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Published: September 6th 2021
Our bus left Denpasar at 6am, and reached the ferry at Gilimanuk at 9.30am. We had to wait an hour for the ferry, which saw us reach Katapang, on the island of Java, at around 11.30am. The trip through to Surabaya was another 300kms and we did not reach there until 6.30pm that evening. The trip, in a little minibus shared with 7 others, was not too bad, all things considered, except for the 12 hours of constant horn-honking – an unfortunate driving habit round this part of the world that we are going to have to get used to. Asian drivers seem to only have two controls on their vehicles – the accelerator and the horn!
Java seems quite a contrast to Bali. This part is very flat around the coast, although it appears to have a mountainous centre. There is greater variety in the countryside, with treelined roads most of the way, but fewer temples evident, and a heavy Dutch influence on the architecture of the houses. Plenty of becaks are around, but the drivers are much less aggressive than their contemporaries in Bali. Most of the people in this region appear to be Muslims, with the men
Java Map
This was taken off a website but shows almost our exact trip.wearing their special Kopyah hats, while the ladies generally are decked out in hijabs (headscarfs).
We booked ourselves a lockable room with a double bed at the Bamboe Denn at Surabaya, at a cost of Rp350 (around a dollar) per night. (Editor’s note – some 30 years later, on a business trip to Surabaya, I stayed at the Shangri-la Hotel at a cost of Rp350,000 per night!). A becak driver tried to line us up early in the piece with a couple of ‘dates’ to help us celebrate my 25th birthday dinner, but we didn’t bite. However, it gave us an interesting view of the seamier side of Javanese life and confirmed the advice from one of Bob’s travel books that he sent over to me in Fiji, which advised that Surabaya was the main centre for hookers in Indonesia, with 60,000 girls available every night, to which Bob had rudely pencilled in the column “well, that leaves you out”!
Surabaya clearly does not cater too heavily for the tourist. It’s a large, overcrowded, dirty, industrialised city, with much of the business activities centred around the port. There is obviously some wealth here, based on the expensive gear
in some of the shops, but it certainly doesn’t appear to have been shared around. The girls here are much more eye-catching than those in Bali, with more modern gear, more westernised, and happy to give bright smiles to the boys!
We had a long talk over lunch with Steve from California about further travels, given that he had come overland from the opposite direction. We even discussed the possibility of sending on my suitcase, which is clearly becoming overkill for this type of trip and making some forms of transport more difficult. In hindsight, as well as bringing a suitcase, I have clearly bought far too many clothes with me, and it is doubtful whether some of my ‘smart casual’ gear will see the light of day on the whole trip.
In the afternoon, we took in a trip down to the wharves, which were really dirty, with a number of coal ships being unloaded. They clearly have no concept of OH&S here, with grabs lifting coal from the vessels’ hold into trucks, with half of it dropping over the side onto the wharf or into the water, and one or two guys in the trucks guiding
the grabs bareheaded and barefooted. We took a becak back to the hotel in the pouring rain. We then spent a wet evening at the Peoples Amusement Park, a sort of very unsophisticated Luna Park, where we dined out on a special birthday treat of waffles, chocolate and beer!
We then decided to put in a couple of days at what was advertised as ‘wonder resort’, Tretes. We took the bus to Pandaan then shared a taxi for the last 12km. The place was almost deserted as it was clearly off-season, but accommodation was extremely high-priced (the Tandjung Hotel on the slopes of Mt Welirang had rooms available for a modest Rp6,000 per night), and with a massive thunderstorm threatening, we decided to cut our losses and return to Surabaya after a couple of hours.
We decided next to make it through to Yogyakarta, and caught the train out of Surabaya at around 4.30pm, managing to con student fares. The 6-hour ride in a 3rd class compartment was just that - we were in virtual darkness for a considerable part of the trip due to light failure, and with people asleep everywhere, including the floor
and over each other, stretching room was at a premium. There were plenty of options to purchase food and drink from the various vendors coming through the carriages, but none of it was too tempting. It poured with rain throughout the trip, so taking in the scenery was not an option. Eventually I met up with ex-Wallaby Bob McLean and 5 other Sydney Uni students and spent a couple of hours with them in the dining carriage reminiscing about rugby union and other current events. (Editor’s note – last year I was drawn to play in a golfing four in Sydney with the same Bob McLean and he got the shock of his life when I informed him that we had taken a train ride together 46 years earlier!).
We had trouble finding accommodation in Yogya on arrival at 11pm and had to settle for the very expensive Hotel Ratna, near the station. So first task of the next day was a change of hotels, which was duly done to the less expensive Hotel Indonesia, where we got a very musty, but large, room with two double beds for less than a dollar per night. We made our way
down to the Sultan’s Palace after breakfast and took in a tour that included gamelan music and trainee dancers practising, but it wasn’t that impressive.
After lunch, we met up with local guide Alfonso, who took us on a tour. Yogja is not nearly as cosmopolitan as Surabaya, and is more in line with Denpasar as a cultural centre. Many more Europeans were in evidence, but fewer decent stores. We went to visit several classy Batik artists and got a demonstration of their techniques from one. We were finally settling into a pattern with our meals. Toast, eggs and drink for breakfast was generally obtainable around 50 cents; bread rolls and fruit for lunch costs a further 25 cents; and then for dinner, we splash out a mammoth couple of bucks for a full meal of rice or noodles, always washed down with our favourite iced fruit drink.
The next morning, we took a trip out to the famed Borobudur, with bus trips totalling 45 minutes, including a change halfway at Muntilau (a 40km total trip). It was very hot, so the bus was hot and stifling and the seats cramped. We tripped around the largest Buddhist temple
complex in the world and while the scope of it was impressive, it was interesting without being outstanding. The site was crammed full of Japanese tourists and rip-off stalls, which took the edge off it a bit.
We had heard previously about this fabulous beach at a place called Parangtritis, so made an early start the following morning. We had to wait an hour for a bus, which gave us a bone-shaking trip to the river before embarking on an incredible punt trip over a swollen monsoonal river (in fact, little more than 100 metres), along with many locals, bicycles, produce etc, and women carrying incredible loads on their backs. This was accompanied by an incredible backdrop of intense black clouds. The final leg of the trip was 7km ride to the beach on the back of a local’s bicycle, through the back tracks of a number of villages, with all three legs costing in composite less than a dollar.
An incredible vista greeted us on arrival at the beach – surf, sand-dunes and seclusion! Little shacks built right on the beach, long drawn-out sand-dunes (unfortunately of black sand) and a magnificent mountain backdrop, with its green terraces,
made it a sight to remember. After a couple of hours of total seclusion, we met up with a young couple, George and Denise, who were smashed out of their minds and looked like they were ready to spend the rest of their days there! We had a great surf in 2 metre waves before finding a little shack where we picked up some noodles and soup for lunch for 15 cents. We climbed up for a great view from the lookout and smoked some pretty rough grass with the pair. After another surf, we strolled back via some grotty hot springs, before reversing the transport process back to Yogya. We had to encounter a late storm and a typical Javanese delay of over 90 minutes, but it was worth it for what was a memorable day.
We took in a dinner of a toasted sandwich and es juruk at the Moloboro Restaurant, before venturing out to see “Enter the Dragon’ at the flicks. The locals were ecstatic to see Bruce Lee come out on top again and throughout the movie offered plenty of vocal support! On the way home, we were amazed at the number of becak drivers
and stall owners, who sleep in the streets at night, even in heavy rain. We had a late nightcap of a ‘susu panas’ (hot milk) before having our daily banter with the shoe polish and newspaper boys – “Hello Mister”.
Our planned trip the next day to the Dieng Highlands never eventuated due to the persistent rain in the mountains. Instead, we made an on-the-spot decision to split from Indonesia and move north. We managed to get students’ tickets for the long train trip to Bandung (11am to 9pm), but fortunately the train was much emptier than our previous trip and less tedious. We were accompanied by George and Denise, who had finally come back to civilisation to renew their Indo visas so they could go back to Parangtritis! We took in some great views on the trip, and some fascinating cloud formations helped to kill some of the time. However, we were constantly hassles by vendors, and even worse, the occasional beggar.
We decided to take the bus trip from Bandung to Jakarta, mainly to view the well-publicised Puncak Pass (3,400ft high). A big mistake! We made it onto a very crowded bus full of expectorating Indonesians,
and a duration of almost 5 hours for the 180km trip. The pass was okay, but not worth the discomfort of the trip. We were not impressed with our initial take on Jakarta – it seems dirty and crowded, so we were happy to book our onward flight to Singapore at the Thai office and make it direct to the airport on a bimo. The most noteworthy sight on this latter trip was the number of unfinished skyscrapers left unfinished from the Soekarno days.
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Rudrakshahub
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