On Monday, I wake up at our accommodation in Medewi and enjoy the wonderful ocean view from the terrace. We chose this fishing village as our stop because we had read in Lonely Planet before the trip that it has remained much as Bali was 20 years ago, before mass tourism. In this quiet fishing village, you’re more likely to meet people who are already quite familiar with Bali. After breakfast, I watch as fishermen bring everything they’ve caught from the sea to the small fis

On Sunday morning, we begin our journey by train from Probolinggo to the port town where the ferry departs for Bali. Food is served on the train, packaged similarly to airplane meals. From the port, we board the ferry. As soon as we step off the ferry in Bali, taxi drivers surround us and offer rides to our destination, Medewi, at a much higher price than what we had found online. Since it’s nearly a two-hour drive, the price difference isn’t small enough to simply accept. Wh

On Saturday, I wake up before 4 a.m. because our accommodation is located right by the road leading to the viewpoint where people go to watch the sunrise, and the bathroom ventilation is literally just a hole in the wall. Motorbikes and off-road vehicles transporting visitors to the viewpoint make so much noise that even earplugs are useless. I drag myself out of bed and climb up to the viewpoint as well. By then, it’s already packed with people. I’m the only foreigner there—

On Friday morning, we take the train from Yogyakarta to Probolinggo and from there continue by taxi up into the mountains to Bromo National Park. Halfway through the drive, the driver asks if he can stop so he can pray at a mosque. We agree, of course. In Bromo National Park, it’s quite chilly in the evening, so we have to put on all the clothes we have with us—we’ve now reached an altitude of about 2,000 meters. Since Bromo is an active volcano, the word “lava” appears in th

On Thursday morning, our driver Edwin picks us up again from our hotel in Yogyakarta, and we head to the Prambanan temple complex, the second most important attraction in the region. This 9th-century Hindu temple complex, like Borobudur, is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Only Angkor Wat in Cambodia is a larger Hindu complex in Southeast Asia. Interspersed among the Hindu temples are several Buddhist temples from the same period, showing that followers of the two r

On Wednesday, we spend a sunny morning at our hotel in Yogyakarta. By chance, we meet a driver there who transports tourists, and we arrange for him to take us by car to Indonesia’s most famous temple, located near Yogyakarta. The driver’s name is Edwin. When I ask if that’s his real name, he confirms that it is. He explains that since Indonesia was a Dutch colony, Western names like his are quite common. When we tell him that we’re from Estonia (at least most of us are) and

On Tuesday, I wake up at 4 a.m. in our Jakarta hotel room to the sound of banging on doors and shouting. At first, I think someone is just messing around and even consider going back to sleep. Then one of my travel companions calls me, but I don’t manage to answer. Instead, I write in our group chat:“You called? There were locals banging at all the room doors for some reason?” The reply comes quickly:“Fire. In the hotel. Serious. I came down with elevator. Stairs full of smok

On the fourth day, the last two members of our four-person travel group arrive. We visit Jakarta’s “Old Town”—a somewhat run-down district where a few buildings from the 17th century have been preserved along the canal, dating back to the time when the Dutch East India Company established the city under the name Batavia. From there, we walk toward the harbor. Along the way, the surroundings become truly dirty and somewhat suspicious, and a couple of locals try to act as our g

When I wake up at 2:30 a.m. to head to the airport, it turns out that our flight to Flores Island—originally postponed to 4:30 a.m.—has been completely canceled due to an excessive concentration of volcanic ash at Labuan Bajo Airport. So I go back to sleep. Our original plan had been to take a boat trip from Labuan Bajo to Komodo Island to see Komodo dragons, but instead we head to Jakarta Zoo to see a Komodo dragon there. And we succeed. We also see an orangutan, which would