Early Mornings and Malang, Indonesia

Committed to traveling overland from Yogyakarta to the island of Bali, we took a several hour train to the hill town of Malang. The plan was to climb the volcanic Mount Bromo and watch the sunrise over its peak, and Melang seemed the best jump-off point. Having grabbed some "Executive" class train tickets (which were still only about $20 each), we had very comfortable, wide and reclinable seats and our own plugs, making it a commodious travel experience.

We had decided to splurge (again, at around $60 hardly breaking the bank in dollars terms, but more than double our normal spots in Indonesia) for our stay in Malang, as we had heard about a somewhat unusual hotel. Tugu Malang is owned by the ancestor of "sugar king," a Chinese businessmen who came to Indonesia and built an agriculture empire on palm sugar plantations and married a native malay woman. His descendant, Anhar Setjadibrata, retained some family heirlooms, and a passion for historic relics and art. Apparently, throughout his 20's Mr. Setjadibrata traveled throughout his native island of Java, as well as other islands of Indonesia and the Philippines, collecting artifacts along the way, and ultimately housing them in a restaurant and hotel in Malang he built from ground up. Long story short, our accommodation, Hotel Tugu Melang, felt as much like a museum and architectural art exhibit as it did a resort hotel. I was excited for our stay, having read about it in the guidebook, but the place blew all my expectations out of the water.

We arrived at our hotel in the early evening, but didn't plan on getting too comfortable, because we had a driver set to pick us up a few hours later, just after midnight. In our research of Mount Bromo National Park, reviews and blog posts all sang praise of the same approach to the visit: a jeep ride in the wee hours of the morning up to a hilltop just outside the national park, to arrive in time to watch the sunrise over the volcano peak, followed by a morning trek up the volcano itself and back! Many tours even combined this trek with a second sunrise climb up a volcano several hours further east in a wild two night extravaganza. We decided to book just the one dawn adventure to start, and in the way of Indonesia, did the booking over Whatsapp.1

We had gotten in a few short hours of sleep, but awoke to our carefully set alarms as 12:15am, to see a Whatsapp message that our driver was already arrived and waiting for us. Our driver didn't speak english, but ushered us into the backseat with another Indonesian couple already in the car. And off we went, about 30 minutes outside town. Here, we pulled off the side of the road at a small parking lot, and waited around for others in the group to arrive. Around 1AM, we and the other couple were packed like sardines into the back of Jeep, and off we went, up dark windy roads, up more dark windy roads, and up dark windy off-roads covered in deep puddles. We were bounced and tossed around along the way, so violently that poor Shadie hit his head and stayed swollen for several days! We bounced and bumped until around 4:00AM, when the long line of jeeps all parked along a cliffs edge and we were ushered out into the surprisingly bitter cold air and then into some smoky huts (all the drivers smoked there), where one could buy tea and wait some more until sunrise was imminent. A bit dazed, Shadie and I sipped on lovely tea from our thermos' provided by our hotel (more on than later!), and tried to fight off exhaustion and the chill while chatting with a lovely Brit, who was in Indonesia on a work tour teaching kids soccer. At 4:45AM, with dawn imminent, we trekked up the final few hundred feet up the hill to see what we could see. And from the top of the mountain, we saw....not much. The cloudy dawn didn't provide much in the way of sunrise, and while the volcanoes on the horizon were nice, they were hardly something to blink at for two Colorado residents.

We took some obligatory photos of the misty horizon and trudged back down the hill in search of short nap in the cramped jeep before we were all off again, bouncing and bumping, this time to dunes below the volcano. When the jeep pulled up, we emerged to find a clamor of men on horseback, each looking to give us a ride across the sand to the volcanoes base. We opted to walk instead, and climbed some steep stairs to the volcanoes top, where we could stare straight down into the steam and yellow Sulphur center of the caldera. The steam stung the eyes, and a tumble of the edge would surely have brought a gollum style ending. The jeep brought us to several other pretty but not notable spots in the park before heading back into town, where we arrived, deeply bruised and exhausted around 12:30PM, some 12 sleepless hours after we departed. Shadie and I promptly swore off any future "sunrise" tours, and fell deeply asleep until late afternoon.

While Mount Bromo itself was impressive, with our uncomfortable and exhausting sunrise adventure tour, the visit to this part of Indonesia might have felt a bit like a bummer had it not been for our accommodations.

Firstly, every staff member was both extremely friendly and extremely professional. The front desk staff, remembered both our names a day later, and had sound advice and helpful information for us at every turn. It was he who suggested the hotel could prep us tea in thermos and some breakfast to go for Mount Bromo tour. He also made sure we had the train station and tickets for our onward journey the next day. We also got a stellar tour (free) of the hotel's amazing artifacts and history from similarly lovely staffer, and he even took us into the jaw dropping presidential suite upstairs. Our all-inclusive breakfasts was several courses (with at least three menus to choose form), and each was delightful, including an array of tropical fruits, oatmeal bowls with fresh coconut flesh, seeds and honey, and multigrain breads with local jams.

Charmed, we also opted to eat meals at both the in-house restaurants, each with themed decor and an array of gorgeous artifacts to decorate them; one was designed to look like you were at Angkor Wat, Cambodia, and actually pulled it off. The food was amazing here too.

But, wait, there's more. We were given a free 15 minute welcome massage when we arrived, and invited to a high tea in the afternoon worthy of the Brown Palace. The Java tea I selected is a rich but not too sharp black, with just hint of jasmine and a few other undiscernible spices. Shadie selected his favorite ginger tea, and was happy to find it perfectly gingery but not sugarified. We enjoyed our teas along side an amazing selection of Indonesian savory snacks and desserts. We so enjoyed these snacks the first tea time, we ended up not having room for dinner. And upon departure, we were given a free bag of local coffee to send us on our way.

Malang is a university town as well as home to many of the country's embassies. This, along with Setjadibrata's clear love of his art and artifact collection hobby, and staff's happiness working there, may also have contributed the uniquely lovely experience we had staying there. While Malang's biggest tourist attraction wasn't one we'd necessarily recommend, if you end up in Malang, be sure to stay at Tugu!

Footnotes:

1) We had actually listened to a podcast earlier in the trip that discussed how important Whatsapp is as a business platform in India. So it was less alarming and fascinating, when we kept getting directed to Whatsapp to schedule tours, request drivers, get ballet tickets or visit national parks. We found the system has pros and cons. Holding Whatsapp conversations took far more time and energy than it would have to click through a website form on US site. On the flip side, it meant you had someone available to ask questions we tried to figure out logistics or confusing details in an unknown place.

2) Our guide Handy, was deliberate in pointing out how mosques and churches and Hindu temples were all located physically adjacent to each other. He said it was no accident, as Indonesians are committed to engendering respect and friendliness across their three major religions. By and large, we experienced what seemed what seemed to be genuine good will across these very different religious groups, as we also had in Singapore and Malaysia.

But wait, there's more. The hotel also helped us set up a bike tour around town. Our lovely guide, Handy, waited good-naturedly for over an hour as we finished our breakfast and hoped an unexpected morning rain would stop before heading out on the town on decent mountain bikes. He showed us various neighborhoods, from lowest wealth to highest wealth, as he put it, as well as past several mosques and churches2, and a few local markets, one focused birds (the favorite pet on Java) and plants.

He also took us one of Mr. Setjadibrata's private houses, where we were served more tea and croquettes, a hybrid of Dutch and Javanese cooking, in the garden while we chatted with Handy about the town.

Shadie really illustrating how tired and cold we felt!

Snapshots from our wild and wildly uncomfortable volcano sunrise adventure tour.

Above: Tugu Malang had both authentic historic artifacts (I saw as early as 5th century BCE, as well as beautiful interior design that recreated historic spaces, blending Javanese and other Malay and Chinse cultural styles. Below: My delight over Tugu's amazing high tea and breakfast spreads, both included in our booking.

Our fantastic bicycle tour guide Handy and us as we head out after the morning rain petered out.