Indonesia part II - Probo Lingo Sucks

From Ubud we started off to Probo Lingo to see the famous Mt. Bromo. I won't lie, it was a shitty trip. We took a 1.5 hour mini-van ride full of high speed swerves to Kuta. For the first time in my life I actually got motion sickness (at least I think that is what it was). While we waited for the bus to depart to Probo Lingo I mostly closed my eyes and rested my head on the table, feeling nauseated.

The bus ride itself sucked. We were positioned at the very back of the bus, next to a very well behaved rooster in what appeared to be a bowling ball bag. His tail stuck out and he gave an occasional cluck but that was all. We were also next to the lavatory, sadly, and occasionally smells eminating from it made it our way. It was an 8 hour journey, my longest bus ride ever. Lukily the seats reclined and we had blankets. At least for the first couple of hours. After that we picked up a family that stayed behind us (yes, we had the back seats, and the family was behind us). It must have been an unofficial pay bump for the driver, and seemed like a common practice. Sadly, we were unable to recline as we had to make room for the vagrants. So the remaing hours were rather uncomfortable, except for the delightful tickle I received from the occasional cockroach crawling on my lower back. At least they were relatively small ones.

We got to Probo Lingo around 2:00 a.m., were hustled into an office who wanted us to book an overpriced tour to mt. Bromo at 5:00 a.m. We did the math and figured waiting for 3 hours to take a 2 hour hike after being on a bus for 8 hours didn't seem like fun, so we skipped the whole volcano sunrise idea. Of course the travel agent assured us there were not any hotels nearby. No hotels near a bus station... We later found out he was lying (suprise). We found a cheap hotel, slept for a few hours, and woke up. ANOTHER tour guide greeted us at the hotel, told us many many lies, but seemed to offer a decent price for a ride to Yogyakarta, our next destination. So we bought a ticket from him. However because of his lies, and our willingness to believe a couple of them out of the many, we didn't go see Bromo that day either. We had a miserable day in a shitty town. The hotel lacked windows, so mosquitos butchered me, there were no restaurants or bars for many km any direction, and it had no air con. The town sucked. Sucked more than any town I have ever been in EVER. So, after 2 nights at this shitty hotel in a shitty town we were even more exhausted than when we first came off the 8 hour bus ride 1.5 days earlier. I was covered in mosquito bites, tired, sick (I had a cold) and annoyed at being lied to by what seemed to be every person we met over the last couple of days. With that attitude, we set of for Bromo.

It was nice. We walked through an hours worth of volcanic silt and climbed the 250 steps, and reached the sulphur smelling summit. It was a nice view and I got to see the first active volcano of my life (it killed some people in 2004). However, in the end, I'm just not a mountain kind of guy. Maybe its the Saskatchewan in me. I am much more impressed by living nature than by inanimate rock. The size of it doesn't make that much of an impact either, 1 beautiful tree is better than the view enourmous mountain as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, despite that it did look cool. I was told the practice was to buy some flowers and throw them into the volcano and make a wish. I bought some flowers, threw them into the caldera, and made a wish: A pox on Probo Lingo.