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Published: March 8th 2011
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White Llama
The Safari Park concept is much better than Zoos where animals are caged behind the bars If Bandung in West Java is known as Parijs van Java, then Malang is the Parijs van Oost-Java. I don't exactly know why the Dutch granted the name, but from the stories, Malang was the most favorite city in East Java for the Dutch to build their settlements. For you guys who aren't maybe that familiar with history in South East Asia, the Dutch colonized Indonesia for 350 years (yes, 3 centuries and a half) since the beginning of the 18th century. Somehow, the natural beauty and the cool climate that the city provide brought the Dutch to Malang to settle. The leftover still could be seen nowadays, the old Dutch houses, government buildings, tea-tree, sugar cane, and coffee plantations, and the existing infrastructures such as roads, railways, and water tunnels. This city is the second biggest city in East-Java province after Surabaya -which is the capital of the province-, and this city is my hometown.
This posting will be the last sequel of the tetra logy of our summer 2010 Indonesia trip after Kuta, Uluwatu, and Borobudur. When we finally arrived in Malang, it was my coming-home after over a year being away, wandering through Europe. Kiki was was
Tea Trees
Everybody drinks tea, but only a few know how the tea tree looks like quite exhausted after the whole Indonesian trip, but we still had to do the list we made for Malang. Unlike the previous places, we didn't do the culinary adventure that much in Malang, because ~of course~ we've got to eat my mother's yummiest delicacies free of charge for the whole week. We wanted to go to the famous volcanoes in the national park Bromo-Tengger-Semeru which is few hours away from Malang, but we decided to save that destination for our next trip to Malang. So we made the list: Safari Park (which is actually in Pasuruan, an hour away), Wonosari Tea Plantation, and Balekambang Beach.
As I might have told, in Bali we wanted to go to the Indonesia's Safari Park III, but we didn't make it regarding the timing, so we decided to go to the Indoneisa's Safari Park II in Pasuruan, very close to Malang. FYI, the Indonesia's Safari Park I is in Bogor, West Java. We got to the park pretty early in the morning, therefore we spent the whole day there. This is the kind of park with a lot of different animals from over the world, tame and wild, and they are not caged,
Balekambang Beach
The lagoon, the floating house, and the white sand they are free in the nature. The park itself is kind of one big hill as a whole, with the track around it, so you can drive and see all the wild animals from your car. You are not allowed to open any window ~or get out of the car~ as the animals are wild and might attack. They try to keep the ecosystem as natural as possible, although most of the animals are kind of used seeing cars and being watched by people. Some tamer animals like giraffes and llamas were approaching our car and licking our window as they might have thought we were bringing foods for them. After finishing the whole track (we saw A LOT of animals), we parked the car and went to the other part of the park which offers other entertainment such as baby animals zoo, taking picture with animals, bird park, reptile aquariums, elephant riding, animal show, etc. Kiki rode an elephant and took picture holding lots of colorful parrots on him.
The next day we drove to Wonosari Tea Plantation, took us less than half an hour from home. It's basically just a green hill with tea trees and a factory that proceeds green tea and black tea to boxes. The farmers are mostly the people who live around the hill, and they also plant coffee and avocado that is available in the site souvenir store. There is a hotel and several villas rented for a weekend getaway, plus two recreational swimming pool on the top of the tea plantation. I made it to force Kiki to try the flying fox (of course I had to do it first to assure him that it's safe ~and fun~ before he finally did it). Flying fox is that ride when you are hanging on a rope, sliding from the higher part to the other side that is lower, far above the earth (in this case carpet of tea trees).
The other destination we went the following day was Balekambang Beach. Balekambang in Javanese literally means a floating house. It's called that way because in this beautiful beach there is this Hindu temple that is kind of off shore, built on a huge rock, connected with a bridge from the beach, so it looks like a floating house. The beach is a white sandy complemented by big waves as most of the Indian ocean beaches. What makes this beach special is there is a lagoon where the sea water is trapped providing a shallow clear area you can bathe the whole day. Again we ate the young coconut fresh from the tree in this beach, and I think all other fruits as well. Anyway, the term Parijs van Oost-Java got weird now, because for sure Paris has no beach! It has that Seine which has no sand and lagoon, though. So maybe, in my opinion, the comparison of Malang being the East-Javanese Paris is just the fact that Paris has always been THAT place you would go when you're traveling to Europe for the first time. Malang is indeed THAT place you would go when you're traveling to East Java.
We would've gone to many other places if we could, but we had a very limited time for the vacation, and Kiki had to go back to work on the 1st of August already. Anyway, I think that we divided wisely already our 2 weeks holiday in Indonesia between Bali, Jogja, and Malang. We're coming back to Indonesia in summer 2011, and we'll make sure we're visiting many other places!
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awanto
Sudarwanto
Great post!
Hi... This is a great post about the nice city where I was born. I thank you for exposing this. Awanto