Jakarta

As we were originally going to Sri Lanka rather than Indonesia, we had a flight booked from Kuala Lumpur to Manila. The cheapest place to fly to Kuala Lumpur from was Jakarta, and so we decided to spend a couple of nights there. When we told anyone that we were going to Jakarta their response was always along the lines of "spend as little time there possible", to the point that people suggested taking a day train rather than a night train just to use up time. As it turned out the city wasn't great, but they were perhaps a little dramatic!

Accommodation
We stayed in Wonderloft hostel. The free breakfast was excellent- unlimited toast, cereal or porridge with peanut butter and dark chocolate spread, with fruit and free flow tea and coffee. The hostel had good communal areas, pod style beds and a rooftop. The staff were friendly and helpful and yeah just a great place to stay

Things to do
Cinema- Lol. We thought we might as well kill some time and toy story 4 had conveniently just come out. Popcorn and a ticket for a couple of pounds, it was the perfect way to stay cool in the midday sun. I love going to the cinema abroad because it's SO much cheaper than in England. We went to a cinema in a massive shopping mall and had a little browse afterwards

Museum/main square- We wanted to go to the heritage museum as I don't know anything about Java's history, but it was closed as there was a festival going on. It was actually pretty cool to see lots of people in traditional clothing and a huge street market. We also found a nice cafe nearby to people watch, so the museum being closed worked out pretty well

Food
Omg. We had THE BEST vegan food here!! I went on happy cow and found a vegan restaurant so we took a grab there. The menu was so extensive that we checked a couple of times that everything really had no meat in it. They had so many meat alternatives and we had probably my favourite food of the whole trip here. Crispy tofu nuggets, a vegetable and noodle soup, mushrooms and vegan chicken... It was all so nice and still super cheap. They even had an amazing looking caramel cake which I resisted as I'd eaten so much but it was tough!!

Getting to/from
From Jakarta we flew onwards to Kuala Lumpur, and took an Uber to the airport. The traffic there is BAD so allow yourself plenty of time!

Laura x

Yogyakarta

Also known as Jogja, the main attraction that we were aware of here was the very famous and beautiful temples. Turns out they often do loads of cool classes in things like jewellery making and cooking. This ended up being a really cool place to visit and we could definitely have filled another day here. Don't rush it to get to Jakarta, you have been warned x

Accommodation
We stayed at Laura's Backpackers. Lured in by the promise of free dinner and breakfast, this hostel had hot showers, a big communal area and dorm beds with curtains around them. The big free meals made it very easy to meet other travellers, and it was a very sociable hostel in that sense, with a big group going camping and hanging out in the evenings

The owners were really helpful in finding stuff to do and arranging stuff for us, though a couple of times the prices they told us were wrong which was a bit awkward. The hostel was a 15 minute walk to the train station which was very doable despite having to cross a pretty big roundabout.

Things to do
Temples: The main attraction here is the  temples but they come with a pretty hefty entry fee. Considering the Taj Mahal is £10 we were shocked and so only opted to go to one of the temples; Borobudur. I definitely think this was the right choice, the price as a student wasn't that bad (£15 I think) and the temple really was beautiful. We did a full scale photoshoot here and also had to pose for about a million photos for other people. From our hostel it was possible to take buses but we ended up taking grabs for the one hour journey each way and they weren't that expensive

Cooking class: Meg and I did a cooking class which I really enjoyed! In the morning we visited the local market to buy our ingredients which was a really cool experience. Everything was SO cheap (like a massive bag of tofu for hardly anything) and then we went back to the kitchen to get started. We made a vegetable curry, a dish which was essentially a tofu omelette with different mushrooms, a caramelised tempeh snack, purple rice, tofu fritters and vegan prawn crackers. We made the food with a lovely lady in a class on our own which ended with us all eating what we'd made. So much fun and so much good food

Jewellery class: I've wanted to do a class like this for ages so was so glad we got a chance! We were able to make one item each (I kind of cheated by making a pair of earrings) and we chose the designs ourselves. It was weird in the sense that we just kind of guessed what we were doing and then the guy would correct us but hey we all made something cool

Spa: The others did such a good spa package which sadly I didn't have time for. Arranged through the hostel they got loads of treatments including a sauna, hair spa, massage, exfoliation etc. for 4 hours for under £10. Slightly gutted not to have done it but I decided to opt for the temple instead

Food
Because our hostel did free breakfast and dinner we mainly ate there. The portions were pretty small and very much lacking in anything other than carbs for the vegans, so one night we found a nearby place which served lots of different tofu and tempeh dishes to fill up on. The staff spoke no English and we walked around with a translator app (funniest thing ever- I tried to say "we don't eat meat" and it auto-translated to "please don't eat me")

General notes
Yogyakarta is a cool city and we split our time pretty evenly between here and Jakarta, but the general consensus is to spend more time here, and I agree with that

Getting to/from
We arrived to Yogyakarta from Malang, taking a pretty long train during the day. We lost a fair bit of time doing this but the train was nice and air conditioned so can't complain.

To get to Jakarta we took a night train which got us there at around 3am, where we got a grab to our hostel. Not the most fun journey ever, but it did the job!

Laura x

Malang

I'm just gonna write a tiny post about this because it was a good place for a quick stopover but we were only there for like 14 hours to break up the journey to Yogyakarta

Accommodation
We stayed in Mador Malang Dorm. Really good hostel walking distance to the train station. Perfect for one night, and everyone seemed to either be on their way to or from Bromo. Had free breakfast (jam and peanut butter toasties yum) and was clean. The beds were like little pods in the dorm which I love and there were hot showers

What to do
We visited the colourful village here which was actually really cool for a short trip. The houses and buildings are painted in bright colours and there are loads of decorations like umbrellas and hats. Not really sure of the history behind it but it made for a nice walk

Other than that we just bought me a phone since mine had died the week previously, so if you need to know the Oppo store is excellent.

There was a market but not touristy just aimed at locals and was pretty much all men's clothing.

The hostel had lots of recommendations for stuff to do, restaurants etc. but we didn't use these because we were just there for like 15 hours

Laura x

Probolinggo/ Cemara Lawang

This is where to stay to climb Mount Bromo. It's a small place, pretty similar to where we stayed for Ijen, but we stayed in more of a town than a village here. There's not a lot else to do so we stayed for one night

Accommodation
We stayed at Sedular Homestay. This place was good but a lot more expensive than Ijen (still super cheap though). It had WiFi, and we got a private triple room. It had a squat toilet but hot showers and was right in the centre of town.

Getting around
From Probolinggo bus station minibuses do the 90 minute drive to Cemara Lawang (IS THIS RIGHT???). The bus station is notorious for scams (cute right??) but we were told multiple times by staff that the tickets should be 35,000 each. When our bus arrived in the town the driver said that it was 60,000 each. We had been travelling all day and were all super grumpy and put up a massive fight against paying the extra, leading to the driver standing on the doorstep of our homestay for about half an hour. In retrospect possibly a little petty of us?? Lol

Things to do
There are jeeps everywhere offering sunrise tours of Bromo. After our night climb of Ijen the previous evening we were very much not okay with a 4am wake up, and I'd seen online that you can walk to Bromo from the village.

After some breakfast we did the climb. It's about an hour to the base across essentially a desert. If you've ever played the Sims 2 picture Strange Town (lol). To get down to it you have to go down a mud path which takes like 10-15 minutes but is not a pleasant walk. It's SO dusty that the clothes I wore that day still produce dust when I wash them. From there you just walk towards the mountain where all the jeeps are heading. Bromo itself is free to climb, and a lot easier than Ijen. We reached the crater in maybe half an hour? You just climb some stairs. The views are cool and you can see some smoke coming out of the volcano (it is active after all) but we couldn't work out what we were missing.

DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AS US. Lol just a little bit bitter x King Kong hill is the most impressive viewpoint, where almost all photos that you see of Bromo are taken from. We couldn't work out where these photos were taken from, but found out that's where the jeeps take you. Without sounding extremely uncultured, Bromo was a bit of a let down without King Kong hill. Definitely go there, or you'll probably end up just as confused as us.

Food
The area isn't packed with restaurants, but we found a small local place serving pancakes and veggie noodles which made for a good breakfast.

It's pretty remote, so I'd take snacks with you or you'll end up paying loads more than necessary

Just along the road from the bus station is an IndoMaret supermarket where we booked train tickets and got snacks. Next door to that was a really nice restaurant which did THE BEST crispy tofu nuggets. I am still dreaming about them

Getting to/from
Get a mini bus from Probolinggo bus station. If you can fill it it should be 30,000 each, but if not you'll have to pay extra. On the way back we only managed to get 5 people rounded up so had to pay more which was a little annoying but hey ho, we wanted to get to the next place.

We opted to get a local bus to Malang from Probolinggo. Scam central part two x don't buy your ticket until the bus starts moving (though I think we only lost about 50p by not following this). The scams are annoying but seeing Bromo was definitely worth it

General notes
I got super sunburnt climbing Bromo! Nothing like the cool temperature up Ijen

Laura x

Banyuwangi/ Ijen

We headed over to Java to climb some mountains and do some more backpackery stuff before going to the Philippines to continue lying on beaches. Java is a lot less touristy than Bali and seems to attract more of a middle aged couple climbing the volcanoes crowd, and so perhaps appropriately everything costs a bit more and it's a bit more of a challenge to travel there

Accomodation
We stayed at Ijen Farmer Homestay to climb Mount Ijen, a volcano with a blue sulphur crater lake at the top. This was a very basic homestay. We had a triple room which had bunk beds and a mattress on the floor, and an ensuite which didn't have a sink, and for some time there was no running water. It was really really cheap (about £5 total) and the hosts were nice (though we saw him kiss another woman despite introducing us to his tiny wife, which was slightly off) and they had fast WiFi despite being in pretty much the middle of nowhere. They also made us a chocolate pancake and tea for free when we arrived and very cheap noodles for dinner and some rice included for breakfast.

What to do
The main attraction of here is climbing Ijen. Other than that there wasn't much around, though we did go to see some rice terraces in the afternoon which were very pretty. We organised our ferry port pick up, transport to and from Ijen and drop off at the bus station through the hostel owner's friend arranged through WhatsApp before we arrived. We paid him 600,000 IDR for this, about £33, which involved him waiting at the bottom of the crater for hours in the middle of the night. He also spent ages driving us around the next day to a train station, bus station and back again because we hadn't booked onwards travel. He was such a sweet man aw

Climbing Ijen
We left the homestay at 1am and began the drive to the base of the volcano. It took about 45 minutes where we paid the entrance fee (think it was 100,000 IDR) and then got a lot of warm stuff ready for the climb. We hired masks from the homestay, and took blankets with us, and the driver even gave me a coat. The hike itself was pretty much all uphill, and to the crater took about an hour and a half. Climbing in the dark sounds pretty terrifying but there were loads of people there and we could kind of see but also used our phone torches to help.

From the crater there is a viewing area to see the blue flames. This was the reason for climbing in the middle of the night, but annoyingly for us we didn't get to see the flames. Some people were walking down to the crater lake, but it's apparently pretty dangerous and we were freezing by this point so ended up lying down in our blankets.

From the crater lake we walked for about half an hour to reach a sunrise point. We weren't entirely sure where it was but everyone was walking the same way and we asked some people. As the sun rose it became really really beautiful and a bit warmer so we spent an hour or so taking photos before climbing back down, which took about 45 minutes

Food
We just ate at the hostel, but there were a few little general stores, as well as one at the start of the hike where we got a drink. I'd recommend taking snacks or a sugary drink for the walk

Getting to/from
To reach Ijen we followed lots of instructions on blogs. We took a bus from the bus terminal in Denpasar to Gilimanuk, and then took the ferry from Gilimanuk to Banyywangi (Bali to Java) and from there our driver met us and drove us to the homestay.

From Ijen we took a bus going to Probolinggo, where Mount Bromo is. The direct train took about 3.5 hours, but we missed it and so ended up getting a long local bus journey which took about 7 hours. Not fun with no A/C

Ubud

We ended up extending our time in Lembongan meaning that we only had a night left on Bali before heading to Java. After a bit of research we decided to spend the night in Ubud. I'd been before and it's very touristy; think yoga, cheap massages and all the souvenirs, as well as the sacred monkey forest where everyone who's been to Bali seems to have a photo. For a night it's definitely worth it and has all the eat pray love vibes

Accommodation
We stayed at Kabera Bunglaows. A pretty simple place which I have no complaints about. Close to the main road, it had a lovely pool and a really nice breakfast brought up to a table by our room in the morning. Rooms were pretty basic but we had a bath and the staff were nice.

Food
This is where to get all the smoothie bowls and western cravings out of your system. I don't know the names of the restaurants we went to but there are loads around, and I had a really nice and cheap smoothie bowl and we also found a restaurant doing cheap Mexican food. Not very traditional but hey

Vegan ice cream- we saw multiple places selling the same brand of vegan ice cream. It was experience (35,000 IDRA per scoop) but real gelato and the best vegan ice cream I've ever had

What to do
Sacred monkey forest- it's got to be done. Even if you're terrified of monkeys (like me). The entry is cheap (maybe £3/4) and you walk around a big area full of monkeys. They're wild animals really so keep everything in your bag securely, and there are signs saying no plastic or paper bags and to remove sunglasses etc. Don't smile, look directly at a monkey or try to touch it. But they're super cool to see and they'll come and sit on you or try and steal your stuff. Definitely an experience, and turns out Georgie loves them

Massages- this is the place to get one. We found somewhere that would do 3 for 100,000 IDR with a bit of bargaining. I was massaged by a man and we were in a room all together topless. Very good massage though and for under £2 for half an hour I'm in no position to complain

Shopping- this is souvenir heaven. All the gifts you want to find people can be found here and there are countless shops selling the same thing. Barter well though, because with all the tourists everything is overpriced

Getting to/from
From the airport you can take a grab for maybe £15 ish for the hour and a half journey

We were dropped off as part of our tour in 'central ubud' which was a 20 minute walk to our hostel

From Ubud we took a taxi to Denpasar bus terminal to go on to Java. There are a lot of signs saying not to use grab there and to support the local taxi drivers. After a lot of bartering we found a very sweet driver who would do the journey for 200,000 IDR and I felt we did a good deed by supporting him

Nusa Lembongan

After Uluwatu our plan was to head to the Gili Islands with 2 nights on Gili T then 2 on Gili Air. However after buying our ticket and transport the ferries weren't running. Much closer to mainland Bali are the Nusa islands, and for a bit of our money back we were able to go to Nusa Lembongan instead.

Accommodation
We stayed at Rigils Bungalows and Spa which I couldn't recommend more. It was really, really nice. About a 10 minute walk from mushroom beach where the ferry drops you off, and only about 5 to two other lovely beaches, this "hostel" has the lovely bungalow style accommodation many of the fancy resorts do, but for around £5 per person per night. We stayed in a 4 bedroom dorm which was clean and spacious, with two bathrooms just for the room. It had A/C, free breakfast and a pool. The owners were lovely and helpful, they sold cheap cocktails but it was also near to many restaurants. One of the best hostels I've ever stayed at. No hot showers tho

Things to do
Beaches- we weren't all that lucky with the weather during our stay and only really went to the beach on our last day. Tamarind beach is close to the hostel as well as a really nice private beach the owner told us about. We went there for the sunset and even saw a couple get engaged

Mangrove forest- There's a big area of forest on the island where you can take boat trips and do stand up paddle boarding. The SUPing wasn't running when we did it as I assume it's off season which was a shame and so we didn't actually visit, but it sounded nice!

Devil's Tear- this is a pretty cool cliff edge where the waves get really high. We were told not to get too close to the edge as tourists have died there which is never a reassuring thing to hear, but if you stay far back it's good for photos

Nusa Ceningan- We walked over to the small island attached to Lembongan by a yellow bridge on our last day. There are loads of lovely beach side restaurants and bars where we stopped for a drink and later some lunch. We walked to blue lagoon which was really pretty, and then walked back. In the sea are lots of swings which make very pretty photo backdrops!

Club nights- While we were there one of the bars had a club night with a DJ which all the tourists went to. We got there early to utilise happy hour and they even extended it for us until the bar picked up a bit. We had seen signs around the area advertising it so it was easy to find

Food
We went to a few different restaurants along the road by our hostel for lunches and dinners. They all served similar things- the tofu curries and satay were my favourites. A lot of places sold cocktails and did happy hours making each drink less than £3

We had some of my favourite food of the trip here, and it was all freshly made and cheap. The beach bar we went to for lunch had a pool despite being right on the beach so we had a dip after our food. The smoothie bowls looked great and were reasonably priced

Getting to/from
We paid 550,000 IDR for return transport including hostel pick up and drop off in Bali. This was definitely overpriced, but due to our plan to go to Gili we paid it anyway, and it was sorted through our hostel in Uluwatu. Shop around.

We wanted to go from Lembongan onto the Gili Islands but it's really expensive. It's cheaper to do a return ferry to Bali and then go to the Gilis from there, though we didn't end up doing that
The boat trip takes about 30 minutes and wasn't bad. You have to wade out up to around mid thigh level to get on the boat, so maybe wear shorts

Uluwatu

Our visit to Munnar brought our time in India to an end, and as tempting as it is to write a post about to joy that is Singapore airport (I'm not even joking I love it) we made it to Bali. After meeting Georgie at the airport we took a grab to Uluwatu where we spent 2 nights. Personally, I'd give Uluwatu a miss if returning to Bali. I think there are better places to spend your time, but it was okay for a night or two

Accommodation
We stayed at Pecatu Guesthouse which was a hostel. It was okay and the beds had a curtain around them like little pods but they were SO squeaky and every time anyone moved the whole room heard it. That being said they had cheap food, hot water, a pool and it was sociable. Probably a good place to start your trip but it was full of tanned surfers and we were not in the mood to socialise so definitely looked like the boring trio. I think we paid around £5 a night. The location was alright as everything was reachable by a cheap Grab, but it wasn't particularly near anything and it was a bit of a trek to get food outside of the hostel.

Getting to/from
From Denpasar airport- We took a Grab for around 180,000 IDR which is approx £10

To Nusa Lembongan- we intended to go to Gili T from there and booked return mini bus transport and speed boat for 600,000 IDR each which is around £30. The ferry ended up not running as it was too windy so for 550,000 we were able to use our tickets to go to Nusa Lembongan, though we definitely overpaid for this. Taking a Grab to Sanur or Padang Bai and getting the ferry from there is also a cheap way of doing this journey.

Things to do
Uluwatu Temple- This is definitely the selling point of the place. A bit pricey at 130,000 entry to see the temple and the famous Kecak dance but we opted to anyway. The dance was okay- nice to see a bit of culture. the temple is on a high cliff with some pretty sea views below. The dance was an hour long, but it was SO crowded (several hundred people watching) that we left about 5 minutes before the end to avoid the crowds trying to get out

Uluwatu Beach- We visited a small beach/cave which was very pretty but our hostel wasn't close to any actual sunbathing or swimming beaches


Food
We ended up mainly eating at the hostel. The breakfast they offered was good- huge bowl of fresh fruit for a pound or so, and they did Tempe sandwiches with fries which made a good dinner on our first night.

We had lunch at a restaurant near to the beach which was really nice and cheap! Can't remember the name though

General notes
SIM card- as this was our first stop in Indonesia we intended to buy a sim card here. The only place we found charged us 180,000 IDR for 8GB of data and nothing else, which we soon discovered was massively overpriced. The locals pay like 5,000 per GB!