5 Days in East Java - Rain, Rain Go Away

On Thursday morning we left Jakarta’s small domestic airport via Batik airline flight to Malang, a city in between 5 mountains in East Java.  The flight was supposed to be just over an hour long but, wouldn’t you know, a thunderstorm came up just about when we were due to land.  After circling for a while, the pilot decided (probably very wisely) to land in Surabaya, another city in East Java.  After sitting on the ground there for about 15 minutes, the pilot announced we were now cleared to fly on to Malang as the storm had subsided.  Of course, the plane then had to refuel, etc.  All in all, we arrived in Malang over 3 hours late!  Too late to do anything but go to the hotel and eat.

Since Malang is among the mountains, it has a much milder climate than Jakarta.  As such Friday started out looking like a perfect day with blue skies.  We headed to visit Gua Maria Lourdes.  On the way we seemingly came across the Arc de Triomphe.  

Did we make a wrong turn somewhere?  No, this is just Kediri, East Java's facsimile of Paris' famous arch.  It was built here about 10 years ago but I couldn't discover exactly why.  I think East Java just wants to relate to France.  This can be also seen in Gua Maria Lourdes.  East Java wanted to have something like France's famous Our Lady of Lourdes, so in 1999  they created Gua Maria Lourdes.  

Since they subsequently got it blessed and dedicated by the Pope, it is now quite the attraction with people flocking here.  

After the Catholic shrine, we headed to an old Hindu Temple, Candi Penataran.  This is the largest Hindu Temple in East Java and was built somewhere between the 12th and 15th centuries.  

As you can tell from the above pics, this site now is such ruins as all the Hindu moved to Bali long ago.  Of course, just as we pulled up to this site, the rain started.  Although we managed to run between the raindrops to see these ruins, this marked an early end of sights for the day as the skies were now completely dark.  

Saturday morning was another nice morning and saw us off to a local waterfall.  After the waterfall, we went to the Secret Zoo.  I don’t think this is much of a secret as there were people everywhere at the zoo.  It was a nice zoo for the area with a great museum of stuffed animals, fish and insects.  

I guess this is the closest I am going to get to a Giant Komodo Dragon on this trip!

 Also of note here was the unusual hotel right in the middle of the activities.  

As you can see, thbis modern hotel’s facade is made to look like an old wall.  It is just right of the huge concrete elephant!

After the zoo, we visited the local Transportation Museum.  This was a very nice experience as they had lots of old cars, motorcycles and bikes and many photo opportunities.  

A bamboo VW?

My own car but they misspelled the name!

There were lots of European cars I have never seen before but even the American ones looked different as they are all right hand drives!  In addition, many of the cars were available to be touched.  That is something that doesn’t happen in the US.  These visits and the fact there was no significant rainfall made Saturday a very enjoyable day.

Sunday was devoted to the beach.  We visited two.  The first pic below is the only one of the first beach that didn't seem to offer much except sand and surf.  The other beach with all the little islands reminded of Viet Nam as it was very picturesque.  However they really need to clean it up as there was trash all around!  Thankfully it didn't rain today until about 5 PM so it wasn't much of a factor.

  

Today is Monday and we are on the way to Yogyakarta and Middle Java.  We have a 1:25 PM flight from Surabaya.  We overestimated the amount of time it would take to get here from Malang so now we have a long wait here at the airport.  Hopefully this flight will be more timely than the past few!

4 Days in Somba

I arrived on the island of Sumba on Saturday afternoon on a flight from Jakarta with a connection in Bali.  Now I am on a 5 day/4 night package tour for Sumba that was organized by the Catholic Church.  

My flight landed at the Tambolaka Airport in East Sumba.  I spent the first 3 nights nearby at the Samba Culture Center.  Not surprisingly, this center is owned and run by the Catholic Church.  The people there were very nice but the accomodations and meals were very basic - no wifi or even hot water!  I wasn't expecting such rustic conditions.  However despite the austere living quarters, they had interesting days trips lined up to various native villages and scenic spots.   

The poverty level on Sumba is very high with many people still living in bamboo and straw houses.  The island also offers many beautiful beaches and scenic oceanfront property.  But again, nothing here is developed.  So the oceanfront has the poor living there - making it less than inviting for tourists.  Sumba is unlike most of the Indonesian islands as it is so poor and it has many Catholics.  Besides for Bali which is Hindu, Sumba is one of the few parts of Indonesia that is not primarily Muslim.

Today, Tuesday, they drove us east across the island to the town of Waingapu.  This is the biggest town I have seen on the island in it has more than one trafffic light.  We had the opportunity to yet another local village this afternoon.  All of these native villages are not only very interesting but they reinforce how lucky we are to live in the USA.

On Wednesday I spent most of the day at the Waingapu airport.  They have one flight a day to and from Bali with connections onto Jakarta.  As luck would have it, a severe thunderstorm came up about 30 minutes before the flight was due (11:30AM) in from Bali.   After a while the flight decided to return to Bali as the storm prevented them landing in Sumba.  The storm continued for over an hour but finally it broke about 1 PM.  We were told by the airline they weren't certain if the flight would return the same day.  But we all waited and about 3 PM they announced the flight would return about 4 PM.  With another delay in Bali for a connecting flight, I was on the 'road' for over 14 hours.

Now for some pictures from Suma:

This is the tallest native house on the island.  Up to 70 families can share one house.  The tall tower is the middle is used for grain storage and makes them that closer to God.

Father Bob, the Catholic priest that runs the Sumba Cultural Center

My tour group

'Back' to Jakarta

On Tuesday morning I left Bali and flew back to Jakarta.  As you may remember, I was in Jarkarta overnight when I first arrived in Indonesia.  Now I will actually spend some time here.  I arrived at the airport about noon but it took another good 30 minutes for my bag to arrive.  Then it was off my a car in a severe thunderstorm.  It took almost 2 ½ hours to go to get to the suburbs where I’ll be staying with my friend, Lilies.  It continued to rain until into the night.  The next morning we (Lilies and I) had a car/driver take us up to the White Crater.  Although this is a beautiful turquoise crater lake, the drive to it was 5 hours each way due to the perpetual traffic gridlock that seems to thrive here.  Needless to say, this drive was a day’s adventure unto itself.

On Thursday, we went to Taman Mini Indonesia which proclaims to be ‘All of Indonesia in one park’.  Since this is another suburb of Jakarta, it ‘only’ took us 2 hours to reach it by car.  The park however turned out to be a disappointment to me.  While all the islands and areas of Indonesia seemed to be represented, it was strung out, seemingly at whim across the park.  Furthermore there was no real writeup (in any language) describing the specific areas.  Still the created building and houses were classified by their specific areas of the country and many contained clothes and descriptions of local practices, marriages, etc.  Also there was a clever miniature version of all the islands done to scale created in a man-made lake.

                             The islands in minature

On Friday I didn't do much but get ready for a very early flight to the island of Sumba on Saturday.  Believe it or not, we will leave the house at 2:30 AM because of the traffic!

Final Days in Bali

IIOn Friday morning, Made, the guide/driver, picked me up for our trip to the most famous temple on Bali, Tanah Lot.  On our way, we stopped at this large temple owned by the Royal Family.  

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The above is a great example of a Temple Activity Center which is rebuilt as needed with this massive thatched roof.  Here, at each Temple, they have a cock fight every 210 days.  Yes, cock fighting is 

legal here but only for religious purposes.  No betting is allowed.  The Hindu considered the losing cock the victor as he gave his life for the religion.

The above is Tanah Lot.  It is an incredible sight as it is right off the beautiful rocky shoreline.  Unfortunately, it is now mainly a tourist trap. 

Made and me.

A couple of the Ogoh Ogoh we saw along the way.  We also stopped at perhaps the most scenic stop in all of Bali for rice terraces.

Finally on Saturday, we stopped at yet another temple.  The water here, according to legend, used to be posonious.  But due to divine intervention, it was made pure.  Now pilgrims come from all around for the water.  Note that each water 'faucet', is supposed to be good for difference purposes from diseases to purifying the house and the dead.   Yes, people can carry the water home with them.

For Sunday, I took the Green Bike Tour.  It was the number one rated bike tour in the area which says a lot as there must be about 20!  The nice thing is they limit the number of riders to a maximum of 6.  We had 5 in my tour - along with two guides.  The other tourists were 3 young people from Singapore and a lady from Florida who is just finishing up 6 months on the road from Europe and SW Asia!  There is really unusual for an American - other than those of college age!

The tour drove us up a volcano so most of the riding was downhill so not a whole lot of exercise involved.  On the drive up we stopped at a coffee ‘plantation’.  This is really a tourist trap place where they sell coffees and spices grown elsewhere on Bali and teas grown somewhere outside of Bali.  Their claim to fame to the kopi luwak coffee.  This is the coffee that has been digested by the civet cat.  Here in Indonesia, they keep these cats in cages and feed them the coffee.  Several of the woman on the tour took exception to having these wild cats in cages so the coffee producer can make a quick buck.  Any way, the tour provided us a couple banana pancakes here as well as a sample of all the coffees and teas they sell.

Once we got on the bikes, we still made several stops.  The most interesting one was at a local family house in one of the villages.  Here we got to see the mother making the baskets as the father watched tv!  After the mother worked on the baskets, she started making the traditional Hindu sacrifice tray of flowers and dried plants which they will burn with incense.  These are done several times a day.  We got to try our skill at this art and here is my meager product:

Monday had me walking about the town of Ubud again.  First stop was the Antonio Blanco Museum.  For those of you like me and never heard of Mr. Blanco, he was a painter from Spain that came to Bali and became famous painting topless Balinese women.  I guess if was a tough job but someone had to do it!  Whatever, Blanco died in 1999 right before this grand museum was opened.  

It was an interesting museum but way overpriced by local standards.

Then I saw Ubud’s famous Monkey Forest.  This was a very nice woods and forest area that has over 600 monkeys for our amusement - or our we there for the monkeys amusement?  It is hard to tell.

To end the day, I stopped for a stick massage.  Bali is known for their massages and I have liked the stick foot massages I've had in the past.  (It feels so good when they stop!). But this guy was different.  Not only did he work on my feet but also my hands, arms and shins with his stick.  As a result, now my arms are black and blue which he insisted is a good thing as my veins were ‘clogged’.  Although I am convinced the stick is a good technique for the feet I seriously doubt benefits for other parts of the body!.