Merry Christmas from Malang

OK, so Em updated everyone on Mount Bromo. Here is my take on the description: Drain Crater Lake, re-fill with sand. Add one more wizard island, remove all snow. And add Mt Hood in the background….Got It?

So yeah…we are in Malang. We have been staying at an old Dutch colonial mansion that was long ago converted to a hotel. The common areas are very nice. There are about 6 sitting rooms, with couches and international TV (CNN, BBC, HBO). So we got caught up in international news and even watched a movie. We are still traveling with Steve and BB from Belgium we have had fun dinners and rounds of billiards over Bintang (Indonesian beer).

The room was OK. The hot water didn’t work if our neighbors next door were using it. But that was not the least of are worries. Just outside the front desk the hotel they kept a big Rooster in a small cage. We commented that the only way he was ever going to come out the small door was in pieces. So needless to say, he was bored. He started making his morning “cuck a doodle doo’s” at about 2:00 a.m. We wish we would have brought Em’s Ambien because we’d had fed him a nice snack. The next day we had a long conversation with him, and last night he was much better. Sunrise only.

On our first night we went out to a nicer diner at the Amsterdam restaurant. It was about 4 km from the hotel and it being night, we didn’t want to walk. So, we grabbed a Becak, a three wheeled bicycle with the driver in the back and Em and I up front. All XXXX lbs of us. It was slightly uphill. The driver was small. Physics! He ended up pushing us in places. Very embarrassing! It turns out however, that this is normal and we saw becak drivers pushing their passengers around fairly often once we started noticing. Is was good for a laugh at ourselves though.

We will enjoy a quiet Christmas in the mountains to the North, a little town called Tretes. We are thinking af all of you over the holidays.

Emily here now....here are some pictures from the past week or so....

First, back to Ubud, and our cooking class. Keith learning the Bali technique of using the hands in all of the Balinese cooking:



Here's a look at the agricultural area around Bromo from the hike we did to the viewpoint:


And another picture of the village that I just really like:


A look into Mt Bromo - the most active of the volcanoes:


Here's the vast wasteland from the viewpoint on our second attempt at the sunrise:


Here is our transport that we took across the sand sea from Bromo to Malang:


Workers doing their daily chores of gathering grass to feed the cows and horses. They carry this so far and it looks SO heavy. No riding tractors here.