Traveling East Across Java

Dubbed the Big Durian, Jakarta is not an easy city to get to grips with. The national museum gives an excellent introduction to its tribal diversity and the shopping malls are world class but after a hot and sweaty day attempting to find my way around its somewhat disappointing tourist attractions, I was content to move on. A short train journey east took me to the city of Bogor, built around a vast botanical garden which plays an important role in agricultural and forestry research. The gardens are indeed a great place to while away an afternoon but it was the train journey there that really opened my eyes. I made a bit of a mess of the train connections and ended up on the slow train through the Jakartan slums, where beggars crawl along the dirty corridors of the packed commuter trains. Thousands more live alongside the tracks in tiny shacks where poverty is the way of life. The train line itself seems to act as a kind of economic artery and a whole variety of food vendors board the train at each minor station, desperately hawking their meagre wares. It was a sobering reminder that the Big Durian has a tough spiny outer shell for those struggling to get by. However, Bogor itself is definitely a one attraction town and once I’d seen the botanical gardens, it was time to move on.

I decided to get clear of the cities and set myself the ambitious target of getting as far as Pangandaran, Java’s main beach resort, the following day. This meant traveling through the busy city of Bandung (population 2 million) and the journey over the scenic Puncak pass through the tea plantations sounded interesting. Unfortunately my bus chose the longer, duller motorway route, depositing me at the western bus station. I then needed to navigate the city of Bandung by public transport to get to the eastern bus station. It was a real slog but events took a positive turn when I met a Canadian guy on the bus to Pangandaran. Ross, an English teacher at a South Korean university, was taking a three week holiday across Java to Bali and was great company. The conversation helped pass the six hour bus journey and we ended up hanging out for a few days in pleasant Pangandaran and then traveling east across the rest of Java. In truth, the towns grey sand beach was nothing special, but the place did have a laid back out of season vibe (it was actually approaching peak season) with some decent restaurants and bars. At the edge of town a peninsular of land plays host to the Penanjung Pangandaran nature reserve. Its mostly secondary rainforest but is home to a variety of wild animals. An afternoon stroll produced sightings of sambar deer, macaques, black leaf monkeys and even a rare mouse deer, which had come out to forage for food as dusk began to set in. For our last day, we hired some motorbikes to explore this stretch of the southern Javan coast. It was great to get out on the open road and visit some of the small bays and fishing villages. Suitably rested and relaxed, we got a bus and train combo ticket through to Yogyakarta, Java’s cultural capital.

Yogyakarta is the only province of Indonesia that can still be referred to as a Sultanate and the Kraton (the Sultan’s Palace) is one of its main tourist attractions. In reality your only allowed access to a few of the buildings and we both found the guided tour somewhat underwhelming. Equally disappointing was the Water Castle, where the royalty used to bathe and we spent most of our visit trying to give the would be guides who were pestering us the slip. One of Yogyakarta’s more unusual sights is its bird market, where a colourful menagerie of tropical birds are on display. Alongside a whole host of other animals that you wouldn’t really imagine would make great pets - bats, snakes, monitor lizards, wild cats, a mongoose and even a slow loris. The poor loris looked a very unhappy creature, which is hardly surprising as you wouldn’t expect these nocturnal tree dwelling creatures to take well to living in cages and being displayed in the bright sunlight.

The folllowing day we hired some more motorbikes and took to the busy roads to visit Borobudur and Prambanan, Java’s ancient monuments to Buddhism and Hinduism. Borobudur dates from the ninth century and was abandoned in the fourteenth following mass conversion to Islam. Its a giant six tiered rectangle with thousands of reliefs and some 504 Buddha statues. The central stupa is surrounded by 72 smaller stupas, each housing a seated Buddha. Its an impressive, yet somewhat exposed structure and the heat and humidity take their toll as you navigate the stone stairways. We moved on eventually making it to Prambanan as the sun was beginning to set and had less than an hour to visit the site. Its less impressive than Borobudur and suffered some significant earthquake damage in 2006. There are three main temples to the holy Hindu trinity - Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu and facing them, three smaller temples for their vehicles - Nandi, Hamsa and Garuda. Several smaller temples surround the main site but the damage is extensive in places and overall the site has a somewhat neglected feel. We were both left wondering how they can justify the rather expensive 10$ entrance fee as it seems like little restoration work has been done.

Continuing east, we joined a shared van for the long journey to Mount Bromo. The busy roads were clogged with traffic and we were both looking forward to East Java’s volcanic highlights, which promised an escape from the urban centres. Java has a very high population density, indeed its the worlds most populous island, packing 130 million people into an island around half the size of Great Britain. It was late evening by the time we arrived in the mountainside village of Cemero Lawang and we took one of the few remaining overpriced rooms and went out in search of dinner. A large tour party seemed to have taken over the hotel restaurant and most places were closed, but luckily a small cafe was open and they managed to rustle up some nasi goreng and a few beers. At 4am the next morning we took a four wheel drive to the Mount Penanjakan viewpoint and waited along with a few hundred other tourists for the sunrise. Mount Bromo is the most accessible volcano of those that share the much larger Tengger Caldera and the large crowd did detract somewhat from the early morning ambience. However the vistas were stunning, even though smoke from Mount Bromo itself prevented a clear view. We decided to walk down into the caldera and across the sea sands to Mount Bromo itself to escape the crowds. It took a few hours to get there, by which time most of the crowds had cleared. The crater rim itself was something of an anti-climax after the long walk and we then faced a long journey to the Ijien Plateau.

Things didn’t get off to a great start. The bemo to Probolinggo made very slow progress down the mountain stopping at regular intervals to ferry locals taking their cabbage crop or bedroom furniture to market. It didn’t inspire much confidence that the vehicle was soon overloaded, barely roadworthy to begin with and that the driver seemed about thirteen years old. It was mid afternoon by the time we had reached Probolinggo and our hopes of reaching the coffee plantations of the Ijien Plateau had been dashed. We took the bus to Bondowoso breaking the journey at the very pleasant Palm hotel, which came complete with swimming pool, where we got two superior en suite rooms for the same price as the awful shack we had shared at Mount Bromo.

The following day we caught the local bemo up onto the Ijien Plataeu staying overnight at one of the coffee plantations. The coffee was free but like most places across the country, its served unprocessed and unfiltered - just add hot water and allow the dregs time to settle and never drain the cup. Over the two months across the archipelago, I never really took a liking to it. Both robusta and arabica varieties are grown here but the factory was closed the day we arrived and a tour was not forthcoming. Another early start saw us on the mountain trail around 6am. Its an hours walk up hill to the crater rim, where you peer down into the turquoise blue acidic lake. Its then twenty minutes walk down a steep trail to reach the waters edge, a busy hive of sulphur mining. The miners make two daily trips up and down the mountain, carrying staggering weights of solid sulphur on a primitive hod. For this back breaking work they can earn around 5-8$ a day. Those also mining the seam with drills and pickaxes also have a tough job due to the intensity of the acrid gases emanating from the fumaroles, which dissolve in the lungs to form sulphuric acid. That aside, Ijien Kawah is visually more dramatic than Mount Bromo and I left feeling a great deal of respect for the locals who craft a living from it.

Its all downhill from the Ijien Plateau to Java’s Eastern coast where a ferry can be caught to Bali, Indonesia’s tourist capital.

Introducing Indonesia

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of over 11,000 islands that stretches out towards Australasia. Its the worlds fourth most populous country and after India can claim to be the worlds second biggest democracy, based on voter turnout. However there have only been three elections since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998 and politically the country is on a steep learning curve. The democrats, a rising force in Indonesian politics won last years elections, despite taking only 20% of the vote. Rivals Golkar and PDIP each took around a 14% share and the remaining votes were split across the countries many different political factions. Since the May 2009 elections, attention has focused on the race for President, where there has been much behind the scenes maneuvering between the main parties in an attempt to form a more powerful political coalition. Current incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyon retained the top job, having made promises to reduce graft a big part of his campaign. Public sector corruption is endemic and my own perceptions suggest that artificial price inflation within the private sector is worse here than most other places in South East Asia.

The archipelago was the jewel in the crown of the Dutch East Indian trading company, later becoming a Dutch colonial possession. Yet over the course of three centuries of colonial rule, the Dutch never really unified the islands. Following independence after world war two, the separatist struggles continued, with perhaps the most bloody conflict being the secession of East Timor. Whilst the countries many ethnic minorities form a rich tapestry of tribal cultures, the challenge for modern Indonesian governments has been to try to foster a national identity, whilst attempting to balance the countries vast population across its many islands. Transmigration policies were encouraged under the Suharto dictatorship, opening up the backwaters of Sumatra and Kalimantan to economic prospectors, whilst aiming to reduce overpopulation on the island of Java. However, this mass migration caused sectarian tensions to simmer in some areas and national unity remained an elusive ambition. In recent decades, independence movements in remote areas such as Aceh and Papua have further plagued attempts at Indonesian unity and whilst a fragile post tsunami truce has been brokered in Aceh, Papua remains a troubled area with much resentment directed towards the Javan elite.

Indonesia was perhaps the worst victim of both the 1998 East Asian economic crisis and the 2004 tsunami. Its islands arc along the join between two tectonic plates with volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and giant landslides all contributing to the difficulty of life in a country where many people remain subsistence farmers. Although Indonesia has not matched the achievements of the BRIC nations, it has been posting some impressive economic growth in places. Unfortunately this has been accompanied by environmental problems, as vast areas of pristine rainforest are cleared for oil palm and fruit plantations. Indonesia is the worlds third biggest CO2 polluter - largely because of deforestation. Alongside significant offshore oil, gas, mineral and metal reserves are the tropical cash crops which are amongst the countries main exports: hardwoods, palm oil, rubber, cloves, tea, coffee, cacao, durian and coconut are all big commodities. Java and Sumatra host a number of large industrial cities and ports that help drive this economy, whilst tourism plays a lesser role. Indeed outside of Bali and Lombok you won’t find too many foreigners and in places, the traveler trail that used to exist has gone distinctly cold. Thus it has remained South East Asia’s final frontier, a destination for those with time on their hands and an appetite for exploration. English isn’t widely spoken and quickly made friendships often falter due to lack of a common language. It helps to learn some Bahasa Indonesia, the national language. Its not a difficult language to get stuck into and a little Bahasa goes a long way. In some places, its easy to end up being the only tourist in town which can bring with it a chorus of welcoming, yet sometimes overwhelming “Hello Misters”.

The country does have a continuing problem with extremist islamic elements. The Bali bombs of 2002 killed 202 people and bomb blasts at two five star Jakarta hotels in July last year, will do little to calm fears or assist those seeking to attract more tourists to these enigmatic islands. I found there were a few places where Indonesian male machismo does rear its ugly head but overall the attitude was welcoming and its in the more remote areas where you get the warmest welcome.

Indonesia’s island territories include Papua (the western half of New Guinea, the worlds second largest island), Kalimantan (the largest of four states that make up the planets third largest island Borneo) and Sumatra (number six on the global islands by size list). Although my two month island hopping adventure bypassed these giants, I still covered a vast distance from the capital Jakarta on the island of Java, traveling east across Bali, Lombok and Sumbawa to Flores and finishing up on the remote island of Sulawesi. The journey across Indonesia was a great opportunity to get up close to some amazing biodiversity, both above and below the water and many of the highlights were experienced in off the beaten track places observing some unusual rainforest animal or tropical fish.