Hey mister!

My last night in Bali I sat on Kuta beach waiting for that famed sunset (I'd never seen the sun set over water before). Just as it was disappearing into the ocean, at that magical moment, a young guy squatted beside me to offer me marijuana and a Balinese girlfriend. Such is Kuta. The next morning I got a lift on a motorbike into Denpasar to catch my nine o'clock bus. We sat on that bus at the station, engine running, until midday. None of the Indonesian passengers seemed miffed, so I didn't say anything... I got talking to a Javanese man who had moved to Kuta to sell watches, and he told me how he sells to Australians: "It's a bloody cheap watch, mate!" Once on the road I met a student from Surabaya named Ary who was heading home, and we stuck together for the ferry-ride and the dinner break at a muslim truck-stop, although he didn't speak a word of English. We didn't arrive in Probolinggo until well after dark, and I was dropped at an information centre for Gunung (Mount) Bromo tours because I had answered 'Ya' when the driver asked me 'Bromo?' This slimy tour organiser sat me down and told me how much everything was going to cost - at this stage I wasn't really planning on going to the mountain. I told him that I just wanted the hotel, so he charged me a whopping 50,000 rupiah to drive me around the corner (pretty much), all the way playing ear-piercing Bollywood music, and trying to convince me to pick up a local prostitute for just 100,000 a night. I found a room and went straight to sleep. Yesterday was a slow day in Probolinggo. It's just a dirty big sprawl of a city, and there was nothing to do except wander up and down the street being stared and yelled at (Hey Mister! Hey Mister!). Lonely Planet calls it the mango capital of Java, but on a street full of fruit-sellers there was not a single mango to be found. They must be out of season here... Most of the day was spent laying on my dirty mattress watching the fan-blades, like the opening scene from Apocalypse Now. "Probolinggo... Sheeit... I'm still in Probolinggo." I spent the evening smoking kreteks with some travelling salesmen from Malang, and watching Indonesian television. If you're not in Probolinggo for the mountain, you're there for the prostitutes. So eventually I had to book a driver to take me out to Bromo for the sunrise. My wake-up call was at 2.15am. It took nearly two hours on winding roads to get to Cemoro Lawang, from where you either walk or hire a jeep to Gunung Bromo itself. I chose to walk. The path started out easy enough. Paved and marked on either side. Then it opened up into a massive crater - a veritible desert in the sky. The three main mountains are all within this ancient crater, and the rest of it is just flat, littered with volcanic debris and the odd tuft of grass. Of course, at four o'clock in the morning you can't see anything. I had a torch, but the white stone markers that I was supposed to follow were more of a dark-brown in colour, and impossible to see. So, instead I followed the white wooden posts, which took me in entirely the wrong direction. A jeep full of Papuans rumbled up behind me, stopped and told me to turn left. So I did, but I was still stumbling through the dark. After walking all the way to the base of the wrong mountain, I spotted a light in the distance and headed towards it. They were like Javanese gypsies, sitting around a fire, wrapped in colourful blankets. I yelled out "Hello!" and they started running towards me. "Bromo ini?" I said... "Ya ya, you want guide Bromo? Twenty thousand." So what choice did I have? They literally held my hand as we came towards the mountain and scaled the steps up to its crater rim. As it became brighter a Korean man in a track-suit arrived on horseback, and we stood together waiting for the sun. It wasn't exactly the hoards of tourists that I had been lead to expect on Bromo at sunrise, but it certainly was an amazing view up there. Bromo itself is constantly puffing sulphurous gases that burn the eyes and sting the throat when the lookout is down-wind. Semaru, in the distance, emits a thick black cloud every ten minutes or so - so slowly that you can barely detect it moving. You just turn around to see this massive black plume in the sky that wasn't there before. The walk back was much easier in the daylight, but I don't know how anybody can find their way in the dark. I suppose that's why they hire out jeeps. Back in Probolinggo, I hitched a becak out to the train station, bound for Malang. Economy class was okay. Spacious enough. And at every stop a different set of buskers would get on. Mostly small children, or adults with deformities, tapping home-made tambourines and collecting money in an empty chip-packet. At one stop, five young guys in green t-shirts got on with a banjo, double bass, guitars and tambourine and played a song. Unfortunately I had already given all of my small money to the midget and the guy with the lumpy face. Malang is a totally different kind of city. I had been worried that all of Java would be like a giant Probolinggo. This place is cleaner and cooler, and there's obviously more money here - shiny four-wheel-drives cruise the streets, and there are plenty of well-groomed young people in this internet cafe. There are some Germans staying at my hotel whom I haven't met yet, and I spotted a white mormon on the street, wearing a badge that read "Yesus Krist something something..." So at least I'm maybe not such an oddity here. I'm here for a couple of nights anyway, so maybe I'll change my mind about Malang. Stay tuned.