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Hello Everyone,
Well, contrary to the propaganda that CNN is feeding you all, Indonesia is a great place to travel at the moment. Everyone is friendly, there still seems to be plenty of wealth around and it's not nearly the hassle that India was, as I had expected.
However, I do see some strange things due to the currency crisis. For example, the 2 local airlines are having troubles and rates are really strange. Internal flights are dirt cheap (about $20 from one island to the next) and international flights are expensive. It will actually cost me half as much to backtrack to Northern Malaysia and fly to Australia than it will to make the short hop from here. Silly.
Right now, the Rupiah is about 1/8 of it's value before the crisis. This means that already cheap Indonesian goods are even cheaper. I usually have a great meal for about $1.20 US and nice rooms with attached bath are about $1.50. There was a shopping center with a sale on, packed full of Indonesians so I know the prices were good, and I saw great dress shirts for about 1.50$ and good quality denim shirts for 90 cents. Good time to shop for clothes. Anything not imported is cheap. However, I had to buy some razor blades and they cost me an Indonesian fortune. 5 X what that Denim shirt would cost, which is also the average monthly salary. I guess Indonesians will forgo shaving for a while.
I flew into Bali and stayed in the town of Kuta for 7 days, just enjoying a rest and going surfing once or twice a day. Renting boards cost about $1 per day, so I've tried a few long boards and have moved to a 6'10 short board now. Not so easy to catch waves but much more maneuverable. Bali is just loaded with great surf spots and you don't find too many crowds in most places. Just enough people to make it sociable.
After all that lazy time, I flew to YogYakarta in Central Java, about 8 hours east of Jakarta. There are two of the largest temples in the world here, one Buddhist one called Borobudor and one Hindu one called Prambanan. Both were built around the 8th century, took 70+ years to build, and they say it might have been a competition.
Each one is around 45 meters tall and absolutely breathtaking with the jungle and active Merpati volcano spewing steam a few km behind them.
Prambanan has over 200 temples in one small area, although they are not completely restored. I know that upon completion it will be one of the most fantastic places in the world. Not as impressive as Angkor Wat in Cambodia was overall, but still a highlight of Java.
From Yogyakarta we did a day/night trip up to the Merapi volcano. This volcano is one of the most active in the world, and erupted in 1994 killing 70 people and resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands. Two weeks ago, it's status was raised to level 3 which means, "If we go to level 4, get the hell out". We got a guide and got up at 3 am to visit a viewpoint over the lava flows and watch the sunrise over the volcano. Of course, out guide carried a radio in case the warning was upgraded to level 4 and we had to high-tail it off the mountain. Once we cleared the forest, we had a clear view of the volcano silhouetted against the stars and saw the occasional spew of red glowing lava come out the top and race down the side. (at 300kph we were told) Very spectacular! After the sun came up we could still see lava coming down, however for the most part we just saw a smoking mountain, which is pretty cool anyway.
After Mt Merapi, I traveled to Mt Bromo, another active volcano in East Java. It's a series of several volcanoes and craters with the tallest being 3700m. The first night we got up at 3am to hike to a viewpoint overlooking the whole landscape. The sunrise was probably one of the best I have ever seen with orange fingers of light poking over the horizon and illuminating the Martian-like landscape. From the viewpoint we could see Bromo, a barren smoking crater, Mt Serapi which erupts about every half hour, and a few other craters with vegetation growing on them. These mountains are surrounded by a larger crater with a black lava sand sea that is almost perfectly flat. it's very difficult to describe how this thing looks...you have to see the pictures, but even they don't do it justice.
The first 3am journey was so much fun, we decided to take another 3am trek the next day around the entire crater rim. We hiked about 15km over 8 hours along the rim of two interconnected craters, one barren and one covered in tall grasses and ferns. The temperature is perfect up on bromo, about 15 at night and 25 in the day. It's also great to have a full day (8 hours hiking) and be back in time for lunch.
From Bromo, we took a bus back to Bali and I am currently waiting for a flight tomorrow to Sumbawa, an island about 2 hours flight east from Bali. The last few days have been more surfing and exploring Bali, this time with motorcycles.
The first day we rode to a place called Ulu Watu on the southern Tip of Bali which has a Monkey temple perched on a cliff about 200 m above the crashing surf below. It was a fantastic place with surf of sizes I've rarely seen before. I brilliant contrast between the thatched temple, green cliffs, white surf-break and blue shades of ocean.
The area around Ulu Watu is home to some of the best surfing in the world with lots of right-hand and left-hand reef breaks. Absolutely beautiful! and we spent almost the whole afternoon swimming and watching the surfers catch these 4-5meter waves and ride them for what seemed ages.
On the way back, two of the guys I was with got pulled over by the police for not wearing helmets. They were fined 18,000 Rupiah and had to purchase a helmet on the spot for 10,000. Good thing that doesn't even total over $3! Funny, anyway.
Today we rode up to a town called Ubud, which is a charming rural town up in the foothills of Bali. One of my travel companions managed to run over a chicken with his bike. I guess that chicken shouldn't have crossed the road. The chicken went flying up in the air, landed on a tin roof and slid off to land right in front of a sleeping dog. The dog looked at the chicken as if to say "Hey, I think you deserved that one, stupid chicken."
The area is loaded with jungle area and plenty of rice paddies. Very lush and green. It's great fun riding motorbikes on these windy rural roads here in the tropics.
All in all, so far Indonesia can't be beat. And I expect it to only get better.
That's all for now! Ta-ta.
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