Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!
Monday, November 16, 2009
My Little Pony And Henk's Durian Episode
Hey everyone! Francesca here again.
I'm going to tell you about our trip to Mt. Bromo, as well as our visit to the Mt. itself. Well, the actual drive from Yogyakarta to Mt. Bromo was not too exciting. It was still scenic in places, but the trip itself was really long: a 10 hour long drive. Henk and I enjoyed our ‘Western’ breakfast once again at the tables outside the hotel, and then I jumped online to attempt to check some e-mails before we had to leave around 9:00 am. We ended up leaving at around 20 minutes past 9:00 due to our extra internet time, and after a quick ATM and supermarket stop, we were on the road. Henk and I watched ‘Into the Wild,’ and had a long and lively discussion about different foods our parents/grandparents make… making both our mouths quickly water!
We pulled off to a buffet for lunch since I had to go to the bathroom, but it didn’t look appetizing at all – the food looked like it was sitting there for days, and had tons of flies all over it. Who knows how many maggot babies were getting ready to be born on that food! Yuck! We tried to hold out for a while longer, relying on our store-bought snacks. However, when our guides pulled off to a little shack to grab some dinner, Henk decided something to eat was in order. Since they didn’t have ‘sate ayam’ (aka chicken satay, or chicken-on-a-stick) Henk instead tried a concoction that I raised my eyebrows at: ‘sotong kilik’ or ‘cow skin soup.’
He could eat his cow skins, I was gonna wait for some chicken. It wasn’t until more than an hour later that we stopped off at a large grocer/food ‘court’ area. I was famished! I grabbed so many different snacks from the grocery store that the girls at the checkout counter actually threw in a couple extra snacks for free. Free caramel chocolate bar! Woot! Then we proceeded to the sate section, and bought two portions of lamb sate, which I happily stuffed into the bread roll I had bought at the supermarket. Finally, a sandwich again! (Apparently, less than 1% of Indonesians eat any form of sandwich, which is why I’m struggling to find food. And I refuse to eat cow skins… and bats… and cats... seriously, they eat that stuff!)
We arrived around 8:30 pm at Hotel Yoshi, which for less than $20.00/night was extremely nice! It even had an amazing view and an eclectically-designed Indonesian restaurant. We booked our sunrise tour of Mt. Bromo for the morning, and then jumped straight into bed after hearing what time we were going to be woken-up by reception. 3:00 am! And we really had no choice but to do the sunrise tour, because we were scheduled to leave Bromo at 9:00 am, with a 7 hour drive (or so we were told) to our next destination, Kalibaru Village. So we were happily awakened at 2:30 am by a crowing rooster… then shortly later by reception knocking on our door. We saw that Budi was outside, ready to come with us. However, since we had to book a special jeep for the tour, Topik got to sleep in. Lucky!
Our brochure about Mt. Bromo describes the sunrise as ‘one of the most exciting experiences,’ but we were a bit hesitant to believe them. Why? Their next line goes on to read that the sunrise viewing is: ‘Fallowed by a pony ride from the village of Cemoro Lawang over a see of sand to the food of the volcano.’ After a bumpy jeep ride, we arrived at the sunrise viewing platform and starting taking pictures of the volcano and its accompanying sunrise. Thankfully, since Henk was taller than virtually everyone there, he was able to get pictures over their heads. There were a ton of people there! Deciding to beat the crowds to the horses, we left the sunrise a bit early and headed back to the jeep. We did take the time to buy a roasted sweet corn to munch on the way back down.
As we got on our horses (more like ponies from the size of them) we noticed many locals trying to get us to buy bundles of colorful flowers, asking us if we want an ‘offering.’ We later asked Budi about this, and he told us that indeed the volcano is considered ‘holy,’ confirming our suspicions. Mt. Bromo is believed to be a ‘holy volcano’ by Hindus, the Balinese, and the surrounding villagers. It is said that when there is intense rumbling made by the volcano, the population quickly bring offers to the God of Bromo. Moreover, there is an annual offering ceremony of Kasada in the twelfth month in the Tenggerese calendar year. During this ceremony, villagers bring their produce of sacrifice to the holy volcano. Henk and I rode our ponies to the base of the steep stair climb, and then got ready to tackle the worst.
250 steep steps later, we were posing at the top of the climb, peering down at the crater below and getting pictures with Mt. Bromo in the background. I was really nervous standing at the top since there wasn’t exactly a ‘comfortable’ area to sit or stand without being very near to the cliff edge. We made our way back down and jumped on our ponies again (different ones this time, and Henk had to walk a bit to meet his) heading back to the jeep. We returned to the hotel, packed up our bags, and ate breakfast/lunch in the hotel restaurant. Henk tried a pineapple curry chicken which he wasn’t too impressed with, while I had a ‘pizza bread open-faced sandwich.’ Yes, a sandwich!
Our drive for the day started around 9:00 am, and finished much earlier than expected around 2:00 pm at our very nice hotel here in Kalibaru called ‘Margo Utomo.’ We have our own little cabin! However, all is currently not well. Henk decided that he wanted to try one of the local fruits during our drive, a fruit called durian. It is supposed to be a very sweet fruit that smells extremely disgusting… I wasn’t at all interested in trying that risky thing. However, Henk being a fruit-lover opted to try one. Let’s just say he has gotten really sick all of a sudden, and we’re wondering if it could have been the durian, because besides the chicken this morning that’s the only thing he has really eaten all day.
Anyways... that is the current status of things. I’m taking good care of him, don’t worry! But I really hope he gets better soon.
Everyone wish him well!
The next day... November 15th!
Henk feels a lot better today from the ‘durian episode.’ We found out after some light breakfast that our driver, Mr. Topik, felt a bit sick as well. Since the only thing both him and Henk ate was durian, it was probably that. We even found out from Mr. Budi that durian ‘heats up the stomach’ or something like that, so it is not the easiest fruit for the stomach to handle. Now we know!
Here is a description of the fruit I found on Wiki that is pretty humorous:
Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions."[22] Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother."
Anyways, because Henk wasn’t really feeling 100% yet, we decided to just do the rubber factory tour and skip the coffee plantation tour planned for later in the day. We had already seen a coffee plantation when we went to Costa Rica, so seeing another one wasn’t mandatory... it was much more important for Henk to be able to relax. We met our guide and driver and then drove us down the bumpy road towards the rubber factory. When we got there, we were given an ‘inside look’ at where companies like GoodYear get some of their pre-processed rubber from for their tires.
There were young rubber trees all around, all which had little buckets attached to them to collect the liquid rubber dripping down like sap off the trees. We also saw a handful of Indonesian women working hard in a warehouse, mixing the rubber with water to separate the rubber and form it into flat ‘rubber plates.’ There were also a bunch of machines in the warehouse that looked absolutely ancient, and we later learned they were brought over by the Dutch in the 1800’s.
Next we were taken to a long row of doors. Turns out, each one had a heat-room behind it, heating the rubber to various temperatures over the course of 5 days in order to form and shape the rubber sheets. There were two qualities of rubber: the ‘A’ quality, which was turned into big sheets of rubber and the ‘B’ quality, which was cut into smaller pieces and sold as ‘scrap rubber’ for use in products like footballs. We stretched and tested both qualities, and viewed a ton of packed boxes of rubber labeled and ready for shipment.
With our short tour over, we enjoyed some tea and tapioca doughnuts before heading back to the car. When Henk and I returned to the hotel, we spotted the pool walking back to our room and decided to dip our feet in real quick. It felt good! Henk had been progressively feeling better throughout the day, so I thought a soak in the pool might help him and we changed into our bathing suits. We were literally the only ones in the pool – or even anywhere near the pool! We realized our nice hotel was so empty because the two of us were one of just two couples staying at the moment. Nice! We ended up having a huge private infinity pool, just for us.
After a quick shower, we decided to have some dinner at the hotel. It was less than $5.00 USD for my sweet and sour chicken meal, and the same for Henk's soup and chicken sandwich. Since it was so cheap, we splurged on a dessert of banana fritters and ice-cream. Tomorrow morning we have to get up around 7:00 am (or a bit earlier) to get some breakfast before experiencing the last day of our tour. Thank God, we’re finally reaching Bali! It should only be a few hours for both the driving time and the ferry, and we can’t wait. We’re going to have 2 full weeks of nothing but relaxing, snorkeling, and laying around in the sand.
Bali, here we come!!
Francesca
I'm going to tell you about our trip to Mt. Bromo, as well as our visit to the Mt. itself. Well, the actual drive from Yogyakarta to Mt. Bromo was not too exciting. It was still scenic in places, but the trip itself was really long: a 10 hour long drive. Henk and I enjoyed our ‘Western’ breakfast once again at the tables outside the hotel, and then I jumped online to attempt to check some e-mails before we had to leave around 9:00 am. We ended up leaving at around 20 minutes past 9:00 due to our extra internet time, and after a quick ATM and supermarket stop, we were on the road. Henk and I watched ‘Into the Wild,’ and had a long and lively discussion about different foods our parents/grandparents make… making both our mouths quickly water!
We pulled off to a buffet for lunch since I had to go to the bathroom, but it didn’t look appetizing at all – the food looked like it was sitting there for days, and had tons of flies all over it. Who knows how many maggot babies were getting ready to be born on that food! Yuck! We tried to hold out for a while longer, relying on our store-bought snacks. However, when our guides pulled off to a little shack to grab some dinner, Henk decided something to eat was in order. Since they didn’t have ‘sate ayam’ (aka chicken satay, or chicken-on-a-stick) Henk instead tried a concoction that I raised my eyebrows at: ‘sotong kilik’ or ‘cow skin soup.’
He could eat his cow skins, I was gonna wait for some chicken. It wasn’t until more than an hour later that we stopped off at a large grocer/food ‘court’ area. I was famished! I grabbed so many different snacks from the grocery store that the girls at the checkout counter actually threw in a couple extra snacks for free. Free caramel chocolate bar! Woot! Then we proceeded to the sate section, and bought two portions of lamb sate, which I happily stuffed into the bread roll I had bought at the supermarket. Finally, a sandwich again! (Apparently, less than 1% of Indonesians eat any form of sandwich, which is why I’m struggling to find food. And I refuse to eat cow skins… and bats… and cats... seriously, they eat that stuff!)
We arrived around 8:30 pm at Hotel Yoshi, which for less than $20.00/night was extremely nice! It even had an amazing view and an eclectically-designed Indonesian restaurant. We booked our sunrise tour of Mt. Bromo for the morning, and then jumped straight into bed after hearing what time we were going to be woken-up by reception. 3:00 am! And we really had no choice but to do the sunrise tour, because we were scheduled to leave Bromo at 9:00 am, with a 7 hour drive (or so we were told) to our next destination, Kalibaru Village. So we were happily awakened at 2:30 am by a crowing rooster… then shortly later by reception knocking on our door. We saw that Budi was outside, ready to come with us. However, since we had to book a special jeep for the tour, Topik got to sleep in. Lucky!
Our brochure about Mt. Bromo describes the sunrise as ‘one of the most exciting experiences,’ but we were a bit hesitant to believe them. Why? Their next line goes on to read that the sunrise viewing is: ‘Fallowed by a pony ride from the village of Cemoro Lawang over a see of sand to the food of the volcano.’ After a bumpy jeep ride, we arrived at the sunrise viewing platform and starting taking pictures of the volcano and its accompanying sunrise. Thankfully, since Henk was taller than virtually everyone there, he was able to get pictures over their heads. There were a ton of people there! Deciding to beat the crowds to the horses, we left the sunrise a bit early and headed back to the jeep. We did take the time to buy a roasted sweet corn to munch on the way back down.
As we got on our horses (more like ponies from the size of them) we noticed many locals trying to get us to buy bundles of colorful flowers, asking us if we want an ‘offering.’ We later asked Budi about this, and he told us that indeed the volcano is considered ‘holy,’ confirming our suspicions. Mt. Bromo is believed to be a ‘holy volcano’ by Hindus, the Balinese, and the surrounding villagers. It is said that when there is intense rumbling made by the volcano, the population quickly bring offers to the God of Bromo. Moreover, there is an annual offering ceremony of Kasada in the twelfth month in the Tenggerese calendar year. During this ceremony, villagers bring their produce of sacrifice to the holy volcano. Henk and I rode our ponies to the base of the steep stair climb, and then got ready to tackle the worst.
250 steep steps later, we were posing at the top of the climb, peering down at the crater below and getting pictures with Mt. Bromo in the background. I was really nervous standing at the top since there wasn’t exactly a ‘comfortable’ area to sit or stand without being very near to the cliff edge. We made our way back down and jumped on our ponies again (different ones this time, and Henk had to walk a bit to meet his) heading back to the jeep. We returned to the hotel, packed up our bags, and ate breakfast/lunch in the hotel restaurant. Henk tried a pineapple curry chicken which he wasn’t too impressed with, while I had a ‘pizza bread open-faced sandwich.’ Yes, a sandwich!
Our drive for the day started around 9:00 am, and finished much earlier than expected around 2:00 pm at our very nice hotel here in Kalibaru called ‘Margo Utomo.’ We have our own little cabin! However, all is currently not well. Henk decided that he wanted to try one of the local fruits during our drive, a fruit called durian. It is supposed to be a very sweet fruit that smells extremely disgusting… I wasn’t at all interested in trying that risky thing. However, Henk being a fruit-lover opted to try one. Let’s just say he has gotten really sick all of a sudden, and we’re wondering if it could have been the durian, because besides the chicken this morning that’s the only thing he has really eaten all day.
Anyways... that is the current status of things. I’m taking good care of him, don’t worry! But I really hope he gets better soon.
Everyone wish him well!
The next day... November 15th!
Henk feels a lot better today from the ‘durian episode.’ We found out after some light breakfast that our driver, Mr. Topik, felt a bit sick as well. Since the only thing both him and Henk ate was durian, it was probably that. We even found out from Mr. Budi that durian ‘heats up the stomach’ or something like that, so it is not the easiest fruit for the stomach to handle. Now we know!
Here is a description of the fruit I found on Wiki that is pretty humorous:
Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions."[22] Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother."
Anyways, because Henk wasn’t really feeling 100% yet, we decided to just do the rubber factory tour and skip the coffee plantation tour planned for later in the day. We had already seen a coffee plantation when we went to Costa Rica, so seeing another one wasn’t mandatory... it was much more important for Henk to be able to relax. We met our guide and driver and then drove us down the bumpy road towards the rubber factory. When we got there, we were given an ‘inside look’ at where companies like GoodYear get some of their pre-processed rubber from for their tires.
There were young rubber trees all around, all which had little buckets attached to them to collect the liquid rubber dripping down like sap off the trees. We also saw a handful of Indonesian women working hard in a warehouse, mixing the rubber with water to separate the rubber and form it into flat ‘rubber plates.’ There were also a bunch of machines in the warehouse that looked absolutely ancient, and we later learned they were brought over by the Dutch in the 1800’s.
Next we were taken to a long row of doors. Turns out, each one had a heat-room behind it, heating the rubber to various temperatures over the course of 5 days in order to form and shape the rubber sheets. There were two qualities of rubber: the ‘A’ quality, which was turned into big sheets of rubber and the ‘B’ quality, which was cut into smaller pieces and sold as ‘scrap rubber’ for use in products like footballs. We stretched and tested both qualities, and viewed a ton of packed boxes of rubber labeled and ready for shipment.
With our short tour over, we enjoyed some tea and tapioca doughnuts before heading back to the car. When Henk and I returned to the hotel, we spotted the pool walking back to our room and decided to dip our feet in real quick. It felt good! Henk had been progressively feeling better throughout the day, so I thought a soak in the pool might help him and we changed into our bathing suits. We were literally the only ones in the pool – or even anywhere near the pool! We realized our nice hotel was so empty because the two of us were one of just two couples staying at the moment. Nice! We ended up having a huge private infinity pool, just for us.
After a quick shower, we decided to have some dinner at the hotel. It was less than $5.00 USD for my sweet and sour chicken meal, and the same for Henk's soup and chicken sandwich. Since it was so cheap, we splurged on a dessert of banana fritters and ice-cream. Tomorrow morning we have to get up around 7:00 am (or a bit earlier) to get some breakfast before experiencing the last day of our tour. Thank God, we’re finally reaching Bali! It should only be a few hours for both the driving time and the ferry, and we can’t wait. We’re going to have 2 full weeks of nothing but relaxing, snorkeling, and laying around in the sand.
Bali, here we come!!
Francesca
3 Comments:
Hey Fran and Henk-Jan natuurlijk, na jullie net gesproken te hebben..... heerlijk!!!!! ben ik direct jullie laatste story's gaan lezen, dat verhaal van die vrucht.... en die ''oma', Henk-Jan wat zul jij je ziek hebben gevoeld.
Maar wat weer een prachtige foto's!! Ik ga weer verder met lezen!!
kus
mams
Lieve Francesca en Henk-Jan.
Ik heb jou verhaal nog niet goed gelezen ,maar dat doe ik morgen.Maar ,op mijn achtergrond, heb ik jullie op die paardjes.Heerlijk om het allemaal te lezen Francesca. Henk-Jan kan er wat van ,maar jij niet minder.Vindt je het nog steeds fijn,om met mijn lieve kleinzoon rond te reizen Tot morgen Oma
Hallo Dear Francesca.
Wat weer een pracht verhaal.Maar Henk is ziek geweest door het eten van een verkeerde vrucht ? Kijk uit lieve schatten,want ik ben daar toen ook zo ziek geweest.Ook iets gegeten wat heel lekker leek,maar achteraf niet was.Maar verder gaat het allemaal goed he.Jullie zijn ook naar de Bromo geweest. Wij ook. Heel vroeg opstaan, dat weet ik nog wel.Alles wat je verteld Francesca,dat komt me zo bekend voor en dan voel ik me weer even in dat geweldige land.Ik heb nog altijd een beetje heimwee.De Sawa,s en de Theeplantages,de schitterende natuur en de aardige mensen,en nog zoveel meer.Ik zal het nooit vergeten.Ik hoop nog veel te horen.Heel veel liefs en pas goed op jullie zelf. Veel liefs uit het verre Borger. Oma.
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