Ijen

After our morning watching a volcano erupt it was time to visit a (hopefully) less violent one further along the island. The journey wasn’t a huge distance but thanks to the road being unsurfaced it took over 5 hours mostly travelling at about 5 miles an hour. When we arrived we paid about 14p each to sit in a volcanic hot spring for a while as there was not much else to do. We spent the evening in the company of about 8 or 9 huge rhino beetles, the largest being about 4 or 5 inches long. Despite their size they are as stupid as other insects and enjoy repeatedly flying into light bulbs until they fall to the ground with a loud clatter.

The next morning was our second pre-dawn start in a row, though this time it wasn’t so that we could see a sunrise so our failure to ever prepare wasn’t an issue. Breakfast was an interesting experience; jam and chocolate sprinkle sandwiches again surrounded by the stupid beetles. The walk to the top of the volcano was 3km and in that distance rose over 500m, i.e. steep.

Luckily the views from the path on the walk up were pretty incredible so we had an excuse to stop and nearly die every 2 minutes (travelling doesn’t do great things for fitness). 

When we finally reached the rim of the crater it was like arriving on another planet. Hard to really improve on pictures of this, not that they do justice to being there.

We decided that we should get a closer look at the vents lower in the crater (despite the many signs forbidding it). We followed the path down that the sulphur miners spend all day trekking up and down. Unfortunately halfway down the wind changed and we couldn’t make it any further in past the thick stench. To get a sense of scale look at the tiny dots that are the people around the vents, this was taken from halfway down the crater.

On the way back down we stopped to get a drink at what turned out to be the weigh station for the workers mining/harvesting the sulphur from the crater. We watched one of them getting their basket weighed; it came out at over 65kg and wasn’t one of the biggest loads we had seen!

One last thing, the hotel provided the best towels I have ever seen; featuring both Winnie the Pooh and Transformers!

Mount Bromo

Of course when visiting a volcano it’s very important to check whether it is erupting before you set off… so we didn't. After 7 hours travelling we got close to Mt. Bromo and found out it was erupting, had been since around Christmas and had even grounded all flights at Denpasar airport on Bali for a while! This kind of got in the way of our plans to climb it but having come this far we decided to go up to the village nearby to see what we could do. By the time we arrived at the village it had already gone dark and we were told that we couldn’t get to the volcano but we could climb to a viewpoint overlooking it. I was happy to find we were staying in Yoschi’s Hotel, even if the spelling was slightly off. Since there was absolutely nothing to do in the village we got an early night to prepare for our pre-sunrise trek in the morning. 

The morning did not start well. We got a lift before 4 in the pitch black to the bottom of the viewpoint. Being us we hadn’t taken a torch and so had to struggle up the steep side of a slippery mountain with zero visibility apart from the little orange focus light on my camera. When we finally got to the top things only got worse. The sun made an appearance and we were greeted by a view of; nothing, absolutely nothing, there was fog so thick we could barely see a tree 5 meters down the hill. A bit of a waste of time climbing for sunrise then! Since we were up there we decided to eat our packed breakfasts a wait a while. This didn’t improve things, the breakfast was 2 slices of bread, jam and water and mine ended up starring in the picture below. 

As we were waiting around to see if it was going to clear up we were able to hear the volcano erupting, just like thunder with no lightning. After being up there for a few hours things started to look up and we caught a glimpse of the ash cloud being thrown up by the, as yet unseen, volcano. This was quickly hidden and we had to wait another hour and a half before getting any more visibility back. Though we never got a full view of everything, what we did see was still amazing, as the pictures below show.

Things didn’t get any less spectacular after we had climbed back down. In our minibus on the way back to the hotel we were suddenly able to see the extent to which the volcanic ash had covered everything in the valley. The road was under about 6 inches of ash and the whole trip back was a purely monochrome ride. When we got back to the hotel we realised that here, in the valley under the ash cloud pictured above, it was constantly “snowing” ash.

Jakarta

We flew into Jakarta in Indonesia and spent a few days seeing not much at all. Jakarta is quite a strange place, within sight of high rise financial buildings are areas of complete waste ground where the poorest people in the city live.

The only real sight we went to see was Jakarta‘s old town. Though there wasn’t much to see as most of it seemed to be closed and falling down we still had quite an eventful visit. We tried visiting a café on the edge of the main square but it seems than even in Indonesia if a place has been visited by the Dutch royal family then it will still be too expensive for us!

Whilst we were walking around the main square in the old town we heard some commotion going on from one corner. Of course being on a development plateau level with high school children we rushed over to surround what was going on and chant “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT”. Well we may not have actually chanted but we did want a better view. It seemed that a group of teenage has aggravated a stall owner somehow and they were now facing off in the street. The face off quickly turned into a throwing competition with bottles, sticks and metal poles flying up and down. Eventually the kids ran away and after following the crowd for a bit we realised that they weren’t going to be found again.

I was going to claim that we saw the national monument but Pete tells me it doesn’t count if you only take a picture as you fly fast in a Tuk Tuk. Talking of driving round in Tuk Tuks, even after going through all of Asia the driving in Jakarta was the most crazy we had witnessed and their Tuk Tuks were the funniest looking.

The main reason we didn’t get to see much else was because we were having such a hard time trying to book our tickets to get away from there. In the end we managed to sort ourselves with the aim of going to a volcano, Mt. Bromo, that you can usually climb to the rim of at the eastern end of Java.

Singapore

Leaving Malaysia we managed to get back to our old near missing transport ways. For some reason we decided that we had time to get a fried breakfast before setting off to the airport. We didn’t. when we got there the sign said that check in had closed but we decided to go to the desk anyway. Luckily they hadn’t yet put the sign up so they let us check in with just over half an hour until take off. The queue for immigration didn’t look too long so we figured we were in the clear but then it became obvious that this was the slowest immigration procedure ever! After 10 minutes we were finally at the front of the queue and then had to push in for the final baggage scan and run to get on with 5 minutes to spare, now that’s efficiency.

Relieved to have made it onto the plane when we arrived at Singapore we thought nothing of being asked to let them scan our bags again. After the scan the customs officer asked if I had anything to declare, I told him no to which he replied “so you don’t have any ammunition cases in your bag”…. fuck. We spent nearly 2 hours in an office giving statements, talking to police etc then were finally let go minus one souvenir from Vietnam.

We spent most of our time looking around the city with our fantastic hosts and tour guides Sarah and Jorge. First impressions of Singapore is that it is constantly redeveloping. For example we were told that a bridge that crosses the river near to a new botanical gardens is to be taken down and replaced with a tunnel, just because that would look nicer! it was nice to finally be in a place that had a very western feeling for the first time in about 4 months! It is also quite a heavily supervised place with CCTV an even more common sight than at home.

By the coast in the city (and right next to the Grand Prix track pit straight) is the worlds largest observation wheel which we took a trip on.

When Sarah and Jorge had to work after the weekend me and Pete went to Santosa island, accessed by cable car off the coast of Singapore. The island is basically one big amusement park. Whilst most of it is still being developed we had a great time on the luge ride that involves driving a little car down a concrete track. Tickets to use the ride also include a ticket back up the hill on a cable car so no walking like suckers.

Malaysia

The journey to Malaysia was actually pretty nice in comparison to some that we had been doing recently. The worst part was that we had to go 5 hours across the same part of Thailand 3 times in less than 2 weeks. When we finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur we got to our room and realised it wasn’t in the area where we wanted to stay and it was utter shit. In our first evening there we first managed to find a new place to stay and then went out and drank expensive drinks all night.

Most of Kuala Lumpur was pretty disappointing really. We had to go electronics shopping which took most of our first day and then another few hours the day after due to our great indecisiveness and the overwhelming size of the shopping centre we were in; 6 floors of shops selling just electronic goods.

We when we were done with electronics shopping we went up to the PETRONAS towers to try and go up them. Unfortunately they are so busy that you have to buy a ticket to come back later, when we were there at 10 all the tickets for the observation deck for the day had been sold and tickets to the bridge halfway up were sold out until 4! We decided it was something we should do so we bought the tickets and came back later. 

In the time we were away the weather changed from clear blue skys to a massive storm. This meant we could see exactly nothing from the bridge! On the way back we realised the water level in a storm drain had risen about 4 meters from almost nothing to a raging torrent! 

On our last day there we went to a park a small walk from our hotel and then Pete got a tattoo in a shopping center that also boasted a roller coaster.

We got around Kuala Lumpur mostly using the monorail system which meant having the Simpsons monorail song stuck in our heads for 3 days. The best part of the monorail was that the line we took to get home terminated in a place called Titiwangsa, always good for a laugh.

Koh Phangan

We had another long spell travelling to get to Koh Phangnan as it was back on the east coast of Thailand and a bit further north. We spent all day on a coach that had definitely seen much better days, luckily as we were leaving the bus station there was a shop telling us not to panic in large friendly letters.

As we took all day to get to the coast, instead of taking a night in Surat Thani we decided to take the night ferry over to the island. The ferry was actually more like a cargo ship and on the top deck there was padding all along both sides for sleeping. Everyone was allocated a space about half a meter wide and luckily the sea was calm or it would have been a very uncomfortable night. The ferry arrive in the early morning just before sunrise and then we could begin the nightmare of finding a bed.

Accommodation was really hard to find especially since we were in a group of four having bumped into a couple of girls we met in Vietnam. We initially thought we had found a place but after waiting around for several hours and paying for a room we were told there was only one tiny bungalow available. We managed to find another place where we could share one extra large bungalow for a reasonable price. The only problem was the original place would give us our money back for the first night even though we couldn’t stay because they lied about having space for us! I ended up having an argument with the owner for about 20 minutes that ended with her calling the “police”. I decided it was probably best to leave at this point since the police would probably be a group of her largest friends! After that annoyance we went down to Haad Rin where the full moon party was going to be held and the toll the partying was taking on the beach was obvious. A beautiful white sand beach ruined by non stop partying, and this was 2 days before the full moon party!

We spent the next few days just hanging around and waiting for the full moon to arrive. The most exciting thing we did was to visit an underwhelming waterfall and get attacked by someone’s savage little pet monkey!

When the party finally came it was pretty spectacular. The sheer numbers of people on one beach was impressive and there were endless sound systems in and around the sea all along the beach. Drinks were sold by the bucket as you become accustomed to in this part of the world and after 2 full of gin and tonic the night becomes a little hazy! Luckily there was only one casualty for me; the camera that had taken such a beating had finally given up at some point in the night. Unfortunately for the girls we were sharing the bungalow with the same could not be said for them. Me and Pete arrived back at the place at around 7 in the morning to find it empty with just a note from them explaining they had gone to Koh Samui with a friend who had injured himself. It later turned out he had had a toe amputated after one of the girls convinced him to have a go on a slide at the beach. This worked out quite well for us as the room was already paid for so we had it all to ourselves until we left!

Koh Lanta

Our next stop was Koh Lanta that was just a ferry ride away from Phi Phi. We decided to go to have some quiet time before the full moon party the next week. We spent our first night watching the Manchester derby with about 20 Thai Man United fans in a local restaurant which was an interesting experience.

Our first day there we rented a couple of motorbikes to get around to more areas of the island. We went off in a random direction with no plan with two Canadian girls that we had met on the ferry coming across. We rode around for a bit to some deserted beaches and then followed a sign for a waterfall. After a while the road turned to a dirt track and then ended at a restaurant. From there we were told to walk into the jungle for a while and we would find the waterfall. The walk ended up being over half an hour over pretty tricky terrain at times just walking along a stream. Not what we were expecting but we imagined it would definitely be worth it. It wasn’t:

On Valentines day me and Pete had a lovely meal together on the beach (they didn‘t light the candle on our table though) to the accompaniment of every heartbreak song that you could think of, no wonder the restaurant was empty! Afterwards we went to a bar further up the beach and watched the barmen display their skill with various firery sticks, thankfully now in the company of the Canadian girls.

On our last day there we noticed that the sea had strange black patches about 5 or 6 meters long. Up close it turned out that the patches were huge shoals of small fish with the occasional larger ones circling. The picture below is me swimming through the middle of one of the groups, taken with Pete’s underwater camera.

One last thing to mention from Koh Lanta is the pictures on the cigarette packets. Most of them are much more brutal that the UK ones (even worse than throat cancer man) apart from the guy pictured below who seems to be demonstrating how smoking with a baby in your arms makes you look cool. 

One more one last thing, here is a picture of a weird bug, I'll be damned if I know what the hell it is!