Blissed out in Bali

8th-14th January

What can I say about Bali? Or more specifically, Ubud? It is, quite simply, a little piece of heaven here on earth. And after last night’s worst of the worst hotel experience, we enter another world at Greenfields. Our beautiful room does indeed over look green fields - and we become intimately acquainted with the life-cycle of a paddy field over the next few days. It’s a brand new room, with a huge, comfortable bed – with no bugs – opening onto a large terrace, with a sofa, two chairs, coffee table and another massive bed seat that just invites you lounge and contemplate the view. And best of all, there is a huge bathroom, with the best shower in the world – you could have a party in it, it’s so big – as well as wonderful bath. After Catimoer and the sulphur mine, we are almost dancing with joy.

While most of Indonesia is Muslim, Bali is Hindu. But Balinese Hinduism is a one-off variety. We are to learn a little about it in the days to come, but you could study it for a lifetime and still have more to learn. The atmosphere is much calmer and more orderly than Java – and the 3.5 hour road journey from the ferry to the hotel is the first example of this.


There are one or two instances of commercialism. And with apologies to Jane Austen – It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Westerner on the streets of Ubud must be in need of a taxi, if not today, then definitely tomorrow. But this hardly amounts to hustling. We grow used to a gentle daily cycle: – breakfast, check paddy field activity, pool, lunch, check paddy fields, stroll, massage, check paddy fields, sundowners, supper. Occasionally this varies with a visit to a traditional dance performance – with wonderful vocal accompaniment, a hundred men chanting “chaka, chaka, chaka” – an art gallery, the monkey forest, a little light shopping, or even a cycle tour of the surrounding countryside. But we are here to relax after our hectic tour of Java. And for me, it’s a perfect end to an amazing 12 week trip, where I daren’t think how many miles I’ve covered. Writing this, I realise my six nights in Bali is the longest time I’ve stayed in one place. But that’s another story.

Back to Balinese Hinduism, and the concept of harmony. There are human beings, plants and animals, which are inseparably from each other. The three are called “Tri Hita Karana” – which means three ways to respect. The concept of respect includes respect from humans to the Gods, through ritual, prayer and celebration which is integral to Balinese life. Respect for each other, through communication and discussion, and respect for the environment.

I spend an hour talking to a local artist about his life in Ubud and life in London. He cannot understand why we have so few religious celebrations – I manage Christmas, Easter and harvest festival – nor why we only go to church on Sunday (“what do you do on Monday, Tuesday etc?) – nor that so few people go to church, and that the rest of the community don’t mind. In Bali, everyone makes an offering of thanks every day, sometimes three times a day – you see these little baskets of flowers everywhere on the streets. Every family has its own temple, and there are several community temples in each village, each of which has a specific purpose. Giving thanks is a way of life. Just as respect for your neighbours and the animals and environment that support you.

The simplicity of this life is evident in the paddy fields. The women, for it is largely women, work from dawn until dusk, occasionally scurrying for cover during a downpour. They form an effective production line - our fields are ready for harvest, so we don’t see the earlier process – but a team of 10 can enter a field, cut, beat and winnow to sort rice from chaff, bag the rice seed and move on within a morning. But when they move out, the duck tenders – mainly men – move in. I learn from my artist friend that most work is done by women. I ask what the men do. “Cockfighting!”. And gambling on the outcome, of course, Paddy ducks are a specific breed, or they have had their wings clipped, as they can’t fly away. But our ducks are perfectly content and merrily quack their way through the cut fields feeding on discarded rice. We notice that some field have young ducks, while others have fatter ducks – some of which disappear into a bag each night. Female ducks may lay eggs, but they don’t get to hatch them. They are put under hens, and the ducklings follow the hen around until they are old enough to go into their own nursery field. And so life goes on in rural Bali. Five days is not enough. I will go back soon.

Fire and brimstone

8th January

Now run by the Indonesian government, the coffee plantation where we stay employs over 500 people who all live in tied cottages in a small village surrounding the plantation house. Built by Dutch colonialists, the plantation house now serves as a guest house, but its former glory has definitely faded. Although our enormous rooms seem impressive at first sight, we quickly discover the awful reality of Catimoer Guest House – which was dirty, crawling with ants, unfolding the towels released a squadron of large flying insects, and we found the wings of many of these inside the bed, along with other long dead creepy crawlies. Our unimaginative dinner was cold as it been on the table for half an hour before anyone told us it was there, and consisted of vegetable soup, prawn crackers, steamed rice, noodles, potato croquets and tiny chicken drumsticks. Breakfast was even worse – a boiled egg and a sandwich of rancid butter and chocolate sprinkles. But the crowning glory of Catimoer is the complete lack of sound insulation as both the interior and exterior walls are latticed canework – you can see daylight through them. We went to bed listening to the TV lounge next door; thought someone was using our bathroom as you could hear their ablutions so clearly; and, to cap it all, were woken up a little before 4am by the village mosque calling the faithful to prayer and broadcasting the entire proceedings over the tannoy system for the next hour. Prayers over, work obviously started for the day as several lorries revved up and reversed into our room – at least that’s what it sounded like. But if you want to visit Mount Raing and see the turquoise lake within Ijen, its crater, there are very few accommodation options. Apparently, this is one of the best. Hmmm. But we are easily up for our 6.15am departure.

It takes about 4 hours to climb up the volcano, walk around the rim, down into the crater and back again. Fortunately, we still had a packet of chocolate biscuits and some rambutin (fruit) in the mini-bus, so we didn’t have to do it on an entirely empty stomach.

What’s unusual about Ijen is that it is an active sulphur mine. But though we knew this, nothing prepared us for the vision of hell that unfolded below us as we crested the rim of the crater. We had already encountered cheery sulphur miners carrying two baskets of yellow sulphur balanced on one shoulder. They sulphur looked like broken blocks of wall insulation but, as Robin and Tim found out when they tried to lift one, each load weighs between 65 and 85kg – which, even at the lighter weight, is about 10kg more than me. Essentially these guys were hauling the equivalent of me and my luggage for 3 months up from the crater and down to the bottom of the mountain two or three times a day. And for that they received the princely sum of 900 rupiah a kilogram – about £4 for each load.

We could barely see the famous turquoise lake from the top of the crater as it was covered by yellow, grey and white sulphurous plume spewing out of the crater. This is where the miners worked, and it would make a good set for a desolate planet in Dr Who. It took us a good 20 minutes to stumble down the rocky track inside the crater to the mine itself, I only managed it with the help of Katung, who has done it so many times before he knew which rocks were solid and which would shoot down the rock face if you tried to balance on them. The miners had to come up this with their load, even they found it tough, ironically pausing for a fag break along the way.

Once we reached the makeshift mine we could see that the vapour from the volcano was directed through a series of pipes so it condensed on exit and formed hard yellow sulphur on the rock. Some of the sulphur liquefied and turned red, forming strange shapes either naturally or with the help of the miners, which they sold to tourists for extra cash. Being a scientist, Robin was in his element. For me it was a scene of medieval hell, made worse by the often choking fumes. At one point on the trek back up we were enveloped, and despite the wet scarves over our mouths, the eye-watering fumes scorched the back or our throats.

To our Western eyes it looked as if it would be pretty easy to mechanise the process of hauling the sulphur up from the crater, and use donkeys, at least, to carry it down. But in a country with a population of 235 million and no social security, Katung argued that the work was needed. And so the men we saw will carry the sulphur until they drop – and do it willingly.

We were happy to walk – or rather gallop, same foot always forward – back down the steep mountain slope to our mini-bus for our final journey in Java, to the ferry that would take us over to Bali. Once across the narrow channel we entered a different world.

Bromo at sunrise

6th & 7th January

We are off on a tour through the highlands of East Java and will be visiting 2 active volcanoes in the following days. The first is Mount Bromo. On the map, this is just 120Km from Surabaya, hardly any distance at all. But on Java’s busy, single lane roads it’s a 5 hour journey – made worse since the demise of a major bypass in 2005 when an Indonesian company drilling for oil struck boiling mud instead. The mud engulfed 17 villages as well as the bypass and is still gushing out millions of cubic metres every day. International experts have been called in, but no-one seems to know how to stop it. The Government is containing the spill by means of an earth bund, currently 30ft high, but this will presumably keep growing as the mud lake deepens. A great many people have lost their homes and livelihood, and many more just outside the bund have seen their properties blighted. But the compensation offered by the company responsible is not enough to replace the houses lost so far. Our guide – Katung – looks on the bright side, “It’s Indonesia’s latest tourist attraction” he says. We are not convinced. But it does show how unstable the earth’s crust is here. East Java has at least 8 active volcanoes and we are about to see two of them.

But first Tim insists that we discover another Javanese attraction. It’s durian season, and stalls along the road are selling the famously smelly fruit, so we have to stop at one. Durian is an acquired taste – it is said to be so evil smelling that it makes it difficult to eat the fruit. But the Javanese variety hardly smells at all, and Robin and I are happy to sample the fruit. There are many small segments inside the spiky durian, each with a little creamy flesh wrapped around a large stone. It’s hardly worth the effort of eating it. And while it’s not disgusting, it is very filling. A little goes a long way. Think I’ll leave this addiction to Tim. So does Robin. But our guide has other ideas and a few miles later stops at a durian orchard for Tim to see the fruit growing on a tree. And the very hospitable owner insists that we have yet more durian. Even Tim has had his fill by now.

As we leave the orchard the road begins to climb into the highlands, and the temperature drops. We no longer need the air-con and can just open the window to feel the cool, damp air. The higher we get, the more fertile the land. This is crop growing country, and every square inch is used – no matter how steep the incline. It looks very different to lowland Indonesia. Both the landscape and the people living here – the Tengenese – look different. The population is exclusively Hindu and many men and women have sarongs wrapped around their upper bodies to keep them warm. The houses are also different to lowland houses, with more windows and colourful woodwork and renders.

It’s almost dusk by the time we arrive at our home for the night, the aptly named Lava View Lodge, this is inside the lip of a huge old volcanic crater. While the outer walls are lined with rich red fertile soil, inside is a grey lava field. We are just a few kilometres from Mount Bromo and Mount Batok – both within the larger crater. Batok is a small, perfectly conical volcano that has not yet erupted. Bromo’s top is missing and we can see from its smoky plume that it remains very active. Its last eruption in 2006 lasted only a few minutes, but in 2002 lava poured out for 3 months and the area was evacuated.

We are in bed by 9pm, and up again at 3.15am in the vain hope of seeing the sunrise over Mount Bromo – and light up the far larger Mount Semeru, that stands over 3,670m and is clearly visible a few miles away behind Bromo. Our 4WD takes us in darkness to a viewing point at the top of the old crater, to join several hundred other hopeful tourists. But its rainy season, the clouds are thick in the sky which, together with the plume of smoke from Bromo means we can see virtually nothing of any volcano in the area.

Robin is not an early riser and has to be cajoled out of bed for these pre-dawn starts. And today is his birthday. He’s not a happy camper, but consoles himself by planning a new website “Why the f*** get up at dawn?” It would show photographs of every viewpoint tourists are conned into going to at dawn, taken on the one perfect day of the year when the sun can actually be seen rising, and contrast them with the reality of everyone else’s cloudy day or fog-bound shots.

The 4WD takes us back into the main crater – a sea of volcanic ash and lava fields – where we swap four wheels for four legs and clamber onto horses to take us to the base of Bromo. The horses are the Indonesian variety – ie too small for us – the stirrups aren’t adjusted and I have no reins to hold onto as my horse is being led by a small boy, who is probably 32. I don’t think he trusted me to do anymore – despite the small stature of the horse, I still couldn’t swing my leg over and fell off the first time I tried to mount it. Tim must look equally incompetent as he is also led. But Robin, who earlier claimed that he and horses didn’t get on, proves a natural, and is soon off the rein, overtaking everyone else, and thoroughly enjoying himself. It doesn’t take long to get to Bromo, and it is such an established tourist attraction that it has a concrete staircase leading up to the crater rim. We climb the 252 steps and peer into the cone - my first live volcano experience. As the wind blows the sulphurous plume you can clearly see the open “plug” below. Tim throws a bunch of flowers into the cone, the traditional offering to placate the fires below. Then it’s back down the steps and onto our trusty steeds for the return journey. Once again, Tim and I plod along on our old nags, but Robin’s frisky horse charges ahead and is soon out of sight.

By 9am, we have breakfasted, showered, checked out of the hotel and are on the road to our next volcanic destination. Once again, it’s a distance of perhaps 120km, but on the journey takes most of the day, and it lashes down with rain most of the time. We stop for lunch at a restaurant known for its ice cream. When he learns that it’s Robin’s birthday our guide orders us the house speciality, durian ice cream. We are fast becoming durian experts, but are puzzled that it’s served as an appetiser rather than a dessert.

The rains stop around 4.30pm, just as we reach the coffee plantation where we are to spend the night. The setting is rather beautiful, and Katung takes us to see the steaming waterfall in the forest and the natural hot springs. The waterfall is a powerful torrent of brown water, which I find quite disturbing and destructive. Maybe it’s the colour of the water, but I can only think of it as a destructive force. Apparently locals come here to meditate at the full moon - I’d be tempted to exorcise the evil spirits in the water rather than spend time in contemplation. Fortunately the water for the hot springs has already been tamed, and contained within two concrete pools, the first containing warm water, and the second, hot water. The warm water is hotter than the hottest bath you can imagine, and we have to sit on the side, splashing water over our bodies to try and acclimatise before getting in. The hotter spring is almost unbearable, and we can only stay in for a matter of seconds before jumping out again. The water is also very murky, and I daren’t think what’s in there, but hope the sulphur in the water has killed the worst of any bugs lurking. But it’s another first for Robin’s birthday and we’ve brought a few cooling beers along to toast him.

By train to Surabaya

5th January

We chose a small hotel near the railway station for our final night in Yogya. It has two big advantages. The rooms face on to a swimming pool, ideal to cool down in when we get back from Borobudur, and we can walk to the station for our 7.15am train. But we hadn’t factored in the disadvantages. The large Muslim party who take over the restaurant for the evening, complete with cabaret singer of the Vic Reeves style. The train announcements from the railway station that can be clearly heard at 4.30am. And the children splashing in the swimming pool at 5.15am. At least we are packed and ready for breakfast at 6.15 – but we are still the last people to reach the dining room. The days start early in Muslim Indonesia as everyone is up before first light for morning prayers.

No matter. We are on to our next adventure, the train to Surabaya. The very name conjures up a romantic picture. I imagine tinkling fountains in shaded gardens, covered walkways cooled by gentle breezes and handmaidens – and handmen – to answer our every wish. First we had to get there, and the railway through Java is one of the few Dutch infrastructure projects that benefit modern Indonesia. The express train takes 5.5 hours to reach its destination. Not much of an express, but we are told that Executive Class is modern and comfortable. Sadly there are no Executive Class tickets left, so we buy Business Class tickets, which are half the price (all of £3.50). We feel quite pleased with ourselves. We’ve seen a few trains by now and, apart from Economic Class – with hard plastic bench seats facing each other - they all look to have air-conditioning. Arriving at the station, we quickly realise our mistake. Being Westerners we are directed to the Executive carriages, which are, as promised, modern and comfortable with reclining seats, footrests and the all-important air-con. Reluctantly we make our way to our allocated seats at the back of the train and haul our bags on board. There is space at the end of the carriage to store the big bags, and our seats are padded with plenty of leg room. But there is no air-con, just a row of fans on the ceiling and windows whose top section you can prop open – if you are lucky. Ours seems to drop down after every bump in the track, and we have a running battle with the family sitting in front of us to keep the nearest fan on. They seem convinced that the slightest breeze will prove fatal to their baby and keep turning it off. It seems that each set of coaches has a cabin manager who rents out extra cushions and provides a running supply of cold drinks and food from the buffet car – we are good customers so have officialdom on our side, the cabin manager ensures the fan stays on. I’m confident that no harm came to the baby as the fan barely ripples the air. The pretty hand-held fan I bought many weeks ago in Singapore pays for itself several times over on this journey.

Apart from the steaming heat, the journey is rather civilised. Everyone has a seat. Animals aren’t allowed on the train. No one seems to be smoking – an exception in this country as almost all Indonesian men smoke incessantly. There is plenty to eat and drink – aside from the buffet car, there are hawkers at every station passing food through the open windows, and later in the journey when the buffet closes, coming onto the train with baskets of fresh food and cold drinks.

The journey takes us through Central Java to Eastern Java, but until we are close to our final destination there is little change in the landscape. Paddy field after paddy field passes by, with coolie-hatted workers bent double tending to their plants. The rendered concrete and stone buildings are mainly topped with red pantiles – the Dutch influence – and are far more picturesque to anything we’ve seen up to now. But there is never a moment when you can’t see a building, or land under cultivation. This is a densely populated country – according to our next guide, at 235 million the third largest population in the world behind China and India.

Finally, when we are almost at the point where we can bear the heat no more, the view from the window changes and the urban sprawl of Surabaya begins. It is far from picturesque. There are no handmaidens wating to carry out our every wish, but the station is packed and we are pounced upon by touts offering us a lift to our hotel. Our first taxi driver refuses to put his meter on. Much to his annoyance we get out of the car, and probably end up paying the same fare to the private driver we then negotiate with.

Surabaya means “shark” and “crocodile” – as it is at the point where a river meets the ocean. We never see the ocean, and the river looks polluted. As we are to discover when we venture out with our guide and driver the next morning, there is little to recommend in Indonesia’s second city. It has none of the charm of Yogya. The roads are teeming with motorbikes and cars – in fact it is impossible to cross the road from our hotel to the shopping centre opposite – and while it is not yet as polluted as Jakarta, there is only good reason for staying there. Our hotel.

After our cheapest journey to date, I relish being taken to the most expensive hotel in town - the magnificently colonial Majapahit, designed by the son of the architect who created Raffles in Singapore and very much in its image. This is one bit of Surabaya that lives up to my romantic expectations. Once we set foot inside the Art Deco reception – a later addition to the original hotel - we stay there until our driver collects us the following morning. Our rooms, which are the smallest in the hotel are, nonetheless, huge and look out over manicured gardens complete with fountains. They have enormous beds, comfy sofas and dark mahogany furniture including a vast mirrored unit with marble basin and countertop and an array of drawers and cupboards for the Edwardian gentleman to keep his toiletries in.

We drink cocktails, eat lunch, snooze through a thunderstorm and dress up for more cocktails and dinner – an amazing Chinese meal of crispy duck rolls,, smoked duck, chilli prawns and a whole crispy fried fish. It is one of the best Chinese meals any of us has eaten – and we are the only people in the restaurant. Our every wish is indeed the staff’s command.

Temples of delight

3rd & 4th Jan
.
Although it’s a largely Muslim country, Indonesia seems tolerant of other religions, and in the case of its famous Hindu and Buddhist temples at Prambanan and Borobudur has ensured their ongoing restoration and positively promotes them as part of the country’s cultural heritage. And indeed they should for they are both extraordinary structures.

Prambanan – the Hindu temple complex - was built in the 9th century, about 50 years after Borobudur. It contained 244 temples, but today all that remains are 8 minor and 8 major temples. Although there are piles of stone where many other minor temples stood, so more may be restored. The ornate black stone temples stand out dramatically against the blue sky. The largest temple – or Candi - is dedicated to Shiva, one of the three main Hindu gods, this is flanked by two smaller, but still substantial temples dedicated to Brahma and Vishnu. You can go inside some of the smaller temples. Inside Candi Nandi is a statue of the large bull the temple was named after. People push past to touch the bull, but this is a family day out rather than a religious experience. Prambanan is now set in parkland. There are horse rides for the children, a gamelan demonstration and a small road train that circles the park and lets visitors see smaller groups of temples in other parts of the park. It’s too hot to walk too far.

As the only Westerners there, we quickly become one of the tourist attractions, with locals asking to take their photograph with us, or introducing themselves to practice their English – even videoing the conversations they have with us.

But Prambanan is just the warm-up act. Our primary destination is Borobudur. This is an hour’s drive away, which gives us a chance to see the Javanese countryside. Or so we thought. In fact, there is no real countryside, everywhere is built up to a greater or lesser extent, though between the buildings there are many paddy fields. And everywhere is packed full with industrious people in a hurry. Entire families are transported on a single motorbike. The children are so used to this that toddlers sit sucking milk from a baby bottle as they are driven along. Bikes and motorbikes are also used to transport goods and livestock. In a rerun of our “Pigs on Bikes!" experience in Vietnam, I am delighted to see two goats in baskets straddling the back of a scooter, a live sheep sitting contentedly on a shelf at the backof a motorbike and a double bed being wheeled along on a bike.

Our hotel is in the Borobudur complex, which means we have access to the site before the tourist buses arrive at 6am. But the weather turns from hot to stormy that night, so we decide not to get up before dawn for a non-existent sunrise. But we are still at the base of the temple by 5.30am and climb the steep steps up the six tiers to watch the mists rise up from the surrounding forest and mountains.

The temple was started by Hindus, who abandoned it as Buddhism came to prominence in Central Java. The Buddhists used the Hindu foundations to complete their own temple. Each of the lower tiers of the wedding cake structure is covered in detailed reliefs depicting the road to nirvana. The carvings are fascinating, moving from animals in the forest to the mundane realities of life – soldiers, scribes, hunters, sailors - on the lower levels, through to godly contemplation of the Buddha as the tiers rise. The final two levels leading up to the stupa contain 72 latticed stone cages, each containing a statue of Buddha – the figure is significant, representing 72 Javanese princes. While I don’t understand the religious significance of the temple, it is a peaceful and contemplative place in the early morning. And extremely photogenic. Though the temple was abandoned only decades after it was completed, the structure was preserved by a geological quirk of fate, buried in volcanic ash after one of Javas many volcanic eruptions. It was rediscovered around 1811 by Sir Stanford Raffles, of Singapore fame, who obviously got about a bit in S E Asia.

By 7am the site is crowded with the arrival of the tour buses, so we head back for breakfast before returning with hopes of an elephant tour to get an elevated view of the temple, as described in Lonely Planet. We find the elephants, but there is no sign of any tour activity, so we head back for another look round the site. With the arrival of the crowds, we are once again in demand for photoshoots. An Indonesian father shyly asks if I’ll pose with his baby daughter. Tim and Robin are in demand by local football fans, who are highly amused by Tim's poses with headless buddhas.

The car taking us back to Yogya is booked for 11am, so we reluctantly drag ourselves away. But with a car and driver at our disposal, we stop off at another small temple on the way back, which houses the oldest statue of Buddha in Indonesia. Outside is a huge banyan tree that looks to be hundreds of years old, with tarzan-rope like air roots hanging down – Tim and I couldn’t resist swinging on them, while Robin was “interviewed by a posse of local Muslim girls. By this time, the heat of the day is building again, and we are grateful to step back into our airconditioned car and escape the souvenir sellers and head back to Yogya.

Markets, palaces and becaks - on tour in Yogya

1st-2nd January
We wade through the shallows to the Bunaken boat for the first stage of a remarkably trouble-free trip to Yogyakarta in Java.. Having seen the ferries when we dock, I’m relieved to be flying and, after yesterday’s fruitless day of phoning, Garuda Air comes up trumps at Manado airport, finding us three elusive tickets for the last leg of our three flight journey.. Garuda also has executive lounges at each airport with free wifi, drinks and food so we are very happy travellers, but we arrive in Yogya at 7.30pm on New Year’s Day with no accommodation. There is a booking desk at the airport and the very helpful man there phones every hotel in our price range but finds only one with any rooms. Hotel Saphir is large, modern and, apart from us, caters solely for Indonesian guests, who are mainly Muslim. But there is a large white Christmas tree in the foyer and signs wishing us Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year : Salamat Natale and Tahun Baru – a greeting repeated throughout the streets of Yogya. Like the folks back home, the Indonesians treat the festive season as one big holiday, and the place is packed with families out to have a good time. It takes us over half an hour to check in but we are eventually directed to our rooms in the new wing – conveniently for the local families above a shopping centre complete with ice rink and bowling alley. The rooms are very comfortable but strangely lack any form of daylight – although they have gone to the trouble of installing a window but the shutters open onto an internal corridor so you can see other guests walking by. Welcome to modern Indonesia. This is going to be a very different experience to sleepy Bunaken.

Yogya is the historic cultural capital of Java. It has been home to the sultan of Java for many centuries and, without administrative power, the sultans turned their influence into patronage for the arts – primarily batik, silverwork, dance, gamelan music and puppetry.. We set off on a DIY walking tour to the Kraton – the palace area – which doesn’t look far on the map, but involves walking down Malioboro, the main shopping street on a holiday Saturday. There’s a rumour that the street is named after the Duke of Marlborough, but as the country only had British rule for four years, this is unlikely. It could also be “the street of flowers”, but there are little in evidence today. I’ve never seen a street so packed with people. There are shops, malls, markets, street vendors, food stalls spilling out onto extremely narrow pavements. At one particularly narrow point, where just two people can pass a food stall has set up seats and laid on a guitarist to entertain those eating. Madness!

Despite the crowds it’s a very easy place to be – we may be an unusual sight, but we are not hassled or seemingly viewed as out of the ordinary. But it does take us hours to get anywhere, simply due to the number of people. I can quite believe that Java – an island roughly the size of England, has a population of over 120 million. .

We seek airconditioned respite in C-Jo for iced coffee and the best donuts in the world, incredibly light with yummy toppings like mango, almond, oreo cookie, green tea and cream cheese (much better than it sounds.) They are so good we have three each. Back in the street we push on to the covered market – inside it’s a square kilometre over three floors. On the ground floor the locals jostle for clothes. In the middle of the chaos sits a woman in a burka nursing a baby. I smile at her baby and her eyes smile back through their letterbox opening. On the first floor there strange fruits and vegetables. Many of the vendors are elderly women. A 90-year old, bent double by her age, still wields a forceful machete to cut coconuts. We are adopted by a local man wearing a Bunaken t-shirt – he has spotted the one Robin is wearing and comes over to talk to us. His sister works at a dive shop and he visited her recently. He doesn’t want money, but this point of commonality means he can practice his English, so he guides us through fruit and veg and onto the spices, explaining what everything is. With him in tow, the stall holders are happy to be photographed and give us samples.

Back in the baking street, we take our first becak ride (the local cycle rickshaws). There are hundreds of becaks for local rather than tourist use. In fact there are no Western tourists here – we see less than 10 throughout the day. It’s an exciting ride, dodging motorbikes, scooters, cars and horse drawn carriages but when we get to the Kraton, the sultan’s palace, it’s shut for the afternoon. We are soon adopted by another unofficial guide, who stays with us for a couple of hours and takes us through the kapong (village streets), where we see batik artists and leather puppet makers at work, to the Water Palace which is undergoing renovation as a world heritage site, and onto the bird market. The Water Palace is cool and airy and, as the name implies, overlooks a series of swimming pools. Back in the day, the sultan used to look down on the women swimming in the pool and choose the one he wanted for the day. The current sultan, the tenth, has only one wife. His father had five wives, and his great grandfather had 44! The Kraton used to house only members of the royal family, and up to 25,000 lived there. Today the water palace is packed with teenage sweethearts taking pictures of each other on their mobile phones. The following morning we visit the Palace itself, but without the promised dance performance – cancelled for the holiday season – and with limited access as the sultan still lives there, it’s not nearly as interesting at the Water Palace

Despite Tim’s crash course in Bahasi Indonesia, we are fortunate that many of the people we meet speak some English. The language itself is relatively new –introduced on independence from the Dutch after WWII as a unifying language. There are 300 other languages spoken throughout the country. Our unofficial guide still speaks Javanese with his family at home. His mother could speak Dutch, but little of their influence remains either on the language or the architecture, apart from a great many pantiled roofs.

We move onto the bird market, an extraordinary place selling wild caged birds – kept for pleasure – fighting cocks, racing pigeons and chickens to eat, plus bird cages and, bird food – maggoty coconut and cockroaches. Yum! There are also animals for sale as pets – guinea pigs, cats, dogs, rabbits and a civet we see bought for Rp100,000 about £6.50 and a lot of money for a pet. Elsewhere there are snakes sold as food, and gekkos to make medicine. They go in a lot for natural medicine – later we see a month-old baby with a large leaf covering her head to cool a fever. After all this activity in the heat we need to cool down, and retrace out steps to a café where local musicians sit drinking beer and playing violin and guitar. A little oasis after the bird market.

But our Yogya tour isn’t over. We take a horse carriage to another part of town for a Ramayama open-air dance performance. Accompanied by the gamelan music that becomes very familiar over the next few days, the highly structured choreography tells the love story of Hindu gods. We are given a story sheet, but I have soon lost the plot. The colourful costumes and exciting fight scenes – with monkey gods and their troops sent to fight giants to win back the princess are very entertaining, and all ends happily every after. .

Marine life

27th – 31st December

The day starts with a slight problem. The guest house we are leaving only takes cash, and we had only been able to get a million Rupiah (about £60) each from the cash point. Luckily our hosts accept just about any currency, and between the four of us we pay them in a mix of sterling, rupiah, Singapore dollars and Malayasian ringits. The bill sorted, we are taken to the jetty, where a boat waits to take us over to our next hotel on Bunaken Island, just 20 minutes away.
The entrance to Living Colours is hidden in the mangrove and we only see the narrow clearing when we are a few metres away. As we drift through the shallows under the mangrove trees we can see a small sandy beach, the dive shop and “the Safety Stop”, the obligatory bar. Our thatched cabins are up a steep hill, approached by 50 extremely steep steps but they have a lovely view over the mangrove to the sea, the mainland and surrounding islands. It is enchanting. We spend the rest of the morning chilling on our cabin’s terrace - the hammock is particularly relaxing. After lunch we make our first dive here, which is similar to yesterday, drifting along a coral wall in a strongish current, viewing the marinescape as if passengers on a train.

There are many similarities between Living Colours and our liveaboard experience. Everyone is here to dive or snorkel, and there are 4 dives a day on offer. There is a similar mix of nationalities, it is owned by a welcoming Finnish couple, Mia and Jako. And we have access to some of the best diving in the world. But life here is so much more relaxing – they even arrange massages. I’m happy doing two dives each of the following mornings, and taking the afternoon off. And I finally do a night dive. Despite being given the weediest torch in the world, I find I love the reef at night. There are not too many fish around, apart from those you see hiding in the nooks and crannies in the coral wall. But creatures that masquerade as corals and stones during the day, at night turn into pre-historic looking creatures. Stonefish, hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs and my favourite, a large cream sponge crab all come out to play, along with lobster and hundreds of small shrimp whose eyes light up the coral when a torch is played on them. We surface to a full moon shining on the water. It’s quite magical.

Two of our day dives are also outstanding. Some of the walls are covered in a patchwork of colourful soft coral flowers, as if someone has planned an intricate garden. There are rays, octopus, turtles, lion fish, barracuda, tuna, GTs, wrasse and one or two shark in the distance, plus too many colourful reef fish to name. The turtles here are huge.and very clean – they all seem to have a pair of cleaner fish travelling with them at all times. But some of the most interesting sightings are tiny. The ghost pipe fish, that blends in with twigs of coral as cleverly as a stick insect on a tree. The black and green newdibranch (pictured), that looks like a caterpillar, but on closer inspection has a face, snout and tiny hand-like fins.

Our first few days in Indonesia are almost unbearably hot and humid, but the weather finally breaks one night with torrential thunderstorms. The following day is also overcast with intermittent rain – not that it matters when you are diving – and we are grateful for some cooler weather. That afternoon we walk into the local village. Just like the mainland, life here goes on much as it has done for centuries. One and two man boats are taken out each day to catch a tuna to feed the family, not to sell at market. People run shops and bars in their homes, and chalk the names of the goods on sale on the wall outside. Some of the houses are made of concrete, many are wooden shacks. The most substantial building by far is the enormous church. The second largest building is the mosque. There are no cars, but walking along the track to the village we are passed by several small motorbikes. But boats are still the main form of transport, and we bump into the Living Colours boat on the jetty and hitch a timely lift back, as it is bringing our masseuses over from the mainland.
.
We are up early on New Year’s Eve and on the boat at 6am in search of dolphins. And so are the tuna fishermen as the two go together. All the boats are flying kites, which looks colourful but has a practical purpose as the line is baited and drops into the water to attract the tuna. We don’t see anyone catch a fish. But we do see two large dolphin pods – with 30 or more visible at the surface and I guess many more below. They tease us by swimming at a distance, then gradually come closer, then dance away again to give us a spectacular display jumping out of the water.

The boat moves on for our final two dives – and having started early, we are back on the beach by 10.30am. We’d planned to go back to bed, so we can stay awake until midnight. But, having waved goodbye to KM, who is back to KL to spend New Year with his family, Robin, Tim and I have to get down to the serious business of sorting out our travel plans for the rest of the trip. Not easy in Indonesia. Luckily the lovely owners of Living Colours let us use their phone. But by the end of the day we are still not sure if we are going to Bali or Yogyakarta tomorrow. Where ever we end up, I’m sure it will be awesome..

We celebrated New Year on the beach with the house band – two guitars and a home-made drum kit - which turned into an acoustic karaoke, with all the guests taking turns singing or strumming along. Beats cold, rainy London any day.

Wishing everyone a fantastic 2010, and many more travels.