Bromo, Yogyakarta, Borobudur and LOTS of driving

Our time on Java was definitely spent tired by all of us. The first day we left from Lovina and drove all the way to the town by Mount Bromo, Cemoro Lawang. Our driver on that stretch was pretty good and spoke pretty good English also. The scenery was quite nice, a bit repetitive though. Rice paddies and corn fields and then a bit more rice and corn and to finish it off let's add in some corn and rice!

There were lots and lots of towns too, hence Java is the most populous island in the world. About 60% of Indonesia's 240 million (the 4th most populous country in the world) call Java home. To put it into perspective, Java's population density is over 1000 people per square kilometre. In British Columbia there are about 5 people per square kilometre. We pulled in to Cemoro Lawang at around 7:00 that evening (we left Lovina at 8:30am). Java is jammed full of volcanos so we decided to go see the one with the most fame...Bromo.
The regular trip to Mount Bromo is a sunrise tour. You first go to the nearby Mount Penanjakan to watch The sunrise by Bromo and then head back down and climb Bromo. We were unaware of the time change between Bali and Java so we ended up waking up at 2am instead of 3am. At 2:30 we were ready to go...but no one else was. We asked some people what time it was and they replied 2:30. Darn! We were supposed to meet the jeep at 3:30 but the dumb time change made us wake up an hour early. Once 3:30 came around we hopped into one of the hundreds of Toyota Landcruisers and made our way to Penanjakan for the sunrise. Overall the sunrise was a bit of a disappointment. It was really cloudy so there wasn't much of a sunrise. I didn't know what to expect for a viewing area, but I was kind of thinking of a big open field where you sit and watch the sunrise. My expectation wasn't quite matched it was a fenced off cement platform jammed full of people. The hundreds of Indonesians there freezing half to death in the 6-7 degree temperatures (not quite what they're used too) kind of took away from the non-existent sunrise. Once the sun had risen we did get a pretty nice view of Mount Bromo, mind you we were getting trampled by people at that time. After we were done at the viewpoint we headed back down to the jeep and set off to climb Mount Bromo (it's not much of a climb, just more of a walk). Once we got to the steep uphill there was a long set of stairs. The stairs were definitely the worst part because there was no way of passing people. It was a VERY slow walk up those stairs, some people were evidently REALLY struggling, because it was causing a domino effect on the whole staircase full of people. At last we made it up to the top of the stairs and onto the rim of the volcano. Wow! I peered over the edge and there was a huge pile of smoke steaming up from the inside. It was so cool, I have never been up on top of a volcano before, let alone a steaming one.

Then we made our way down and headed back to Cemoro Lawang. once in Cemoro Lawang we got into a minivan and got driven to Probolinggo. From Probolinggo we got into a different minivan to Yogyakarta. I would like to note that we left Probolinggo at around noon. Our driver really wasn't good. He wouldn't stop to let us eat, and when he finally stopped it was at a restaurant with no prices and a menu completely in Indonesian. Eventually he stopped at a supermarket and we bought kraft singles and wonder bread...real nutritious! The car was having some problems too, at 9pm the car broke down and he had to call a mechanic. It took an hour an a half to get it fixed! Then we were back on the road and we arrived in Yogyakarta finally at 2am. The trip was supposed to take 8 hours but it got stretched into a 12 hour ordeal.
We got some sleep that night and explored Yogyakarta the next day. While we were walking we found a really good air-con store with tons of Indonesian souvenirs. After an hour or two of shopping there we headed back to the hotel and arranged a trip to Borobudur for the next morning.
5am pick up...another early morning! We arrived at Borobudur in about an hours time. Borobudur was built around the 9th century and took approximately 75 years to build. The giant stone stepped building is 35 meters tall with several levels, the bottom ones covered in reliefs while the top three had lots of stupas. We had a guide that explained to us lots about the meanings of the reliefs. The stupas near the top were pretty amazing, there is a Buddha inside every one of them. Borobudur was pretty cool but what really took away from it all were the hoards of school kids running around and constantly asking for photos. The obnoxious megaphones were also very irritating. But I'm glad I saw it, I really like old temples of that. Sort so it was nice to tick another one off my list.

On my way out of Borobudur I bought a mini stupa and some flip flops. The next morning we flew out of the surprisingly small Yogyakarta airport back to Kuala Lumpur, my favourite city in Southeast Asia. I'm sad to leave Indonesia for all the nasi campur (mixed rice) and sate (grilled chicken skewers with peanut sauce) but I'm super stoked for roti in KL and Thai food after that! I also won't be able to speak Indonesian anymore (...well I could but people would look at me like I'm stupid and not understand a word I'm saying!).

Lovina

When our plane arrived in Denpasar (Bali) we took a taxi and headed straight to Sanur and stayed at The Ducks Nuts hotel again (for the third time!). We just got settled in and I slept and rested. My fever went away in about a day but I was very hot, achy and had a bad headache during that time. After I was rested up and feeling better we hired a taxi and took the 3 hour drive up to Lovina- a town on the north coast of Bali.

Lovina was a pretty good little town, lots of good, cheap warungs (restaurants) and a nice market. Another one of Lovina's draws is the diving. The diving is also quite cheap and it is pretty good too, as we found out the day after our arrival.
We went on a dive trip to Menjangan Island and I was very surprised by the corals. There were plenty of huge fan corals on both dives. Two dives cost 500,000Rp (about $50) and at Komodo and Alor they were 800,000Rp ($80ish). It definitely wasn't as good as Komodo or Alor but it was very good considering it was Bali-the tourist mecca of Indonesia. And heck, if it's that cheap I don't expect supreme diving!

The next day my mom and I went shopping at the nicely sized market. It wasn't so big that it was overwhelming but it was still big enough to have competitive prices. I bought a cool tye-die sarong and some nice bracelets. My mom however decided to go to town with the bracelets and buy 50 of them...one for each of her coworkers.

That evening we had another amazing meal at Wijayaa Warung. I had more amazing fresh lemon juice and nasi campur (translation: mixed rice). Nasi campur can be anything from chicken, rice and some sambal (fresh chili peppers ground up into sauce) to the extravagant spread I had here.

Labuan Bajo, Kanawa and Komodo National Park

We flew out of the itty bitty Alor airport and took a stop in Kupang, as we did before. Since there were no connecting flights to Labuan Bajo on the same day we had to to stay a night in Kupang.
We headed straight to the airport early the next morning and headed for Labuan Bajo with SkyAviation. I was pleasantly surprised to see how Labuan Bajo has cleaned itself up. Before, Labuan Bajo was a dirty, dusty, rather dank little town. Now they have paved the roads, cleaned up some garbage and added some nice little restaurants and shops. When we got to Labuan Bajo we grabbed some snacks and caught the boat to Kanawa Island right away.
Kanawa is a gorgeous island about an hour boat ride away from Labuan Bajo and is just barely outside of Komodo National Park. We stayed at Kanawa three years ago so we were eager to come back and see what it's like now.

Last time we were here there was an absolutely spectacular house reef for snorkelling. We were upset to hear there was a very bad storm in January that took out the jetty and damaged some of the reef. I was far more than upset when I hopped in the water-I was depressed, devastated and torn. The reef to the right of the jetty was thriving, vibrant and life-like before, but it's nothing near like that now. Huge toppled over coral heads scatter the ground and the odd fish moped by. I felt like I ought to cry, life has been ripped out by the roots and will take generations to recover. Coral takes it's time to grow so I can't imagine it will be anywhere near back to its original state within my lifetime. I was happily surprised to see that the coral on the left side was quite intact and lively. Although it wasn't nearly as vibrant as the right side prior to the storm. It's still very nice to know the reef wasn't completely annihilated.
Since there is only one restaurant on the island you eat are rather obliged to eat there. The food has gone up in price a fair bit since 2010 but it has gone up in quality a lot too. They hired a new chef and the food is just amazing. We stayed for 6 days and I didn't have a sub par meal the whole time.
Although Komodo is most famous for spotting the Komodo dragons, it's fame also comes from the world class diving. Our first dive was at Tatawa Besar. The highlight of this dive was the blue polka dotted, fluttery nudibranch that I have never seen before. We also got to see some turtles, a leaf scorpionfish and nudibranch eggs (my dad thought it was a fake flower). Our good luck continued onto the next dive- Karang Makassar, where we saw 3 manta rays!!! "Check"...there goes another one off my bucket list! The first one was sooo amazing, we all knelt on the bottom while the manta circled around in front of us and got cleaned by his cleaner fish. Once he came right over top of us, about a foot away from our heads. We saw two more later on in the dive but they were a bit further away. We also got to see a huge whiptail ray stirring up the sand looking for dinner. The best part about the mantas was that they were in the wild (not a zoo or aquarium) and it didn't feel like we harassing them (they were perfectly content with us there and it was their choice to come close to us and investigate). The next day we did a dive on the Kanawa house reef. I was pretty stoked on our frogfish find, it was so weird looking but it was amazing, I never would of known it was a fish if our divemaster didn't point it out. Some other cool sights were turtles, cuttlefish, pipefish and a HUGE bumphead parrotfish. The following day we did two more dives one at Cauldron and the other at Gili Lava Laut. Cauldron had amazing topography, with a huge sandy bowl/cauldron in the centre of the dive site, surrounded by coral reefs/gardens. At one part of the dive you could look up and see schools of fusiliers and trevally. And at another we saw 11 devil rays trying to swim against the current. In the sandy part at the bottom there were hundreds if not thousands of garden eels sticking their heads up and catching food that happens to float in their direction. Gili Lava Laut was our final dive in Komodo. It was a good farewell dive because we got to see 5 turtles! There was also lots of nice soft corals, even ones that swayed back and forth and looked liked hands trying to grasp a hold.

One afternoon when we weren't diving my mom and I decided to hike up to the top of Kanawa Island to get a good view. The hike wasn't very long (about 20 min.) but the view of the island and of the park was great. We sat up and ate some peanuts before we got shooed by a pile of ants. We got a couple peanut shells with 4 peanuts inside, still not quite as good as when we got a peanut shell with money inside last time we were in Indonesia.

We had to leave two days before we planned to because I woke up with a high fever. As much as I love Kanawa, I think it must be cursed! Last time we were here (in 2010) we had to leave early because my dad got a kidney stone. We changed our flight tickets and got ready to go back to Bali so I can rest in an aircon room and hopefully get rid of my fever.

Kepa and Alor

Our flight to Alor took a short stop at Kupang on the way. Kupang had a small one-gate-airport thing going on, so everyone waiting for different flights was waiting in the same gate. They decided to kick it old school and scrap the PA system for calling our flight. Instead it was just a whistle, just a simple whistle and everyone going to Alor knew it was time to board. We slightly heard the whistle and saw everyone rushing around so we assumed something was up, so we walked over to the door. Sure enough that was the 'get-on-the-plane-we-are-leaving-now' whistle. I won't ever forget that comical whistle of a boarding call.

We arrived at the teeny tiny Alor airport. I really didn't realize how remote we were until I saw the size of the airport and the next-to-nothingness around the airport. On our way out we stumbled across a Canadian couple going to Kepa Island as well. We were both looking for a ride so we shared a minivan to the boat crossing. The car ride was a about an hour long so we got well acquainted and exchanged numerous travel stories...and of course talked hockey! We all hopped in a boat afterwards and headed over to Kepa to check in.

The resort is called La P'tite Kepa and is located on a small island right off the coast of Alor Island. Alor is a remote island in the eastern Indonesian archipelago. Our bungalow was quite nice and spacious with a gorgeous balcony over-looking the sea. I'm glad we had the nice balcony because we all spent a lot if time reading out there. It seemed reading was the second most popular activity here, the first being diving. I'm not joking, everyone would come to lunch and dinner anouncing that they had flown through another book.

The meals at Kepa were very tasty although they got repetitive over time. They were served family-style, so everyone staying at La P'tite Kepa ate together, which I found very nice to sit and talk with everyone. Lunch and dinner always consisted of fish, rice and a couple veggie dishes (like I said, it gets a bit repetitive!). While breakfast was usually some odd sweet bread of some sort and bananas. Nonetheless the meals were pretty good and tended to be better when there was more guests.

Oh the diving was great! We did 4 dives over the course of our 6 days at Kepa. The first dive was called Harilolong. It was full of beautiful bubblish looking anemones, there were fields of them almost. These bubbly anemones came in many hues of pink and purple adding a touch of zest and flamboyance to the dive. We also saw a couple big lionfish and some very small white crabs. We spotted (and kept clear of) a titan triggerfish (they are known to be very violent and territorial). Some nudibranchs, moray eels, box fishes and nemos were just some more of our sights that dive. Our second dive at Kepa was called Limarahing and was mainly a wall dive with a slope for part. I was very excited that I got to see two mandarin fish, they are so beautiful and it was my first time seeing them! I got to see some well camouflaged scorpionfish and leaf scorpionfish. Seeing the black and white sea snake slither through the ocean was also neat. Motolang was our third dive, I even got to go inside a cave on this one! In the cave I saw 2 sleeping nurse sharks (the first sharks of this trip!). I think I saw 4 moray eels on this dive too. Along with the amazing orang utan crab (the first picture below), (it really looks like an oran utan!) and the beautiful clown triggerfish. On our final dive we went to Wolang. My favourite part was the pygmy seahorse (I have always wanted to see a seahorse-even it's only the eighth of the size of my fingernail!). The dive guide spotted it out but it must have been near impossible because it was clinging onto a fan coral of the exact same colour as itself and I have already told you of the size. We saw another clown triggerfish and another boxfish. The only downside to the dives here was the current, at all the dive sites we went to there was at least a little bit of current or swell. On one of the dives there was so much current the dive guide let me use his tank-tapper-poker-stick, I was pretty stoked about the poker stick! I felt like I had so much added authority and like I was instantly a better diver! I want to buy one but they are $20...and I ain't paying $20 for a tent peg and a piece of string! But to finish it off on a good note we got to eat beng-beng chocolate and drink coffee after the dives.

I met a nice French girl by the name of Lila who lives at Kepa with her parents (the owners). She is 9 years old now and can speak, French and Indonesian fluently and is also pretty good at English. I played a few card games with her and one day we went and made a pile of yummy cookies. I got a good chance to practice bits of French and Indonesian with Lila and the kitchen staff.

After six days we bid our farewells to Christina and Tye- the Canadians and the remaining Kepa guests. I had a great time at Kepa and it was definitely worth the trip out. Next we are heading to Labuan Bajo to do some more diving and snorkelling.

Kuta and Ubud

My stay in Kuta was a hectic mess for the most part and Ubud wasn't a whole lot better. I'm not saying it was bad, it was just very chaotic. When we arrived in Kuta at around noon we hunted out a hotel without too much difficulty.
After we got kinda settled we headed over to Water Bom. Water Bom is a nice water park in Kuta- about a 15 minute walk from our hotel off of Legian Street. It is one of the best in Southeast Asia anyways. There were plenty of water slides there, my favourite being the drop-floor-slide and the runner up being the very-steep-almost-straight-down-slide. The drop-floor-slide had a capsule that you stand in, 3-2-1 and there goes the floor from underneath you. You get sent down a very steep chute and then whirled around in an upside-down-loop-thingy. You have to be a certain weight to go on this slide or else you will get stuck in the loop. I was just over the required weight so both times I did the slide I could feel myself slow down and nearly get stuck. The very-steep-almost-straight-down-slide was also fun but not nearly as fun as the one I just described. It was pretty much just a slide that went straight down(not literally).
After a good few hours at Water Bom we left and wandered around Kuta looking for a cheap bathing suit, because my old one was thrashed. Easier said than done, it ended up using most of our time in Kuta! At the end of all our shopping in Kuta I came out with 2 bathing suits and a really nice Surfer Girl backpack. Surfer Girl is a cool girls surf shop with nice apparel and accessories. I don't surf at all but some of the stuff is purdy and not too surf related. The backpack cost me $40 (haha I'm going to run out of money!) but I'm glad I bought it.

For dinner we looked and looked for an old restaurant we had been at 3 years ago in Kuta and we finally found it! Wow it sure paid off, we got AMAZING thin crust pizza. I think it was one of the best meals of this trip so far!
We only stayed in Kuta for one night but that was definitely good enough for me. Boy, it was loud that night. We stayed on a side-road off of Legian Street but that wasn't really far enough away for a quiet night. Legian Street has good shopping but also has plenty of noisy night clubs that keep the music pounding all night. Wouldn't recommend staying there if you have to get up early the next morning!
We took the 1:30pm Perama shuttle up to Ubud the next day to meet some friends and do some shopping. On our day of arrival we checked in to the hotel, wandered around, checked out the market and ate at the amazing Dewa Warung. First of all we dropped our packs and checked into the same hotel we stayed at when we were in Ubud 3 years ago. Then we went and grabbed a quick bite from our favourite restaurant in Ubud, Dewa Warung. Mmmmmmmm, it was so tasty! Potato cakes were ordered all round and not a crumb was left from any of us. The potato cake consisted of grated potato fried up and served with tomato and cucumber on top. It is really nice to be able to go back to some places a few years later and see that they haven't changed for the worse.
I remember the market being big but it is HUGE now! It seems to have sprawled out even further than before. It is jammed full of the usual souvenir vendors selling pretty much the same thing at every stall. I bought a sarong, a Bintang singlet, an oil burner and a ceramic happy face.

We mailed a parcel, met Scott and Donna (my Dad's friend from school and his wife) at Dewa Warung and did a bit more shopping before heading to the airport and flying to Alor via Kupang.

Lembongan Island

Lembongan...Bali's very own mini-me paradise. Lembongan island is situated off southeastern Bali (a 45 minute boat ride from Sanur). If Bali was shrunk (size and population) you would come up with a little island paradise called Lembongan. Lembongan has a great laid back vibe and has a little something for everyone. There is diving, snorkelling, surfing, parasailing, jet skiing, stand up paddle boarding, kayaking, swimming, sunbathing and just about anything else you could want to do on an island.

We took the morning Perama boat from Sanur to Lembongan and got there in good time, to find a hotel and explore the island. After checking at a few places we found that Ketut Losmen Bungalows was suitable. We got a fan room right by the beach with a nice big balcony and some sea breeze. An awesome bonus was the infinity swimming pool.

After checking in and going for a swim it was time for a little exploration! We walked down the road and found a store to rent a motorbike from (there was no shortage of stores renting them). All three of us squeezed on and drove off around the island. We checked out Mushroom Bay and Dream Beach but Devils Tear was amazing. It sure did live up to its name; huge waves crashing into the rocks and shooting up through holes. Look out and you see endless rock-bluff shoreline with unforgiving seas thrashing about. To me that is what I think of if someone was to tell me to imagine Bali's coastline. It's just so spectacular and beautiful.

On our second day we went for a snorkel tour. I will try to be positive by saying it was alright. Right off the bat something happened to the motor and he spent 10 minutes trying to fix it with no luck, so we just used the spare. Another 20 minutes to half an hour was used to trying to spot manta rays, unfortunately with no luck also. We went in for a snorkel at the manta-less manta spot, it wasn't too bad but it would have been a whole lot better if we saw a manta. The corals were very far down so there really wasn't much to see. To put the icing on the cake my camera got ruined by water damage(I have...or had I should say, an underwater camera)! I got out of the water and tried to turn my camera on and the screen remained black. A couple minutes later I tried again and the screen started going fancy colours and I saw some water on the inside of the screen. Finally I opened up where the battery and SD card go and it was all wet. Before I went in the water with it I checked the seals and made sure everything was secure, so I'm blaming it on the camera and not myself. Anyways I phoned Panasonic and asked about the warranty, they told me it had expired a week ago. A week! Yes you heard that right only 7 days! So now I have to wait till I get back to Canada for it to get repaired or replaced. And now I have to go the rest if the trip without my camera. Crystal Bay was our next stop. The coral was not bad, a lot better than the first spot. The colour wasn't amazingly vibrant but there was a good variety of coral and fish. We hopped in once more to see some trevally.

We met a very nice French family in the hotel pool that afternoon with two kids aged 3 and 6. The latter was a young girl by the name of Océane. While the former was a little boy by the name of Célian. We had a great time in the pool with them. One evening we drew pictures and another all of us went out for dinner at D&B Warung. I practiced a few of my basic French skills with them and they practiced a little English with me.

The following day we toured the island by motorbike again and even crossed the little suspension bridge over to Cennigan Island. We drove around on some little roads and got a great view of Lembongan before heading for some lunch at a nice little restaurant on Cennigan. I had a great sleep on the balcony that night anticipating our dive the next day. Yay my first dive in three years! I'm definitely ready to make some more bubbles this trip!

At 9am we started a refresher course in the pool. The first thing we went over was getting our gear set up, tank, reg, bcd and all that fun stuff. Then we did the buddy check- Breakfast With Rice And Fish, an acronym for the buddy check. Breakfast=BCD, With=weight belt, Rice=regulator, And=air, Fish=final check. In the pool we did mask clearing, reg recovery, buddy breathing and some buoyancy exercises. It went by smoothly and quickly with no problems. At around 2pm we all went for a dive at Crystal Bay. Our dive was 75 minutes long (for me anyways) and we went as deep as 18 meters. It was nice to be able to go deeper, last trip they restricted me to a max depth of 12 meters. I think the coral seemed a fair bit better when we were diving opposed to snorkelling at the same site. I saw a couple nudibranchs, a turtle, a boxfish, a garden eel, a goatfish, a filefish and plenty of other nice corals and fish. The topography of the dive site was a sloping beach.

The following day we hopped on the Perama boat back to Bali. My stay on Lembongan was very pleasant, it's nice to have a little getaway from the big hubbub of Bali.