Java: Mount Bromo

In Java, I laboriously make my way to the village of Cemoro Lawang which faces Mount Bromo, one of the island's biggest volcanoes.

Sunset the night before

Up at the crack of dawn the next morning to catch the sunrise. Ahead of me, the lights of a jeep...

Beautiful sunrise....

...in a nice and intimate setting! Me and hundreds of other tourists... Half the planet is on vacation in Indonesia...

Muslims praying on one side, the rest watching the rest of the sunset on the other...

The whole place has a slight Mad Max feel with motorbikes roaring around all day and all night... Dozens of jeeps carting us tourists around... It's desolate, dusty... and also has horses to bring people up to the volcano's crater...

The schlepp up...

This fella is ready for action!

I actually hired one of the Mad Max bike guys to bring me around the volcano and then all the way to my next destination (Malang), which involves crossing this valley on the back of said bike:

Great View. Also a Video Here.

People, this is as Mad Max as I get...

On the other side of the valley it's fertile slopes...

We arrive in Malang to the sound of the mosques calling for prayer

And I somehow get suckered into making a cameo as a guest at a local English class. Actually, it was a really nice guy called Dewisur I met in Malang. He's an English teacher in one of the neighborhoods...

MORE PIX HERE. If you can bear it...

More Ubud

The local soft drink of choice.

The cute little dog at my homestay

Ubud has a lot of culture going on so I tried what I thought would be classic Balinese dancing...

So far, so good...

But it turned out to be more of a comedy/play with loads of dialogue in Indonesian...

And with monsters popping out of everywhere...

The perfect lunch: Chicken Satay and rice with a side of veg.

Now ready for a visit to the local temple with its monkeys:

OK, OK, I'll bring back the monkeys...

Who knew monkeys could not only swim, but also dive...

This monkey took a liking to me. Not sure how I feel about that...

Playing dead

After a few days in the South of Bali and some pretty constant hustling from locals offering just about everything: transport, massage, visit my shop etc. Bali seems more like Ballyhoo... Rather than pushing out further East to Bali's other, smaller islands, I've decided to head West to Java. In any case, I got to see some monkeys and that counts for something.

That's Java in the distance. My next destination...

Bali

I landed in Kuta, on the Southern tip of Bali. It's basically a mass tourism hub catering to rowdy Australians.

I moved on to Ubud which seems to cater to the "Eat Pray Love" crowd and, oddly, tons of French tourists. I heard so much French around me that I could have been on the streets of Paris. Minus the surrounding rice paddies of course:

This walking path along a field of rice paddies actually has advertising signage...

My homestay in Ubud. Really nice, plus cheap.

View from my room: