Gili Trawangan – dive day 3 (Tue, 15 Mar)

This morning started already at 8.30 with the prospect of having two dives (and no more pool sessions :)). We headed to Sunset reef and went down to 18 metres for about 48 minutes. This dive site was gorgeous, with a lot of coral and different fish. Vanessa told us that this was a site where sharks tend to come to sleep, but unfortunately the sharks were not at home this time. Even though we had to go through some skill exercises again, we felt more secure than in previous dives. Vanessa made me repeat the mask exercise at 5 metres, and this time I had no problem with it.

Once out of the water, we took the final course exam, which we passed with 100%. Yeeiii!

In the afternoon, we headed to the final dive of the course. We headed to the wreck of a sunken jetty, the Bounty, on Gili Meno. We went down to 18 metres again for 49 minutes. This was a lovely site – again a lot of beautiful coral and loads of different fish. And by the end of the day, we were divers!

We went to the village for dinner. A lot of nice seafood is offered everywhere. However, conversations with Vanessa had given us a bit of bad conscious about eating fish here. Vanessa said that the only fish one can eat with not so bad conscious is the snapper, because all the rest that they offer here (tuna, barracuda, swordfish, grouper) are close to extinction because of excessive fishing, and even with snapper, we should check that the fish is big enough to have been able to reproduce. Vanessa wasn’t quite sure about butterfish, but most likely it is endangered as well. Still, we couldn’t resist it and had a nice filled of grilled butterfish, especially as it came with a nice salad buffet, but we felt of bit guilty. The only consolation was that we had avoided having fish the previous days.

We walked back to our guesthouse after the dinner, it’s about an half an hour walk, and were again happy to get out of the party zone. It was our last evening in Gili Trawangan. We took some time to chill out at the beach lounge of our guesthouse and we enjoyed life.

Gili Trawangan – dive day 2 (Mon, 14 Mar)

We started the diving course at 9 again. We went through the theory with Vanessa and headed to the pool to continue with divers’ skill exercises. We started with the mask exercise and this time it was not that bad at all –I could take it off and stay without it and swim without it for a while underwater without a problem. So, Vanessa had been right – it just takes some practice.

We were done with the pool exercises once and for all by lunch time. After the lunch break, we headed to our second dive (to Halik reef). We went down to 12 metres again and stayed there for 55 minutes. We felt much more comfortable this time. We had to do some skill exercises in the sea. Mostly, it was fine, but the mask exercise at 5 metres underwater was uncomfortable for me again. We again saw turtles and many fish (including the amazingly chameleonic scorpionfish, eels and snappers), and Felipe saw and octopus. All in all, things looked much better this day (and there was less homework for next day than the previous day).

Gili Trawangan – dive day 1 (Sun, 13 Mar)

We went to Lutwala Dive by 9 am. We met Vanessa, who was going to be our instructor. Vanessa was originally from Scotland. She had first come to Gili Trawangan 4 years ago, did her first diving there and got addicted to it. She came back to Gili Trawangan three years ago and has been working as dive instructor.

We started out with learning some theory about how pressure increases when diving and how this pressure affects our bodies. Vanessa gave us the PADI diving textbooks and asked us to go through first three chapters by the next day. We also had to some paperwork to do – filling out forms and signing all kinds of liability releases (à la whatever happens, neither we nor anybody we know will ever sue PADI or the dive shop). Once done with that, Vanessa introduced us the diving equipment – the cylinder, the jacket (buoyancy control device), regulators, etc. and taught how to assemble these and check their functioning. It felt like quite a lot of information to start with.

We then got into the pool with all the equipment on and started learning the basic skills – how to establish neutral buoyancy, what to do if you lose you the regulator (i.e. the mouthpiece with hoses attached to the cylinder that provides you with air) or how to deal with water getting into your mask. I didn’t particularly like the exercises with mask – it felt really uncomfortable to keep breathing under water having my nose surrounded by water. Vanessa said that we’d practise it more and also taking our mask off under water and staying without it for a while. She said that it’s just a matter of getting used to it and anybody can do it. It sure felt for me that I won’t get used to it and got a little stressed about the mask exercises coming up in the next days.

After lunch, we headed to the sea and did our first ever real open water dive. I was a bit scared, but Vanessa calmed me saying that it was ok to be a bit nervous and she’d be worried if I wasn’t scared. We checked our equipment and carried it to the boat. We put on all the gear on the boat. When diving from a boat, you have to drop yourself into the water backwards over the boat rail, tank first. This seemed a bit freaky, but was not actually that scary in practice. So we threw ourselves into the water and the trip to the bottom of the sea began. We went down to 12 metres at Shark Point reef and stayed there for about 46 minutes. We saw quite a lot of fish (sweetlips, lionfish, batfish, clownfish (Nemo!), trumpetfish) and some turtles – that was really nice. But both of us were still a bit stiff down there, but Vanessa was very reassuring and helped us overcome the concerns that we had. We ended the diving activities around 5 pm and headed to do our homework.

At the end of the day, I was a bit stressed about how we manage to go through all the materials by the next day (about 170 pages, but with pictures and in half page print) and the prospect of having to go through the mask exercises again, did not make me any happier. Even though we conquered most of the material by the time we went to sleep, I had a bit restless night.

Gili Trawangan (Sat, 12 Mar)

A minivan picked us up from our bungalow in Seminyak at 7 in the morning and took us to Padangbai, which is port village for Lombok and Gili bound boats. Our speed boat had a nice sundeck, so we could enjoy the sun and see some dolphins swimming around the sea – really nice.

‘Gili’ means ‘island’ in Lombok language, but for tourists travelling in this region “Gili islands” mean the three islands north west of the Lombok island – Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air. None of the islands has any motor vehicles, which provides a nice rest from the motorcycles always swarming around anywhere else in South East Asia. Out of the three, Gili Trawangan is the best known destination for tourists. As several of our friends had been there before and had had a good time, we headed there.

Our boat landed in the central village of Gili Trawangan. We were immediately surrounded by offers for accommodation, but we were determined to get away from the village to some more tranquil parts of the island. My intuition led us towards south and western parts of the island, but that appeared to have only some rundown places. So we ended up walking around the island to the other side. It soon appeared that the privacy in the more remote parts of the island came with higher prices, as there were a few new high-end resorts there. We found still something quite nice and reasonable – a Greek-themed bungalow at Karma Kayak.

We had thought of doing a diving course in Gili and as the dive shop Lutwala Dive was close to our bungalows, we went to check it out. We were greeted by Sebastian, who said that we could come to take the course any time we wanted, no pre-booking required. He also said that all the dive shops in Gili islands have same prices, as they have a price agreement. This was funny to hear for a competition law lawyer :), but in a way also made our life easier – no point to shop around the island for the best price and quality offers. When we were back at our guesthouse, we met the manager, Olga – a Dutch lady. She said she had taken her diving course at Lutwala and was quite happy with that, because they are not very busy and hence, their students get all the attention and flexibility they need. That sounded good for us and we decided we’d do our diving course there.

We did enjoyed the sea and the sun for while, until it started raining. In general, we’d been very lucky with the weather so far despite the rainy season, but some rain was probably inevitable. We went back to Lutwala Dive and agreed that we’d start the diving course at 9 next morning, and headed to the main village for dinner.

The village had a lot of restaurants, dive shops, souvenir and beach clothes shops, beach bars and a lot of tourists, some of them in quite overwhelming mood. It was quite noisy and not very relaxing there. The rain had turned the village main road quite muddy. So we were happy to get out of there soon after the dinner. We took a horse-cart back home and went to sleep.

Bali – Seminyak (Fri, Mar 11)

After all the mornings of waking up early, we allowed ourselves a nice lazy morning. So we could call our breakfast more accurately a brunch. It was raining, so we had really no reason to rush to the beach or anywhere. We took care of money changing (we left our mark there by completing the money changer’s collection of bills posted on the wall with a beautiful 10-kroon bill), did a bit of shopping and finally got ourselves to beach.

The beaches in the south west of Bali are good for surfing as they have big waves, but not very good for swimming, because the waves and currents could make a dangerous combination. Still, there are some areas where swimming is allowed. In general, the beach there is quite like any beach of any resort town – impersonal, with quite a lot of people and different bars, surf shops, etc.

We rented beach chairs for the day in the short strip of beach in Legian where swimming was allowed and settled there. Quite a lot of vendors were passing by offering necklaces, wooden figures, dvds, fruit, etc. As some point we got a coconut. The lady selling it told that it was low season and there where very few tourists (but it sure looked quite plenty for us!), so this was bad for her business. She looked forward to July and August, which is the top season for Bali.

After sunset, we decided that we had had enough for Seminyak and booked a bus and boat to go to Gili Trawangan island next morning. After the dinner, we treated ourselves with fish pedicure – i.e. an aquarium of small fish that eat dead skin cells and particles. It tickled a bit, so I guess the fish were indeed doing something and the feet did feel a bit fresher after that. We liked it, and Felipe even joked about upgrading Kotka’s fish tank into a Dr. Fish one… We saw on TV the news about Japan, while packing for the next day, and after being reassured that there was no tsunami threat to the area where we are we called it the day.

Ijen Plateau and Bali (Thu, Mar 10)

We got up at 4 am again to go to Ijen – an active but quiet volcano. Its crater has a sulphur lake and with some sun, the water of the lake looks really turquoise. At one edge of the lake, sulphurous vapour comes out from tubes coming from the volcano. The tubes drip melt yellow sulphur, which forms lakes and rocks when they cool down, which are collected by the local sulphur collectors.

The sulphur collectors are really hard working. We could see them carrying down baskets (in fact two baskets connected by wooden pole) full of sulphur rocks fromthe mountain already before the sunrise. And oh, these baskets are heavy – we could barely lift them. But the collectors carry these loads first up the rocky inner hillside of the crater (which could be quite slippery and a little dangerous) and then down the mountain for 3 km, and with all that, they could still cheerfully say “hello” to us and other tourists. Simply unbelievable!

As we were reaching the top of crater, the smell of sulphur got quite intense. It was not that bad down in the crater, because the sulphur fumes go right up from there, expanding and dispersing as they go up to the top of the crater. But at some points on the crater rim the stench was really nasty.

The crater itself with the huge yellow smoke columns running up looks a bit freaky – the smoke looks like kettles of hell, while the turquoise lake next to it is really appealing and beautiful.

Unfortunately, a little sleepy as we were, we forgot to take out camera with us. Our German friends took pictures of us too, but we couldn’t manage to get these into my computer yet. Hopefully, we can get these pictures from them over internet once we get back home. Then you can see what we’re talking about.

After getting down from Ijen, we continued our way thought the Ijen plateau towards Ketapang, which is the place to take ferries to Bali. On the way, we made a stop at a coffee plantation. We had been hoping to get some guide telling us about the coffee farming, see some processing and maybe buy some of the famous “kopi luwak”, but the “tour” consisted of our driver stopping the car in the middle of the road and saying the coffee obtained from the plants on one side is for local consumption and from the other side, for export. We really couldn’t tell the difference. But well, as our tour package didn’t include any notion of any tours to coffee plantations anyway, we couldn’t ask for more either.

We arrived to Ketapang after 11 – got a bus, which took us to the ferry and from there on to Denpasar (the main city of Bali). The ferry ride did not take more than an hour, and the further bus ride to Denpasar took about 3 hours, while the road was not bad, flanking green terraces on one side and the blue sea on the other. Denpasar looked just like any another city, not particularly charming. So, we got out of there right away.

We took a taxi to Seminyak – a beach area along the south-west coast of Bali (the beach continues south from there to Legian, Kuta, Tuban and Jimbaran), as we were hoping to see our friend Nakul in that neighbourhood on the next day. We spent some while looking for a room. There were a lot of fancy villas around with rather high rates (more than USD 100 per night), but finding a lower end nice enough place turned out to be a little tricky. We finally found a decent and not too pricey bungalow on a side street. We walked around of bit, had a nice dinner and it was time to call it a day.

Gunung Bromo (Wed, Mar 9)

We woke up slightly before 4 and got the minivan to go to the Penanjakan viewpoint on the mount of the same name bordering the big Tengger crater. After the minivan had dropped us off, we still had to climb up about 15 minutes to get to the viewpoint. It was still dark then, so the headlamps that Maret and Heiti had lent us where very handy.

On the way up, we could see Bromo throwing out some sparks, which probably were not just sparks, but small rocks of lava. This was really amazing.

Once up the hill, there were already a bunch of other tourists there and more people were coming. So there was a lot of excitement, but little privacy, in the air.

There were some clouds around, therefore we couldn’t really see the sun rising, but despite that the view to the big crater, Bromo belching smoke and incandescent ash, and its moon-like surface of sea of sand and lava, and the surrounding mountains was breathtaking. We stayed there quite a while and enjoyed also the views on different heights and angles on the way down.

When Bromo is not erupting the tours would take tourists to the big crater and it is possible to climb up to the crater of Bromo itself. The cars could not go down there right now, but it was possible to get there on the back of a motorbike from Cemoro Lawang, which is the closest village to the Tengger crater. We assessed the risks, and it seemed safe enough. So, we got down to the crater and saw Bromo quite closely. Of course we did not push our luck any further by trying to climb it, it was enough just to be at its foot and see it in its full power, spitting ash and volcanic rocks.

After seeing Bromo, we were taken back to the guesthouse for breakfast and after that it was time to say goodbye to the Dutch travellers and continue the journey towards Ijen Plateau by first going back to Probolinggo and from there to the Sempol village near Bondowoso.

On the way to Probolingo, the poor old van had a flat tyre, but fortunately the van had and extra tyre and the driver managed to change the tyre quite quickly, propping the van up with rocks. In the meanwhile, we had the chance to take pictures of surrounding hillsides, all of which had been used for growing vegetables, but were now covered with back volcanic ashes, in a sight that resembled deep snow, but of the darkest black. The ash had buried the crop, but at the same time the ash makes the land very fertile. So this explains why the locals were already starting to till the soil again.

In Probolinggo, we changed the old crappy van for a quite decent car and continued the journey together with the two German guys. The way was quite beautiful, passing along the sea side and through hilly jungle forests. The roads were generally good until we reached to hilly areas, where the “jungle highway” was at times difficult to go through.

We arrived to Sempol around 4:30 in the afternoon. Our guesthouse was located in a coffee plantation, although it was not apparent if or how the guesthouse and the plantation were in any way related.

Our German companions had heard that there was a waterfall and thermal baths nearby and asked if we would be interested to join them, if we manage to agree with the driver the ride and the price. We sure were. The waterfall was not very high, but was still quite nice. As the darkness was falling soon, we only had a quick look at it and headed to the thermal baths. The water in the baths was warm as expected, but fortunately not as smelly as in some other places. So it was a good and relaxing ending for the day.

En route to Gunung Bromo (Tue, Mar 8)

We started a bus ride towards Bromo 7:30 in the morning. We knew that it would be long day of bus ride ahead. The minivan we had was not the nicest one and the driver had to cool the engine down with water from the tap from time to time, but fortunately we got a quite comfortable seat in the front rear of the van and enough of room for us. The road was not too bad and the traffic, though quite hectic, was not a crazy as in India.

We had really nice co-travellers – two girls and one guy from the Netherlands and two guys from Germany. We had good chat with them during the journey. We found out that the German guys would stay with the same tour until Bali, but the three Dutch only until Bromo.

We arrived to Probolinggo, which is a big town near to Bromo, around 7:30 pm. The van dropped us at a travel agency and we got another mini van from there to Ngadisari – a village closer to the Bromo crater. That van had to be pushed to get the engine going and it seemed a miracle that it could go up the hill at all. But we arrived to Ngadisari two hours later nonetheless. We were all tired of bus riding and happy to find our hotel to be quite nice. We had dinner with our group and it was time to get to bed, as we had to wake up already very early to go get to the Bromo viewpoint by sunrise.

Gunung (mount) Bromo is an active volcano situated together with two other volcanoes in a crater of an ancient even bigger volcano (the Tengger Massif) of which Bromo and its siblings are the vents. Bromo erupts about every ten years and most recently, it started erupting in January this year. It does not currently erupt lava flows, but it does through out lava ashes, stones and smoke, and makes thunder-like noise even right now.

Yogyakarta –Borobudur and Merapi (Mon, 7 Mar)

We started the day very early to get to Borobudur temple by sunrise. Unfortunately, it was rainy and the sun rose without showing itself. It was nevertheless nice to see the temple in the brisk morning hour, when it was not crowded yet.

Borobudur temple is a Buddhist temple built around the late 8^th century and early 9^th century. It has survived major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as well as some terrorist bombings. It is a massive building consisting of about 60,000 m³ of stone. It embodies 10 layers – the first 6 layers represent the earthly life and have stone encrypted galleries depicting the scenes of the Buddha’s life; the 4 top levels represent the higher being (nirvana) and have huge bell-shaped stupas, each having Buddha’s statues in it. The whole temple is an incredible masterpiece and taken the time it was built and the technology available then, it really is a wonder.

We headed on to see Merapi volcano. On the way, we stopped at another nearby Buddhist temple – Mendut temple. Compared with Borobudur temple, it is rather small and modest, but it houses an outstanding 3 metres high Buddha statue, whereas the Buddha does not sit in his usual lotus position, but on a chair with both feet on the ground.

We also had a stop at a silver processing workshop. There was not much processing going on there at the moment, but there sure was a large shop offering silver jewellery. Despite the “special prices” offered, we got out of there without buying anything.

We continued the way towards Kaliadem, which is a town close to the villages at the hill sides of Merapi volcano. Merapi erupted most recently from October to December 2010. This was a major eruption, where many people lost their lives or homes. We could see the lava remains at the riversides already on the way to Kaliadem. But once we arrived to the place where there had been a village before the eruption we were speechless. The lava had washed away and burned everything on its way – trees, houses, cars, etc. There were a few ruins still visible under the lava ash, but other than that there was not much left. What was not buried under lava, had been burned by hot smoke. We could see the routes lava had taken carving dark ravines of desolation in the face of the mountain otherwise covered in greenery; not far away from there, there was another village, which had not been affected at all. As we walked around there, the peak of Merapi was covered with clouds and everything looked calm and peaceful. It seemed surreal that just few months ago this mountain had brought around such damage. Despite the constant threat of new eruptions, people had already started building up new homes and planted new trees in the site.

On the way back to Yogyakarta, I noticed plantations of palms I had not seen before. I asked our driver about it, and he said these grow snake-skin fruit. We made a stop to see it closer and our driver bought us some of these fruits to try. The skin looks really like snake skin, the inside has a few cloves, which are quite tasty.

Back in Yogyakarta, we booked a tour that takes us to the Bromo volcano and the Ijen plateau in East Java and will end up in Bali. The idea of taking a tour did not seem appealing to us at first, but after we made our calculations on how much time and money we would spend doing it on our own, taking the tour seemed a reasonable option.

In the evening, we had some Javanese massage. It was quite different from Thai and Lao massage, as was not focused so much on pressure points and stretching, but was quite soft and felt more like a regular oil massage.

Yogyakarta – Water palace, Kraton, Prambanan (Sun, 6 Mar)

We gave the Kraton area one more chance in the daylight. Finding the entrance to the Kraton coming from the south is no small feat and the people we asked were giving contradictory directions but we found the Taman Sari (Water Palace) and visited it first. The guide explained us that this used to be the sultan’s water park and swimming pool, built in the mid 18^th century. It was abandoned after an earthquake destroyed it in 1865, with most of the lakes and gardens occupied now by houses, but the main swimming pools have been restored and are still there. Two enclosed swimming pools would be used by the sultan’s many wives and children, while the third one would be used only by the sultan and the wife that he would choose to accompany him by calling from a balcony.

Of course, the tour around the Water Palace ended in a batik and leather puppet workshops and galleries, where we were expected to buy something. Batik is the art of dyeing textile with all kinds of patterns and pictures and it seems to be a local specialty in Yogyakarta. Leather puppets are used for shadow puppet theatres, which depict Ramayana (the most important mythical story in South and South East Asia). The puppets are cut and carved out of buffalo skin. We managed to get away without buying anything although it was really difficult after all the convincing that we should support the local handicraft culture and that things within the Kraton district are cheaper because there are no taxes.

We then finally found the main entrance to the Kraton just in time to catch the gamelan (Southeast Asian classical music) and local dance performance there. Gamelan is played on various instruments many of which look like a mix of xylophone, gong and drum. The harmonies and rhythms of gamelan are rather different from western classical music and therefore it sounds for us sometimes a bit like cacophony, but the whole set up really looks impressive and sophisticated. The dance performance was quite interesting – there were only three dances, but in total it lasted about an hour. Dancers and their moves were very mellow and slow, but quite enchanting.

While we were waiting for the performance to start, some locals would go around the audience with children who were perhaps only 5 or 6 years old and encouraged the kids to have conversations with foreigners to practice their English. The children were quite shy and could not talk much yet, but taken their young age, they were brave and smart enough.

After the show we looked around Kraton and its museum. It had some nice items, but overall we did not find it breathtakingly remarkable.

From there, we headed towards Malioboro, which is the main street of Yogyakarta. It has a lot of bazaars, which seemed very popular among locals in a Sunday noon. So it was quite crowded there. We had lunch in the neighbourhood and made plans for upcoming days.

We decided to go to see the Prambanan temple that afternoon, as it could be reached with the TransYogya bus from Malioboro. It’s about 17 km out of town and the ride there took about an hour.

There are actually a range of temple complexes around that area, but we went to see only the most famous of them. Prambanan temple complex was built in the middle of the 9^th century some 50 years after Borobudur. It used to have 200 small (about 14 metres high) temples around it and 10 bigger temples in the middle. Most of the small temples have been destroyed in the earthquakes, but the bigger temples still stand there or have been restored. Out of those temples, there was one temple for each of the three main Hindu gods and one temple for their “vehicles” (Brahma’s goose; Shiva’s bull Nandu and Vishnu’s big man/bird Garuda). The galleries of the inner walls of the temples depicted different stories, most importantly of course scenes from the Ramayana. Our guide gave us a lengthy overview of the different symbols and figures around and provided his own quite interesting comparison of different religions (Hindu, Islam, Buddhism and Christianity).