Assalamu'alaikum Guys,
Happy Eid Mubarak 1437H
Taqabalallahu minna wa minkum shiyamanaa wa
siyamakum..
May Allah accept our good deeds, forgive our sins,
bless us with love.
Today, i want to share about my trip to East Java. In last march, i went to some beautiful places in
Indonesia which are Kawah Ijen, Gunung Bromo, Pulau Menjangan and Baluran.
For this trip, thank God i was not alone as usual,
although in the beginning I made a plan with my 2 college friends and one of
them would bring her boyfriend but pufff, something came up and i ended up with
only one friend. That's okay. It's life, we can't know what will happen
in the near future.
Nowadays, open trip is a popular thing in Indonesia because with this kind of trip, we can save our budget. Have you heard about it? Basically, it's the same thing as tour travel but not private, because we must share everything with others like guest house, car, boat, etc. The advantage by joining this trip is we can meet new friends, or maybe find our travel mate in here to go to other
Nowadays, open trip is a popular thing in Indonesia because with this kind of trip, we can save our budget. Have you heard about it? Basically, it's the same thing as tour travel but not private, because we must share everything with others like guest house, car, boat, etc. The advantage by joining this trip is we can meet new friends, or maybe find our travel mate in here to go to other
places together. So yeah, i was so excited about it.
If you already know when you wanna go, you can start
finding the available trip in Triptrus. I love this site with their tagline "Explore Wonderful Indonesia" because there are a
lot of choices from many tour travel. A lot of tour travels offer trip to
Baluran, Menjangan and Ijen altogether but excluding Bromo which where I want
to visit as well. Since i have to pay flight cost to go to Surabaya to reach
that places, i insisted to search travel which include Bromo in their plan so i
didn't need to buy another flight to go to Bromo on my own. And from the
website, alhamdulillah i found "Teman Ngetrip" which included
Bromo to their Baluran, Menjangan and Ijen trip plan, and i
also met other friends that make my holiday was awesome!
My trip started on 24 March, 2016. I had a flight from
Jakarta to Surabaya at 19.30, but i was alone as i said before that one of my
friends canceled the trip due to work reason and Rena, who was going with me, already in
Surabaya. I didn't know why i was so clumsy that day, i was off from work at
16.45 although it was supposed to be at 16.30. Then i took the Gojek to go to
Gambir. From Gambir, i planned to go to airport by Damri Bus but until 17.00,
the bus didn't come! By chance, i found another way to go to airport by using
car which shared with other people. Time was ticking and the traffic was crazy.
Oh my goodness, i was so nervous whether i couldn't catch my flight. Can you imagined
that i had flight at 19.30 and i was still in the car at 19.00. Fortunately i
already did online check-in, but i still felt unsettled because my boarding
time was scheduled at 19.10. In the car, i called every airlines to buy another
flight but it was sold out, it was long weekend by the way, i would be surprised if they
still had a seat. Alhamdulillah, i didn't gave up. After the car out from the
highway, i asked the driver to stop because i want to continue my journey by
using gojek, and i made a good choice. Long story short, i could catch my
flight because it delayed for 15 minutes. Thank God!
I landed at 22.30 and i had to wait the driver who
would pick me up at 00.00. It was not hard to find the driver because it was
midnight and the airport was not as crowded as in the day. After i met the
driver, we picked up my friend, Rena and then we went to the train station to
pick up other participants. The team completed and we were off to Baluran,
Yeaaah.. We reached Baluran at 8 in the morning, completely tired, still
wearing last night outfit and hadn't take a shower yet :D
The place was beautiful but not as beautiful as in the
photos, i don't know.. maybe because dry season was coming so some of the grass
was not green. They were dry and yellowish. However it was a good place to take
a good picture :D Baluran is like a savana, and highlights of it are the
trees. I didn't know what kind of tree it was, But i got this sad and lonely
feeling while i saw it, like it will be happy if someone accompanied it, like
it would tell everyone "hey, you can get protected here from shinning sun,
i will protect you. Please come, i am alone". Maybe it was kinda the same
with some of us as human feel like, "i will give you my best so please
don't leave me alone." Okay Haifa, what are you talking about, blaaah..
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| The Icon of Baluran |
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| I will catch you! |
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| The Team |
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| Renaa |
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| What do you think? |
Heem about the snorkling experience, i
would say that i love Karimun Jawa than Menjangan. Because in here, the
coral condition was already bad. And i didn't know what happened with my
snorkel gear, i bought it on last feb, never had a chance to try it, and when i
wore it, the water always entered my mouth so i couldn't breathe in the water,
i had to hold my breath that's why i couldn't enjoy my snorkeling time.
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| Circle |
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| Who is she? :p |
At 17.00, we went back to the shoreline and took a
shower, after that we continued the trip to Kawah Ijen. Yeaay! We stopped once
to have dinner and off at 20.00. The trip took times around 5 hrs. And we
arrived at 01.00 am. We had to wait because the ticket services would be opened
around 2 am. As you may already know, the weather was so chilly, so we had to
use something warm. And i was wearing my new ultra light down jacket from
uniqlo (really recommended), scarf, and sneaker. At 2 am, we started to hike. It was not my first
hike, but because my last hike was 4 years ago, this hike felt quite hard for
me. Well, since i hiked with these new-fun friends, it was not a big problem
anymore because we really enjoyed every step that we took.
We need 3 hrs to reach the top. But the journey is
not over yet. We still had to go down because the highlight of the trip was
Kawah Ijen! not Gn. Ijen. Some people chose not to go down, but my team decided
to try because maybe it will be the last time we would ever go here. Buuuuut
really, it was so hard! The terrain was mainly rocks and we had to be very
careful because on either sides were a cliff. But it was paid off! I succeed to
watch one of the most phenomenal things that happened in this world, Blue Fire,
right in front of me. What is that? It's a burning sulfur that shows blue fire
in the night and it only last for a few hours. It was so beautiful. I was so
speechless at that time, Thank you Allah for letting me witnessed this kind of
beauty.
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| Because the structure of the stone, i felt like i was in the moon |
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| Flash |
After enjoying the moment, we decided to hike back
before suns up and now i really regret why i didn't have picture in front of
the crater :( Not only the blue fire which was beautiful but also the crater
when the sun was up with its green color..
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| Ijen Crater |
Nowadays, not only local people who knows the existence of blue fire but also
visitor from other cities like me and the foreigners as well. So i think the
local government should give more concern about the public facility, especially
the toilet :( I don't have any courage to enter the toilet because..... you can
write anything on it. It was so sad, because Indonesia has many beautiful
places but sometimes it's not convenient to go there :(
Okay, back to the trip. Touched down at 8 am and then
had a breakfast. We continued to Bromo which was a really long road. We just
reached Bromo at 4 pm, bloody tired! I went to sleep at 10 pm and have to wake
up at 2 am. Wohoo i was the first one who woke up. We had to wake up early
because we wanted to catch the sunrise. Alhamdulillaaah i could see the sunrise
from the highest point at Bromo. Higher than the mountain itself. Basically,
Bromo mountain is an active volcano mountain which just got erupted a few
months ago and it had closed for visitor during that time.
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| The agent had prepared two jeep for us to explore bromo. |
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| The sunrise from the highest point |
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| Bromo from Titik Pananjakan |
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| All of horses have a name |
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| 280 of stairs |
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| Top of Bromo |
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| Boyband? |
The best thing by visiting Bromo is we could see some
of different nature situations. First, the bromo itself which is a volcano
mountain. Not far away, there is a grassland which is called Bukit Teletubbies.
DO you know Teletubies? Tinki winki, Gipsy, Lala, Pooo.. and not far from
there, suddenly the scenery has changed into a sea of sand which is called
Pasir Berbisik. It was totally amazing. How could the adjacent areas have
a very significant difference.. Only Allah who has power over it all.
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| Bukit Teletubies |
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| Pasir Berbisik |
Visiting Bromo became the end of my trip and i'm
looking forward to enjoy another beauty of Indonesia in the near future.
My bucket list :
- Pulau Weh
- Ora Beach Resort
- Derawan and Kakaban Island
To be honest, this trip was really tiring because we
were always on the road, inside of the car that make my legs cramped except in
the last night, finally we slept in the guest house. Overall, i satisfied with
my open trip agent because everything runs smoothly as planned. Until next
time!
