Indonesia : The conclusion

We spent one month on Java and Bali but we still have a lot of islands to discover… We will come back for sure just the time is not decided yet !!! But for now, it’s time for us to make a small conclusion :

Bali : sea, new culture, a French School … and a lot of tourists

After Java, next destination Bali : New scenery : Hindu culture, plenty of tourists and high prices !

First we visited Ubud, « the cultural capital » of Bali. Here, all house entrances have two dragon statue (or monsters, I don’t really know). They protect the house and let only the “nice” spirits enter. On Bali 90% of the population is Hindu and the religion is omnipresent. 30% of their income are spend for offering! Every day Balinese people do offerings for everything: The offering are made with banana leaves and contains flowers, incense and sometimes food. The offerings let on the ground are here to “calm” the bad spirits while the offerings in heights are used to honour the good spirits.

A lot of Balinese people have also some rice sticked on their forehead because rice is the symbol for prosperity. Sometimes they also put a flower behind the ear because flowers are used during ceremony, so having them behind ears is a good omen. Moreover, each time someone buys something in a shop, the vendor shakes the bill everywhere in the shop. For the ceremonies and preys, people wear white clothes and at the entrance of houses or temples they hang black and white fabrics (like Yin and Yang); to symbolise the balance between good and evil.

Hindus believe in 3 principal gods : Brahma represents the creation (and is symbolised with red), Vishnu represents the protection (and is symbolised with White and Yellow) and Shiva for the destruction (in Black). These colours are everywhere in temples and streets.

Religion has an important place in the life of Balinese people.

In Ubud, there is also a monkey forest where we can get very close with monkeys…

After Ubud, we continued our trip to Tulamben for diving, then to Candidasa for the beach and then to Kuta where we visited the French School of Bali ! We had a very friendly welcome and we also discovered new games :

•         The « Killer » is the easy version of « werewolf » : The children sit in a circle and one is the detective : he stays out of the circle and closes his eyes. In the circle, one player is designated as the killer and then the detective comes in the circle and has to find the killer before the killer kills everybody.The role of the killer is to “kill” the other players in winking to someone. The “killed” player should lie down.

•         Children also play « Pacman » (or « line-wolf ») when they have the sport field free : one wolf is designated and he has to catch someone but all players should only stay on lines (painted on the floor)

•        In the game « Midnight in the sheepfold », players are in the “sheepfold” and one stands opposite to them and is the wold. Sheep ask the wolf “what time is it mister wolf?”  and the wolf answers “it’s 7”. All players have to move forward from 7 steps. (it’s the same if the wolf says it’s 5, 10, 3…) but if the wolf says “it’s midnight”, all players has to run away to the sheepfold before being caught by the wolf. If they get caught, they become wolf.

•        The children also showed us a game that we played as well but we forgot about it: “Grandma can I come?” All children are in line on one side of the field and the grand-mother stands at the opposite side. One by one, children ask “Grandma can I come?” And the grand mother says “Yes you can, do 4 giant, or mini, or jumping steps”. SO the player has to do 4 steps forward and the size depends and what the grand-mother said (giant, mini, or jumping steps). This game isn’t really fair because only the grandmother decides who will win but we could imagine this game with a dice for the number of steps and cards for the type of steps.

•         We play the « vocabulary bomb » : children are in a circle and chose a theme (for example animals) : the first child with the ball has to find a word related to the family chosen and then pass the ball to another player. This player has to say an animal and pass the ball. If one player takes too much time to find an animal, other children start saying “tic tac, tic tac” and after 6 seconds the ball explodes like a bomb and the player is eliminated. If the player says the same animal as already said, he is also eliminated.

-

•        For the « pass with 5 », two teams of 5 people face each other. One team has a ball and tries to pass the ball to all members of the team without falling down the ball. The goal for the other team is to catch the ball and then do the same as the first team (passing the ball to all members).

• For the game « butterfly- butternut », children are divided in two teams and stand in lines in the middle of the playground. The teacher starts telling a story and when he says the word “butterfly”, the butterfly team has to run away and the butternut team has to catch children of the other team. If someone is caught, he is out of the game. We continue until one team is totally eliminated.

•          In « Fish- Fisherman », the fishermen team does a circle and all players hold hands. They chose a number and start counting. In the meantime all « fishes » run under their arms. When the chosen number is achieved, all fishermen let their arms down. All fishes inside the circle become fishermen and go in the circle for the next turn.  

We enjoyed these two days and we met all ages between 3 and 11 years old!!! For almost all of them, school is an obligation and not a right!!! ;-) And Pomme Pidou received a lot of gifts from the children!! Thank you so much!

Just before taking off to India, we dived on a small island with two manta rays!!! But the water was really cold!!! Romain surfed also. (And of course we always go around with motorbikes :-) )

South Africa the conclusion

You've been waiting for it since a long time... But internet is rare ;-)!! Anyway it's better late than never so please enjoy our "South African Movie"!!!

Java : the volcanic island

We left Jakarta and its pollution to visit the rest of Java Island. Java is the most active volcanic island in the world and has 126 volcanoes. Impossible for us to hike all of these volcanoes but we chose 4 of them, all different:

We started with Papandayan volcano, south of Jakarta. This volcano erupted in 2006 and is still active. We went there with motorbikes (we were not the drivers) and we spent then half day there to walk (and swim…). It’s an easy hike of about one hour and then you walked on an almost flat floor. It’s a good start if you’re not use to do long hikes and it is also a good opportunity to get close to the sulphur sources. Sulphur is a volcanic mineral which smokes smell like egg… not really a nice smell !

We also passed some hot springs (hot enough to cook an egg, as water was boiling… ) but in some other parts, cold water meets warm water and we could have a nice bath there, we really liked it.

Our trip (veryyyy long by bus) brought us then to Yogyakarta in Central Java. This cultural city is the capital of “batik”: traditional fabrics made with hot wax and different layers of colours. We did couchsurfing in a very special place: We were hosted by Allison, her 2 year old son and her flatmates (an indo-Dutch couple with 2 children) and they have the particularity of welcoming everyone who asks for a bed. In their house they have more than 10 mattresses on the floor… It’s perfect to meet new people (we were about 10 couchsurfers when we were there) but it looks more like a hotel than a real couchsurfing… We still spent a nice time in Yogyakarta. 

We visited the biggest Buddhist temple of the world: the Borobudur temple. It is very impressive and well conserved.

During this visit we met Salomé and Quentin, a French couple in holidays with whom we quickly discussed. Together we decided to climb the Mount Merapi: the most active volcano on Java and one of the most difficult to climb (on Java). The next day, we started our hike with a guide at 1AM…. The trek takes approximately 4 hours and we wanted to be at the summit for the sunrise…But we were not sure to be fit enough…Fortunately, we were all almost at the same level of fitness and with the motivation of each other we can do everything (or almost….).

Hiking at night with head lamps and still fresh air is really nice… and it also permits you to arrive at the summit just before sunrise… So we had to keep going if we wanted to be on time. The path is really steep and slippery! Fortunately we could count on the support of everybody to go ahead! And when we arrive at the “Plateau” (just before the last part of the crater) after 3.15 hours climbing we were really happy! Our guide did a small fire to give us some energy before the last (more difficult) part!

But because Salomé has fear of heights, Quentin and she decided to stop at the plateau. Romain and I continued hiking, but the last part was more climbing than hiking! First we had to walk in sand, so when you do one step you go back from two…. And then it was a lot of rocks, so we had to use our hands also to go up!!! But what a nice feeling when we arrived at the top! It as a 9km trek with a 1600 m of vertical gain in 4.15hours!!! But it’s really cold at 2900 m above sea level at 5.30AM…

Fortunately the sun came really fast to give us some warmth! Soooo nice to see the sunrise from here…. 

Unfortunately it was time to go down… and if the way up was difficult, the way down was worst… But we finally arrived at the village where a delicious banana chocolate pancake was waiting for us!!!! Hmmm Yummi!

As we were now trained ( ;-) ) we decided to climb Mount Bromo. We took the train (economic class…) to go there !! 8 hours with no space for the legs and very straight seats… checked!! But it gave us the opportunity to meet Laura, a German girl in holidays who hosted us in her hotel room for free because she had two your beds in her room.

We waked up a 3AM. Laura took the 4x4 and we went on foot (it’s free and it’s more freedom…. And more calories burnt) We first climbed to the first (and lowest) view point to see the sunrise on the mount Bromo.It’s an easy hike to here, but then, to avoid paying the entrance fees for the Bromo, we took the free option: A 20 kilometres hike, with 8 km in the “desert volcanic area”. It was really impressive! And we were really proud when we arrived at the summit of Mount Bromo after all these efforts and still all our money in our pockets ;-)!!!

We even had enough energy to run down in the ashes…

 Okay, the way back up to the village was a bit difficult so we slept from 2PM till 2 AM!!! (Why 2AM??? Because I think we like it… so we did another hike at 2 AM to see to sunrise from the second (and higher) viewpoint !!! What a lovely sunrise!! We highly recommend you to go to Bromo, with free version or even with 4x4… it really worth it!

At last but not least, we visited the sulphur collectors of Mount Kawah Ijen. To go there we decided to rent a motorcycle: the road to go is new, so the scooter is the cheapest option. If you make a stop in Banyuwangi to go to Ijen, then we advise you to rent your motorbike at Tripoli agency. This new agency is very reliable and the boss has a lot of advices about almost everything ;-)… And of course, if you think of driving at night, take a jacket and even gloves because it’s really cold on bikes at night in the mountains…

We left from the hotel at 1AM. It’s one hour drive until the bottom of the volcano and then 1.30 hour on foot to arrive at the summit of the crater and 30 minutes to go down the crater near the sulphur « mine ». So we left early to get a chance to see the “blue fire”: the blue smoke produced when the sulphur gas under pressure meets the air. But we can only see it during night time!  

We started the hike at 2 AM. Compared to Merapi it’s really easy! 1hour and 30 minutes later we were at the crater’s border. From here we had a great view on the blue fires…but we wanted to be closer. We followed the path taken by the sulphur collectors down to the crater. When we reached the bottom, we needed to breathe with our masks and our scarves because the smoke was really dense… Our eyes were also burning…. And when we looked at the workers there, they were only with t-shirt and jeans and sometimes no mask…. And they have to carry more than 80 kilograms on their shoulders… 

One more time, this volcano is different from the previous ones we did before. And even if we couldn’t see the sunrise from where we were, the sun brought nice colours on the volcanic lake of the crater!!! Really nice before driving back to the hotel (and having a huge breakfast).

After all these night hikes, we need some rest… Next destination Bali and its beaches, its diving sites, its French school…