Trip to Surabaya

Note: I wanted to post this a month ago... I got lazy. According to Wikipedia, feelings of laziness might be symptom of clinical depression or listlessness... Hmm...

Finally I get to follow along on a family holiday, after missing the previous two. This year, our destination was Surabaya, the 2nd most populated city in Indonesia. The holiday lasted for 5 days... thanks to my dad being a frequent flyer of MAS, we got the airline tickets free.

A quick comment to MAS... the steward/ stewardess shouldn't have asked passengers to choose between toast or roti canai when obviously there weren't even enough toast! The plane was only half- full and by the time they tray got to us, there was only roti canai left. Either eat that or stay hungry 'till the plane lands. Sadly, it was the same situation on the return flight. Of course I would eat it... the ticket price is inclusive meal... not eating would be throwing money away. MAS should take note on this or risk losing even more passengers to AirAsia.

The first place we visited was Mount Bromo, located about more than 2000m from sea level. To reach the location, it was about 4 hours drive from the Surabaya airport. The drive had to take alternative route along the paddy fields since the main road could not be used, due to the mud spill that had taken place since 2006.

The beautiful view from Bromo Cottages, one of the few hotels available there. It's located about 800m from sea level and the only road there is narrow and seems quite dangerous. Vegetables were seen to be grown along the mountainsides.

As early as 4am in the morning, we went to Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, to the top of Mount Penanjakan in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. Upon reaching the viewing platform, it was already crowded. Sadly, the fog was too thick to see the sunrise. If we had been able to, I guess this is what we would have seen (cantik kan!):

Next, we proceed on to see the crater of Mount Bromo. Getting to the place was a great experience itself. The jeep drove us through the Sand Sea (Lautan Pasir), and then we had to take pony ride to the foot of the mountain. After that, there were 250 stairs to climb before reaching the top!

From left: (1) View of the Sand Sea, a Hindu temple could be seen right in the middle; (2) the tiring and steep staircase

Sadly, again, we were unlucky to be able to see the crater clearly due to the thick fog. Since the weather was cold, and the smell of sulphur fumes from the crater was really strong, we didn't wait long for the fog to go away.

Dear readers, here is where I suddenly got the laziness attack... although I don't think I suffer from any depression whatsoever. So from this point forward, I'll just put lots of pictures to this post. It's worth a thousand word.. wait, I have more than a picture here... so that would be millions of words then =P

Coban Rondo waterfall - height bout 60m - absolutely beautiful

Plucking apples at Kusuma AgroWisata - surprisingly the green apples are the sweet ones, and red are sour


Taman Safari Indonesia II - it's obviously way better than Zoo Negara


Shopping at Surabaya

Surabaya is definitely an interesting place to visit. Plus, halal food is everywhere and there is no problem in communication. Things are fairly cheaper too... so it's great for shopping. So why not go there for your next holiday destination... for more info, try visit these websites:

• Surabaya Tourism
  
• Taman Safari Indonesia II
• Malang Tourism