travel diary — day 270

In buddhism, travel on 16 December 2009 tagged active volcano, bali, beer, bemo, borobodur, bromo, buddhist, buffet breakfast, camera, cemero lawang, competition, dancing, dinner, drinking, expats, ferry, fight, finals, gilimanuk, hindu, homestay, hotels, indonesia, indonesian tourists, island, java, jogjakarta, laundry, lookout point, lunch, medewi, party, photography, photos, police station, polish, prambanan, presentation, probolinggo, scuffling, singing, sulphur, sunburned, sunrise, sunset, surabaya, surfing, temple, travel, travel stories, travelers, trishaw, volcanoes, walk with no comments

day 266 — the pre­vi­ous day i’d seen some signs advert­ising the ‘medewi surf comp’ which was a local event organ­ised by a few expats. the whole idea was to pro­mote surf­ing and improve the medewi com­munity. after break­fast, i found the organ­isers and offered to pho­to­graph the day for them. they jumped at the offer and i spent the day in the sun tak­ing pho­tos of local kids rid­ing long left hand breaks.

i got sun­burned to all shit and in the after­noon i took a break after the finals. there was a party and present­a­tion in the even­ing, so i returned for that. i got free food (in return for my pho­tos) and took pic­tures of the present­a­tion. then they star­ted dan­cing and singing, drink­ing and hav­ing fun. i’d had a few beers, and since the fest­iv­it­ies were wind­ing down, i decided to go and get some sleep.

day 267 — i met alex, one of the surf comp organ­isers, early and gave him all the pho­tos. i took around 400 pix in all and he was happy with the res­ults. i returned to my hotel, checked out and got a bemo to gili­ma­nuk. gili­ma­nuk is the port town where fer­ries make the jump to java. i got on the ferry and enjoyed the ride over to the main island. i got a bus to pro­bol­inggo which took forever to arrive. i got in really late and had to stay in a hotel near the bus ter­minal. a local tout had tried to con­vince me to spend $15 for a private taxi to bromo (my des­tin­a­tion) which annoyed me, mostly because i was so tired.

after check­ing in i real­ised i was hungry and ven­tured off to find some food. there was a small res­taur­ant nearby which was still open. they sold goat kebabs (10 sticks for $1) and some rice. the food was good and i got into a cov­er­sa­tion with the young guy who was run­ning the place. he was obsessed with west­ern women and wanted my advice on how to get a west­ern woman to have sex with him. i lec­tured him that women don’t like to be treated as sex objects, which he pretty much ignored, so i just advised him to treat them nicely, have good man­ners and try to be inter­est­ing … then he might get lucky. the con­ver­sa­tion had lim­ited interest to me, so i headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. when i returned i real­ised that java time is an hour earlier than bali.

day 268 — i had a big break­fast and while i was eat­ing i real­ised that java was an hour earlier than bali. so i had picked up an extra hour to get to bromo. bromo was a moun­tain range with a num­ber of act­ive vol­ca­noes. i got a bemo to bromo and dur­ing the trip we picked up three pol­ish trav­el­ers. the four of us got to talk­ing and the pol­ish guy was not happy about the cost of the bemo up the moun­tain. the price was $2.50, which he thought was too much, and when we arrived he refused to pay the full price. the two pol­ish girls with him paid, i paid (even though i agreed the price was a little steep), and the pol­ish guy con­tin­ued to refuse. he offered to pay less and a fight broke out between he and the bemo drivers. i walked away to check out the hotels and was dis­ap­poin­ted to find that the hotels were so expens­ive. a pol­ish girl had found a cheap homestay around the corner and that looked like our best bet.

dur­ing all this, the pol­ish guy was still refus­ing to pay the full price. i’d returned to see what was hap­pen­ing. one of the bemo drivers was angry and took out a metal tyre iron and was threat­en­ing the pol­ish guy. i stepped in and stood straight in the bemo driver’s face. he backed down and another local guy took the tyre iron from him. i stepped out of the way and let them fin­ish their fight (i didn’t care about the fight, as long as it was fair … and unarmed! lol). two guys tried to drag the pol­ish tour­ist to the police sta­tion. there was scuff­ling and even­tu­ally a local, who spoke good eng­lish, inter­vened and nego­ti­ated a truce. the bemo drivers, real­ising they couldn’t win, accep­ted a lower amount and stomped off huffily.

the three pol­ish trav­el­ers were going to the homestay and i offered to share a room with the beli­ger­ent pol­ish guy. we got the room cheap and halved the price (which worked out well).

i dumped my stuff and wandered off to find some food. after lunch i read my book and had a small nap, plan­ning to avoid the heat of the day. when i woke up it was mid-afternoon so i grabbed my cam­era and made the trek to cem­ero lawang, an act­ive vol­cano with a large open crator which spewed sul­phur into the sky all day. it was a long but easy walk there, down hill and across the flat plain between the vil­lage and the vol­cano, then up the stairs to the crator’s edge. i took some pho­tos, choked on a cloud of sul­phur when the wind changed dir­ec­tion, and star­ted the walk back. the last part of the return walk was the hard­est, since it was all uphill to the township.

i had a small wash and met up with the pol­ish group. we had din­ner together over­look­ing the moun­tains and were treated to a spec­tac­u­lar sun­set. i was a bit dis­ap­poin­ted that i hadn’t brought my cam­era, but i enjoyed the sun­set any­way. we bought some beer after din­ner and sat out­side our rooms to chat and share travel stor­ies.

day 269 — the pol­ish group planned to wake up at 4am, hike up the hill to a lookout point and watch sun­rise. i agreed to join them and we got going at about 4.15. we walked briskly towards the lookout point and i real­ised that we were never going to make it in time. the sun had already star­ted rising (it was light, but the sun hadn’t reached the hori­zon yet) and the hill was very, very high and steep.

about half way, the sun was peak­ing above the clouds. i real­ised that i’d never make it to the top of the hill to get pho­tos, so i stopped at an out­crop which had a decent view. i took some pho­tos and watched the sun come up. the other three con­tin­ued up the hill. i don’t know if they actu­ally made it or not.

i enjoyed the sun­rise and i could feel the heat creep­ing in quickly, so i headed back down to the vil­lage. i packed my bag, left some money on the bed so that the pol­ish guy could pay for the room, and headed off. in the main street i had a fant­astic buf­fet break­fast for $2.50 and then got a bemo back down the hill to probolinggo.

on the bemo i met a couple of indone­sian tour­ists and we got to talk­ing. i got to the bus ter­minal and said good­bye to the indone­sians. i jumped on a bus to sura­baya and then got another bus to jog­jakarta. buses in java were slow and i arrived in jog­jakarta late. i grabbed a cycle trishaw to the hotel, checked in and crashed.

day 270 — in the morn­ing, after break­fast, i was told that my room had been pre­b­ooked and that i couldn’t stay. curs­ing under my breath, i packed and walked around the block to another hotel. the second hotel was much nicer and i had access to wifi from neigh­bour­ing hotels. that cheered me up. i checked my email, put some wash­ing in, and spent a few hours look­ing for tours to borobodur and prambanan.

i had a small nap, col­lec­ted my laun­dry (yes, they were that fast!!), had din­ner and slept.

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