[Explore Wonderful Indonesia] Trip to East Java

12:26:00 PM


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
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..

The Icon of Baluran
I will catch you!
The Team
After took a lot of pictures, then we went to the next place, Menjangan Island. Menjangan Island is located in West Bali. Our schedule was snorkelling, at 12.00 o'clock with the sunshine above the head :D Thank God i didn't get a seasick as every time i sat on the boat. The journey took 60 min, i even fell asleep. Heheh.. 
Renaa
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.
Circle
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.  
Because the structure of the stone, i felt like i was in the moon
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.. 
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.
The agent had prepared two jeep for us to explore bromo.
The sunrise from the highest point
Bromo from Titik Pananjakan
To reached the top of mountain, we had 2 choices, ride a horse or just walk. And I chose to ride a horse, because i was so tired after hiking the Ijen, hahah.. But not entirely by horse until the top but we would stop before the first step of the stairs. Yeah, we had to continue by climbing around 280 stairs. At the top, i could hear the voice of the earth being rumbled and the view from above was beautiful. I only could say woow, wooow, wooow..
All of horses have a name
280 of stairs
Top of Bromo
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.
Bukit Teletubies
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!

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