Surabayaaaaa

The day after I wrote my first message, I left by train for Yogyakarta. Joost took me to the train station way too early in the morning to being able to keep a feeling of holiday. Thanks to his rather quick " Indonesian" way of driving, he was able to drop me at the station, 3 minutes before the train to Jakarta left, so this was great timing. The train trip after that (via Jakarta) took almost all day, at 15hrs. I was in Yogya.

Rice and fishermen's fields in the low plains of Western Java. Everything goes by hand, I only saw 3 tractors in 500km... And nice little kids who speak two words of English (guess what...)

I found a hostel and looked around in the city: the ancient Dutch fort Vredeburg and the Sultan's Palace, both very nice buildings. But further on, I found Yogya noisy and dirty, with someone on every corner asking " Hello Mister, you want taxi/batik/becak?" So I decided to have a nice meal and sleep, in order to travel on to the Dieng area next morning. The meal worked out that way, but the sleeping was worse: until late at night and early in the morning again, there were people coming and going, planes flying over and mosques singing.
Vredeburg fort, Jeroen in a Becak and the Dutch influences in the Indonesian language

So actually I was quite glad to leave Yogya again for Dieng, but first: Borobudur temple! This is a UN World Heritage Site and now I know why: a giant Buddhist temple, very impressive and destroyed several times by nature, bombing etc., and with a great surrounding landscape.




After that, I drove up into the mountains by public bus, in order to reach Dieng before dark. Dieng is a plain of about 5 square km's in the crater of an old vulcano. It has the highest village of Java (2200m) and a great view point from which you can see the sun rising next to the still active vulcano Gungung Merapi (at 6 o'clock, so again up before 5...). Didik, the guide who was working in the hostel was a very nice man, he drove me around on his small Honda motorbike. with a breakfast break in between. After the sunrise, we visited some other vulcano relicts and Buddist temples. It's a very impressive area where they grow potatoes on terraces on the vulcanoes! In the rest of Java (lower parts), they mainly grow rice, tobacco and coffee. In the afternoon, I sat on the holstel's balcony, planning my trip and overlooking the main street of Dieng.
Guide Didik on his motorbike, driving me around the Dieng plain. The great sunrise (the utter middle peak in clouds is Gunung Merapi which is still active). A coloured vulcano lake with sulfur and hot water bubbling. And the Dieng area with it's potato terraces.

Yesterday I went back down to Yogya after having a breakfast of banana pancakes and saying goodbye to Didik, Tito (another guide) and some French people with whom we had been having a nice drink the night before. It was a long bus ride but I did not want to stay in Yogya another night, so I directly went on by train to Surabaya. It was a quite heavy day, because once I came down from the Dieng plain, temperature was rising again and that makes you tired... But I had a good train ride because I had a nice chat with Rani, an Indonesian girl (vetherinarian student), after an earlier chat with a family with very cute kids.

At 22hrs I arrived in Surabaya, Indonesia's biggest harbour city and home of the navy. I wanted to go there, before visiting Bromo vulcano (my next goal), because there should be much Dutch architecture being left. My hotel was ok, an all right bed (although you should not expect any cleanliness or comfort from budget hostels out here!) but again two mosques singing, at 3 and 3.45hrs... This morning I went into town and this really shocked me! Just near the hotel, people were bathing in the dirtiest river I've ever seen, and selling all sorts of food, car parts etc. in stalls in which we would not even leave our waste bin... And again Hey mister, hey mister. So with quite mixed feelings, I went into town. Well you had to look well between the bill boards and concrete buildings, but indeed there's a lot of ancient colonial style buildings to see, very interesting: trader's offices, banks, ware houses etc. And I also went into China town, where it was very crowded, stinky but interesting, with a lot of trade in anything you an think of (single ax-tractors up to paperclips...). After visiting the harbour, with old and heavy loaded ferry's leaving for Kalimantan, it was time so search for the air conditioning of this internet cafe (WarNet as they call it here).



I hope that I gave you a bit of an impression and hop to write more when I'm at Bali!

Bye! Jeroen