combined wealth of the poorest 100 million people here.

Unbelievable.

As always, poverty particularly affects women and kids, and the 43% of the population who live in rural areas. Over 10% of Indonesians now live below the poverty line, that’s nearly 30 million people just like you and me, but born in a different postcode.

It’s one thing to know that this is happening around the world, and it’s another to see it with your own eyes. It’s sad, it’s infuriating, it’s confusing, it just feels so wrong, because it doesn’t need to be like this. This is not the poorest country I’ve seen, that dubious honour goes to India (so far). But here there’s still a massive chasm between rich and poor, and it feels crap to see it.

Whilst wealth obviously doesn’t bring happiness (often quite the opposite), the lack of access to basic human needs such as adequate shelter, nutrition, basic health services and education is causing needless suffering to hundreds of millions of people around the world, and actually crippling their economies at the same time.

You may be surprised to know that countries that have decreased their wealth disparity, and reduced inequality, actually have higher and more sustained rates of economic growth. If workers receive a proper living wage, they’re significantly more productive, and that wage is largely spent in their communities, lifting many others out of poverty, and creating more opportunities for further poverty reduction.

It’s a win-win situation. Businesses benefit from more productivity, the community benefits from more cash floating around.

But there’s huge resistance from the uber rich to changing the current system. It’s too magnificently decadently goddamn bloody good just as it is, terima kasih banyak.

And there, Watson, lies the problem.

I didn't take any pics of the really poor areas. I was too busy pondering the excruciatingly inexplicable meaning of life.

Kantor Imigrasi

Well, here I am sitting in another random office, waiting for my life to be processed.

Paperwork.

This time it’s the Indonesian Department of Immigration, I’ve just filled out my Visa Extension application form, and provided all sorts of docs to them, to prove that I have a way out of the country (flight), a hotel to stay in (booking confirmation), local references (fictional), reasons for visa extension (Indonesia is beautiful), etc.

You know the drill.

As long as you make sure you fill in every box, you should be right.

Luckily there’s a little printer business downstairs, because Imigrasi asked me for extra documents here that weren’t on the list of requirements they publish online. Surprise surprise. But I got them from my email, and now they have them.

Because of public holidays, I’ll probably need to stay here in Yogya a few days longer than I expected, but I’m totally cool with that. It’s so interesting here.

On the commuter train to Imigrasi

To Yogya

I arrived in Yogyakarta (known as Yogya, but pronounced as Jogja), yesterday afternoon on the train. It was another beautiful train trip, scooting through one of the largest rice baskets of Indonesia, East Java.

Well actually, there’s 4 main rice producing areas in the country - South Sumatra, and then East, Central and West Java.

The land is so lush atm, lots of workers were out there slogging in the fields in the hot sun, bending their backs in the mud.

I’m glad it wasn’t me.

Given that it’s rainy season, there’s cloud about, especially in the afternoons, so it’s not as hot out there as at other times of the year. But I imagine the mud and the mush must do all sorts of things to the feet and lower legs, let alone the hard hard labour.

Yogya central station. Porters in their red traditional gear.

Dodge

Arriving in Yogya in the hot and humid busy afternoon chaos is sorta fun. I’m so used to what to expect that it’s pretty easy to negotiate any potential hassles and/or dodginess.

Not that there’s a lot of the latter, but it does exist.

I heard of a scam last night where young tourists are persuaded to check out an art exhibition in one of the little laneways, and then talked into buying what they’re told is authentic traditional art. Which isn’t. And of course they pay exorbitant prices.

The scammers are skilled. One Austrian guy bought a fake artwork yesterday which turned out to be just a worthless print. He paid way too much for it. The scammers actually went through the process of showing him how to differentiate between real and fake art, whilst actually selling him fake art! I gotta give it to them, they’re pretty creative.

Everyone’s gotta make a living I guess.

But there are better ways, and those buggers know it.

As it turns out, as I was walking down the main drag, Jalan Malioboro, yesterday afternoon, before I knew about that particular scam, a guy came up to me, chatted about his nephew in Australia, said a few Aussie phrases like “good on ya mate” (scam detector on), and then told me about a special regional traditional art exhibition in a nearby laneway (detector level up to medium).

I asked him a few questions, particularly about his nephew, and his answers weren’t convincing. As we passed by the laneway and he tried to direct me to the exhibition I walked straight past the turn, and he said “no no no, it’s this way,” and I said “ok, well maybe I might have a look tomorrow,” (scam confirmation question), he said “no, no, it finish today, very soon” (confirmation).

What a coincidence.

Off I went.

The Maluku Connection

Martha (pronounced Marta), a young woman who works here at my guest house, is the sweetest most helpful soul ever. She’s so nice. Yesterday, rather than me go out in the rain to organise the printing of docs for my visa application, she offered to organise it all for me, and had a friend of hers go and print them. She refused to take any money.

She loves singing, especially cheesy Indonesian love songs, which everyone seems to know around here. We’ve been singing songs with her and her friends after they finish work sometimes, along with other guests, eating sweets and chatting. It’s fun.

Note the more Pacific features of Martha (centre) and Aya, features common in the east of Indonesia. Here we're ripping into Hallelujah. Ade rudely cut off my head when he took this pic.

Martha is from Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, an eastern province consisting of many many beautiful islands, which see almost no Western tourists. The only influx of tourists Ambon gets is during the annual Darwin to Ambon yacht race, held in August every year, when a bunch of Aussie yachties turn up for a couple of days.

Once I told Martha I’d been to Ambon, her home town, and to a number of islands around there, she was so happy. The area is magnificent, and includes the Banda Islands, a spectacular set of islands, one of which, Banda Api, is composed entirely of an active volcano, which you can climb. It’s unbelievable, there’s a black lava river flowing from the crater lip all the way down to the sea, and the sea is literally boiling due to volcanic activity.

What a coincidence Martha is from Ambon, because lately I’ve been thinking about an Indonesian girlfriend I once had, Wirda, whom I met there.

Weirder

Wirda’s story is pretty crazy, and pretty fucked up.

She grew up on a small island in Maluku province. Her dad was the head honcho of the island, and three adjoining islands. When she was in her late teens her boyfiend asked her to marry him, she said yes. He then persuaded her to have sex with him, as they were getting married anyway. After they’d had sex, he told his mates all about it, and then told her that he had no intention of marrying her, and that she was basically a slut, and he was just testing her.

What a guy.

Of course, her reputation on the island was then mud. No man wanted her after that. And in those days, and in that place, there weren’t a lot of options for women outside of marriage.

She had to leave everything, her family, her friends, her whole life, and moved to Ambon, the capital of the province, where she could be anonymous, and start anew.

Everything was fine for a while, until a man from her island came to Ambon and told people about her past. Same thing happened, her boyfriend dumped her, she was unable to get another one, and this time she basically had nowhere else to go.

Her only option from that point on was to hook up with a foreigner, as most didn’t care at all about her past. And she normally only had a small window each year to try her luck, during the Darwin to Ambon yacht race.

Enter yours truly.

I met her on a street corner in Ambon, she chatted to me in broken English (she was the only person I met there who spoke any English whatsoever). She was older than me, and basically seduced me. I was pretty naive, pretty enamoured with this random exotic woman, and so she didn’t need to twist my arm.

I was pretty straight with her, telling her I was travelling, just passing through etc, but she was still into it, and we decided to do some travelling together. We had an awesome time, firstly on a trip with her friend and her friend’s daughter to Banda and some other islands, and then alone to Sulawesi, an amazing trip.

But quite quickly the difficulties of being together with an Indonesian Muslim woman, in Indonesia, became apparent. In those days the place was pretty conservative, particularly in rural areas, (it still is), and many guest houses and hotels wouldn’t give us a room because we weren’t married. She would sometimes be harassed on the street for being with a foreigner, and definitely got harassed at hotel reception desks.

Also, our own personal expectations of what a relationship should be were totally different. When I asked her how she felt, she would reply “I feel how you feel,” and, when pressed, would say she had no idea how she felt because no one had ever asked her, and she’d never verbalised it.

When I asked her what she wanted to do she’d say “I want to do what you want to do,” which sounds like bliss for some people, but I’m def not one of those people.

She had extremely fixed views about the role of men and women (men do all the organising of stuff, tickets, transport, admin etc, women sort out the food and clothes, and always make sure their man is satisfied sexually, no matter what).

She believed in heaven and hell, and I asked her what hell was like. She told me she believed it was full of Westerners! True story.

Wirda believed that if we hung together for awhile then maybe I’d really wanna stay with her, and marry her. But of course that was never gonna happen, I kept telling her I was too young and not ready.

We eventually parted ways, her heading back to Ambon on a ferry, sadly, and me carrying on west on another ferry, a little bit less sadly.

As an interesting footnote, about 15 years ago she got in touch with me, via a letter to my sister Ursula in Adelaide, who’s address hadn’t changed for all those years. She told me she’d eventually married a Kiwi guy, they’d had two kids, but were now separated and she was living in Australia. And, btw, what was I up to (hint hint).

So she finally made it out, what a good thing for her.

I replied to her letter, and told her I was in a relationship and bringing up three kids.

I never heard from her again.

Sad but true.

Way back then. Wirda and I looking particularly wholesome, in nearly matching T-shirts, despite my suspicious red eyes and her mouthful of tucker.

Candi Plaosan and Candi Prambanan

One day I rode my treadly to these amazing temple complexes, which, according to my app, should have been about a 40km return trip from Yogya. But with my innovative route-overrule getting lost navigation methods, it turned out to be a few km more than that.

This whole area is dotted with amazing ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples, built around the 9th Century. That’s pretty old guys.

Prambanan is the second largest temple site in Southeast Asia, after Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and was originally made up of 240 temple structures. Wow. I mean, just a couple would’ve been pretty cool.

It’s really magnificent, there’s no doubt about that.

When it was built, the Hindu dynasty of Sanjaya had just retaken control of Java from the Buddhist Sailendra dynasty (the Buddhists built Borobudur, another incredible and famous temple complex nearby). So the Prambanan temple complex represented a major turning point in the Royal court’s patronage, shifting from Mahayana Buddhism to Shaivite Hinduism.

Candi Prambanan, and many other temples around, were therefore mainly dedicated to Shiva, one of the three main deities of the Hindu trinity (Trimurti), the others being Brahma and Vishnu. But some temples within the complex were also dedicated to Buddhist deities, representing the complex nature of religious devotion in those days.

As I’d been there about five years ago, I didn’t actually go inside the Prambanan complex this time, but checked it out from the outside. But here’s a few pics from that last trip for FOMO sufferers.

And here’s a few pics of Borobudur from that trip as well. The temple itself is closed off to the public now, you can’t go up there anymore.

My main destination this time was actually Candi Plaosan, another 3 clicks on from Prambanan, which I hadn’t visited before. It was a beautiful ride to get out there, once I’d left the smelly busy main drag heading east out of Yogya.

As soon as you’re a short distance from the main road, you quickly enter farmland (rice paddies), with small villages (kampungs) and tiny local eating places dotted around. There were a few other temples around the place as well, as I rode along.

Candi Plaosan is mainly a Buddhist temple, but has Hindu shrines as well. It was built around the same time as Prambanan, and is not as big, but still stunningly beautiful.

Borobudur-style stupa

Nature doing its thing

My lunch spot

Mosque on the way home. Reminds me of something:

Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed, in Moscow. You've gotta admit, the resemblance is uncanny. Def some architectural plagiarism going on there.

I'm not eating here

New Year’s Eve

And so came the last day of 2022. I deliberately stayed at a traveller’s guest house close to the centre of town for New Years, because I knew I’d wanna go out partying, and there’s always a ready-made party crowd in those places.

And party we did. We stuck around the guest house drinking beer and chatting till about 10pm, and then took a Grab (Southeast Asian version of Uber) out to “bar street,” Jalan Prawirotaman, where someone heard there’d be a bit of action.

It was super fun, we sat outside a bar with live music, drank, chatted, met lots of friendly locals, and then celebrated the New Year out on the street with improvised fireworks and loads of singing and dancing. It was great. I drank a lot, unusually. Do I keep saying that?

A local guy, Iwan, told us the place to dance after that was at “Platinum,” which was a really big club another short-ish drive away. It was totally packed full of locals, all going nuts on the dance floor to really lame Indo pop. So we all went nuts too, it was great. The alcohol had nothing to do with it.

We emerged some hours later, and continued our partying at the guest house, although luckily we couldn’t get any more alcohol as everything was closed. Steve suggested breaking into the guest house fridge to access more beer, we all thought it was a good idea at the time, but he didn’t go through with it for logistical reasons.

I was really glad about that the next morning.

Well, the next evening I should say. I slept for the whole of New Years Day.

The countdown’s on. Steve with his million dollar smile.

That is not my hand. Note the long fingernails, they wouldn't last two minutes on my fingertips. Iwan at the back, very happy with his drink, which was a combination of beer and wine. It wasn’t too bad actually, I tried some.

Random fireworks in random places

Don’t ask me what I said to Firla at this moment, she looks pretty shocked.

Fireworks Yogya style

Dance floor action

The Remains of the Day (not mine). I unfortunately had to process my own in the slow, normal, queasy way.

Back to the Bike

So I’ve done all I need to do for my visa extension application, now I just need to return to Imigrasi in 3 days, to collect my passport.

I’m so happy to stick around, I love it here in Yogya. I actually really enjoy Asian cities sometimes, there’s so many interesting things around, so much to do, so much to see, to explore. So much to eat.

Then I'll get back on my loaded bike, after a week's break.

It feels good to mix it up.

My next plan is to head to the Javanese south coast, and then pedal west along the bottom.

I’m excited, these are completely unchartered territories for me, and I have no idea what to expect.

I like it like that. ❤️