Ho Chi Minh and The Plethora of Motorcycles

Ho Chi Minh (17-20 December 2010)


Disclaimer: This trip probably my ‘step’ trip not only because I wrote the journal together with other trip journal after this, it’s also a trip deprived of pictures because I only brought my old blur blur pocket camera and didn’t bother to take a lot of pictures, it’s also a trip where we didn’t visit any of natural, special or distinctive attractions. Maybe because it’s a in-between trip, before Christmas and New Year and basically we were busy with other plannings. However, this trip still had the highlight, my crazy traveling kakis from work, and that is enough to make a trip fun.


17 December 2010

It’s half day today. I’ll be going to Ho Chi Minh with my office travelling kakis minus one, so It would be three of us.
We couldn’t really concentrate with work as we prepared last minute maps and information that we could get. Since we were all busy or not around previously, there were hardly any preparations.

As the clock struck twelve, we were on the way to airport. High spirited to be away from work, this was also our first trip together this year since a year ago to Central Vietnam. This time is South Vietnam. Why Vietnam again? I actually can’t really explain it well. Haha.. for these few kakis, we chose the location based on mini mini mani moo..

It’s either based on budget airline ticket promotion for our first trip, based on the exotic but easy destination like our second trip, and this time we based on the hotel, the lamest reason of all. :) We were aiming to go somewhere nearby so the choice were between Laos, Myanmar, Brunei, Philippine and Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh was the last choice since we all actually had very good fix of Vietnam already. However, the air ticket for the rest of destinations were very high for this holiday time, and HCM has the apartment hotel that we like, it’s very good for friends travelling together, HCM it is.

Our plan is to explore Mekong Delta by boat and cycling, but things didn’t really go according to plan.

We went to Airport Terminal 2 for Burger King lunch. This has become one of our traditions to have BK meal in the airport. Easy choice and we love the breakfast, although this one was lunch. We had plenty of time to spare, so after lunch then we got in the shuttle bus to Budget terminal for Tiger Airways.

The plane was delayed, argh.. for how long..? Maybe half an hour to one hour, I can’t remember the detail anymore (!).. We played card and walked around while waiting, played card on the plane. The flight took around two hours.

The airport taxi system was clear, it cost us US$8 to reach the hotel. It kind of took forever to reach because we were stuck in HCM peak hour traffic jam. There were motorcycle everywhere, more than Jakarta, more than the other parts that I had been in the world. It probably took one hour plus before we reached.

It’s Christmas time! The hotel was decorated nicely with simple skeleton tree with Christmas ball theme, and aluminum foil crumpled paper for the entrance. The lobby was small but very cosy. Our unit has nice two bedrooms, two bathroom, living, dining, kitchen and laundry room, very spacious for three of us. Upon throwing the bags, we roamed around happily for a while, took shower and ready for our first destination.

It was dark already, we went to Ben Thanh market by cab. There were two trusted cab operator, Malinh and something Vista. (not vista only mind you, that’s another cab :) I know I’d be horrible travel writer. In my defence, if I’m paid, I write down everything! Anyway, imho, details shouldn’t be important. You want to travel, do your own research! >:))
We stop at a roundabout with a statue, and this was the first time we saw the real havoc of HCM motorcycle traffic. There were literally an ocean of motorcycles coming from and to every direction. Din din din twet twet twet pi po pi po in every colors and shapes. They have a lot of fancy and unique design helmets, together with colorful facemask, jacket and fancy color of motorcycle, it added the whole new dimension to the street. The taxi dropped us on street side, where we could see many hawker selling fruits, balloons and other random things. Vietnam has right side traffic as opposed to Singapore and Indonesia.

We started to walk to rows and rows of stall like normally seen in night market. And we were lucky, because first row we were in, it was full of food. It’s about time!!

We walked by the stall, selling miscellaneous food, seafood, Vietnamese food, the famous Pho’, certain type of local noodle. We chose the one that looked good, patronized by many customers but still has empty table for us. Sitting in the open, next to the tent is apparently the right way to get extra meat for your meal. We order noodle, springroll, what else… hmmm… I remember mine is shrimp noodle and I loved it! Food arrived first for my friend and he had to eat fast competing to those tiny suicidal insects that were also interested in dipping in hot soup. But I guess he probably ate at least five of them. At certain point, you just let the insect had their way. Lucky for mine, I had quite safe meal, at least if I ate anything, it’s not to my knowledge.
It was a nice meal and upon setting down, we started to walk around the market.

They were selling clothing, slippers, bags, shorts, souvenirs, fabrics, fruits, from anything to everything. We just went around randomly, and at one point of time made it our goal to find convenient store for some snacks and drinks.

We didn’t shop much, but at least made use of first night according to itinerary, to feel the hustle and bustle of Vietnamese night life and saw the crazy traffic. Little did we know, the traffic was not as crazy as what we would encounter the next day.

We walked quite a distance before hailing a cab to go back hotel, passing by short distance of riverside where we could see those floating restaurants glimmering in the light, although I think none of us was too interesting in dining there.

Nevermind, we went back to our hotel, cleaned up and started to do our routine, relaxed and played game. Anyway, it was quite late. Each of us brought a game, not usual Scrabble because 3 person might not be as fun as four, and we decided to rest our brain this trip. So we played number game called Rummy, which was quite fun because it was not so difficult but yet quite strategic to keep us interested. We watched an captivating but crappy show concurrently until pass midnight and called it a day.


18 December 2010

Today was the birthday of my really good friend since childhood. I remember, but too bad I couldn’t call her, worse, I also lost her number because my old handphone spoilt and half my contacts burned with it. But I’m not too worried because eventually we found our way to get in touch again. (Update: I found her!)

Our plan was to go Dai Nam Tourism Park, it’s very commercialized tourism area but was chosen because our original plan might not work. We wanted to cycle whole day along side Mekong delta and around the city, but since the traffic was really heavy, difficult to find bicycle rental and the condition of the river side was also looked industrial and not so natural.

We had simple breakfast at the hotel next to pool, then booked a cab to Dai Nam, it would take probably one hour plus to reach destination.
The traffic was not as bad as the day before but there were also some hiccup along the way.

Upon reaching the gate of Dai Nam, we went in (still with the cab) and saw massive row and row of high wall resemble Forbidden City. It took sometime to find the entrance, and from there we proceeded to the ticketing area (which was merely a table, probably that is the way for car ticketing) and still, proceed to the inside until one hut where the taxi parked. He persuaded us to book him for the way back and we agreed.

The weather was very hot that day, we walked to one of attraction where there were gigantic gargantua gaban sariban megaloman (meaning: freakiiing huuuge!) golden dragon. I think it’s a theatre, and there were shows about hell and others, the speaker outside the building was broadcasting a story in Vietnamese that we couldn’t understand. We walked around there for a short break to the loo, walked back to the main road to go to the nearest temple before decided to rent bicycle.

First, we tried to rent single person bicycle, we saw someone riding it and there were a row of it in the bicycle rental shop. But somehow they said it’s not for rent. The only type available is double rider plus one pillion bicycle. We tried to rent one for each, and somehow lost in translation because the shopkeeper kept insisting we took two bicycles or even put three of us into one bicycle.

Finally, with a lot of hand gestures, drawings, sketches and even animated actions, we managed to get her to understand that we wanted one bicycle each. How did it feel to ride 2+1 bicycle? Well, it’s basically the same except now you know how dragonflies feel, or praying mantis, or truk gandeng, or someone very very bohay. (translation: gaban sariban megaloman gargantuan long ass) Stop me. Please.

Bicycle is way to go! I have to admit that the infrastructure for the gigantic park is impressive. They have road bigger than what Pontianak has before I moved to Jakarta. They have road signages more elaborate than many parts of the world. The whole park consists of zoo, temple, theatre, artificial beach (!), huge rock formation, theme park etc. I think I am a very poor representative for Dai Nam, if you want to find out more, look at this link (http://travel.vietnamwebsite.net/post/118/), they actually have much more kind of everything including world in small scale, warm water stream, even have biggest artificial mountain range.















If you really want to go there and enjoy everything, it’s better to plan ahead, unlike us who did it without proper planning because of last minute destination, and end up scrambling around left-right-up-down as we wish. For our defense, the park looked quite bare, there were landmarks and attractions far and between, and not so much connecting recommendation or information from one place to another, perhaps because the park is still new and everything is under development. Visitors could go around by walking, cycling, park’s vehicle or blue trams. There were very few cars and trams, and few motorcycles.



We cycled around, it was nice to have big road with bicycle as the highest order. We could go wild! Basically I can conclude what we did was cycling around, passing by temple, river, mountain, and we went to the zoo.

Going to the zoo might be a mistake because everything reminded us about work. Actually, the zoo has quite impressive animal collections including a lot of white peacocks, Bengal Tigers, lions, sun bears, hippo and they also have gigantic white tigers. What I didn’t like and see was the animal show that use monkey in dress (like topeng monyet). Anyway we didn’t spend a lot of time there because we were kind of rushing (afraid to get caught in Vietnam peak hour!) and we also went around the zoo with our bicycles. Indeed, we could bring or rent bicycle to go around, it’s good because the zoo has very low visitor traffic so it’s not obstructing one another and basically we were quite lazy to walk around when it was so hot and we had spent sometime cycling up and down outside.









After lunch in the zoo, we had not much time left and decided to head back to the city. The one hour long trip left me and one of my friend collapsed in deep sleep in the cab, while my other friend had to sit in front and try to be awake. Poor her.

Although touristy artificial attraction like this is not really my cup of tea, it’s quite recommended for those who want some all-in-one instant destination. It does have quite nice ‘artificial-natural-landscaping’ and also has a lot of cultural theme attractions that represents Vietnam.

Went back hotel to shower and relaxed abit before going out to embrace the crazy crowd and ocean of motorcycle.

I don’t remember how we got there, but we were at Orchard Road of Vietnam. It was impressive, the crowd was crazy. There were buildings, malls, three sections x three lanes road, and lots and lots of Christmas decorations, on the shop front, side walk, all over the roads. Everyone was posing, taking pictures, walking, din din din motorbikes, it was super duper busy.

The challenge is to cross the road, I read that to survive the HCM traffic; or crossing the road, basically what we could do is just go and the traffic would work around you. If you hesitate, you’d spend eternity. My friend also read the same thing, so we convinced our other friend that it was the best thing to do and both of us dragged her across the road.

It was quite scary indeed, to put you neck and leg in front of ocean of moving vehicles, but it worked! The traffic really worked around you, they get used to it. From almost dislocating my shoulder on the first day, my friend had become one of the experts of crossing the HCM street. We wonder of the craziness is everyday things or was it because of Christmas. It seemed like Vietnamese, especially youngsters, embrace Christmas. They had fun and every decoration was a hit. I had headache listening to the rich musical theme, din din din, dong dong dong, poet poet, street sellers, people talking, and everywhere, you were brushing shoulders with one another. Some (mostly older ladies) didn’t hesitate to grab your hand or shoulder to get by.

I was stressed with the waffle seller, they have this 2 low basket connected with a long stick where they carried through the shoulder (very common mode of street seller in most of South East Asian country). We couldn’t really see on eye point that they actually had these two baskets below so anytime I could hit my legs to the basket while we tried to moved around in between the crowd. Why particular waffle sellers? The catch was, they put the waffle makers (those two metal round identical shape pressed together) on the very very edge or sticking out from the basket and we sometimes can see smoke coming, they were hot!
In another word, it would be like pressing you leg to motorcycle exhaust pipe if you didn’t avoid it on time.

We shopped a bit for supper, instant noodle, luncheon meat, some tidbits, water, snack and bread (whew that sound like a lot!) and it was almost closing time for the malls although the crowd never subsided, in fact, getting more. We walked around trying to find way back before settled down for dinner at the famous Pho’ (Vietnamese noodle) that was recommended by other colleague. It was okay, not as fantastic as the first day noodle with insect ingredient.

We went back to the hotel, meddling with the washer and dryer to get our clothes clean while playing Rummy and making instant noodle, usual ritual. We decided that tomorrow we could go for whole day free itinerary of shopping, going through Ben Thanh market in the day time (the main portion of the market only open in day time) and would go to another market located quite a distance away, I kind of don’t remember the name and location, and also visited Saigon Plaza, local products but air-conditioned shopping mall (sounds good!), so there goes all other itineraries about Vietnamese landmark. I kind of forget why we didn’t remember Chu Chi Tunnel. Chu Chi tunnel was used during Vietnamese war back then for local fighters to hide, it’s basically human living in tunnel system which is fascinating. We did discuss it before and decided not to go, but it was in the option if we want to visit HCM unique places. But somehow me or all of us forgot about it.

We watched TV until quite late at night, one of my friends slept first while we had to wait for our laundry to dry, so we played games, chit chat and watched TV until around 3?



Sunday, 19 December 2010

I had quite a bit of spooky dream that night, that the room that we stayed used to be someone’s cemetery, so apparently we were intruding. In the dream I responded by asking do we need to move? The answer came and I was told that it was okay. Weird dream, I remember I woke up a bit feeling a bit uneasy but I could go back to sleep and then it was fine.

We had breakfast again at the pool side. Nothing much but some noodle, sausages, bread and omelete, I skipped the omelete this time.
I like omelete but somehow always find that hotel’s omelete always lame. It’s either they only have chopped onion (I hate raw onion), some tomatoes or tiny tiny invisible ham, the omelete also always very bare and tasteless, we can add in our own pepper and sauce but basically we are tasting the sauce, not the omelete. My favorite was the one I ate in Johor long time ago, it was thick super omelete with very tasty and generous filling, yet everything compliment and didn’t take over the eggs. Wah..slurp..slurp.. anyway, good omelet are not difficult to find, which makes me dislike hotel’s omelete even more. I always try hoping it would be different but it never was.

We take cab to Saigon Plaza, did a bit of shopping but not really shopping people, we ended up in a café and tried out Vietnamese coffee, cappuccino and common green tea ice cream to relax from the weather. Did we eat? Yes, I think so, but couldn’t remember what and when. Anyway, we moved to Ben Thanh market and it was the first time we saw it on day time.

The have clothes, wet market, dry produces and miscellaneous stuff. One unique Vietnamese dry produce was fried lotus seed. It was nice, crispy and fragrant. Last time my friends brought them back so this time they want more. One of them who is very experience in dealing with shopping, chose a stall and sit down, instructed two of us the younger ones who are blur sotongs to sit down too. So begun our shopping.
I found two gems, first is pure tamarin that really kicks. Hmm.. how to say, normally tamarin was either sweeten or mixed so that it’s not too sour, or comes with sugar sprinkle. This one is not, it’s top notch so I like it a lot.
The other one is ginger. Okay, they put some sugar sprinkle but it was great, it ends up not bitter, yet the ginger was still super hot. It would be great for diving trips.. love it!

We ended up with more than few kgs buy in three plastic bags, we still walked to the wet market area and thinking of buying some fresh seafood for our supper. My friend suggested lobster, It was on sale everywhere. Hm… instant noodle lobster would be very nice but personally, I really didn’t want to think of killing it. Anyway, we decided not to buy anything because that means we needed to go back to hotel first. So we continued to another market (forget the name) located quite a distance away. It looked much more messy, really local (Ben Thanh on the other hand is already a bit touristy) but interesting. They has rows and rows of traditional toy shops where you can find various childhood and simple toys. The price were very cheap too, I got a bunch of transforming toy (those robots to cars to heli etc) for a mere two dollars, while my friend bought boxes of assemble-it-yourself transforming toys.

We were quite exhausted and hot, so stopped by an KFC after failed to find street food that we wanted. All of us are sick of Singapore KFC because that is what we eat here for every tea break since there is nothing else in convenient office proximity, but we wanted to try Vietnamese KFC, and enjoyed the air conditioning room after all the hassle and bustle of crowded market. The chicken was quite dry but tasty, my friend started to assemble her toy while the curiosity kept the rest of us looking out at the window, where motorcycle and motorcycle passed by with gigantic load on their back. One motorcycle drop its stuff in the middle of busy road, the magical traffic worked around it. He parked his bike, went down to take the stuff, put them up and there life went on.

We were a bit zombie-like and decided to go back hotel to freshen up.
Played a bit with the toys we got before going to see Water Puppet show, unique Vietnamese show. We had asked hotel to book ticket the day before and they told us the show is 5.30 pm. Originally we wanted to watch it on Saturday but the performance was fully booked. Three of us had gone to Danang and Hoi An together, and each of us had gone Hanoi separately. My two companions had watched the puppet show in Hanoi, while I hadn’t. They said they sacrificed their time and money to accompany me to watch, how nice! Haha...

Happily, we boarded the cab slightly before five, and reached the theatre around 5. The theatre had closed door, it looked a bit deserted at the entrance we figured out that they would not allow anyone to go in yet.
Next to the theatre there was a toy sale, so we went around trying to kill the excess half an hour before proceeded to the entrance again. Much to our surprise, it still looked the same, so we approached the guy who looked like staff. We saw the door being opened before and see row of seats full of audience. The guys quickly escorted us from the side, to the back. We thought, wah, this must be good-seating VIP front tickets with special entrance, maybe front row! But of course, it’s not. We had to enter from behind because we were late, half an hour late. The hotel gave us the wrong timing, the show started at 5 pm, to think that we actually reached on time but didn’t know!



So, quite pissed, three of us sat down and watched the remaining of the show. They had this small water stage in the middle, while there were three people on each sides of the stage, total 6 person. These six sang and played various musical instruments while there were also six people hiding behind the stage while controlling the puppet through stick underwater. The puppets are wooden-painted or plastic dolls that dress up in various clothes and represent various characters. There were some fighting, fishing, playing and dancing scene. I’m very impressed with the singing and musical playing because of the harmony of the rhythm and momentum, so mostly I paid a lot of attention to see the interactions and chemistry among the players, who fill in the gaps between the scene. Those traditional music instruments compliment each other to create glorious sound effect, I would think it was pre-recorded if I didn’t see it in person, the harmony was that great. According to my friends, the water puppet itself was not as good as the original one they saw in Hanoi, where they have more synchronization and challenging scenes. We were also bitten by mosquitoes and being late was not good factors, but overall we were quite happy and upon going out, we went to our next destination, the crazy ‘Orchard Road’ again, since we didn’t have any other destinations to go. It was even crazier than the night before, and wafer seller attacked everywhere.







Tonite we went back to the night market where we had our first dinner, we tried other stall and ordered some food I can’t remember.. I think it’s Pho~ again, it’s Vietnam! Anyway, that is why you shouldn’t delay in writing journal. You will end up like me, unless you have pictures of the food you ate and the places you visited, which I don’t. My point is, I’m lazy but I’m diligent to admit that I’m lazy. Got it?

We strolled around the market and decided to go back to enjoy the hotel, played games and did massive laundry. It’s either there was something not right with the washing machine, we couldn’t use same method to get same result, dry clothes. All the games and plays couldn’t get us through the waiting period and we desperately needed to sleep at 4 am.
As usual, this group is the group where I had the most sleep deprive holiday, because we enjoy same game and I’m grateful for it.
It’s hard to find same insane people like us. Yay for traditional board game!



Monday, 20th December 2010

Last day holiday… Uwaaaaaaakkkkkk… holiday always has to end, that is the part I’m trying to negotiate.
Although we didn’t really have real agenda today, all of us still woke up early. Today we had breakfast at the local place near hotel, ordering with language we don’t understand for the last touch of Pho~. Our leftover laundry was successfully dried, which led us to make some questionable decision. More on that later.

After breakfast (not bad!) we walked further away from the hotel to found a small shopping center, selling mostly stationery. After a while, we decided to split because one of my friend still wanted to buy something while two of us couldn’t find anything much. We walked to other directions and finally walked back and passed our hotel to find another shopping center which sold everything touristy. For Vietnam touristy stuff, one area is basically represents enough because it would be the same. So I guess, what you could find in South Vietnam, it would be the name in Central and North. We didn’t buy anything and went back to hotel so we could do laundry for our current clothes with the goal or bringing zero dirty laundry back.

One and half hour before check out time, we already packed everything, showered and played game, but the plentiful time was apparently still not enough to wash because the machine cocked up again and we ended up with wet laundry, although the hotel actually helped us to dry it for us and our goal was achieved. We put our stuff with the concierge, and headed to Diamond shopping center. It’s high end shopping center, chosen because we didn’t have enough time to go further and didn’t want to really walk under the hot weather because we already checked out from the hotel, no chance to freshen up. We played some game in Time Zone and entertained the idea to play bowling but we were running out of time, so we just headed back to hotel, grabbed a few bites and off we went to the airport.

We did some walk around, see-see-look-look, bought something for our missing forth-kaki and saw some crappy movie from airport TV.
I think this might be the only or one of the very few trips where I went to zero natural attraction, fortunately, the getaway and companionships were good.
We still played card in the plane, with one companion being slightly claustrophobic and the other being aisleseatlover (read slowly to understand) I always sat in the middle, I don’t mind sitting in the middle of two person I’m comfortable with. We played card but the turbulence was quite bad (if the pilot ordered the stewardess to sit down, it should be quite serious à I read this from an article written by a pilot) so we called it quit.

We reached Singapore quite late, around nine plus. Our friend had someone to pick her up, so two of us proceeded to Terminal One to grab some dinner before taking cab home. The trip itself was so-so-okay, but the companions were great! I hope that I have other chances to drive them crazy in future trips.

Until next time. Until next time.

Mount Bromo

Mount Bromo (4-7 November 2010)


Took me so long to write this journal. It’s all about mood, haven’t had writing mood in quite sometimes but here we go.

When I noticed that we have Deepavali as public holiday here, which was a Friday, I thought it would be a great idea to go for short trip with my parents, when I asked my brother, surprisingly he was able to make it too with sis-in-law and my nephew. This would be our holiday trip together since..eh…since…eh..

The options were between Yogyakarta and Bromo. I always like Yogyakarta, at least I have fond memories about it, and I have been wanting to have picture of sunrise in Borobudur for quite sometimes. Even though I had gone twice, there were no pictures in my album without a single human being or pure scenery, so I have to go back one day.

For Bromo, it seems like every Indonesian that I know had been to Bromo except my immediate family. Heck, even my Singaporean travel buddy said he had been there twice, in my face! Anyway, it supposes to be one of the easiest mountain destinations, suitable even for my parents, on the other hand, also offers great scenery.
I want to bring my parent to places where it is difficult for them to go by themselves. My mom likes tour, but I hate it. I prefer to go on my own time and schedule to explore funny or remote places. But then, if I travel with them, I can’t really do that, so it’s either I bring them to those places I had visited or I’ll go some place new that I think it’s easier and less tedious. So, Bromo it is.



4 Nov 2010

Took half day leave and departed for Jakarta to spend a night. There are many things happen from the time we confirmed our destination to the day itself. Mount Merapi, located on the border between Central Java and Yogyakarta, had just erupted. It was a sad news as the eruptions were more than few times and there were many casualties. Thoughts and prayers for the victims and families left behind.

Originally we also wanted to experience night train, from Jakarta to Malang town, East Java. I had experienced taking 12 hours train to Yogyakarta and 18 hours bus to Malang. I still remember the crowd, the restlessness to sleep because we had to keep eye on our belonging, the constant bugging of miscellaneous salesmen, the rigid wooden train seat that has some kind of table that separated us to other passengers. The only way to sleep was either leaning to left or right and spooked my friends or faceplant on the table while sitting on the floor, my choice. And also, the ‘no toilet’ factor because every toilets were occupied for those who didn’t have proper tickets. It was not a bad memory though, because I remember fondly that I still enjoyed the overnight trips and had fun with my friends or family back then. So I am all for experiencing another night train, especially this one was suppose to be a great, premium and comfortable night train.

Not meant to be, just few days or maybe less than that before we were about to buy the ticket, there was a freak horrible accident that take many lives with the very train we planned to take. We would still go for it, but upon learning about the accident, mom didn’t want to, so we switch to flight on Friday morning, and I would spend Thursday night in Jakarta, at least to get some home cooked food, collected something very important that I asked my mom to buy, and on the very short last minute before closing to neighborhood mall, I managed to get 20 comics. Yes, 20! Yahoo!!


5th Nov 2010

Early morning we were already in the airport. Keegan my nephew, was in good mood. In fact, I had no worries travelling with him because I know he likes travelling a lot, to see cars, bus, train, plane, anything that involves vehicle. He can endure hours without any complains, in fact, he always wants more. Proven, this trip we spent a lot of time in the car or travelling from one point to another and I had never seen him in bad mood at all. He was livelier than anyone, cheerful and very well behaved.

The plane was delayed about one hour plus, I think it only took an hour to reach Surabaya. Because of one and other thing, we flew to Surabaya instead of Malang. At the airport, we saw many flights to Yogya being cancelled because of worsen Merapi eruptions.

We touched down at Surabaya about noon time.

We had to find the driver who picked us up. Normally, it’s easy task. But not to be fooled, it was never that simple in Indonesia, at least not for 50% of the time that I experienced. The driver was nowhere to be seen, he told us he wear orange shirt. So we searched high and low for everyone wearing orange. My brother was in contact with him the whole time, we told him where we were, just right outside the arrival gate, next to certain prominent fast food or taxi stand, but he couldn’t find us. There was only one arrival gate I guess, or in any way, there might be less than few and all the points and landmarks were quite clear cut.

But still, it took us almost half an hour to find him. And how we found out? Almost movie-like moment, we actually bumped into him, while still engaging with the phone, and we actually heard his actual voice talking to us instead of from the phone.
And to rub it in our face, his shirt was as grey as the color of the road, the mixture of black and white paint or the colour of rhinoceros. Apparently he meant ‘loreng’, in Indonesian, loreng mean motive. Shirt with motive, something like batik. Oh my!

We boarded the car and headed for our hotel near the foot of Mount Bromo. When we asked, the driver said it would take around 2 hours. We were all in high spirit of holiday, and thought perhaps we could go hotel first, or had our meal nearby hotel.

It was the first time for almost all of us in Surabaya, we saw the scandalous Lapindo incident site, what has now become one of tourist spots (WT…).

The thing about some Indonesian driver, as I had met in Menado also, they are so attentive that it’s scary. So when we talked or asked question to him, he would turn his head around almost 180 degree and give you answer or explanation as long as necessary. Looking back at you, hands still on the wheel, cars still moving without slowing down. So after few tries with same result, we tried not to ask him anything. Anyway, it seemed like he didn’t really know when we asked what are the places we could visit or attractions we could do.

But then! About two hours down the road, where everyone tummy began to make noise, we asked him whether it’s already near. He said no, maybe about one and half hour more or two hours more. Eh…? Had we been travelling in round for the last two hours? To make the matter worse, about almost two hours later, the driver finally almost reached.. the wrong hotel. Aiyoh!! Luckily we stopped by for meal nearby the wrong hotel, at least stomachs had been filled, however, it cost us some precious time.

I love Malang’s Rawon rice.

Around 21 years ago, gasp, alamak!! We had a trip to Malang and Batu town with parents, my brothers, my cousins and three other relatives. I was barely a teenager (another gasp) and my this brother was just a kid. However, it was a memorable trip because of the 18 hour bus ride, pleasant cooling weather, weird but homy motel we stayed, nice places and nice Rawon rice just located outside the motel. The blackish gravy with lump of meat and big-headed bean sprout. It’s awful looking but it’s yummy! For the record, I only really like Malang’s Rawon rice.

To cut long story short, we had our first fix of Rawon, and that was the first time I found out that it is also the place for the mysterious snack food that I liked when I was young. I didn’t even know the name, apparently it’s Brem. What it is again.? Err.. google yourself, I thing it has something to do with apple. (Give me a break, I have a lot of writing to do ;p)

Okay, we finally reached our hotel. It was almost dark. It was a decent apartment style with spacious living and kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathroom. It’s nice but it didn’t feel very homy, maybe because we barely spent anytime in there at all.
Upon dropping in our things, we went out wanting to visit places around hotel vicinity, somewhere not too far. Since the driver couldn’t suggest anything, the hotel suggested that we go Pantai Bentar (Bentar beach). So off we went, together with the determination to find some shop and dinner.

Maybe about 15 minutes in the car, it was dark and started to rain, and it turned into stormy pouring rain we couldn’t even see the road well. Anyway by the time when we felt that it took us too long for reaching Pantai Bentar, we asked the driver. He said we had passed the entrance. What?!? That was our initial response.

Then what, why, where are you keep driving?

He said the entrance was closed so he kept driving to find whether there was another entrance or whether we could see the beach from the road. Ah well. I gave him points for initiative although it was questionable because we were almost double the distance away and it was heavy pouring rain. Initial thought was to just drop by the beach even when it’s raining hoping that they have some restaurant for us to eat and waited whether the rain would stop.

So we U-turn and asked him to go to a small shopping mall we passed by nearby hotel, because it didn’t seem like a good idea to ask him to bring us somewhere else anymore.

The small shopping mall had some food stall and Giant supermarket. We bought water and tidbits, had meal, strolled around but not much things to see, then decided to call it a day. We wanted to have early night because we needed to start moving at 1 am tomorrow.


6 Nov 2011

One am, had quick brr brr shower and we were all ready to go. Hotel had packed some bread for us. As blur as he was, at least the driver was always on time. So we started the drive to a village where we would be transferred to 4W official Bromo Jeep. It was dark, the road was quite winding and we could see mountainous silhouette from far. It kind of reminds me of the night we drove up to Rinjani foot. I miss Rinjani!

Anyway, I had some perception and image in my mind about mount Bromo. I thought we would drive up to a point, then had to trek up to the summit where we could sit down, chose our place and even when there are others, there would always be spot for taking picture. Anyway, everything was wrong. Read below.

When we reached the base to change vehicle, there was no crowd or many activities. There are few villagers coming to us, there were the Jeep drivers or operators. Anyway, it was dark, quiet, a bit of drizzling. We thought we might be the only one going Bromo, since it was not holiday season and also because they actually put Mount Bromo in watch list after the Merapi eruption.

I was quite in alert mode because it seemed like good scenario for things to go wrong. The people kept trying to approach us and our Jeep was not there yet. Anyway, everything was fine, in about 20 minutes we were already inside the jeep with a handsome driver. Mahaha..

Bromo Jeeps are those classis style ‘soap-box’ jeep that I like, but somehow we think it was modified because it had a lot of power to take the terrain. We drove in the dark and started to see other jeep in front and behind us. So we were not alone. In fact, yeah, far from that.

After maybe half an hour drive we had reach the destination. It was still dark. According to the driver, it was only five-ten minutes to the top. On that place, we saw many jeeps and many Indonesian stalls selling instant noodle, coffee, sweater, glove, jacket, scarf etc. It was quite cold but it was pleasant.

We sat down in the shop for one of the best instant noodle and ginger tea in my life. I would say it every time I had them in the right time. :)

From there we could see the valley far away, and I saw a glimpse of orange light and suggested that we started to go up so we wouldn’t miss anything. I was really really surprise that the summit was only a very short distance, few incline and some steps and there we were. And I saw..ocean of people, gazebo, wooden chair, so it’s nothing that I imagine. There were so many people that it’s almost impossible to get good spot. Leaving everyone behind, I tried to sneak in to the front and got a spot at the edge, but I sat down on a rock so I didn’t block the view of people.

The edge has rusty and broken railing, from the railing, there was a one over meter space before the drop to the valley. That was the spot I settled, at least I could get unblocked view of the infamous sight of Bromo. It was quite scary at the edge but at least I didn’t get the instant death feeling like when I was staring at Rinjani valley.

I had never think that it was like that at the summit, it was almost like a concert with swarm of people around you.

Anyway, the weather was a bit cloudy, but we were very grateful that it was very nice compared to rainy yesterday. The sunrise was kind of block by the clouds.. and people’s heads. Gosh… just when the sun started to show, people on my left started to take turn to pose for picture. I had to get lucky shot in between of them appearing right in front of my nose. Arggghhhh… Anyway, I tried my best to get few shots but I must say I’m not satisfied. I kind of miss my personal private time in the summit of Rinjani again, because of the blessing of waking up late and taking too much time reaching the summit I guess..he he..

So after finding out that people would never stop posing in the direction of sunrise, I gave up and found my family, took few pictures together and there we started to make a move.

There were people selling grilled corn, some snack food and flower. There were quite a lot of flower sellers we had to turn down along the way out, so when I saw one leaning on the gazebo pillar, hand stretched out with flower (that’s what it looked like!), I shook my head no. Apparently people behind me did the same, then I heard something that made me burst out laughing on the spot “Orang gak nawarin, kok pada godek-godek.”

The guy was mumbling with annoyance about why people shook their head everytime they saw him, while he didn’t say a word to offer flower to them. The way he said it was funny and it also reminded me of an incident back, coincidentally, when I took the overnight train to Yogya.

Me and my friends were sitting chatting in the train, while at the background was people selling stuff. This one salesman was quite vocal, selling plastic toys, he would shout ‘Toys! Toys! Love your kid, give them toys!’ and made various sound with the toys he was selling, some kretek2 windmill, some battery operated cars etc etc. Just before he passed by our seat, he was quiet for a while and the we heard mumbling, in heavy Javanese accent and very very low voice “Dari tadi jualan gak ada yang mau beli.” Complaining that nobody pay attention or buy anything from him.

You have to hear it for yourself in original accent to find how hilarious it was.

So, everyone has bad day at work.

We took some pictures on the way down, and on the road also. With the persuasion of the handsome and cool driver, mahaha..we all agreed to add the trips to Whispering sand and Savannah field. Originally we were worried if we could make it before hotel check-out time, so because it was still early, barely six o’clock, it’s possible to visit other places.

We drove to the big ‘desert’. When the wind blows, the sand would whisper. I could imagine it although the sands gave us silent treatment when we were there. Anyway, it was only us, so we ran around happily, even mom, who is more allergic to picture taking than me, asked to pose for pictures. I love the volcanic sandy field, the open space and the blue sky, I would love to just sit there and enjoying the morning sun for as long as I wish, but eventually we had to move on.







We proceeded to Savannah field, once again, mom went wild, she ran around upon seeing various wild flowers. Both mom and dad are quite plant person. My sister in law went happily for pictures, and my nephew had his own fun time running here and there that at certain time, I think everyone forgot about him for a while. It was nice cooling weather that add the icing to the cake. I love love love savannah field, and did I mention I love the wind, open space and blue sky and the sun? I think I haven’t.









Along the way to our next stop, crater of mount Bromo, we saw many similar jeeps with various of colors that made Keegan very happy. We also saw villagers here and there carrying stuff or tools to work in the field. I know it’s backbreaking hardwork and tough life, but sometimes I am jealous of their gorgeous work places.
Near the settlement, there were many many horses. We passed by previously, so now we were going there to take horse or walk. Only me and my sis-in-law intended to go up to see the crater, so we chose horse instead of walking up to save us some time.

When we approached the settlement, we could see many many many jeeps parked there in the gigantic open field, and the horses. There was one gorgeous big white horse galloping next to our jeep, upon confirmation that we wanted to ride the horse, guess who got that handsome horse?? Me! Me! Me!

I had never ever ride horse in my life. Never! And for those who know me better, you have good idea about how good I am in balancing. I fall on flat road and good at it. Nuff said.

Riding horse (although not qualified as riding, as we only sit there and the guide will bring the horse around) was actually quite a scary idea for me, but since I was there, I wanted to try. After making sure that I was not too fat for the horse (seriously, I think it’s no joke to climb on your own, let alone carrying someone like me on the back. I am quite meaty ;0)

As said, I got the gorgeous and apparently, quite a wild horse. Upon stepping up to the saddle, I almost regretted it. It was quite scary up there. The feeling was ‘Whoa’ ‘Whoa’ ‘Whoa’. Then things got worse.

We directly started walking across the field, to the direction of the crater, where there are inclines, up hill and finally stretch of 250 steps.

Few meters, my horse started to make noise and kick its front leg. Another WWW (stands for Whoa Whoa Whoa) it calmed down, then few meters it started again, the feeling is ‘WWW OMG I’m going to dieeeeeeeeee’. My sis-in-law shouted something, apparently her guide told her that my horse was anti social, it gets irritated everytime a horse is too near to it. And along the way, there are many many narrow spaces and a lot of horses! So.. is that mean it was going to act like this everytime??

It was certainly not a good feeling, funny but you know, those kind of dry nervous laugh and a flashback of horse riding accidents that I read before in the news. What can I say, newbie wild thoughts. So I did my best to help calm down the horse by sushee susheeee it’s okay and all those. I tried to convince it that I know how it felt, I also don’t like crowd and not social. Bla bla.. I do talk to animal thinking they understand me while they stare at me thinking how crazy I am.

The guide grab the rope tight by if the horse really decided to get wild, I don’t think anything can prevent me from having the adventure of my life galloping to don’t know where. It might be cool when you see my silhouette with the horse like those in lucky luke comic, but when you got clear light on my face, you’d see half of it contain an open screaming mouth and the other half would be two gigantic frightened eyes.

So it’s true, everytime we were near another horse, which was everytime, the horse would get anxious. I don’t know whether it calmed down eventually, or I got used to it, I relaxed and started to enjoy the scenery. It started to drizzling a bit, and I forgot my windbreaker, I got nothing to protect my camera, luckily it was only a few drops. The terrain up was steep sometimes and I pitied the horse. I tried to lean forward to ease the burden, it was a very strong horse and again, the most handsome as everyone was looking at it.

Reaching the foot of the staircase, both of us started to climb up. It looked near but also gave us good pants. (Panting=breath catching, not trousers ;p), we reached the top and saw the crater with white smoke coming out. It was nice up there, but could be quite scary going near the edge. We spent time enjoying the scenery and taking pictures for a while, then started to go down. Our horses were there waiting for us.





I must say, going down was way more scary, as always. At one point the horse acted up quite badly and kicked his front leg quite high on the air, some sort of Zorro thingy. It’s WWWWWW… but my sis-in-law got even worse experience. Her horse got so confident and took a leap down at some point, almost lost its balance, while she hung for dear life. I didn’t see it happening as we were in front.

Beside all those W moments, upon reaching the field, I was quite nice riding the horse. I can imagine running with it would be very fun. Maybe next time, let my blue-blacks from other experiments cured first.

We met the rest, bought delicious fried banana and Keegan already had perhaps almost one hundred collection of all the jeep’s photos in various colors. My crazy brother spent all time taking pictures of every one. Mom and Dad were sitting happily enjoying some light snack. For mom, it’s straight forward, give her beautiful natural scenery, cool weather and she is happy. Throw in wildflower field and she’d be overjoyed.





Time to go back to hotel after transferring back to our car.

We cleaned up, relax for a while, and checked up to continue our journey to Batu town, Malang. Going down 21 years memory lane.

We stopped by for lunch but all in all we went straight. Again, the driver’s time estimation was not accurate but not as bad as the first time.

It was quite a long journey, we slept a bit in the car, when we entered Batu, it was around 2 plus in the afternoon. We saw some places (from the banner though) that we recognized, Selecta, Sengkaling.

We dropped by some roadside mango stall and bought some mango. They have the best and cheapest Harum Manis mango, my favorite of all time.

Upon reaching hotel, we checked in a so called suite with 2 beds, living and kitchen in one big room. It was a nice minimalist new hotel. But it was so minimalist that they wanted to charge us for every additional things like pillows or towels. Not to get it wrong, we stated clearly how many parties we were and they chose us that room to fit everyone, but yet, the facilities was not enough.

Anyway, we went out straight away to the nearest attraction nearby. Argh, I don’t really remember., it’s bioculture thingy, where they have plantations, recreational activities, flower fields etc. So everyone should have something we like.
We went for guava and apple picking in the plantation. The guavas was impressive, those big red delicious guava and the plantation was huge, however, the apple plantation was disappointed, the fruits were small, and even so, the area was small. Then I saw that I probably took over my mom. She jumped over the barbed wire low fence, through the dirty soft earth to get to better fruit trees. Apparently we were not supposed to go there, he he..







It was four o clock. The youngsters (yes, me also) wanted to play flying fox but it was closed at four for an event. Hah? So we quickly changed direction and wanted to go Selecta, Sengkaling or somewhere my sis-in-law suggested, somewhere nice and natural..eh.. I can’t remember!

Anyway, when we checked, they said they were all closed at 4.. Whuaaaatttt?
So there goes the plan! We decided to go makan and visited the Factory outlet next to our hotel then, since there was nothing much we could do. And it was drizzling too.

We made our way back, cleaned up (our slippers are probably few inches thick with all the soil stuck on them), went to factory outlet (nothing) and went out again to have nice delicious dinner at a cosy Javanese restaurant.

After that we decided to call it the night and enjoy the comfortable hotel room and had mahjong battle with my brother and my mom. We played and had quality time chatting until I guess almost midnight.



7 Nov 2010

Going home time…!

We thought we could go somewhere in the morning but apparently the driver told us we need 4 hours to drive to Surabaya airport. So we just woke up later, had relaxing morning, enjoying the pool, had breakfast and drove to the airport. Anyway, we didn’t really have any destination in mind except to find some place for lunch.
Apparently, the driver got traumatized by himself he actually gave much more time that required to reach airport. We reached there in less than 3 hours I guess but anyway we also got traumatized that we didn’t really keen on stopping for restaurant, afraid he got the timing wrong and we’d be late. Aiyoh…. Haha…

There were not many things to see along the way.

Well, This one not for sight seeing, but it’s worth mentioning because it was weird!
So we were crossing a bridge where there was a traffic jam, so we were moving in turtle speed. Then on the side, next to the canal, there was a guy peeing. Instead of facing the greenery, he decided to face to the bridge with traffic jam.

People were stuck in the car. We got nowhere to look. We caught off guard.

Luckily, he was a distance away so no details were revealed. Gosh!

We just had our lunch at the airport. All the while we were worried. Since the day before, Mount Merapi and the ash got so bad that Yogyakarta airport had been shut down, the ashed spread widely and affected aviation industry in other area up to Jakarta. Malaysia, Singapore had stopped all the flights going to Jakarta.

I’d be going back to Singapore, while the rest of my family would go back Jakarta. So we were worried that we might not make it home that day. If I had to stay back myself, it should be alright, but it would be boring and I had to take another day off which I didn’t have.

The planes were delayed without announcement for one hour, but we finally boarded our planes and reached home safely.

Although we spent a lot of time travelling and didn’t really go anywhere but Bromo, we were very lucky to have good weather when we were there compared to the rest of drizzling or rainy days. It was also a great time to reunite with my families and finally, I had been to Bromo :).

Thanks for my brother who made all the arrangements. :)