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I Love the Smell of Sulfur in the Morning
Published: May 21st 2013Asia » Indonesia » Sumatra » Berastagi
May 21st 2013
Today's hike up to the volcanic crater rim of Gunung Sibayak was quite tame compared to yesterday's burner up Gunung Sinabung. Both are manageable day trips from Berastagi where I have based myself since flying from Malaysia to Indonesia last Saturday. I arrived in Medan, North Sumatra ~11:00 a.m. local time and immediately began plotting my departure from the furnace that is coastal Indonesia. I was offered a ride to a share taxi office for service to Berastagi but there was no space so I caught a moto-taxi to the bus staging area and was almost immediately on my way to the coolness of the Karo Highlands. I have actually been wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt at night in stark contrast to Thailand and Malaysia where I hardly wore any shirt at all. ... read more
May 19th 2013
We are coming to the end of our 3 week visit to Bali, Indonesia. We live in the town of Sanur, popular with expats and well off retirees. Sanur is towards the southeastern end of the island, not far from the capital, Denpasar. Sanur has a nice beach which is protected by an offshore reef making it a good place to swim. Being on the windward side of the island, Sanur is a popular place to enjoy the Bali pastime of kite flying. Sanur has one main street that passes along the beach through town. The street is lined with small restaurants and spas and many shops catering to tourists. A few larger hotels line the road on the beach side, but nearly all have a low profile and lots of trees so the entire town ... read more
May 19th 2013
I’d been back in bonnie Scotland for a little over three months. I spent the first couple of weeks catching up with friends, family and the like, as well as enjoying some home comfort food that I hadn’t had for over a year. Kebab, haggis, chippie in particular! Then I decided to take this whole teaching thing a little more seriously, so I spent the next month of being home in Edinburgh completing the CELTA course. After the first couple of days, I could see why CELTA is far and away the market leader in the EFL world. I learnt more on that course, in terms of how to effectively give a lesson, than I did in a whole year in China. The course cost a total of a grand, but it really was money well ... read more
May 19th 2013
I decided to try to wake this morning to see my first Indonesian sunrise, so I was up a little before 6am. And a lovely sunrise it was. Again, it was a fairly noisy place with animals etc so I don't think I would have slept much past that anyway! The sunrise was very pretty, lots of reds and oranges and yellow. Worth getting up for, seeing the sun rise over the ocean and the valley more so. After watching the sunrise it was back to the room for a shower and to get ready to head out on a six hour trek. Breakfast was a banana pancake with condensed milk which made a nice change from the eggs I have been having every day for the last week. I am over eggs, and over rice ... read more
May 18th 2013
Travel day today. Up early to have a 7am breakfast for a 7:30am departure. Short stroll to the ferry (porter took our bags for grab total of $1.50) where we eventually got on and secured an area for the four of us. Technically the ferry trip was four hours. That was fairly accurate, we probably departed at around 8:30am and got into Lombok at 12:30pm. The problem was that there seemed to be no where for the ferry to pull up and off load, meaning that we sat on the ferry for about another two hours. Not what any of us wanted nor needed! So at around 2pm or just after we exited the ferry and headed towards the biggest shopping mall on Lombok for lunch and shopping. Grabbed Indonesian take aw... read more
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May 17th 2013
I got a 3:20am wake up call this morning intended for Christina who had already left the room. This woke me up with a jolt, largely because I didn't even know the room had a phone, and then had to find it while still largely asleep. It also meant I had trouble falling back asleep for almost an hour which I wasn't impressed by either but not much I could do about it. Woke up around 7am and had a leisurely morning of breakfast, Internet and reading, before heading to the volcanic museum at 9am. There is very little to do in this town except for that and a volcano trek, and given I had opted out of that I thought I should try to learn something about volcanos while here. Turns out they erupt a ... read more
May 16th 2013
Up early this morning to gorgeous sunshine and blue skies. So after breakfast it was straight to the pool for some swimming, sun bathing (mostly in the shade for me) and reading. Unfortunately the swim up pool bar hadn't opened by the time we left at about 11am though. After showering and checking out, we sat down in a gazebo at the beach for about 40 minutes before we got back into our van and drove down the Harbour for lunch. Again, I wasn't overly thrilled with the lunch I ordered, but maybe it was my choice rather than the restaurant itself! Had veges with satay, called Gabo Gabo. After lunch we headed towards Kintamani, on the way stopping at another temple which was quite pretty and a little more entertaining than some - with statues ... read more
May 15th 2013
After a brief visit to Bali we went by propeller plane to Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores. Labuan Bajo is a special place because it is the harbor giving access to the Unesco protected Komodo national park. We were picked up in the airport and taken straight to our nice hotel, Golo Hilltop. The hotel has a perfect location with an amazing view to the beautiful hilly hinterland and the ocean. We had chosen to save a bit of money and not have air condition. It was a BIG mistake. The heat was excessive and quite a bit warmer than usual. Even a swim in the pool couldn’t cool us off. After our liveaboard we bought air condition, which was a very good idea. Our Komodo chapter was primarily about diving. We dived with ... read more
May 15th 2013
Today we set out from Ruteng, originally planning to try to make it all the way to Ende, the largest city on Flores, or Moni, a small town near our final roadtrip goal of Mt. Kilimutu and the colored crater lakes. We changed our plans when we realized it was going to take too long and there were some other orange crater lakes at Wawo Muda, outside Bajawa, that we also wanted to check out, and it seemed a much more reasonable goal for the day. Tomorrow we will set out as early as possible for the lakes, and then see how far towards Moni we are able to get. Our ride today was rather eventful. For one, we stopped to rest our asses and stretch our legs next to a school in an unknown village ... read more
May 15th 2013
First stop today after breakfast was a village temple. We had to hire sarongs, which is a fantastic look on me (I can never pull that sort of thing off). The temple was small but pretty and intricate. Some impressive offerings too. Then it was on to an example of a traditional Balinese house. Essentially they are all different little houses, one each for the children, the parents, an outdoor kitchen and so on. They also have their own small temple in each house as well as an area in the middle with a bed. When I asked what it was, I found out that that is where they put people once they die before the bury them. Eww. We also visited a silver smith and looked in their store. So many pretty things with no ... read more
