coffee and spices

Munduk is in the hills of North West Bali. Here they grow many different spices such as cloves, as well as coffee and rice. The air smells of the spices as they are dried outside village houses. We went on a guided walk and met our guide's mother who is 94 and still sorting cloves!

Gecko!

Everywhere I go there are geckoes. They come out at night and eat our mosquitoes. This one was not so lucky - it was dead and was being moved by a swarm of ants.

Hindu cremation ceremony

While we were in Permuteran, we witnessed a Hindu cremation ceremony. It was a funeral where the whole village came to watch the ceremony. Firstly, the women of the family lead a procession, followed by friends and the rest of the villagers. The men of the family carried the body in a box in which the grandchild was seated. Following was an effigy of a spirit (an ox) which was burned on the funeral pyre.

Permuteran, Bali

We caught the ferry from Java to Bali. Although we could see our destination, it took an hour to get to Bali while we waited with 10 other boats for a berth to become free. If they were organized, we would have arrived 45 minutes earlier.

Permuteran is on the North West coast of Bali. From the black sand beach we can see the volcanoes of Java. We stayed on a harbor with fishing boats and did a snorkeling trip.

Mt Bromo

Java has many volcanoes and we walked to one that is active. The landscape was a bit like the moon. We walked around the top and looked into the crater. I lifted up a volcanic rock!

Solo

Solo is the old capital of Indonesia and very traditional. It is the batik capital and we saw how batik was made. We also visited other cottage industries such as Gamelon factory (traditional musical instrument), bakery, rice wine and Javanese shadow puppets. Most of the factories were in the countryside in old sheds, but it was amazing what the workers could make. I had a go at making banana bread.

Yogyakarta - Borobudur

This is an amazing World Heritage site. Borobudur is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist monument near Yogyakarta. You have to walk around each of the nine levels of the monument clockwise before you reach the top with stupas. We watched the sun set from the top and it was a beautiful view.