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Published: August 4th 2005
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Photographer
A fellow photographer captures the sunset from Mount Bromo. Chronodementia: 'a lack of ability to judge, estimate, tell or understand time'. I've just made it up but I feel Elaine and I may have it. We really have lost all sense of time. Which is fine until we need to get on a metal-bird for Kuala Lumpur ('visa-hop'*). A good example of our new illness is Yogyakarta: we only meant to stay for a few nights - we stayed a week! In fairness we were ill (you don't need details... trust me) and the swimming pool tricked us. It made us lie next to it and not do a lot. That's our story and we're sticking to it. We have did however manage to see the Prambanan Hindu temple and the Ramayana ballet. Around the temple there were people trying to sell little wooden whistles. This was because tourists looking at Hindu temples need wooden whistles... for whistling.
Next to the Pramaban temple (think Angkor Wat, on a budget) there's the Ramayana Ballet open air theatre. The Ramayana tells the story of goodies and baddies (like all good theatrical pieces). And here is the story (in the tiniest of nutshells):
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Prince (wearing much makeup) meets princess, but Baddy
The Faithful
Hindu worshippers pray at Mount Bromo. (wearing a red mask) wants Pprincess for himself. So, cunningly, Baddy distracts Prince with a fairy pretending to be a deer (if anyone has read Life Of Pi - the deer gets a mention).
And now it gets odd: So, Baddy has princess but the important White Monkey doesn't like the Baddy so helps Princess escape. Baddy is angered (I would be if a monkey helped my stolen princess escape!) and builds a pyre on which to burn the White Monkey. But the Monkey breaks free (clearly escape is his thing) and sets fire to the Baddy's kingdom. Prince and Baddy have a war and sure enough Prince wins. A happy ending after all.
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It sounds a little comical but was actually really good. The white monkey had lots of monkey followers who were all children and, of course, were very cute.
When we weren't by the pool in a Yoyakarta we were in Via Via Travellers Cafe. Now that doesn't sound much more productive than the pool but thankfully they had adverts for various courses so we signed up to a few of them. First up was an Indonesian lesson. Here was my Indonesian when I
Gecko
A gecko sheds it's skin on Elaine's hat (nice!) in Yogyakarta. arrived:
Selamat Datang: Welcome
Selamat Pagi: Good Morning
Gula: Sugar
Terimah Kasih: Thankyou
Now I know a few more words (Elaine's doing better than me!). We also signed up to a Silver course. We were taken to a small workshop in the silver district - where
everything revolves around silver. We were late (being late seems the norm here - Elaine and I fit in well). A Belgian girl, our fellow student, had arrived promptly (clearly Belgians don't fit in quite so well). I made a rather fetching pendant and Elaine revealed her hidden silver-smithing skills in a ridiculously intricate-looking platted ring. The bloke who was teaching us was really laid back, spoke at least 3 languages (he spoke Dutch to the Belgian girl) and seemed to know more as much about wireless internet devices as silver!
After escaping from the swimming pool at Yogyakarta (we snuck out at midnight) we headed to Mount Bromo. By this point I still wasn't well and the train journey wasn't much fun. As we headed up into the mountains we could feel it getting cooler and the short stroll we took to choose the hostel we wanted to stay in
Mount Bromo at Sunrise
After almost dying of exhaustion on the way up I managed to take some pictures of the volcano at sunrise. felt like a short hike thanks to the thin air. That evening we took a horse ride across what I can only describe as the barren 'blast plain' around Mount Bromo. We climbed the steps (surprisngly civilised for a volcano - at least for now) and watched the sunset and the Hindu faithful say their prayers. The next morning we got up at 2:45am and walked up the mountain overlooking Bromo to see it at sunset. It almost killed me. When we got to the viewpoint it was already crawling with fellow tourists who had been too lazy/sensible to trek and had instead taken one of the twenty or so jeeps. The presence of these 'non-walkers' gave us mixed feelings of envy and superiority.
After walking/slipping/sliding/swearing back down we jumped on a bus for Bali and here we are! We've been here in Lovina (northern Bali) for 5 days and it's all very nice. The diving here is very good; better than the diving I did in Malaysia and certainly better than Vietnam. Elaine is now a qualified PADI Openwater Diver. :-)
Anyway that's quite enough for one blog - next stop: Central Bali...
*A
Lionfish
Lionfish at Menjangan Island north Bali visa hop is a ridiculous, expensive and beauracy-orientated transit from country A to B to A in order to satisfy the immigration authorities requirements for length of stay. (I'm
not a fan.)
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Dave Wood
non-member comment
Travelling beats working
Hello mate, sounds like yer having a great time. the photo of bromo bought back memories. keep having fun. all the best Dave