Karimunjawa!!

2 weeks after the Dieng trip there was a trip organised to go to Karimunjawa, a group of islands off the north coast of java. 4 friends (Meg, Lucy, Sarah and James) went to Semarang (the port city) on Thursday, I went with Eda and Lisa on Friday after our classes. It was much easier than to Dieng, we only had to catch a 3 hour direct bus. We got there just at sunset, got off the bus at a random intersection, and caught a taxi to the hotel where the others were staying. The hotel was… amazing!! It’s an old dutch building, on the luxurious side of things, but cheap. I stayed in a huuuuuge room with the 4 who were already there, and hired a mattress on the floor because the beds were full. To my disdain, all of our time in Semarang was spent in the hotel (either the room or the hotel’s pub) taxis and the port. I had pizza for the first time since arriving, which was reaaaally good, but apparently theres heaps of good chinese food there, I wanted to try that too.

the Dutch hotel

almost at Karimunjawa, from Java

We went to the port nice and early for the 9am boat (wouldn’t want to miss it, not another for 3 days), but Lisa left behind all her money and camera in the taxi. Luckily the driver returned it to the hotel for her to pick up later. The boat ride was nice, especially if you had 3 padded seats to lie across and sleep on. Once on the main island we decided to stay at a floating hotel, which was a kilometre out to sea from a small fishing harbour. We had lunch first, at a ‘warung’ on the edge of the town square. This weekend happened to be the lead up to the Islamic festival of idul ahid, which would start on Monday. This is the time when goats are sacrificed, partly for the purpose of more well-off people feeding the poor, by providing them with goat. This resulted in goats (and other meaty beasties like cows and sheep) being fattened up wherever there was grassy areas. It just so happened that this town square was particularly green, so we watched the doomed goats running around while we ate… I was really happy to not eat meat!

goats, anyone?
me, james, lucy, sarah and meg on the prahu to the floating hotel

We packed ourselves into a little prahu boat and went to the hotel, Wisma Apung. It was so cool!! It was all made of wood, which was rased just above the sea. It wasn’t floating, but poles had been sunk into the seabed, which was only 2 metres from the surface. There were walkways everywhere, so we could walk around pools of small sharks, sea turtles, miscelaneous fish etc. I stood in the shark pool for a while! My friends were constantly screaming at me, saying I was crazy, but I didn’t think they’d bite, they seemed tame from being fed fish. There was a pontoon where we did crazy jumping stunts for everyone else waiting with their cameras ready. There were about 15 rooms, some with doors opening onto the sea, some with toilets (umm, you don’t want to know about the waste disposal system!), some with just beds. We were fed amazing fish for dinner, but it sucked for Eda, who is vegan. There was a choice of white rice and cucumber for her, until she convinced the cook to make her a packet of indomie. After dinner we played cards and crazy games (wink murder!), sitting above the sea.

selamat datang!

lisa, lucy, james

lisa...
lisa and eda

a ray in the shark pool... where are the sharks? camera shy.


sitting on the other side of the hotel, watching the sunset...... ahhh

In the morning we hired a boat with 3 Indonesian tourists to go on a snorkelling tour of some islands. The first one was an idyllic tiny tropical island, perfect white sand, covered in trees. We stopped near some small sandbars which led to the island. The Indonesians (Hary, Fifi and her boyfriend) snorkled on the other side of the boat, which was much deeper. We wallowed about in the pale turquoise water, snorkelling through little seaweed ecosystems and watching a starfish turn itself over. I walked on the island a bit, then went back near the boat, played around with james and lisa doing handstands.

On the way to the next spot (which was actually a beach on the main island with the goats before, but far from a town), I steered the boat, I kept asking the ‘captain’ which beach we were going to, he kept saying ‘the white one’… useful! That island had amazing coral (amazingly sharp too, I cut my feet so many times from stepping on dead coral), I swam around a huge reef, saw so many cool things, like a coral that looks like splashes of purple paint, a grey spiky one with bright blue tips, one that looks like an enormous pink plate, etc etc etc! and the fish were just as amazing! A pale one with a light pink head and a green ridge between its eyes popped out of somewhere and just sat right in front of my face, looking at the strange underwater creature that I am. There were schools of tiny silver fish flicking around me, and I saw nemo too. And angel fish, I think.

Back on the beach we got a local to climb coconut trees, we had a coconut feast right there, we tried very young, young, medium and old cocunut juice and the ‘meat’…. Aaaargh so delicious!! After that we went to a spot in the ocean, and snorkelled there. It was deeper, but much more extensive… I didn’t have as good a time there, I couldn’t get the snorkle and mask to work in unison.

We went back to the hotel, had amazing crab for dinner, we played more crazy games, I chatted with the indonesians who went with us on the tour. And the mosques on the main island were going all night long, because the next day was goat day. We got up at 6:30 I think, to go back to Java. We packed, had breakfast, and caught the little boat back to the main island. Oh dear, there were no goats in the town square anymore. We tried to not think about that. We caught a big ship to Jepara, not Semarang like the first boat. This took cargo of coconuts, and cars and motorbikes, with people on the top 2 levels.

The economy section sucked, there was cigarette smoke everywhere and crying babies. I went to the open deck, and hung out with the indonesians who had been on our snorkelling boat. We found shady spots next to the captains deck, slept, ate, took photos of the sea. It was a slower boat than the first one, and jepara was closer than semarang too. Even so, it took 6 hours to go about 40km! In Jepara, Hary, my new friend, offered to take us all (7 of us) back to semarang in his dads car… we thought ‘how can you fit us, yourself and the driver bringing the car in 1 car…?’ we saw it coming towards us and thought ‘oh no, its really small’, then it turned and we all signed at once, cos it was extra long, with 3 seats in the back! Hary asked the driver to catch a bus back to his dads’ town, and we all fit in, so off we went to semarang! We found the hotel from before really easily, and Lisa got all her money and camera back. We stayed there again, and once again ate in the hotel pub. We thanked Hary profusely, who is currently on holiday from work in Jakarta, and he’s planning to come to Jogja, so maybe we’ll meet again.


The next morning we got up, did the packing thing again, went to the bus station (where I bought the obligatary oleh-oleh, food gifts from the place you’ve been visiting for friends at home), and came all the way back to jogja again.

Dieng Plateau

3 weekends ago I decided that I’d had enough of being in the city, so on Friday morning after my class I hopped over to the main bus terminal in town, to go to Dieng Plateau in Central Java. This area is famous for being over 2000m high, very cold with bubbling craters, hot springs and volcanoes.

here be dieng...

I caught a bus to the next city from Jogja, Magelang, another to Wonosobo, then another to Dieng, which wound up through narrow roads on mountain slopes, terraced with farms. I arrived in Dieng at about 5, got off the bus and directly opposite me was a little hotel which my friend recommended to me. I got a cheap room, stashed my bags and then went for a wander around the village. I had nasi goreng/fried rice for dinner, during a blackout. Then I walked down the other side of town, found a group of teenagers around a fire in the middle of the street. That’s the nightlife in Dieng, roll a tyre into the street and set it alight! It was warm, and pleasant if you stay upwind of the smoke. I was really cold, even though I’m tasmanian. I think I’ve happily adapted to the Jogja heat. We chatted for a few hours about australia, I played them australian music on my ipod, it was good fun. I went to bed at about 10pm, with the intention to get up at 3am for a morning hike to see the sunset from a mountain, but I was woken up at 11 by really loud voices outside my room… I listened, realised it was in english, and opened my door… there were 4 of my australian friends from uni (hi andy, james, lindsey and martha!!) Neither of us knew the other was coming to dieng, let alone staying in the same hotel! Anyway, the walk was postponed cos it was raining like crazy all night and morning the next day.


hindu temples

After the rain stopped I went for a walk to check out the Hindu temples (sorry, that’s the other thing in Dieng, the oldest Hindu temples in Java), then the others turned up – its obviously a small town, if we keep finding each other – and we all bussed out of town to go to a hot springs area. It was beautiful, in a steep mountainous very green valley, and hot sulfur water comes out of the mountain. Bathing pools had been built around the springs, and my god it was HOT!!! We wore sarongs and sat inhaling hot sulfur… rotton eggs! We were a source of amusement for the indonesians, our skin is so white, and we’re so untalented at getting changed modestly in an open area. I think the people who were already there sms-ed their friends, cos 10 minutes after we arrived heaps more people started coming to see the crazy foreigners.

more dieng

We walked back up the steep mountain slopes back to the main road, and wanted to eat. We are always skeptical of bus drivers who say that the nearest ‘warung’ is far, because that means we’ll catch his bus. It’s not necessarily far, he just wants to get money. He said its far, we asked other locals, they said its just down the hill. So we walked down the hill, and it turned out to just be a tiny shop, sellling a few food items, as well as cigarettes, shampoo, water etc. so we had to catch a bus anyway, and got off in a tiny little town, with 1 place that looked like it had edible food. We almost filled the place, but even so the whole town came to watch us eat and say astoundedly ‘do you speak indonesian??’, even though they’ve just heard us speaking. Kids were peering over the windowsill, the adults were crowded in the doorway or on the floor… we’re a source of constant entertainment! Once we had managed to extract ourselves from their gleeful hospitality, we caught a bus back in the direction of Dieng.

bathing area on the right hand side of the valley, above the river


I got off the bus earlier than the others, to check out a crater near Dieng. I walked and walked up a hill, through the mist, just before the top I saw a tree… I thought it looked familiar, and realised it was a gum tree!! A huge one too. There are actually gum tree plantations in Sumatra, and I think some types occur naturally in Eastern Indonesia, closer to Australia. This was just all on its own… who knows how it got there. At the top, everything further than 30m away was densely covered in white fog, including the lake. Trees and whiteness were the sights. I got a lift back to town with 2 indonesians who were also looking at the fog, I was ‘dibonceng’ (taken on the back of the bike), but there were 3 of us! 1st time I’ve been on a bike with 2 others, and it probably wasn’t the best situation to try it in! the road down the hill was so steep, and had more holes than bitumen. The wheels sort of slid around, making my bum slide. And bikes are only designed for 2 people (thank god, really), but that means they only have foot stands for 2 people… bad luck if your leg muscles give in on speedy road! We got back to town all nicely, me with a piece of gum tree to surprise my friends.


That night we had a hot mandi (shower) to clean the sulfur off… it had to be hot, cos the water is icy at 2000m! even in indonesia. But because running water in indonesia is usually only cold, the hotel owner had to boil it for us…it was amazing! 1st hot shower in 3 months.

We organised to go on the same walking tour as I wanted to do the day before, so we got up at 3am, and walked for many kilometres, out of town, past geothermal power stations, by the time we were going through the highest village in java we were running because we didn’t want to miss the sunrise. We climbed and climbed up a steep zigzagging track up the side of a mountain and finally came out of the forest to see an amazing view… villages and a city spread out in the early morning light in the valley, with 4 or 5 volcanoes behind them. The clarity was stunning, we could even see Merapi volcano, the one behind Jogja, and we were hundreds of kilometres away. The mist was slowly rolling in hundreds of meters below us, a thick white carpet covering everything. We could see both coasts of Java, it made the island seem so small.

me, andy, hiding martha, james and lindsey

volcanoooooooooes
exhausted!!

After we got our breath back and soaked up the view, we headed back down the mountain, back through the potato fields, past what we called the ugliest mosque in central java, it looked like a badly designed greek villa with fat white marble archways that went up and up for 3 storeys, topped off with, rather than a dome, 2 little buildings which looked like houses, or the top of Chinese temples. On top of each was an erratically designed chunk of spiky gold coloured… stuff. It might be gold, apparently these villages are pretty well off from potato farming. But still ugly.

ugly mosque

potato farms... can you imagine climbing to the top of your farm every morning??

me and james at the sulfur crater

We walked down a hill through more potato farms, and next went to a sulfur crater… the floor is covered in yellow sulfur rocks and steam vents, and theres a hot bubbling pool of grey sulfur mud in the middle! Mmm yummy rotton eggs. After that we kept walking through a nice foresty area, to another lake. This one is blueish green, and the water is different colours in different areas because of the specific chemicals coming out of the ground in that spot. Finally we walked back to town, and I think we got there before 9am! Not even late for breakfast. We all went back to bed, and started the bus trip back to jogja at 12pm. I think we got back home at around 6.