Picture Dump

Okay, i am obviously too lazy to really take care of this blog and I am sorry for that. Still, here are some pics I just wanted to share:

Sunrise at the peak of Mount Batur

Eike is happy about Pantai Pasir Putih (White Sand Beach), the nicest beach on Bali with almost no people

Cliffdiving at white sand beach

View over East Bali from the Mountains

East Bali has really beautiful landscapes and rice terraces

Diving in Tulamben:

Java

Okay, I know I have been silent for ages but there is just so much stuff to do here that I am actually suffering from a kind of leisure stress ;) I connection with the bad internet situation this makes for me being a lazy blogger... Anyway, since my last entry tons of stuff happened and we had two weeks off from university which we used for traveling. Last week we went to Java, the "heart" of Indonesia with the majority of the population and economic power... We took a minibus to the harbour and the a ferry to cross the short strait between Bali and Java. In Banyuwangi on the Javanese side we tried to rent a car but after 5 fruitless and very annoying hours of asking around, bargaining we eventually gave up and settled for public transport instead. So we took a public bus to Probolingo. The 5 hour bus ride was a really special experience. The bus was crammed and stopped in every small town to pick up or drop off passengers and in every town a bunch of guys hopped on the bus trying to sell everything from food and drinks to jewelery and clothes as well singers with guitars... it was exhausting. In Probolingo we chartered a Bemo (Minibus) to get to Cemera Lawang which lies at roughly 2000 meters above sea level on the edge of the Tengger volcanic Caldera which took us another 2 hours of steady uphill driving. Overall we were on the road for some 21hours that day so went straight to bed enjoying the cool air (actually it was really cold that night). We got up again at 2.30 in order to climb up to a viewpoint just in time for sunrise which was...

...totally awesome. It took us around two hours of uphill scrambling to get to the viewpoint on Mount Penanjakan (2770m) but it was so worth it.

Its fun to stay at the...

View into the Tengger Caldera which measures around 10km in diameter. In front you can see Mount Batok (2440m), to the left smoking Mount Bromo (2329m) and in the background Mount Semeru which is Javas highest mountain with 3676m. It erupts a cloud of smoke every 20 minutes.

Crossing the "sea of sand" to climb Mount Bromo

On the way back to Cemero Lawang

view into the crater of Mount Bromo

That night we took a Bemo from Cemera Lawang back to Probolingo and from there an overnight Minibus to Yogjakarta in Central Java which took another 9 hours. We got there at 4.30 in the morning and fortunately we found a hotel that let us check in that early so we could catch another few hours of sleep.

Taking a rickshaw to go sightseeing in Yogja. In the 2nd rickshaw you can see Paul sitting next to Ecki. We met him on the bus from Probolingo to Yogja, he is Canadian and did most of our trips in Yogja together with us. Downtown Yogja doesn't really have that many things to see but still I would say that so far it was my favorite city in Indonesia. People there seem to be more relaxed than in other places and the overall atmosphere is somehow pleasant... it's hard to describe. What we did most in the city was shopping for all kinds of stuff. I bought a sarong, "original" adidas sunglasses (1,40€) and some pretty awesome batik pants for myself and some presents for friends and relatives. We also tried some of the local cuisine and all of us found Nasi Gudeg (Rice with Jackfruit) particularly tasty.

A rickshaw is a useful tool for transporting all kinds of stuff.

Westerners seem to be a real attraction for Indonesians... we were asked or sometimes even dragged to be in so many photos.

Yep...

I finally started growing a beard.

On the next day we hired a Bemo with drive to take us around the sights outside of Yogja. This is Borobudur temple, which is often called the Angkor Wat of Indonesia. It is a huge Buddhist temple that was built in the 9th century, later completely buried by ashes from the close Merapi Volcano and only rediscovered sometime in the 19th century. The temple itself is pretty impressive although I had imagined it a little bigger from what I had heard about it before.

Malin (who is visiting from Bonn right now) in front of some of the really impressive and detailed reliefs showcasing buddhist legends. The lower walls of the temple are completely covered in these.

Posing on the "roof" of Borobudur.

Prambanan, a Hindu temple from the 10th century just outside Yogja. You cant really see it in this picture, but an earthquake in 2006 damaged this temple very badly.

Some damage from the quake...

and even more damage... it's such a pity because the temple in its original state must have been so much more impressive than it is now.

After our three days in Yogja we took an overnight bus back to Bali which meant another 21 hours of travelling. Overall a fantastic but also very straining trip. Now back in Bali things have gone back to normal. University, beach, surf, pool, food, laziness...

Lombotze

We went on a weeklong trip to Bali's neighboring island of Lombok and the small Gili Islands off the coast of Lombok... I am not really in the mood to write a lot of text so here just some pics with a few comments.

The cheapest place to stay on Gili Trawangan (which is a very expensive island by Indonesian standards)

There is no police on the Gili Islands so you can easily buy all kinds of drugs.

Beach in Senggigi, the prime tourist destination on Lombok. We found that it was not the nicest place on the island though.

Just north of Senggigi...

A waterfall at the base of Gunung Rijani, a 3700m volcano that dominates Lombok island.

Gunung Rijani at sunset

The bays and beaches around Kuta in the south of Lombok(which has very few things in common with the tourist trap Kuta on Bali) are straight out fantastic. In this bay we were all by ourselves, except for two local kids who ran after us all the time. So awesome! This is probably going to develop into a major tourist hotspot once the international airport on Lombok that is under construction right now is finished.

View over Kuta Beach

Fantastic and uncrowded waves can be found everywhere around Kuta. I might go back and bring my board one day...

More great beaches...

... with spectacular sunsets.

Nothing to report

I'm sorry for being such a lazy blogwriter but it somehow fits the Balinesian life really well. Except for the traffic and the tourist hotspot Kuta everything is really relaxed and laid back over here. Tomorrow university starts for real but I'd actually rather just keep on doing nothing. One good thing about university though is that we will have our first excursion this weekend which will take us to the East of Bali to a diving school to learn about their marketing strategy... and of course this excursion includes some diving as well. I definitely expect that to be awesome.

I will probably post a little more stuff and also some new pics as soon as we get internet back at our place. Right now I always have to go to a cafe down the street to go online and that is kinda annoying.

No more searching

Finally I find the time to update this blog. The last days have been somewhat busy and the internet situation here is not the best. There are plenty of internet cafes around here but I feel a little lazy about going there all the time. The Villa next to ours has an open WiFi network so if we sit in our garage we can acutally use theirs but it’s not really fast enough for more than emails.

I am not in the mood of writing long texts now so just a few pictures:

The entrance and kitchen of one of our two 3 bedroom villas.

Our Pool with the fake jacuzzi. You can sit in it but there are no bubbles...

Toilet and open air shower... sweet.

The preferred mode of transportation around here. Traffic is frantic and there are basically no road rules but once you're flowing in it with the scooter it's actually not that bad. I wouldnt want to drive a car here though. We took our scooters for a ride to the university campus yesterday which is supposed to be only 15 minutes from here... we needed more than an hour and countless stops to ask for the way. Afterwards we drove to the Southern tip of the island to a temple called Uluwatu.

The temple sits on top of these cliffs offering some great views.

Posing on the edge of a 100m cliff...

To enter the temple you have to wear long pants or you will get a sarong to cover your knees. Steffen got lucky on color selection here. Check out the monkey in the background too. The monkeys were pretty smart, they stole stuff from tourists and only gave it back in exchange for some food...


For sunset we drove down to Uluwatu surfer beach. You have to climb down a long flight of stairs to get to a cave filled with white sand and then you can climb back up onto one of the rocks to get this view. This is also one of the prime surf spots on the island...

... so there was a zoo of surfers out catching some really great waves. Nothing for beginners though. I promised myself I will surf this wave before leaving Bali but I definitely need a lot of practice before doing that.

I brought my clothes to the laundry service yesterday and got it back all fresh, ironed and folded today. Cost me 21.000 Rupiah (1,47€).

They put small handwritten tags on each item I handed in. You can see that labor is very very cheap here. Every store has at least twice as many people working there as a store of the same kind in Germany would have. Yesterday we talked to a security guard at the university and he told us that he earns about €70 a month... crazy!

So much for today. Will go for breakfast/lunch now and then to the beach to hit the waves.