Mount Bromo

On our first day at sea, we stopped at Probolinggo on the southern tip of Java, and took a long excursion to Bromo Tengger Semeru  National Park.  The Park contains a huge caldera from a volcano 150,000 years ago.  Within the caldera are several smaller and newer volcanoes including Mount Bromo which is still active.

First we took tenders to the port, and then a one hour bus ride up the ridge of the caldera.  After a lunch accompanied by native dancing, a caravan of forty five jeeps took us up the even steeper road to the top of the ridge and then down into the caldera.  From there we walked about a mile across the black sand to the base of Mount Bromo.  Then we climbed.  Gently at first, increasingly steeper, and finally, up a few hundred stairs.  We had seen the smoke from the volcano from far away.  On the top, the smoke was intense and the smell of sulfur was almost overpowering.  Lava was bubbling in the volcano which we could clearly hear - it sounded like the roar of the ocean.  And occasionally, and a bubble of bright orange lava would burst through the smoke.

Starting the climb (stairs in the background)

Approaching the stairs

A toast at the top

After hiking back down, we drove an hour in the jeeps and another hour on the bus to arrive back to our ship, the Jacques Cartier.  This section of Java could not have looked more different from Bali.  There was no traffic (except for our caravan of jeeps), and no overcrowding.  We were back in Moslem Indonesia, so there were no more Hindu temples at each house, but there were several beautiful mosques.  And we could really see the countryside: dense forests interspersed with farmland on the steep sides of the mountain - sometimes in terraces and sometimes in rows that climbed the mountain.  The road was so steep that the houses were built like those in San Francisco.  I enjoyed the scenic drive.

Clarification:  I am not on a large cruise ship with excursions.  This is an expedition cruise with about 150 passengers and an staff of fifteen naturalists.  Some of the naturalists are generalists in ecology, but most have a specialty such as fish or insects or geology or culture.  Their combined knowledge is impressive.  Each day, the team leads everyone (unless you choose to remain onboard pretty much alone) on a single expedition, often to a place that is not accessible to most tour groups.  The expedition to Mount Bromo was a twelve hour day.  We had a restful day at sea today, and have another twelve hour expedition planned for tomorrow.   Most of the rest of the stops will not be at ports, so we will use the zodiac boats to go ashore.  We were also issued snorkeling equipment today so I guess that is on the schedule, too.  As an expedition cruise, the itinerary can be altered as conditions change.

Living in Bali

The popular vision of Bali as a lush, green paradise with beautiful beaches is, unfortunately, somewhat out of date.  A major problem has been created by overtourism as Bali became popular.  Rice paddies and every piece of bare land were developed.  Traffic clogs the few roads, creating gridlock and hours-long traffic jams.  Sadly, this was the view that I saw most often:

Not very scenic.  I can only imagine what Bali looked like before. 

But overtourism is only part of the story.  Indonesia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  Its large income, primarily from oil, does not reach most of the people.  If there are laws, the authorities can easily be bought off, so development can occur anywhere with no oversight and no quality control.  Needless to say, the infrastructure is seriously lacking.  Unlike in Japan where there is no garbage anywhere, in Indonesia, there is garbage everywhere.  The accepted standard is to throw garbage on the ground or in the ocean.  The ocean carries garbage from nearby islands to the beaches of Bali.  Thus a typical beach looks like this:

So what is special about Bali?  The people really do seem to be kind and caring.  The reputation of the Balinese is that they are very welcoming and accepting.  I hear the surfing is great (when there is no garbage around).  And there really are Hindu temples everywhere.  People put out offerings at each temple every day as well as at their stores and businesses.  Our driver always had a fresh offering on the dashboard of the car every day.  I wasn't sure why, but people wrap statues and trees with a black and white checked cloth and put the offering in front of it.

I have seen "local" dance shows that are clearly put on for the tourists, but I also see ceremonies at the temples regularly.  I believe there is a core culture of belief, spirituality, and openness that it is hard for tourists to readily access, but comes across as kindness and warmth.  Again, I wish I could have seen it before.

There is one more thing about Bali ... it is incredibly cheap which is, I'm sure, part of the reason for overtourism.  At a local restaurant, dinner for five of us cost $15.  Even at more touristy restaurants, it was hard to spend more than $20 for a meal.  Our driver (and car) cost about $65 for a day.  Labor is really cheap here, so you can be treated royally for not a lot.  Although, you also get what you pay for as the quality of work here may not be up to our standards.

I had the opportunity to live rather uniquely in Bali.  The villa I stayed in for the first week was spectacular, and since it was in the north of the island, I did see a more uncrowded, somewhat rural landscape.  In the south, we stayed with Peggy's friend Ben who has lived here for twenty five years.  When he built his house near Balangan Beach, there were only open fields around him.  But now there are hotels and other houses surrounding his, and destroying the openness and view.  He used to find the inefficiency of life here the price to pay for living in paradise, but now is not sure that he is still in paradise.

Finally, I boarded a luxury cruise ship and was disoriented in the main lounge which has a mirrored ceiling.  So where is paradise?

Backyard and view from villa

Ben's house

Open patio, living room, and kitchen

Guest bedroom

Main lounge with mirrored ceiling

Finally, we visited one last temple on our last day in Bali.  Tanah Lot is built on an island that you can walk to at low tide, but is inaccessible at high tide.

And that was Bali.  One last drive through traffic to the cruise ship terminal and we are off to some other Indonesian islands.

Bali temples and more temples

I spent my first week in a lovely villa in the north of Bali.  That area is a small, primarily Moslem enclave in a small, predominantly Hindu island in a huge, predominantly Moslem country.  I knew that Bali is primarily Hindu and did not expect to hear the muezzin several times a day.

Whatever my preconceived notions were, Bali is not a small, green, idyllic island.  It is much larger and much more populated than I thought, with a population of over three million.  Old-timers will tell you that Bali has changed so much in the last few decades, primarily due to over tourism.  The narrow roads are always clogged with cars and motorcycles, and the traffic is beyond horrible.  The drive from the airport to the villa, a distance of sixty miles, took four hours.

On Friday I left the lovely villa and finally went to visit some of the sites in Bali.  First I went to Pura Ulun Danu Beratan, a major Hindu temple on the shores of Lake Beratan.  I also had not expected that there would be not one but two beautiful lakes, appropriately named the Twin Lakes, in the mountainous interior of Bali.  Built in 1633, this temple is dedicated to the Balinese water, lake and river goddess Dewi Danu.  It is also known as the floating temple as some of the shrines sit on a small island in the lake.

At this temple, I saw a presentation of the barong, a traditional Balinese dance that features a mythological lion-like creature, who is the king of spirits and the symbol of good.  The dance was accompanied by a thirty piece percussion band, most of them playing something like a xylophone.  Both the music and the dance were a style that I have never seen or heard before.  Very interesting.

Next I visited one of the famous rice terraces that Bali is known for.  From a distance, the fields look green, but that is just the front of each terrace.  At this time of year, each terrace is filled with muddy water where the rice seedlings are individually planted.

Finally, I stopped at a second Hindu temple, Pura Taman Ayun.  Taman Ayun means beautiful garden, and this temple/garden complex which is surrounded by water is the second largest temple in Bali.  The various pagodas are dedicated to ancestors of the kings of Bali.

While I visited two large Hindu temples, we passed thousands as we drove.  That is no exaggeration.  I realized I have never visited a Hindu country and had no idea what the symbolism or customs are.  To add to my confusion, I have also discovered that Hinduism in Bali is unique, and quite different from Indian Hinduism.  Fortunately my guide, Putu, had been a teacher of Hinduism in the local public schools before becoming a guide, so he answered my questions and lectured to me for most of the day. 

In Bali, there are four types of Hindu temples.  First, every house has one.  Second, every extended family (clan) has one.  Third, every village, and fourth, there are public temples.  It is the latter that we are visiting, but we can see the small temples at every house and village that we pass.  There is also a fifth type of temple for various types of industry (fishing, construction, etc.)   The people apparently pray to their ancestors as well as the various Hindu gods, but there is also the concept of one god which is a foundational premise of the Indonesian country. 

Peggy arrived the next day and we moved to her friend Ben's house in the far south of Bali (twelve miles and a one hour drive from the airport.)  Ben built the house himself two decades ago in a remote, bucolic area, but the house now is surrounded by hotels and large houses right up to his property line.  His house is open and airy and quite different from last week's villa.

In the evening, we went to yet another Hindu temple, this one in a stunning cliffside location, to see a unique Balinese dance - the kecak.  The most amazing thing about this dance was that the "musical" accompaniment was a "choir" of seventy shirtless men who chanted rhythmically for the entire hour.  But the chanting was tuneless; they were more like a percussion section, closer to wordless rap than music.  And they did it in complete unison with occasional multiple parts.  Amazing.  The complicated story of the dance had an evil spirit kidnapping the lover of the good king.  The evil spirit was turned into an old man at one point and there was a golden deer for some reason.  As I said, complicated.  Needless to say, evil was vanquished at the end and the good lovers were reunited.

On our first day touring Bali, Peggy and I went to the Basakih Temple, also known as the Mother Temple.  Built high up on the slope of Mount Agung, this is the most important, largest, and holiest of Balinese Hindu temples.  In fact, it is not one temple but a complex of twenty three smaller ones, and was originally built in the 800's.  And it is built on the side of the mountain.  A shuttle conveniently drove us to the base, where we had to walk up a million steps, passing temples along the way until we reached the most important one on the top.  There are, however, two more temples higher up the slope but it takes two hours to hike to them.  I was okay not seeing all twenty three temples.

Japanese curiosities

Yes, everything you have heard about 7-11's in Japan is true.  They sell everything from fresh baked goods to pork baos to prepared dinners.  It was also where I had to go to buy stamps for postcards.  But they have competition; Family Mart and Lawson's are almost identical and I like the baked goods at Family Mart better.  Also, you never hand money to the cashier.  At 7-11, you feed bills and coins into a slot on your side of the counter, and change comes out.  At the other two, you put the cash in a little container and the clerk picks it up from there.  Of course, you can use credit or cash cards.

It is also true about Kit-Kats.  For whatever reason that no one knows, they make Kit-Kats in every weird flavor you can imagine and some you cannot:  green tea, wasabi, matcha.  And the store to buy them (go figure) is named Don Quixote.

I also bought some more authentic Japanese treats like wasabi peanuts, and a few less common treats like salmon jerky.

They drive on the left side in Japan.  Apparently this has nothing to do with the British Empire.  Rather, the samurai needed to stay to the left so that their sword was accessible for meeting a passing enemy.  Maybe, but it's a good story.  They also drive teeny, tiny cars, and only back into spaces, including spaces that are so small that I couldn't figure out how the driver gets out.  Then I remembered - they drive on the left and the driver sits on the right.

Everyone knows about the heated toilet seats and the toilets with so many buttons that you have no idea what they are for.  I have also mentioned that most public bathrooms do not have paper towels or garbage cans, so you have to carry a small towel with you.  But there were so many other oddities of Japanese bathrooms.  For example, how does a young mother manage with a baby?  What about a toddler son who cannot go to the men's room by himself?  The Japanese have answers for these problems and others.

Ladies toilet with baby holder

Only urinal I have ever seen in a women's bathroom.

You do not wear your shoes inside.  You also do not wear your inside sandals in a bathroom.  There are special sandals for that.

Toilet with a built-in sink on top.

So that's why they always close the lid.

It rains a fair amount here so everyone carries an umbrella.  When you go inside a museum or other public place, you put the umbrella in a special umbrella holder that locks it in place and gives you a key.  At the lovely restaurant we went to in Kyoto, if you wanted to walk in the garden, they supplied both sandals (since you did not have shoes on inside) and umbrellas.

Something I have never seen before:

And I could see someone inside holding a tiny pig

Finally, most translations here have been excellent but occasionally you see a sign and wonder:  did they really have to warn me about that?

More Kyoto and then back to Tokyo

After my tour ended, I got to spend two more days in Kyoto seeing a few more of the hundreds of shrines and temples.  Even more amazing.

According to our guide, the US did not bomb Kyoto conventionally (missiles and fire bombs) because they planned on dropping the atomic bomb here and they wanted a "pure" comparison of the damage done by various types of bombs.  But then someone figured out how important Kyoto is culturally to Japan and realized that if we bombed Kyoto, the Japanese would never forgive us.  So Kyoto escaped any bombing.  

We walked through narrow streets with original wood houses although the guide did say that they are losing two or three original houses a week and rebuilding with cheaper, modern materials.  The rounded section (inuyarai) at the bottom of the house, which is traditionally made of wood, is to protect the wooden walls from animals, specifically ... dog pee which rots the wood.  A lot of the wooden walls look burned because they are.  They are lightly scorched to dry out the wood and apparently, protect the walls for larger fires.

We took an evening walking tour of Gion which is traditionally the Geisha district, although in Kyoto, geishas are called geikos.  Each serves a one year apprenticeship as a maiko, essentially working as a servant.  If she makes it through that year, she continues as a trainee for five years, learning dance, music, and culture.  Our guide pointed out the signs and letters that were discreetly placed on buildings to designate Geisha houses, tea houses, and sake houses. We finished our tour at the lovely Yasaka Shrine.

The next day Kasey and I took a five hour e-bike tour of Kyoto where we got to really explore a much bigger section of the old parts of the city.  One comment about local guides:  on my tour of the fish market in Tokyo two weeks ago, my guide was an Israeli from a Russian family who made multiple trips to Japan and fell in love with it, so he moved here permanently a few years ago.  The guide from our evening walking tour of Gion was from Spain, and the bike tour guide, who is from London, moved here more than twenty five years ago.  And the best guide I would have (two days later) was from Ecuador.  I have two questions:  first, what makes these young people fall in love with Japan, a country that is so different and has a difficult language to learn?  Second, given what I have read about how unaccepting the Japanese are of foreigners, do they ever really "become" Japanese?  Is tour guiding the only work they can do here?  I wonder.

Back to our bike ride.  Kyoto has several canals and we rode along lovely trails, including the Philosopher's Path.  Kyoto is a university town, with students comprising one tenth the population.  At one point we walked (not rode) across the narrowest bridge in Kyoto.  It was a beautiful fall day with leaves changing colors, something I don't get to see in California.  And the tour ended with a fifteen minutes ride on the American River Bike Trail - whoops, it was the Kamo River Bike Trail - but I felt right at home passing white egrets and duck families.  Another Buddhist temple, the Nanzenji, has of all things ... a Roman aqueduct.  Okay, the Romans never got to Japan, but the Japanese definitely copied it.

Another beautiful Shinto shrine, the Heian, and then the highlight of the ride, the Imperial Palace and Garden.  The emperors may not have had much power - that rested in the Shogunate - but they were big on ceremony, and this was the home and ceremonial seat of the emperor from the eighth to the nineteenth century when the capital moved to Tokyo.

Lunch was another experience with too much food but it was our own fault.  We went to a sushi restaurant with a conveyor belt.  Not the kind that circulates pre-made, mediocre sushi endlessly.  Rather, this was a completely automatic experience.  At the entrance to the restaurant was a screen where we entered the number of people and it gave us a ticket with our table number so we could seat ourselves.  At the table was a screen that scrolled through pictures of the entire menu.  We clicked on whatever we wanted, and that dish appeared two minutes later, diverted from the main conveyor belt to a spur line to our table.  Just before it arrived, the screen announced:  your item(s) are about to arrive.  I was so intrigued by the process and the range of sushi that I kept ordering, eventually trying egg salad sushi and salted pork rib sushi (looked more like bacon).  We did not try the minihamburger sushi, salmon basil mozzarella sushi, or eggplant wasabi sushi.  When we finished eating, we took the slip we had been given on entering to the payment machine, and presto, there was the bill which, of course, we paid with a credit card.

Egg salad sushi

Salted pork rib sushi

The next day, Kasey and I took the bullet train to Tokyo.  Our first stop was back to the fish market.  It was already after 2:00 when we got there so a lot of stalls were closing down.  The fish market is definitely an early morning place.  But I did finally get (in the fish market, of course) ... my first waygu beef.  It was delicious.  Topped off with grilled and flamed scallops.

We took two night walking tour in different Tokyo neighborhoods:  a beautifully lit up stroll through Asakusa and the next night we joined the masses in Shinjuku, the entertainment district of Tokyo.  A bit overwhelming and not our kind of entertainment.  In the daytime, we took a long bike ride through a much quieter section of Tokyo stopping, of course, at a Shinto shrine and Buddhist temple or two, as well as riding around the Imperial Palace and Gardens.  The ride took us through narrow alleys and neighborhoods that we could not have seen any other way.  As a pedestrian, I was a bit mystified at the no jaywalking culture.  Even at a small street with nothing coming at 10:00 at night, if the walk sign is red, no one crosses.  That is not how I learned to cross streets in New York.  But as a biker, I loved it.  If I had a green, no one was going to walk in front of me or turn right on red.  I started to relax even at blind intersections, and there were a lot of them since the streets are so narrow with buildings right up to the sidewalk.  Even riding on the left in narrow bike lanes was not nearly as intimidating as I expected.

Godzilla in Shinjuku

One last walking tour on my last night alone in Tokyo after Kasey left.  No, I did not transport magically to Paris,  I had an excellent tour of the Tokyo Tower with the best guide I have had in Japan.  Ethan is from Ecuador and that is his real name although his mother speaks only Spanish and there is no "th" sound in Spanish (except for the lispy Castillians).  His mother watched and loved Mission Impossible and took Ethan's name from the movie.  He has lived in Japan for ten years and even attended university here.  He insisted that the Tokyo Tower is not a copy of the Eiffel Tower; rather, this is the best way to build a tower structurally.

And finally, one of the weirdest things I have seen in Japan ... kids playing pickleball on one of the levels of the Tokyo Tower.