Climbing Mount Ijen and Bromo (part 3) - The Road to Bromo

After long waiting for updates (6 month of postponement again, Yolanda) I'll go through my 3rd and final day of trip, which is the main trip, which is to Bromo.

Yes, Bromo is the star of the trip however sad to say it was not as enjoyable and satisfying as Mount Ijen, the one that I went to the previous day. Maybe mainly because we feel that the path to Bromo were made easy because of the amount of tourist that went there; thus that "sense of achievement" of climbing is lost. Not to mention the sickening crowd of the whole area.

Just to make it short, as usual we start the trip around 4 at dawn, and we rode the Jeep to the first area to see the sunrise. We were brought to a hill called Love Hill, which were quite recommended to see the sunrise on. There's a little climb here, not a climb actually, more of passing about 50-70 stairs and that's it. After that anticlimax moment, we just took space for waiting and we wait around 1 hour until the sun came.

It's not the best photo, I told you, where most of them were taken with a mind to avoid people in the picture as best as we can.

The twilight were pretty awesome even though it's quite foggy that day. After a while the Bromo can be seen clearly once the fog cleared a bit and the day is getting brighter.

The down-climbing were a lot of homework, passing through the crowd like this..

However we managed to snap picture together on the other side of the hill before we climb down.

Satisfied and done with the Sunrise and Love Hill, we went straight to the next main attraction which is visiting the active volcano of Bromo. Its around 30 minutes by the same jeep, which brought us to nearest spot of Bromo's bottom parking area. 

From there it's another 30 minutes until 1 hour of walk to the infamous "Stairway to Hell".

Even though its was not that hilly, what makes the walk difficult is that the ground were mostly sand; thus make it harder to walk, not to mention the sand dust always catch our eyes, and the more we go near the feet of the volcano, the more rocky it is.

Soo, locals gave us solution!! Why not use horse to go to the bottom of the stairs??

It was quite expensive actually; unfortunately I kinda forgot how much that was but I think it's around IDR 50k-150k round trip depends on wheres your checkpoint when picking the horse). We're quite hesitant at first however since there's quite a lot of horse-user making crazy sand dust with their horse, rather be a victim of the sand-dust itself; we decide why bother walking and inhale all of the dust and just use horse instead, for health reasons..

So here my and my friends, taking horse..

Moreover, save time! 15 minutes only for maybe an hour trip.

And once we reached the stairway, we just patiently queue..

Managed to took several good photos too while queuing.

Once we reached the top, we saw the hole immediately. The volcanic hole were amazing and both quite scary. Not only emits sulphuric smoke yet the sound of whatever inside is very loud. 

After we're satisfied taking photos and awe-ing the volcano, we went down asap since there's still a lot of people queuing for the view. We use the horse again to go down the rocky hill and straight to the jeep parking area, which took us to the other two additional spots, which is Teletubbies Hill and Whispering Sand area.

Teletubbies Hill were actually quite ordinary. It was named that way as it consists of several sized hill that formed in a way that resembles the hill on Teletubbies movie. It was not that obvious but recognizable. We took several group photo as well since there's space to it.

As the day is getting brighter, hotter, and sandier, we just take off to the final location which is Whispering Sand area.

We didn't find any extraordinary thing on this area that day, where we think it was just a big flat plain sand area. However this area were famous since the release of Indonesian movie called "Pasir Berbisik" "Whispering Sands" (literally) which tells story about refugees making their ways across sand dunes, and there's this moment where the protagonist have a habit to "hear the sound of sands" in this ares.  And its is true since the locals say that during calmer days, you can hear the sound of the sand's friction that resembles 'whispers', which explain its name. Unlucky for us that it was quite windy that day we can't hear a thing.. 

Since this is our final spot and maybe marked as the end of our trip in Bromo, me and my other 2 friends took one last photo before we went back to our hotel and get cleaned.

All in all, it was such a mind blowing trip!!

Outside of how pain-in-the-ass hard cleaning all the sands from our clothes and shoes, this is just a perfect trip to stay away from the busy days of Jakarta even though it was only for several days. It is our reminder to keep exploring nature in some ways, as there are a lot more to be seen outside, aside from what we're doing on daily basis in Jakarta.

That's all guys for the consecutive posts about Bromo (which took me half of a year to finish it off, ffs) and see you on my next post!

Solo Korea Trip DAY 8 - Stroll Around Ehwa University and Back Home (plus Budget Breakdown)

Finally reaching the last post of my Solo Korea trip which is the 8^th day where most of this day was spent with just strolling around Ehwa University (several stops from Hongdae Station) and moving myself back to the Incheon airport to go back home to Japan.

I have looked at several photos of the Ehwa University and area around them from websites, instagram and other people's blogs, and I expected it will be a very lavish and luxurious area, however damn I was so wrong! (or, am I?)

The only luxurious area was only the entrance to the university, the rest of it was just a normal store that sells indeed so many cheap clothes targeted on university students. Overall it was a very normal neighborhood.

The famous big pink ribbon shoe statue.

In the end Karosukil and Samcheongdong was still on my top list of great and stylish shopping environment in my opinion. After I had quick lunch on the area, I went back to my room in Hongdae, take all of my luggages and off to Incheon directly.

And with that, I officially wrap up my first solo trip to Korea last year!!

In my private and honest opinion, I can conclude several things about my trip:

1. Korea is quite safe for a solo trip both for male or even female, however, If you travel solo, it may be quite hard for you to search for a proper place to eat that serve personal serving on each meal. Especially if you want to eat things such as meat barbecue, and other “sharing food”, they only serve starts from 2-3 people. That’s why I’m relying on fast foods, convenience store and food stalls most of the time. Save money, though.
2. Bring at least one company to Korea. I realize that Korea will be much more enjoyable when you go with friends or families, as everything somewhat were made based on togetherness. Compared to Tokyo with bar seat for single customer in almost every store...
3. People in Seoul was nicer towards foreigner, I feel. When I went to Busan, I got several uncomfortable treatments from locals, from simplest thing such as seats on Bus, there’s this grandma that didn’t like me for sitting beside her, and other stuff that I don’t want to talk about. Geez, chill out man.
4. Don’t go mid summer. Just, don’t.

And finally, my budget breakdown! I won’t include my shopping, flight and staying expense here as everyone has their own preferences on those three subjects. However I will try to include all of the expenses that I spend in Korea for 8 days for 1 person, just for you to get the image.

Somehow in the end of the day I feel like I spent quite a lot too even though I feel I saved enough in several aspects (ha!). I think the major minus point for solo travel was the accommodation expense which will be your burden alone, unless you want to save more by spending the night in very budget hostel/backpackers places; which have a lot of risks being bothered by drunken roommates, and maybe bed bugs. (Happened to me when I went solo trip to Hongkong.) That’s when I learn that you better pay more for comforts rather than in the end making your traveling a big disappointing experience. And come to think of it I think that's the main reason why I don't like Hongkong as much as I like Korea now.

I bet some of you think that either I’m splurging my money too much or too tight on my budget, but I can say by that expense which I wrote above, I can enjoy my trip with no problem. It means that I didn’t have to go very strict on my food, I can buy snacks whatever I want whenever I want, and have some spares for unexpected expense that I have to take out if needed.

With this budget breakdown, I’m ending my posts of my Solo Trip to Korea this time! I hope it was enjoyable and informative, and if you want to follow my itinerary, please do! I can say I’m pretty well organized and confident with my plan as I build my itinerary based on the research of the area, which means that each day I spent must be at least on the same area, making it easier to travel to or even cheaper as you can just go walk within those range.

Kindly share this if you want to and please do tell me about your trip too if you have ever been to Korea before! The more the merrier ;)

Please click links below to see which day you want to browse! (Will update the link one by one with every new post that I’ve uploaded)

See you on the next posts!

Solo Korea Trip DAY 6,7 – Centum City, Back to Seoul (Hongdae), Shopping Day in Karosukil, Sinsa-dong, Myeongdong (Again!)

Thank you again for keep visiting my serial post of my Korea trip! One more post and it will end soon. Time is indeed passing very fast when you're on holiday..

FYI, please note that this time post maaaybe will be more enjoyable for girls (oops), as places which I visit were mostly all the cute themed stores plus talking mostly about shopping. Just so you know :)

For my 6^th day, actually there’s not much that I can write since I spend the day very relaxed compared to other days that I had in Korea. The day was spent on exploring Centum City, one of the biggest shopping mall in Busan, waiting for my KTX to go back to Seoul, and checked in to my new Airbnb stay around Hongdae area.

I didn’t take much photos when I’m in Centum City either. I realized that my first photo of the day was my unique and stylish room in Hongdae.

The minus point was that it was quite hot since it was located on the basement. But all in all it was a nice place.

I went to stroll around Hongdae area too looking for a good place to dine in, 

however since Hongdae was full of drinking place, I decided just to have a cup ramen brought from convenience store, ate in my room and take a good rest and prepare my energy to finally shop on the next day!

My itinerary for the 7th day was literally to visit several shopping area, to shop and cut my hair!

Places that I managed to visit first in the morning were areas in Karosukil goes along to Sinsadong.  I didn't found anything much in Sinsa-dong, so I just walk through to Karosukil. This is some of the photos of how Karosukil looks like:

There are 3 main shops that I wanted to visit here: first were Moonshot (makeup brand by YG Entertainment), second was Line Store, third was 3CE Cinema, and plus one was a cute café called Banana Tree.

I didn’t take photos of Moonshot Store as I didn’t spend longer than 10 minutes inside. I didn’t found it as interesting as I expect it would be, plus some of products were a little bit overpriced as they try to sell the brand with the image of their artists too. Can’t argue more.

And then I just walk down the lane directly to Line Store which is much cuter than the one in Japan in my opinion!

They even have Line Café inside!

See the cupcakes!!

Too bad I can’t stop here as I have one to-go-list café near that area too.. Satisfied with browsing their stuffs and taking pictures, I'm taking myself to the next spot.

The next shop that I visit was 3CE cinema, a cinema themed makeup store. 

Full stop it was the cutest store ever and it managed to make me impulsively buy some of their makeups. Say sorry for my budget!

After all of the shopping spree, I went to this café called Banana Tree which I knew from one of the travel book of Korea that I read in Japan. Although the cafe itself were quite small, it was very cozy and comfortable.

Pots on the fridge ~

Their theme was a garden style dessert; I ordered their signature pot cupcake and the Eggyffogato which literally vanilla ice cream with espresso topping served in an egg-like bowl.

Look how cute was that OMFG. The scoop for the spoon. The taste was so-so though. So I guess it was true that taste can’t be communicated well through appearance..

And here goes my lunch for the day.

The rest of the day I didn’t take photo much anymore as I literally only went shopping and brought several stuff as souvenirs for my colleagues back in Japan. During the shopping time finally I went back again to Myeongdong as hands down; every brand can be found there and it can be literally considered as one stop shopping for all the makeup that you need.

The last thing that I did was cut my hair in one of the salon recommended by my friend (again!!) called Juno Hair. Too bad I didn’t take any photos of it but I liked the result very much. I haven’t got any haircut again until now, to be honest; struggling to find one good salon here back in Jakarta. 

Finished with my haircut, ate quick dinner around that area and then went back home to repack all of my stuff to prepare for my trip back home to Japan.

It was quite a fast-moving day back to back overall; since I appointed this day only for shopping and cutting hair. I didn’t manage to get that much photo too especially during my 6^th and 7^th days here. However it was so good knowing that all my checklist finally crossed off and can take my time to do the packing, and preparing myself for my last day in Korea.

Stay with me for my last post as I will make simple breakdown of my expenses too there!

Please click links below to see which day you want to browse! (Will update the link one by one with every new post that I’ve uploaded)

See you on the next posts!