Malang Market and the Bromo Gathering

E had gotten it into her head that Malang was a 'market town' worth checking out.  Unfortunately she was wrong and had the good grace to admit it.  It was, in fact, a little creepy.  Dirty and with lots of dark alleys that didn't look alluring, just alarming.  We did, however, have a nice place to stay - a white bungalow on a courtyard - and we spent the majority of our time hanging out and listening to Janis Joplin.  Oh yes - and eating donuts.

But better was to come.   Mount Bromo was a trip that everyone recommended.  A long sick-making bus journey to the top of a mountain and then up the next one!  We were sharing our final furlong with a couple of young Indonesian civil servants who were clearly talking about us.  They spoke much more quietly when we (inaccurately) managed to convince them that we spoke some of their language by asking them some questions in faltering Indo.

Up at the top was a guesthouse and 'restaurant' overlooking this extraordinary lunarscape.  A sand sea at the bottom of a cliff, within which were two smoking mountains.  Two volcanoes within a volcano. The sky was blue and plans were made to go and see the sunrise.

That wasn't until we had made some friends with some local language students who were camping in the freezing cold, drinking beer, singing songs and falling in love with E.  

So - up at 3am and across the sand sea.  Quite alone and lit only by the moon and a failing torch.  We were heading in what we thought was the right direction - quite fearless of the cravasses that appeared to be opening up in front of us.  But we 'turned a corner' and, somehow, found 'everyone else'.  There had been a motorbike convoy spotted in the distance at one point but this was a serious gathering.   Everyone (including water sellers and horse handlers) headed up the cliff, to the ever-increasing smell of sulphur, and waited for the moon to go down and the sun to very slowly rise.  I likened it at the time to Close Encounters and it still reminds me of that.

We stayed for another day and I tried the walk again, only to be sent back by rain.  The sky was newly overcast and the magic was gone.  Time to go.  Another long haul back down the mountain, a row with a ticket tout and a long long journey to.....Bali.

 

Batik, Trekking and Bedbugs

Yogyakarta remains one of the most beautiful and interesting places I've been to.  There are so many things that make and made it just that.

Our first task was to do a Batik course (of course).  In, what was, my usual style, I tried to reinvent the approach that could or should be taken and I tried to do a piece based on the cover of the book that I had been reading and that which made a particular impression on me.  Batik-making is difficult enough at the best of times - a trial of wax-dripping in the right quantities and dying and re-dying.  My reinvention didn't go particularly well and I quickly gave up.  E returned time and again in the quest for perfection and did rather well, although the levels of disappointment and dissatisfaction were not testament to that.

There were two notable and extraordinary sights to see.  Prambanan and Borobadour.  Both crawling with tourists but large enough to accommodate two more in search of a unique or spiritual experience.  The latter was my favourite, dotted throughout with buddhas, some encased in stone-carved 'cages'.  There was a way in which you were supposed to walk around it, in a direction and with a number of times that brought, I assume, good luck.  The whole thing is supposed to resemble a mandala.  We climbed to the top and imagined what it must be like at sunrise.

Accommodation and food were plentiful in town - although the first of the former had to be abandoned due to bedbugs.  But even that is a rite of passage for a backpacker.

For some reason that escapes me we decided to take a day out of town to a place called Dieng.  The journey was particularly notable in that the minibus that we 'took' (minibuses passed as buses in this part of the world) became more and more full - five people in the front seat alone - to the point of bursting - before the driver would consider departing.  As a result (or for some other life-threatening reason) the floor of the bus got unbearably hot later in the journey - to the point where you couldn't put your feet on it.  Reaching Dieng we found ourselves in a cool plateau - rice paddies and rolling hills.  The only place in town to stay was inhabited by some rather snooty Germans and we rather swiftly realised our mistake - this was a place for hillwalking and suchlike - not for 'hanging out'.  A couple of walks that we did, indeed, do were short and abridged thanks to the rolling mist coming down the mountain in a manner that was beautiful but a little forboding.  So - back to Yogya it was.

Merapi - the volcano - had recently erupted - the temperature was higher than usual, smoking was billowing and people were, of course, taking pictures.  People had died.