Clouds | By Rebecca Michelle

I turned 25 at the beginning of January and Mitch took me to Surabaya, on the Indonesian island Java, this weekend for my present! This was a very short trip for me. I landed at 8:45pm Friday night and flew out at 12:10pm Sunday afternoon. My flight was originally scheduled to leave at 5pm so I was supposed to have all of Sunday in Surabaya, but AirAsia cancelled my flight and moved me to the earlier one. Ah well, such is life and such is travelling on discount airlines. Nevertheless, we had a wonderful day on Saturday!

Indonesia is laughably cheap, which should also tell you how poor of a country it is. As a result, though, we stayed in a gorgeous hotel with a stunning pool, ate decadent food, and hired a driver to take us up to Mount Bromo, an extinct volcano. Seeing the volcano was the reason Mitch chose Surabaya as the place to visit.

Shots of our beautiful hotel in which we had a king-size bed, delicious cocktails, and ordered room service as a snack:

Unfortunately, I saw basically nothing of Surabaya itself. From sitting in traffic, I can tell you that it’s very dense and not walkable, at least not where we were. The driver on Saturday told us that West Surabaya is the expat area with the international school, so maybe it would have been different over there. We did see lots of cool graffiti, though! This is the only example of which I managed to snap a decent picture from the car:

Saturday was a dreary day, as all of the photos suggest, but the rain didn’t start until about 3 hours into the 3.5-hour journey up to see Mount Bromo, located on the Tengger Caldera. We had been warned that it was not a good day to try to see Bromo, but that’s what we get for traveling during the rainy season. The best time of day is supposed to be sunrise and even there there’s a 50% chance of clouds and rain. We figured we’d make do with what we had to work with and I’m really glad we did! Even though the drive was very long, we got to see a lot of Java that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The diver was very knowledgable and friendly, making for a pleasant and educational journey. He drove past the zoo so we could see the iconic statue of an intertwined shark (sura) and crocodile (baya). Who knew?! All of these photos were taken from a moving car, so they’re not the best. Sorry!

Mosque — One of the MANY mosques we passed on the way

Motorcycles — Surabaya has even more motorcycles than anywhere we’ve been in Malaysia, which is saying a lot. Except for the guy in the front of this photo, all other adults we saw were actually wearing helmets! We even saw a couple kids in helmets, which was rather surprising.

Along the way, the driver pointed out a community that had been utterly destroyed by mudslides. No one has been able to figure out how to stop the mud, so now it goes through pipes into a river that leads to the ocean. We saw flattened stone houses, a ruined mosque, and a new road as a result.

We drove through little villages and towns that became increasingly sparse and increasingly agricultural as we got further from Surabaya. The terrain reminded me a lot of our trip to Cameron Highlands. Different trees, though.

The kids walking home from school in their uniforms made me smile. Kids in uniforms are just so adorable.

Painted building that we passed:

Mount Bromo is easily recognizable because it has no top. We were able to see it from one of the two lookout points on the caldera. Had the weather cooperated, we would have taken a Jeep closer to the mountain and gone exploring around and up it, but we had to be contact with gazing through the clouds and rain. Despite those conditions, it was an impressive sight:

Nature is really amazing and rather terrifying if you think about it. My favorite photo from the whole adventure was this one because I think it really captures the awesomeness (and I mean that in the literal sense of the word) of Mother Nature and whoever helps her:

In addition to our volcanic expedition on Saturday, Mitch found an incredible Japanese restaurant inside the Shangri-La Hotel, which is probably the fanciest hotel I’ve ever been in. Our sushi, vegetable, and fish selections were excellent. There were French and Italian restaurants inside, too, and our dessert at the Italian place consisted of red wine and crème brûlée over which the server poured flaming rum. Wow!

Every so often I re-realize how wonderful it is that Mitch and I are traveling and going to new places and trying new things. We really are lucky. Thanks for such a unique birthday gift, Mitch!

Update: Mitch read this post after I published it and made a couple embarrassing corrections. Firstly, Mount Bromo is an active volcano. Secondly, the volcano in the foreground of my photos is not actually Mount Bromo; Mount Bromo is the one to the left with the white cloud-like smoke floating above it. I think I honestly cut it out of most of my photos while I was taking them, but I swear I saw it! I just didn’t know what I was seeing, apparently. Oops . . .

We made it! Mitch and I traveled for about 40 hours door-to-door, but we made it to Malaysia and so did our luggage! I ignored the flight attendant’s request to “stow all electronic devices” during landing and took a few pictures to document my first glimpse of my new home.

I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting so much greenery. I am aware of the fact that Malaysia is tropical and that a large part of it is rainforest, but somehow that did not equate to green in my head. Sometimes it’s nice to be mistaken.

My bosses picked us up at the Kuala Lumpur airport and we drove for about 40 minutes to reach Seremban, the city where we’ll be living. Or, at any rate, the city where I’ll be living and working; Mitch still has to find a job, and Seremban is an “up and coming” city, which, in Southeast Asian terms means it has more than doubled in size in the last decade, so it’s probably not going to be here.

On our drive we passed literally dozens of palm oil plantations. We were warned not to make friends with any of the many stray dogs that roam the city (so far I’ve only seen one) and told to watch out for poisonous snakes. Apparently Malaysia has more species of poisonous snakes than any other country. Excellent.

The on-campus residences are still under construction (yikes?) so the school has put everyone up in a hotel for now. Part of orientation will also include off-campus house hunting, too, so I’m really excited about that. Mitch and I spent the afternoon getting organized, trying to figure out cell phones, and wandering around town. One of the more interesting aspects of our wanderings were our attempts to find and ATM. There were signs for ATMs at the mall next door to the hotel, but they’re not installed yet (“up and coming” in Southeast Asia also means currently under construction) so a helpful lady directed us to a 7-Eleven around the corner. We’d already been there and their ATM was broken, so we went back to the hotel and asked at the desk. The gentleman on duty directed us to a hospital down the street.

Never in my life have I strolled into a hospital, wandered around the first floor unaccompanied and completely ignored, taken money out of an ATM, and walked out again. I did not leave feeling incredibly confident in the Malaysian healthcare systems, especially considering the sign announcing prices for different procedures at the door. Toto, we are certainly not in Kansas anymore.

After 40 hours of travel, sporadic eating and sleeping, and lightheaded wandering, we were more than ready to find some dinner. We had asked a hotel employee for suggestions, stipulating that the menu include vegetarian food. He directed us to a Chinese restaurant in the opposite direction of where we’d walked earlier. I’m not positive we found the specific restaurant because there’s more than one Chinese restaurant here, but we ended up finding the spiciest tofu I’ve ever tasted.

When we walked in, a server handed us menus (mercifully written in both English and Chinese) and we sat down at a table. After looking over the menu and consulting our friends Google and Wikipedia, we learned that we were in a laksa restaurant. We also learned that laksa is a spicy soup that combines Chinese and Malay culinary traditions. Good for us, we’d found something authentic! It also wasn’t too hard to figure out how to order after we realized that no one was coming by to check on us.

The instructions were pretty self-explanatory

When we pressed for service, a bell chimed and a number flashed on the wall, like the numbers people take in the deli counter line at the grocery store. A server came over, we ordered, and a short time later, we had food!

Mitch's chicken (and some other unidentified items that he said were tasty) — Mitch’s chicken (and some other unidentified items that he said were tasty)

It’s a good thing there were tissues on the table (maybe they were supposed to be napkins?) or I would not have gotten through that bowl. Quite tasty, though!

All in all, so far so good. We’re basically watching the clock until it’s late enough to go to bed. I know what day it’s supposed to be, though not exactly what day my body thinks it is. At any rate, I’m glad we have a couple days to acclimate before teacher training starts. We certainly need it!

Photos, travels, musings, and ideas on education by someone trying to make the world a better and more peaceful place

By Rebecca Michelle

Tag Archives: Clouds

Travel Guide: Surabaya

Not in Kansas Anymore

Photos, travels, musings, and ideas on education by someone trying to make the world a better and more peaceful place