20 Feb 2016 Sat
Slight flight delay. Lion air overrun runway at the Surabaya airport which led to closure of airport for 2 hours. Plus our flight which came from Chiangmai arrived late at Changi.
Rainbow 
Reach Surabaya only at 7pm instead of 550pm. Tour guide B brought us to have dinner before embarking on our 3 hour journey to the hotel near Mount Bromo. Mini bus drove us up to Lava Bromo Lodge. The status displayed at the gantry point was Siaga (standby). We reached the hotel past midnight after driving through fog. Chilly.
21 Feb 2016 Sun
Slept till morning. From where we stood so far away, we can see and hear the faint eruption. Weather was cloudy.
Motorcyclists ferrying people to see Bromo in near distance. Jeep drivers had been hard hit ever since Bromo erupted in December last year. On average it erupts every 2 years.
Videos
After breakfast, we went to another viewing point to see Mount Bromo. We trek up a short distance but the view was still not good, cloudy.
Terraced
Village
We continue the driving today to go to Banyuwangi, eastern most point of Java Island, which is about 8 hours drive away. Only Nm was awake.
We stopped halfway near the seaside for lunch.
Crab's hiding
trio
Promote coconut water campaign
Dinner was good.
From Banyuwangi, it was a mere 1 hour ferry ride to Bali. From the landing point in Bali, it will be another 3+ hour by road to the city Denpasar. Lotsa trucks going towards the harbour towards Bali, which was the reason why we took so long, cos we need to overtake them or risk stucked behind in crawling pace.
We started our long drive at 1030am and reach the resort only at 8pm. I quickly went to swim in the pool before it was closed. Beautiful resort.
22 Feb 2016 Mon
Woke up by phone call at 1218am to go Ijen, obviously I overslept. Body totally not willing to leave the bed. It was a 2- hour drive from the hotel to the start of the trekking - Paltuding. I rented a jacket for fear of cold for 50000rp.
We trekked uphill for around 2km before we reached the tuck shop. Then we went further up to the panorama viewing point. We can see the blue fire in the crater from the crater rim we stood. The four of us decided to venture down to the crater to get closer to the fires. We were duly rewarded.
Not only did we see the blue fire dancing in front of us, we also saw the beautiful crater lake once the sun come up at 5am. The blue fire ceased punctually at 5ish as if someone switched it off. We were busy taking photos at the emerald crater lake contrasted with the bright yellow sulphur rocks.
Yellow sulfur rock
After enough photos taken, we went back up.
The rim of the crater
Coming down from the rim.
Panorama:
We saw the monkeys on the way down.
The brake pads of the minibus was overheated so we waited on the bus for about 20 minutes for the brake pads to cool down. Once we reached the town, we had breakfast at a warung nearby. I ordered milo.
I took a quick swim at the pool before we check out. We left the hotel at 11am. The guide suggested that we have our lunch together with our Ijen guide at Baluran wildlife national park. It was a 15km bumpy drive into the restaurant. After about 6km (30 min) on the bumpy road with no wildlife in sight, we gave up and made a u-turn.
We drove on and found a seafood restaurant for late lunch, which we paid on our own. It started to rain halfway through our late lunch. From then on its on and off rain/drizzle from the restaurant to the hotel kampoemg-kita. The dinner already await us at the hotel lobby but we were still full. Deferred the dinner till 8pm. I had some of the rambutans bought near the hotel but they were not as sweet as i thought.
23 Feb 2016 Tue
Breakfast the next day was a pleasant surprise: rice with mutton soup. Checked out at 7am to go to the rafting place Songa Atas where we will have a brief stop at Pekalen Waterfall. Along the way we saw people shitting and washing their clothes in the lower section of the river. Once we reached the rafting base camp, we changed into our wet attire and stood inside a transport van to the rafting jetty 10km upstream. Reminded me of our Pakistan porters being transported the same way.
3 persons to one raft and it was all screams and laughter from now on. Briefing was given:
1. Whenever we hear position, we have to sit at the edge and pedal.
2. When we hear boom boom, a phrase that we would hear quite often from that point on, stand the pedal inside the boat
with the handle touching the boat, hand hold on to the rope tight and sit on the floor of the raft instead of the seats to lower the centre of gravity.
3. If one fell inside the water, just lie down flat facing up, move to the left or right side of the stream by moving ur left or right hand respectively.
Grade 4 rafting adventure of 12km began. We had a very good time on the rafts. Whenever we hear boom-boom, we will all panic and quickly dip ourselves into the rafts. Screaming was a perpetual feature. The tossing and rolling and bouncing made us skipped our heartbeats. Even N and K who had some rafting experience found this adventure a little overwhelming. The steersman on N's raft even asked N if they wanted to try the rollover near capsize, which N's group quickly said no to.
Stopped at the Pekalen waterfall for photo taking. The force of the water falling on our helmets was strong, almost felt like someone knocking hard on our helmets. We continued on and had more screaming moments. T even spotted a big python trying to get close to the bats while a monitor lizard was above the python, a scene he captured on his gopro. An insect stung my fingers while I was holding to the rope. My fingers felt pain and I worried that I might have allergic reaction after that. it turned out to be ok.
The drop
N's legs in the air!
He rebounded with a smile!
Another series of drop
The trio again
We paid tips to the raft steersmen and had wash-up before lunch. This is our last meal covered in the package.
Bought oleholeh at an overpriced tourist shop 5 mins away from the airport. Flight was delayed in departure.
To add on some stories after the trip was over, N took a cab that has its tyre punctured when he was about to reach home.
The route we took on land:
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I wrote an article to Zaobao regarding this trip, it was published on 17 May 2018.
