chefmaison

We decided to leave the Villa Borobudur resort quite early as to not miss our train in case something happened on the way to Yogyakarta. Our Grab car was spot on time, and contrary to the car that brought us to Vila Borobudur, knew the right road, so we arrived in Yogyakarta in 1 hour and 15 minutes. So we still had 2 hours before our train left for Surabaya. 

We had already printed out our boarding passes a few days before, but when entering the train station there were several machines where you can print out your boarding passes. We had booked our train tickets via tiket.com but you still need to have a boarding pass to take the train (even if you buy your ticket in advance at the train station, you still need to print out the boarding passes which are orange), they check it before you enter the station. The bookings for trains open 90 days in advance. We bought Eksekutif tickets, they costed 35 euro for two. There are three classes, Ekonomi, Bisnis and Eksekutif class, and some trains also offer Luxury Eksekutive (with flatbeds like first class in an airplane) There is a waiting area in the train station and some places to eat or buy something to eat or drink, but since it was already very hot, we chose the Anggrek Lounge, where you can sit in an airconditioned room, with toilets, free snacks and drinks for 65000 rupiah per person, a pretty good deal!  (I which we could use the lounge for just 4 euro in the Brussels airport…) A good way to spend two hours waiting. On Seat 61 you find very detailed info on all the trains on Java. If you have the choice don’t take the first wagon of the train, the train toots his horn almost every minute and this is very loud if you sit in the first wagon as we did, luckily we had earplugs at hand. The Eksekutif class has very comfy seats that recline 30°, have a little pull out table, foor rests and blinds you can pull over the window in case of too much sunlight. There are two electric sockets at the seat, two hooks for a jacket and the overhead rack can also hold large suitcases. 

There is a toilet for men and a toilet for women in every wagon, and they pass with food and drinks several times during the journey. There was hot coffee and hot tea, cold tea, water, crisps, and warm meals. You can always bring some snacks with you which you can buy on the train station before boarding. The trains are punctual and a comfortable way to travel between cities on Java. 

We booked a Grab on the train to meet us on arrival in Surabaya Gubeng station. At the Grab pick-up location two people try to unite traveler and driver by checking your order via the Grab app. We found our driver and set of to the hotel Plataran Bromo near the Tengger national park. The ride takes around 2,5 hours, via a toll road. So on top of the Grab price of 416000 rupiah you have to count 10000 more for the station parking area, 120000 for the tollway and we also paid 5000 rupiah for stopping at a supermarket where we bought some snacks and drinks and used the nearby ATM. The first part is on a highway, the second part is on mountainous roads of which some parts are quite steep. Our driver sometimes had some difficulty but he dropped us of in one piece. We had arrived in Surabaya late afternoon, so it was almost 7 PM when we arrived in the dark at the hotel. We were warmly welcomed, and we booked a jeep for the following early morning to go and see the sunrise over Bromo mountain. A jeep costs 800000 for a trip that starts at 3 AM and brings you back to the hotel by 10 AM after which you can take your breakfast until 11 AM. The rooms are wonderful, great beds, nice bathroom, everything very posh and luxurious. The hotel caters specifically to rich Asian visitors who love to spend the weekend here away from the heat in the cities. You need a sweater here most of the day. The hotel offers lots of activities for families with children over the weekend. We had chosen for two weekdays, to dodge some of the crowds at Bromo and we did not mind that it was very quiet on our first day. On the second day, a Thursday, many weekenders started to arrive.  We had a dinner at the restaurant of the hotel and then went to bed early.

We woke up at 2:30 AM and met our driver and jeep at 3 AM in front of the lobby. The drive to on of the sunrise spots takes 45 minutes over mountainous roads. Slowly you join the long train of jeeps climbing up the mountain. Along the way are several stalls that offer breakfast, souvenirs, warm clothes like jackets and bonnets, blankets…  On a weekday an average of 1000 jeeps drives up the hill to watch the sunrise on one of the viewpoints after which they descends to the sea of sands. With 2 to 5 people per jeep, that’s a real crowd. On weekend days this more than doubles to up to 2400 jeeps! Quite crazy. The jeep drove up to Gunung Penanjakan, where there are several viewpoints, our driver pointed us towards Prahbu Hill or Buki Perahu. Other viewpoints here are: King Kong Hill, Seruni Point, and Bukit Cinta. We arrived at 4 PM and were with a group of Chinese tourists the only ones on this hill. We looked for a good spot where we could sit and where no one could come and stand in front of us. For about 30 minutes we were almost alone, but then more people started to arrive and it became quite crowded. Especially because most visitors don’t just sit down and enjoy the rising sun, but desperately want to take the perfect selfie or instagrammable photo with the volcanoes in the back. Some young women have taken a lot of effort dressing up and have loads of make-up on and are busy for over an hour trying to find the most beautiful often quite explicite pose for their portrait. The influence of social media on tourism is what you see here at its height. 

The weather was perfect, it was cold but not freezing cold, we were both wearing two fleece sweaters and that felt like enough ( I guess it was around 10 degrees Celsius). Gloves would have been nice though. In summer it can become a lot colder tough, just a few degrees above zero with often a cold wind on top. Then you will have to dress warmer, especially since you sit still for over an hour. The sky was clear and we had a beautiful starry night. 

There was like a soft carpet of white cotton clouds hanging around the bottom of the volcanoes. We had a perfect sunrise, the sun does not rise above the volcanoes itself but on the left from them, but throws a beautiful warm golden glow over the mountains. Over the course of an hour you slowly see the light change. When returning to our car we used the toilet on the hill in a brick building, it costs 5000 rupiah to use the (clean) toilets. We returned to our jeep by 6 AM and joined the long line of jeeps that now drove down in the direction of the sea of sands.

The jeep brings you over the sea of sands, the only one on Java that looks like a giant parking lot. The driver parked and we walked towards the stairs where you can climb up to the rim of the steaming volcano. You can be taken on horseback if you do not wish to walk. It costs 100000 rupiah one way or 200000 rupiah if you also come back on a horse. On many Tripadvisor forum posts and travel blogs people advise against using the horses saying they are in bad shape. All the horses we saw looked in very good health though. You pass the Hindu Pura Luhur Poten temple built with the black rocks from the volcano. The temple belongs to the Tenggerese people, one of the last remnants of the Hindu Majapahit Kingdom which was destroyed in the 16th century by rampaging Muslim armies. They hold onto their old traditions due to their mountainous isolation. The Hindus on Bali have also fled from the same armies and are distant cousins of the Tenggerese. The Tenggerese hold an annual festival where offerings and live animal sacrifices are thrown down into the volcanic crater to appease their gods. The volcano is named after Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. At the base of the stairs there is a small place that worships Brahma, with a large stone book on an altar. Some stalls sell small bouquets of flowers you can throw into the volcano for good luck. On the rim you can walk about halfway around the volcano. It is forbidden to walk all around, and I wouldn’t advise it either. For us Europeans it is quite extraordinary to be able to walk on the rim of an active volcano, with almost no protection on either side. 

There is a small altar with a statue of the god Ganesh also worshipped by the Hindu Tengerese people who live around Mount Bromo. Mount Bromo is just one of five volcanoes that are located in the sea of sands that is actually a large caldera of 8,5 by 10 km, of the older Tengger volcano that exploded where 45000 years ago and created five new volcanoes of which the one in front, Mount Batok is the only one that is not active anymore. Mount Bromo is part of the Tengger mountains or the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park. Semeru mountain is de highest peak of Java and towers over Mount Bromo in the back (3676 m).

Walking on the rim of the caldera of the volcano looking down into the volcano mouth, from where gasses climb up from its rumbling interior, is an impressive experience. The walk up and back takes about 1,5 hour. We returned to our jeep around 8:30 and on the way back to the hotel made another stop on mount Penanjakan to take an overview photo by daylight. We were back in the hotel around 9:15. We freshened up and had breakfast at the restaurant. The buffet looked quite sad, but you can order fresh made plates, with a choice between Indonesian food, several kinds of egg, French toast, pancakes, granola bowl…., which were actually very good. We then went up to our room and slept two to three hours to make up for our missed night sleep. 

From 3:15 to 5 PM the hotel offers a complementary afternoon tea to its guests, this time in the lounge bar. The afternoon tea is quite large, you have a choice of cold and hot drinks, fruit, Indonesian sweets, little chicken hamburgers, chicken wings, fried banana… Since we had a late breakfast we took the afternoon tea as a late lunch and early dinner and decided we would not need dinner anymore. 

We walked around the hotel grounds to the nursery in the greenhouse and up the hill where they organize eco tourism. The whole hill side is transformed into a vegetable and flower garden, with a children’s play ground, picnic areas, a sunrise and sunset spot, all quite cliché but nicely worked out with beautiful plants. We were all alone on the hill.  We decided to have another walk the next morning before breakfast. We lounged our evening away in the living room that was already decorated with a Christmas tree. 

The next morning the breakfast was only in buffet form and unfortunately the quality of the breakfast is not on par with the style and price of the hotel. The croissants were sour, the pancakes hard and dry, the warm food tasted bland and not very fresh. The freshly made eggs and the freshly prepared nasi or bakmi (fried rice or noodles) were by far the best choices. 

We had planned to make a small walk, but the whole area was again covered in the thick mist, so we went to our room, freshened up, packed and went downstairs to check out. Our driver arranged by the hotel was waiting for us. His car was sturdier than the Grab car that brought us and could handle the winding mountain roads and heavy rain on the highway a lot better. After about a little more than two hours we arrived in Surabaya, that on first sight pleased us a lot more than we had feared. It mades us think of Bangkok twenty odd years ago. We checked if it would be a good idea to play some golf in Surabaya, but upon checking the websites, the green fees were outrageously high, especially for a country were everything else is so cheap, so we decided against it. We were not sure yet how we would fill our two and a half days here in Surabaya.