Blogs from Ijen Plateau, Java, Indonesia, Asia

My plan, or lack thereof, to meet Fahmi’s friend Risti did not work out. I showed up at the Malang train station at 4am after an eight hour ride from Yogyakarta. Never a good time to call someone for a pick up. So after little or no sleep on the train I decided to sleep on a bench in the train station. Not my finest moment of travel but not my worst either. Three hours later I was woken up by security and was told without a ticket I would have to leave the building. Shoving the taxi mafia aside outside the gates I found a payphone and for the next hour was unsuccessful in getting an answer from Risti. Without a plan or any options I cut ties with Malang and took the local minibus ... read more

The name may not ring any bells but many people may have seen documentaries on Mt Ijen on TV. This active volcano is mined for its sulphur. Day in day out miners trek deep in the crater amongst the towering noxious fumes. Like most visitors to the volcano we ventured inside it at night to get a view of the hypnotic blue flames. Getting here was no easy feat. The infrastructure for doing such tours is geared towards tour packages that move tourists from east to west of Java eventually ending in Bali. We arrived in the transition town of Probolingo with our mini bus dropping us off outside of a tour agency (typical!). Our plan was to catch the local bus from Probolingo to get to the small town of Sempol where we would arrange ... read more

Today I left Bali for Java. A local bus and a ferry journey. How happy was I to meet Nate and Benny. Two guys from New Zealand rock up in the tour shop I was in and wanted to do the same tour. Ijen Crater, Mount Bromo and Yogyakarta. Yes, this really made my day. The guys are film makers, who were filming their travels in Indonesia to make a short documentary. We had a vehicle drive us to a hotel close by Ijen, with a stop off on route to check out the coffee plantation and the rubber trees. After our rooms were allocated, we walked through the village to a big crazy waterfall, then stopped off at some hot spring baths where we took time to relax our muscles ready for the volcano climb ... read more

After another long journey in a mini van, we arrived at our accommodation for that night, which was a cute family run, compound type lodge with...a hot tub! This was more than welcome after being stuck in the van all day and we wasted no time in getting in. We had met a couple of really nice Dutch guys (Jos & Wout) on the bus and enjoyed a few beers with them in the tub whilst swapping the usual traveller stories before having quick shower and bite to eat, so that we could get an early night in preparation for our (now regular) 3.30am wake up call. Ijen volcano is a stratovolcano which has a 1km wide turquoise coloured acid crater lake which lies at 2,148m above sea level. The volcano itself produces huge amounts of ... read more

Nogmaals een guestpost: Rosas ecolodge in Baluran , dorpswandeling en nationaal park safari In dit dorp, Kampong, is er geen gebrek aan moskeeen, ik denk zo'n 10 tal. ieder godshuis is uitgerust met een versterker en luidsprekers . Tijdens de Ramadan schallen niet alleen de oproepen tot gebed over de daken, maar wordt ook nog eens bijna en continu ,de Koran in't arabisch gereciteerd. sommige moskeeen slagen erin om 3 tot 4 keer na mekaar de Koran op te zingen. Volgens ons de ene moskee tegen de andere op, wat een geweldige kakafonie geeft omdat ook iedereen op een a,dere vers zit. Bijna niemand verstaat er iets van vermoeden we, zoals latijn in onze streken , maar de duty moet uitgevoerd worden. Sommige stemmen zijn blijkbaar van tiener-muezzins , want lijken bijna op vrouwen stemmen, wat ... read more