slosh down the pepper!

The crazy little adventure trip to Mt. Bromo - Part I

I am back from Lavaland, unscathed!

It started with Andrew's photos on Facebook. Though less than 30 of them, each photo boasted of clear blue sky, lush green vegetation, volcanos shrouded in misty-looking clouds... it's all very surreal.. and that sparked my thoughts on visiting Mt. Bromo. With the long National Day weekend, it was the perfect timing!

So during the 10 days before our departure on National Day, me and Tempest hastily bought our air tickets from Silkair (quite a bargain at $216 nett, made even so with its early outbound and late inbound flight), booked our tour from Global Adventure Indonesia (chosen over Lintang Buana Tours for its slightly lower prices for 2 pax, responsiveness and friendliness over yahoo messenger), and then made last-minute purchases of LED flashlight and sock caps. Woo hoo! We are ready for our most impromptu adventure by Sunday :-)


Singapore - Surabaya:

We were met by Edy Siswanto, the founder of Global Adventure, at Surabaya Airport. It turned out that he ran out of staff, so he had to hire an external driver and meet us himself . When we first checked out of the departure hall, we couldn't find anyone who was supposed to be holding on to a sign with my name prominently displayed. Then a little man no taller than 1.55m approached us. He had longish hair, wore a ketayap kopiah (Malay woven headwear), and was all smiles when he held up a plastic folder with a piece of paper printed with my name, our flight details and contact numbers. That was Edy. He made a quick introduction of himself, collected USD400 from us, and led us to the car that was already waiting in the carpark opposite the airport. In comparison to most guides we met, this little man spoke pretty good english. He was to drop us at the hotel in Bondowoso, then pass us over to another of his team member who would accompany us for the rest of the 3D2N tour.



Surabaya - Bondowoso:

This is one of our first long car drive, almost 7.5 hours including stopovers for lunch and phototaking. Nothing spectacular along the way till we reach the suburbs and villages by the sea. We stopped by one of the restaurants lining by the sea. Lunch was pretty elaborate; Edy ordered several small dishes - oxtail curry, stir-fried potato, vegetables, fish curry, fish head curry, mutton rendang, chicken curry, eggs in curry, fried chicken wings, fruits and a couple of other stuff that we didn't touch. We had joined several local land tours in other Southeast Asian countries, and this was the first time the tour guides joined us at the same table for meals. Maybe this is the indonesian style of fostering a more personal interaction.



We made a quick stopover at Pasir Putih aka White Beach, a short distance away from the restaurant. The place is akin to east coast park, albeit shorter, where locals will while their weekends away swimming, having picnics, fishing. The beach is not free for all, visitors have a token fee of few thousand rupiah to use the facilities which really ain't much, just a few shops selling food and stuff, and renting fishing boats. Honestly, I wasn't impressed; I thought our very own ECP is a lot much better. But Tempest was taken over again by the vastness of the sea, which comes "clean" without the big tankers, boats, cruises etc that we will find lining the horizon every single time we overlook the one at ECP.



After another few hours of drive, we finally reached the city of Bondowoso. But our driver couldn't find the hotel! So Edy had to make a few phone calls, got off the car a few times, asked around before we managed to locate Palm Hotel at 5.30pm (Surabaya time GMT +0700). He then arranged for us to check into our room, introduced us to Bambang (our driver cum guide for the next 2 days), went through the itinerary, helped us to choose our dinner before leaving.



Hotel room was considerably clean and comes with heater, aircon, small TV without satellite channels, bottled water and tea. It could be a 2 or 3 star hotel as it comes with a swimming pool, and a roof top area for KTV. There was also chargeable Wi-Fi at its lobby. We did a short stroll around the hotel, took pictures, and headed off for dinner at 6.30pm.




Amazingly, we shrugged it off without a really big fuss and cleaned out the plates sans dead fly. I had a stomachache the next day but I doubt it was due to that fly since Tempest was perfectly alright. Without much to do, we took a hot shower and went to bed at about 10pm.

Labels: ijen crater, indonesia, mt. bromo, surabaya, travel

posted by slingwoof @ 8/13/2009 11:36:00 AM