3/01/2010 Surabaya & Mount Bromo

As usual we land a Surabaya airport on a wing and a prayer, hoping to get to where we needed to go. And yes we went a bit over budget but we got a guy with a car for 2 days for 1.2 million!!!  Don’t panic that translates to $75 AUD per day. Not bad considering he had to stay overnight once we got to the mountains. He could speak reasonable indo-english and we got him to take us to the sights in Surabaya which included him trying to get us into the Naval base but they would not let us in as we could have been Australian spys!!!


We did manage to go to the Arab section and he tried to get us into this big Mosque but there was something special going on and we were not allowed in. But we went through what must be like their home markets, the lanes were only about 2 metres wide and thousands, I mean thousands of people wall to wall. A bit scary sometimes as they were all starring and some were touching us. Beggars were everywhere the most we have seen anywhere and of course they all chased us, a bit sad really but what can you do. I bought a cool local muslim hat and Trace bought a Head scarf. The driver bought us this special sealed Halal water and we had to drink it while he was saying a prayer for us. We managed to get past all the people and beggars and back to the car. We did the tourist thing and went to the various places of importance. The highlight would have been when he took us to the local homing pigeon race. This was cool, he took us down all these back streets where I guess the not so well off live. After we had gone through all the little alleys we came to a clearing, the locals thought it was fantastic and all wanted to shake our hands and have their photos taken with us. They even got us a chair to sit while we were waiting. They had a lookout up a tree spotting the pigeons. When they saw them coming they got very excited and were all trying to show us where they were, I struggled a bit but they kept pointing until I spotted the birds. When the birds got closer they were all yelling and cheering - it was pretty amazing - and of course when the winner finally made it home there was a big roar. They bet on the races so there was some more happy then others. I think they were genuinely sad to see us go!!! On the way to the mountains we came upon a big levy bank on the side of the road. This was the mud disaster I had seen on the news. We would have to check that out on the way back as we had to get to the volcano accommodation as we did not want a late night as it was another early start. Probably found the best motel for a view but the room was just a room - lucky only for one night. (We had arranged other accommodation but our driver’s brother owned the hotel & told us it was ‘great’). After them extracting everything they could including jacket hire, jeep hire and room hire we hit the sack for a restless night sleep.


Cemoro Lawang – Cemora Indah Hotel