INDONESIA
Population. 240 million, #4 in the world and the world’s largest Muslim country (220 million). There are 300+ languages on 17,000 islands. 50% survive on $2 or less per day. Over half live on Java, one of the most crowded places on earth with 940 people per square kilometre. Birth rates have fallen to 2.4.
Visas. Thirty-day visas on arrival are available for over 60 countries for US$35. They are available at 15 airports and 21 seaports. Land border crossings require a visa arranged in advance. Renewing a 30-day VOA for another 30 days is possible at local immigration offices at least 1 week before your VOA expires, but the process can be complex.
Travel Permits (surat jalan) are required for remote Papua (anywhere but Jayapura, Sentani, Pulau Biak, Sorong and Raja Ampats), available at the local police station and easiest to get at Jayapura and Sentani. Require your passport, two passport photos and a photocopy of both your main passport page and Indonesia visa, take an hour and costs nothing.
Money. 1US$=12,446 rupiah (Rp). ATMs are in all major cities.
JAVA
This is the economic powerhouse of Indonesia, the political epicentre and home to megacities, all pretty uninspiring. Leaving the cities the landscape is one of rice paddies, streams, villages of terracotta houses and patches of dense jungle-clad hills. One of the most fertile parts of Earth, three annual crops are possible in some regions. Over 40 volcanoes are forming a spiky central backbone.
Getting Around.
Air. Domestic flights are expanding rapidly and are inexpensive.
Bus. Often slow and nerve-racking. Public buses are very frequent but stop every five minutes for passengers. Better air-con buses are worth paying a little more for. Air-con minibuses travel all over Java and pick you up at your hotel and drop you off wherever you want to go in the destination city. They sound good in theory, but you can spend hours driving around the departure and arrival cities. Local Transport runs the gamut of taxis, tuk-tuks, motorcycle taxis to horse-drawn carts.
Train. They are usually quicker, more comfortable and more convenient than buses. There are several classes: Ekonomi (dirt-cheap, slow, crowded and run late), bisnis (business). Eksekutif (executive) are better and seating guaranteed and argo (luxury) are top-of-the-range and have air-con, but don’t expect luxury – cracked windows, and semi-swept aisles are the norm – but compared to buses, they are heaven. Book at the train stations at least a day in advance or several days beforehand for travel on public holidays and long weekends.
JAKARTA (pop 26.3 million urban area/8.9 million municipal)
So after almost 48 hours on airplanes and in airports, I arrived in Jakarta. Of the world’s 25 biggest cities, Jakarta is, by urban area, the second largest city in the world. Of those 25, I have now been to 20 (missing Cairo, Istanbul, Karachi, Shenzhen and Lagos).
I am staying at Six Degrees, a very good hostel south of the National Monument and Gambir Train Station. From the airport, I took the Damri bus ($2) to Gambir Train Station and a motorcycle taxi to the hostel ($2).
I am not going to say that there is nothing to see in Jakarta, but I have not found it. If you are into shopping, the Flea Market on Jl Surabaya and Pasar Seni near the harbour for arts and crafts may be worthwhile.
The National Monument in Freedom Square is a gigantic monument to Soekarno. It is a 132m-high column capped with gigantic flame and has been dubbed ‘Soekarno’s last erection’. It is only $1 to take the 10-passenger elevator to the top but I was there on a weekend during a national holiday and queues were four hours long so I only walked around it. The nearby National Museum may be the highlight of Jakarta (excellent ethnographic displays from around the 17,000 islands, a treasure room, prehistoric life in a new wing, ceramics, Hindu statuary and dagger handles) but it was closed for renovation to the air conditioning system. I walked to the area but caught a taxi just in time to miss a massive downpour that flooded all the streets.
The next day I took the train to Kota, the historic heart of Jakarta and home to the remnants of the Dutch capital of Batavia. Taman Fatahillah, the old town square was crowded with locals basically eating. Garbage overflowed from the mouths of colourful penguin and panda garbage cans. The entertainment was renting old bikes supplied with an assortment of hats. The only foreigner I saw, I was interviewed by a university kid (video and all) and had a long discussion about Indonesian politics with a fellow on the square. There is no possibility of advancement unless one has connections – family, clan, acquaintances. Corruption is as rampant as poverty.
Kota is as underwhelming an experience as there is. A few fine old colonial buildings surround the square and Gereja Sion is the oldest remaining church in Jakarta but none are open (seems like everything is being renovated). Besides lots of food carts, the locals were standing around chatting and several were having pictures taken with “immobiles” – uniformed men all painted one colour and posing stock-still for each photo for money.
I decided to walk down to the harbour and was pointed the way walking north along the canal. After crossing to the west side of the canal, I got lost in a neighbourhood of tiny winding streets. “Hello, mister” and smiles were common. But you know things are bad when garbage picking is a significant source of employment. Everybody seems to be scraping by. The small vendors are everywhere with food carts or in shops not selling much. Garbage lines everything. Gerry cans for water-filled carts. Flies covered the fish. Garbage floated in the murky water of the canals. All kind of depressing.
I was informed the access to the harbour was on the other side of the canal, retraced my steps and walked a long way on a street with heavy traffic. Getting directions was impossible as nobody understood any English. I was pointed to one of the small blue vans that provided local transport and jumped in one. After driving a long way under a large freeway, I was let out only to find all the streets flooded and myself sort of lost. I finally got into another little blue van that took me directly back to the square – I never did find the harbour.
I had taken the “train”, their version of a metro, actually a ‘Skytrain’ on an elevated track, to Kota (60¢). Less advanced than any metro I have ever been on, directions were poor and for the first time on this trip, there were no English announcements. It was also turtle slow and packed on this holiday Sunday. From my elevated viewpoint, housing looked slum-like with disjointed corrugated metal roofing held down with bricks and laundry draped under every eave. The Kota train station had several American brands – A&W, KFC and Starbucks (but surprisingly no McDonalds). On my return, I stopped in at the least busy Starbucks in the world. It has always amazed me that in every country in the world, prices are just as steep or higher as Starbucks in North America – it seems like a non-sustainable business model in poverty-stricken countries. Here the delicious dark mocha Frappuccino was 53,000Rp (US$4.50), what it costs in Canada. No wonder I was the only customer and the place was empty while the station outside was mobbed with people.
Probably half the women wear headscarves but no faces are covered and no one has long hijabs in this liberal Muslim country. But the only skin showing is from the wrists and ankles down. It would be difficult to make women less attractive – no makeup, jewelry or nice clothes. The ones without headscarves certainly look better. In a McDonalds, there are 18 women, 7 with headscarves and 4 women in short shorts and tank tops, seemingly very risqué in this country. I could not imagine a larger contrast than with the Russian woman, the other extreme seen in my first country this trip – painfully thin, perfect hair and makeup, jewelry, expensive clothes and stiletto heels – they are making the supreme effort to look attractive for their dumpy, poorly dressed, alcohol-infused men. But this is a Muslim country.
Walking around Jakarta requires constantly looking down, just like walking a rough trail in the Canadian mountains. The sidewalks cover the sewer and are a profusion of broken pavers, holes and obstacles. If the sidewalk does not have a food cart or stall, or a tarpaulin-roofed souvenir shop, it has a motorcycle on it. It is easier to walk on the street. Unfinished construction is common. Garbage is rife. It looks a lot like India without cows and blaring horns. The general decrepitude belies the corrupt, dysfunctional government.
But these are certainly the friendliest people so far on this trip. It has been shown, that after a certain income level is reached, happiness does not increase. And nobody seems unhappy. Everyone has clean clothes. People come up to you and want to talk. They have a ready smile. They ask you for business occasionally but don’t persist to the point of irritation. Even though they speak little English in school, their English is somewhat better than Japan, Russia and China.
The stay in Jakarta is quite pleasant but mostly because of the hostel. It is well set up with comfortable private dorm beds with lights and plug-ins, air-con, a great lounge to meet all sorts of people, a reasonably included breakfast, fast wi-fi and a very good pool table. There is not much to see in the city.
I took the Argo (air-con) train the 518 km and 7 hours to Yogyakarta, departing at 16:20 and arriving at 23:40. I then had one of the more disorientating experiences of my life. I go to get on the train and my seat is occupied. Then I learn that it is Sunday, Dec 28th today not Monday, the 29th and that it is 4 PM, not 5 PM, like it says on my watch. Wow, how screwed up can one be. I have just gained 25 hours and didn’t cross the international date line. I have not taken any drugs nor have had anything to drink for months. It is amazing how reliant we get to be on our watches and I believe that it has been right up to now, at least it was for all the flights and trips I have taken in the last 4 months. Don’t ask me what happened. Maybe it is aliens. So I have plenty of time and go down and buy a new ticket for a $12 penalty and get on the train. Now I wonder when I have booked my hostel and think that I don’t have a place to stay when I arrive, which turns out to be correct.
It takes 45 minutes before we get outside of Jakarta. Out the window are a depressing number of slum dwellings built between the fence and the tracks, just simple lean-tos with tarpaulin roofs. Sitting on the tracks are all sorts of people watching trains go by. Kids fly simple homemade kites. The train jiggles all over the place and it is impossible to write anything. The tracks certainly aren’t level. Thankfully it is not as bad as the incredible trains in Myanmar where your body can sway 2 feet from side to side and you bounce off the seat with each joint in the track. It takes over an hour to enter the countryside, a patchwork of rice paddies. I have no one in the seat beside me so can stretch out to get a sleep when it turns dark. I bought an air doughnut pillow and a new eye cover in Singapore and am in pure comfort. Unfortunately, when it turns dark, I can’t see the countryside we are travelling through, one of the benefits of train travel. Contrary to Chinese trains where smoking is allowed anywhere, the trains are totally nonsmoking. And you aren’t supposed to smoke on the platforms at stops but everyone does.
There are no sleeper trains in Indonesia, only seats with lots of leg room and footrests with several positions but not trays on the back of the seats in front of you. But for the first time on any train (including Japanese Shinkansens), there is an electrical plug next to every seat. Stewards dressed in turquoise shirts covered in butterflies and ties go up and down the aisles pushing small grocery carts with food and drinks. They even keep a tab that is paid at the end of the journey. Very civilized.
Across the aisle are a couple, both 21 and university students, who speak perfect English so that I can ask anything I want. They have been educated in private English schools and have money, as does everyone in this expensive car (my trip costs about $56). They have been boyfriend/girlfriend for five years, remain unmarried, but travel frequently together. Their parents don’t know they sleep together and believe they are travelling with friends. Very liberal for a Muslim country. She never wears a headscarf and there is no pressure to do so. But many Muslim women who are married wear headscarves.
The train arrived at ten after midnight, half an hour late. A taxi to the hostel was 70,000.
YOGYAKARTA (pop 400,000)
Still with its own Sultan, Yogya is the Javanese centre of culture, batik, gamelan and ritual. It is Java’s premier tourist city and serves as a base for exploring several temples and accessing Kaliuang and Gunung Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano.
I asked some Muslim girls at the hostel why they were not wearing headscarves. They are not ready yet as once you start to wear one, then you are committed to continue and it is a sin to then take it off. They get no pressure from their parents to wear them but their grandparents would like it. They thought that a lot of the girls who decided to wear headscarves were bitchy.
Kraton. This is the Sultan of Yogyakarta’s royal palace but is open to the public. The present sultan is 64, the tenth sultan, has five daughters and still makes the palace his home. There is a secondary and a primary palace, both slightly underwhelming. There are several small buildings with displays on the 9th sultan, batik, and presents from other countries. The free English guides have such an accent and speak so quickly that you can only understand 10% of what they say. There is a nice gamelan performance between 10 and 12 every day.
Prambanan. This Unesco listed site is the most important Hindu temple complex in Java. Originally with 50 temple sites built in the 9th century, it was mysteriously abandoned soon after. Many of the temples had collapsed by the 19th century but were all restored in 1937 and then suffered extensive damage during the 5.9 earthquake in 2006. But all has been repaired. What is unusual here is that there are temples to all three important Hindu gods – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (47m high, with carvings of Shiva, Pavratti his wife, Ganesh and Agastyn in each of the 4 chambers), all in a large complex on a big platform.
I took the city bus #1A the 17km to the site. Admission 218,000Rp ($18).
Borobudur. 42km NW of Yogyakarta, Borobudur is one of the most important Buddhist sites in the world and one of the finest temple complexes in SE Asia and is Unesco World Heritage listed. Constructed at the same time as Prambanan in the 9th century, it was abandoned as Buddhism waned and was covered in volcanic ash in the eruption of 1006. It was not rediscovered until 1814 by the British.
The temple consists of six square bases topped by three circular ones. The square ones have 1500 narrative bas-relief panels illustrating Buddhist teachings and 432 Statues of Buddha sitting in chambers on the terraces. On the upper circular terraces are 72-latticed stupas each containing a Buddha image. All is capped off with a large stone stupa. We walked around each terrace in a clockwise direction (most Muslims went the other way). The place was packed on this holiday Tuesday. Apparently the best way to see Borobudur is at sunrise when mists shroud the valley and crowds are small. There is also a museum we didn’t visit.
We took a taxi to the nearest bus station, then the bus 1½hr to Borobudur. It is a short walk to the site (a tout said it was 2km so we hired him for the 300m walk!)
Kaliurang and Gunung Merapi. 26 km north of Yogyakarta, Kaliurang is a pleasant mountain resort on the flanks of Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano (has been in a near-constant state of eruption for hundreds of years). In 2006, 30,000 were evacuated and in 2010, 353 died and thousands were left homeless after eruptions. Climbing the peak is strictly off limits but hikes go to Kali Aden, a viewpoint. As an expensive taxi was necessary to get to the hostel (Vogels with good 4:30 AM hikes to the viewpoint), I elected to not visit.
Gunung Bromo/Ijen Plateau/Banuwangi. One way to get to the east end of Java to get the ferry to Bali is on a three-day/two-night tour that takes in the highlights of this end of Java. Gunung Bromo is an active volcano that is one of three peaks that form a vast caldera 10km across. Its steep walls plunge to a desolate, vast, flat sea of lava and sand best seen at sunrise. Unfortunately, it is a 12-hour drive from Yogyakarta to Bromo and with the New Years holiday, that drive is significantly longer. As a result, most companies are not offering the trip and I could not find a tour. After a night at Bromo, 4WD trips leave at 4 AM to see sunrise from a viewpoint and then to the edge of the caldera. It is then a 7-hour drive to the Ijen Plateau, a vast volcanic region dominated by three volcanic cones. The highlight is a descent into a crater with a steaming, sulphurous lake where an army of miners dig sulphur. It is then a drive to Banuwangi to catch the ferry. Unfortunately, this trip is a huge amount of driving and not much time in nature. As a result, I flew to Bali.
The Yogyakarta airport is like a bus terminal, small and crowded. There are gates but just one big waiting room and our flight did not depart on time. It all got a little bit confusing. But the arranged driver was waiting at the airport in Denpasar and it took 1 1/2 hours to get to Ubud. It is nice to be travelling with someone, for the first time on this trip. Gala is a Ukrainian woman working in Germany and I am enjoying her company.
The hostel is called Balibbu, is new and a great place to stay. It was New Year’s Eve and there were lots of fireworks, I had a few beers and went to bed at 2 AM.
This is the tourism centre of Indonesia. Nobody misses it. It is so small, it can be driven around in one day, but offers an amazing diversity of attractions: rice terraces, surf, volcano treks, Hindu temples, dance and music, beaches, charming people and an active party scene.
History. First populated in 3000 BC, it was not until the 9th century that an organized society developed around the cultivation of rice. As Islam swept through Java in the following centuries, the kings of the embattled Hindu Majapahit kingdom began arriving in Bali with the last exodus in 1479.
The Dutch arrived in the 19th century forming alliances with princes in the north part of Bali. A dispute over the ransacking of wrecked ships was the pretext for the 1906 Dutch invasion of the South that ended in a fight to the death. The Dutch eventually encouraged Bali’s rich and complex culture and the first tourists arrived in the 1930s to boom in the 1970s. Tourism has paid for many infrastructure improvements while not adversely affecting the culture, despite there being 2.3 million per year.
Dangers and Annoyances: Persistent hawkers are best dealt with by ignoring from the first instance. the beaches on the west side of the island (Kuta and Seminyak) are subject to heavy surf and strong currents. The seawater near touristed areas is contaminated and smells. Traffic is a problem and upwards of 8 people die every die in traffic mishaps (8x the incidence in the US, Europe or Australia).
UBUD
In the southeast central part of Bali, Ubud is the second most popular place for tourists in Bali. Known for its culture (dance and music), restaurants, temples, ancient sites, and handicrafts, the best thing to do is to rent a motorcycle ($4/day + $2 insurance) and explore. It is well advertised that you need an International Driver’s License to rent a bike and I foolishly did not even bring my driver’s license.
We walked past many ostentatious homes with walls and a profusion of fun statures to the nearby Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, a small jungle park in the middle of Ubud with hundreds of habituated Balinese macaque monkeys. Gala had monkeys climbing all over her, people feeding them, and it is quite removed from nature. The park has a few Hindu temples and is quite pleasant. She wanted to spend a few hours so I went for a walk along Monkey Forest Road with its profusion of restaurants, knick-knack stores and motorcycle rental shops. A guy asked me if I wanted to rent a bike, I said I didn’t have my driver’s licence and he said that was no problem. So I had a scooter for the day and a map and drove north from Ubud with no specific destination. It was a progressive climb up to a high ridge immersed in cloud and mist, but no rain.
I eventually made it to the water temple of Pura Taman Ayun, with a typical Hindu tower behind a wall. I got too cheap to rent or buy the required sarong but eventually entered – a rather mediocre temple compared to all the amazing Hindu temples I saw in India.
There were views of Gurung Batur, a 1717m volcano wreathed in clouds, huge lava flows and Lake Batur. This turned out to be a Unesco World Heritage Site described as follows:
Cultural Landscape of Bali Province: the Subak System as a Manifestation of Tri Hita Karena Philosophy – Subak is a traditional ecologically sustainable irrigation system for rice paddy fields on Bali which was developed in the 9th century. The system exemplifies interconnected natural, religious, and cultural components: the forests that protect the water supply, the terraced paddy landscape, and rice fields connected by a system of canals, tunnels and weirs, villages, and water temples covering nearly 20k ha. In total, Bali has about 1,200 water collectives and between 50 and 400 farmers manage the water supply from one source of water. Rituals in the temples promote a harmonious relationship between people and their environment. Rice is seen as the gift of god, and the subak system is part of temple culture.
The sites are the Supreme Water Temple of Pura Ulun Danu Batur on the edge of Lake Batur regarded as the ultimate origin of every spring and river, the Subak Landscape of the Pakerisan Watershed, the Subak Landscape of Catur Angga Batukaru and the Royal Water temple of Pura Taman Ayun, the largest and most architecturally distinguished regional water temple. In June 2012, Subak was enlisted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
After I got back to the hostel after my long ride, Gala had also rented a bike (her first time on a scooter) so we went out together to get some practice and drove around well in to the dark and got completely lost.
For our last day in Ubud, we rented bikes again and had a big day on the scooters going out to the east coast. The Coastal Highway is 4-land divided and we turned off and went down a narrow road to the beach. There just happened to be a large Hindu festival happening next to a temple – a full orchestra with gamelans, drums, gongs and all sorts of percussion instruments – lovely. Men did traditional dances and were followed by some very sweet little girls dancing. A large group of men were gambling in a hall not paying any attention to the festival. Votive offerings covered a huge table at the front. After the performances, everyone sat on the ground and did a series of prayers.
We left, continued around to the north and eventually arrived at Padangbai, a little beach town and the port for the main public ferry connecting Bali with Lombok. We swam in the ocean on a black sand beach, but it was big surf with obviously marked undertow and didn’t go in far. It was then a long ride home mostly in the dark.
LEMBONGAN
After a very rainy, stormy night we took a bus to Sanur and then a fast boat to Nusa Lembongan, one of three small islands off the SE coast of Bali comprising the Nusa Penida archipelago, to hopefully do some diving, and snorkelling and have some down time away from hostel life. Raining hard and blowing, there were significant white caps for most of the crossing, we found a hotel on Jungutbatu Beach (250,000 rupiah or US$20) and settled in to watch the series of severe storms that swept across the bay. All the rooms on the beach have heavy bamboo blinds that roll down to keep the rain out of the rooms. It has been rainy and windy ever since the Air Asia plane went down and diving had been poor in the reduced visibility. There are many hotels and guesthouses on the beach, the road behind the beach and every bay on the island here so there is little need to book.
We rented scooters again and went all over Nusa Lembongan and Ceningan (the two are connected by a narrow suspension bridge). Lunch at the east end of Lembong had a stunning view of boats against big surf breaking over the reef at the entrance to the channel separating the two islands. Swimming at Dream beach was a dream with big surf in a safe setting, a lovely café, but lots of tourists (nice bungalows above the beach for 155,000Rp ($13). Mushroom Bay also faces west and is quieter than Jungutbatu.
KUTA, BALI
After two nights, we took the fast boat and bus to Kuta on mainland Bali. This region is overwhelmingly the largest tourist beach resort on the island. Renowned (or disliked) for its wild party hedonism and commercialization, most everyone ends up here at some point as it is close to the airport. We checked into the very posh Kayun Downtown Hostel, rented one scooter and spent the day exploring the surrounding area. North is Legian (big party scene) and Seminyak (more expensive resorts). All have the same deep flat beach with a surf break. Surf lessons are popular but nobody seems to last more than a few seconds. The water next to the shore is disgusting with confluent garbage ebbing to and from in the shallow water. It gets entwined in your flip-flops and around your ankles. We had thought of going for a swim but what a turn-off and left.
BUKIT PENINSULA. South of Kuta, jutting out from the bottom of Bali is the Bukit Peninsula, hotter and more arid and a great place to explore. Surrounded by reefs, it has some of the best surfing anywhere. Bays and beaches, mega resorts, hotels and restaurants cater to every taste. We went everywhere, got thoroughly lost and put on lots of miles but eventually ended up at the important Hindu temple of Uluwatu on the southwest corner. The temple itself is completely underwhelming as only Hindus are allowed inside (and there is nothing to see anyway as you could get good views over the wall). But the setting is magnificent with walkways and the temple on the edge of high vertical cliffs with crashing waves below.
Hinduism here has a completely different look than in India. They arrived from Java in the fifteenth century and thus have developed their own traditions. The big god here is Baruni, the God of the Sea, but the myriad small temples all have shrines to Bramin, Vishnu and Shiva (linga). Lakshmi (god of wealth) and Ganesha (god of good luck) are not nearly as popular as in India as most of these Balinese Hindus are relatively well off. Many own land and houses earning large incomes. To go to the temples everyone is dressed in white, has a white small head “turban” and a percussion orchestra plays traditional Hindu/Balinese music. Praying is a frequent part of everyday life using small woven baskets containing flowers, fruit and incense as votive offerings, sprinkling water and bowing. If these people spent as much time looking after their environment as they do on their religion, the world would be a better place for it. The caste system is in full force but totally unapparent to our eyes.
After the temple, we went just north to Padang Padang Beach, a lovely piece of sand with no surf inside the reef, and swam before the long ride back to Legian mostly in the dark. The plan was to spend as little time as possible in Kuta as the drunk nightlife wears a little thin, so we were up at 05:30 to catch a bus to Padangai and the fastboat to the Gili Islands, the tourist hot spot of Lombok.
