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. :)