Rockers versus the volcano

Mt. Bromo is one of those deals where you head out at 3 a.m. so you can be there for the sunrise. Luckily our room was so cold -- Bromo gets down to 10 Celsius/50 Fahrenheit -- we were glad to get up and move around so we could warm up a little.

The hotel people put us in a jeep and drove us up to a summit with a great view of Bromo and surroundings.

There were some other people there, too. Like maybe 200 people. You could hear murmurings in Indonesian, Javanese, Dutch, Japanese, French and who knows what other languages.


The sunrise was pretty good. And once the sun came up, the view only got better, because Bromo itself is a surreal landscape of volcanoes that look hand-sculpted. One of them was erupting in the background every 20 minutes or so, just to add to the effect.


All around the viewing point there were people renting out winter jackets and selling batteries, t-shirts and drinks. Several boys were selling flowers you could use as an offering to the volcano gods. This one said "Indonesian rockers!" when I took his picture.

The dangdut bus to Probolinggo

We got into Surabaya bright and early on Saturday and took a taxi to the bus station, where we hopped on a nice air-conditioned bus toward Mt. Bromo. During the ride, we were treated to numerous dangdut videos starring a woman who seemed to be constantly disappointed by a series of men. You could see why -- the men all wore weird, shiny, pimp-y clothes and acted like jerks. One of them had long, luxurious hair, and every time the camera panned to him he was running his hand through it in a way that suggested he was the hottest thing on the planet. No sensible woman would have a cup of coffee with that guy, never mind a love affair.

About an hour outside Surabaya, traffic came to a grinding halt in Sidoarjo, the site of the mud disaster. It's been two years since boiling-hot sludge started spewing from the ground there, and the thousands of people who've lost their homes and jobs are still waiting for most of the compensation they've been promised. The mud lake seemed to have gotten bigger since the last time I visited; bulldozers were out working on what looked like new containment walls along the highway.

After this sad interlude, traffic picked up again. Just outside Probolinggo we caught a public minivan to Cemoro Lawang, a little town perched on the outer crater that surrounds Mt. Bromo.


The minivan guys insisted on putting all of our luggage on top. The van was hot and pretty well packed with people. There were no music videos, but we were entertained by children singing songs in the seat behind us.

As we made our way up the steep, winding road, I tried to drink in the mountain views and ignore the terrible thought of my backpack, with my laptop in it, sliding off the top of the van and smashing onto the pavement. It was a long day of travel, but eventually we and the luggage all arrived in one piece.

Jakarta-Papua-Surabaya in a day

Jason and Jaclyn at Bromo

Our friends Jason and Jaclyn arrived in early May for three weeks. Jason is a professor of visual psychology and one of Chad's oldest friends; Jaclyn runs her own business helping people organize their lives and possessions.

The plan was to fly to East Java and make our way to Bromo and Ijen, two spectacular mountainous landscapes. Then we'd hop on the ferry to Bali, work our way along the northern shore for a while, and drop through the central mountains, where I would head back to Jakarta while the other three went on to Thailand.

First, though, we went to Papua -- or Papua came to us. Our third-floor neighbor Dave organized a house-wide party for that Friday night, complete with a traditional Papuan dance troupe. We hosted the dancing because our apartment has the least furniture.


The pictures are fuzzy, but you get the idea. It was pretty cool having 8 or 10 Papuan dancers in our living room in full body paint and headdresses. They got everybody else dancing, too.

Unfortunately, we had to catch a painfully early flight in the morning, so we snuck out of our own place at 11 or so and crashed at Howie and Haviva's -- they kindly offered us the guest bedroom. Dave cleaned up later and let the cat out of the back room, where she was probably wondering what all the stomping was about.

If you want to get a sense of what Papuan dance is like, check out this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QEeNi6a-Fw

The fix is in

My family has a history with cats. When I was little, our cat Agnes was scheduled to be spayed right after Christmas. On Christmas Eve, she went into heat, got out through the basement door, and got pregnant.

So I was nervous about Susu. Between traveling and work, it just hasn't been possible to schedule her for the operation. But she's getting close to six months old and I know we're in a race against her ovaries.

Hanging out on a shelf

I booked her for next Tuesday, when I have some time off. But sure enough, two days ago she started acting funny, rubbing against me and yowling a lot. I was sure she was about to go into heat, and the timing wasn't great. I'm going to Aceh today and I didn't relish the idea of leaving our half-crazed cat locked up by herself with every tomcat in the neighborhood howling outside the door!

Happily the vet agreed to take her early and give her back to us Monday, minus ovaries. I took her down in a cab yesterday. She seemed to be her normal self again.

Getting sleepy in the cat carrier

Spaying and neutering are not as common here as in the States. Even our landlord and his family, who are not impoverished, and who love their dog to pieces, don't seem to plan on getting her "fixed." When I asked him if we could have a cat, he advised me to get a male so I wouldn't get stuck with litters of kittens. (I didn't mention that we actually had the cat already. Minor detail.)

But there are some organizations working to popularize neutering and improve animal welfare. One of my favorites rehabilitates dogs off the street and gives them to good homes. They hang posters of available dogs at the vet's office. At the bottom of every poster are the words: "Our dogs are intended for dog lovers, and not to be used as doorbells or lawn decorations." Right on!

Consider yourself unwarned

The US has finally lifted its travel warning on Indonesia, which is excellent news. Now more people will come see places like Mt. Bromo:


which I will blog about more soon.

We finally put the June issue of the magazine to bed, and that will be my last. Tomorrow I finish work, and after that I have two weeks off! I'm going to Aceh for the weekend, and then I'll spend most of the two weeks taking a picture of everything in Jakarta that has made me think "I need a picture of this." I may slip out of town for a day or two, but I've been traveling and working so much lately, all I really want to do is hang around, play with the camera, pet the cat, and go to the gym.

Junk food of the week: Uffy Snacks Special Roombutter

I wasn't really so interested in these cookies as cookies. I just wanted to write the name Uffy Snacks Special Roombutter in the blog.




In fact, I think I'll just do it again: Uffy Snacks Special Roombutter. Too fun!

The cookies themselves were better than I expected: kind of shortbready and very buttery-tasting. They could have let themselves go a little more wild on the chocolate chips if they wanted.


Here's how they went over at the office:
Haviva - thumbs up
Howie - called them lousy but ate 37
The girls in Marketing - giggled; ate some; giggled

Overall, I'd say they did pretty well.

Sorry about the poor photo quality; Chad has the good camera in Thailand and I killed my nice Sony cameraphone last week by dropping it in Susu's water bowl. Now I'm using a cheap replacement. That Sony phone was annoying in many ways, but man, I really miss its camera. And Susu hasn't even offered to pay a cent toward a new one!

Update

I've clearly fallen behind on my blogging again, heh. I have much to talk about, including a new job, sexy dangudut videos on long-distance buses, and a large fruit bat (none of those things are related to each other, for better or worse). But right now I'm traveling with friends in North Bali, and the internet connection is so glacial I'm not going to try and post any photos. So, I'll get back in blog mode Sunday when I return to the Jak.