Visit Indonesia: 2012

Where is it

It is located in West Java, Indonesia, 60 km south of Jakarta.

Bogor, West Java Map

Bogor is the answer to escaping Jakarta for a day or even as a weekend getaway. With its cooling mountain area with beautiful flowers and happy animals, it does tickles the naturalists while entertaining the young and restless.

Botanical Garden

When is the best time to go

It is generally good to go all year round but as being known as the Kota Hujan (city of rain) so it will tend to rain in the evening with overcast clouds threatening most of the times, so if you are here during the rainy season of Indonesia (October to February), try to arrange your outings to start from early in the day.

What to see

Botanical Garden (Kebun Raya Bogor)
Reminiscent of the era of grand gardens of the riches, you will find beautiful flowers, well-tended gardens, fountains, pond dotted with water lilies and orchid garden in a glass house. Stroll around open areas or twisted trails, and even walk across lanes flanked by tall fern trees and colorful flower-filled bushes. If you are lucky you may even see the famous Bunga Raksasa (giant flower) in full bloom.

Astrid Plane at Botanical Garden

Presidential Palace
Located just at the northwest of Botanical Gardens, it is a grand palace standing tall in the middle a beautiful lawn. It used to be the summer residence of the Governor of Java and now as one of the Indonesia President’s summer house. It is famous for the 250 deer grazing its lawn and you may visit it from within the Gardens.

What to do

After the walk in the Botanical Garden, walk around this little town that sorts of reflect on its old golden days.

What and where to eat

Eat the local specialties which are pickles (asinan) and grilled bean sprouts (tauge goreng)

Cimory Restaurant

Decent food overlooking the hills for a relaxing meal. Don’t forget to try their yogurt drink here made from fresh milk from the farm.

Cimory Restauran

Where to stay

There are various places to stay here in Bogor as it is a popular place for getaways and traveling for the locals as well. You may find from budget to mid-range and to high end of hostels, guesthouses and hotels here. Popular hotels here are in the mid-range with good value such as Santika Hotel or Hotel Salak the Heritage *.

How to get there

First of all, you need to fly into Jakarta, the nearest airport to Bogor, then make you way there via these transports:

By car
The easiest way to get here and also to go to nearby places, you can rent a car with driver if you are in a group and can afford to spare. It will take about 1-2 hours drive to get there depending on traffic. Try to avoid peak hours in the morning (6am-10am) and (4pm-7pm) evening.

By train
You can take the local komuter train from almost any station to get to Bogor.

By bus
You can catch a bus at either Lebak Bulus, Kampung Rambutan or Kali deres bus terminal to Bogor and it will take about 1-2 hours depending on traffic. There are two types of buses which is Executive (with air condition) and Economy.

Angkot

By angkot
This is the favourite method of the locals, being the cheapest and also better in twisting around the jams, these minibuses will take you there in the maximum priced of 1000 Rp. First, you need to catch an angkot from Kampung Rambutan (bus station) and ask to take to Cisalak. At Cisalak you would need to switch and find another angkot to take you all the way to Bogor.

How to get around

You may walk around this town and on pedestrian friendly paths such as along rivers.

Else for fast access, flag down angkot (minibus) and use it to cover the area. Bear in mind the traffic is also heavy here. Just pay 2,000 Rp when you hop off where you wanted. Just take note of your belongings when squeezing into the angkot.

Elephants at Taman Safari

Where to go nearby

Taman Safari
Well worth to bring family here, especially a delight for kids. It ranges from a ride through the safari where animal dwell in free range, baby zoo for more intimate view and take pictures if you like, bird park hosting many wild birds, and even some zoo-like enclosed animal. The animals here are well taken care of and the place is well maintained.

Puncak
Go up even higher to the highlands to view the tea plantations and enjoy the cool breeze.

Giraffes at Taman Safari

After Dieng Plateau, my next destination was the Karimunjawa island. I had read about how seldomly visited by foreign tourists this place is in the Lonely Planet and after seeing how stuning the island looked online, I absolutely wanted to go there. It is pretty complicated to get there – which probably explains why so few tourists make their way there.

You need to catch a ferry either on Jepara or on Semarang – more ferries leave from Jepara so it is the best option. Both cities have absolutely nothing to offer to tourists themselves and getting to them is long and frustrating, no matter where you are coming from. In my case, coming from Dieng Plateau, I had to take four different local buses (five if you count the transfer I had to do after one of them broke down!) before finally arriving in Jepara – a total of eight hours. I think coming from Yogyakarta would have been slightly quicker and less of a hassle, but not by much. On top of that, ferries depart irregularly and are subject to random last-minute changes, no matter if you plan on taking the speedboat or the regular ferry.

I arrived at my hotel in Jepara on Monday night and asked the owner if there was a ferry leaving the next day. He told me there is usually a ferry on Tuesday mornings, but this one had been cancelled, and he would be able to tell me if a ferry would depart on Wednesday morning only at the end of the afternoon on Tuesday. He also told me it was not uncommon that ferries do not go for several days in a row, even in the dry season. I really did not feel like being stuck in Jepara for several days, as there is nothing to do there or even remotely closeby. Fortunately, a ferry did leave Wednesday morning so I only lost a day of traveling. Among the few Western tourists I met on the boat (eight of us in total!), most had been stuck in Jepara for four or five days waiting for a ferry – so I guess losing one day of travel is not that bad, in retrospect.

If you do decide to make your way to Karimunjawa and need to spend a night (or potentially more!) in Jepara I advise you stay at the hotel I stayed at – Hotel Elim. The rooms themselves are nothing to write home about, but the owner speaks good English – a miracle for such a remote place seeing so few foreign tourists – and there is a restaurant in the hotel selling alcohol at a reasonable price – I do not drink but most people do and trying to find alcohol at decent prices can be a pain when traveling in Muslim countries. Also, the menu is diverse with different options than simply nasi goreng (fried rice) and fried noodles. Being vegetarian, the only things I had been eating for the last few days were nasi goreng with fried egg and vegetables or fried noodles, also with fried egg and vegetables and I was so tired of these. You can book it on Agoda here.

I arrived in Karimunjawa at noon, after a five-hour ferry ride. There is also a speedboat that sometimes make its way to the islands in less than two hours, but it had not been running for for at least a week when I was trying to figure out boat matters in Jepara. I was so tired from the five o’clock wake-up call and the ferry ride that I just wanted to find a decent accomodation as quickly as possible – I was in such a hurry that I did not pay attention to two important matters and ended up with a poor lodging option.

Firstly, it was located straight next to a Mosque – a big mistake when traveling in a Muslim country during Ramadan. The speaker-blasted chants were so loud and went all night long – I literally felt as if they were singing to me directly in my room. I have traveled in Muslim countries before, but not during Ramadan, so I am not used to having to pay attention to this detail but will certaintly do after these few nights. Lastly, when taking a look at the room, I had only looked quickly at the bathroom – I had not actually tested the water pressure. It was so low and there was so little water coming out of the shower, it was barely possible to shower at all. I usually check for this when traveling in developing countries but I had been staying in relatively good accomodation thus far so had forgotten this habit. I ended up negotiating further below the price I had agreed on when leaving, but still, so annoying. Do not stay at Azza Homestay if you like sleeping and showering!

On my first day on the island, I met two Swedes while having lunch at Café Amore (the best lunch spot on the island, more on this place below). We booked a small fishing trip with a local tour operator. It was quite fun but we caught no fish!

I did a similar trip on my second day, but I did not like it and would not recommend it – the people working at the hotel organizing it spoke little English and they poorly explained to us what was included. Also, they brought us to the weirdest place ever – some sort of man-made pool inside the ocean (I don’t even know how to describe it) where a few sharks were kept in captivity. It was so sad to see. You could swim with the sharks, so I assume they were overfeeding them with food that is not even part of their diet to start with to limit the risk of human attacks – which is obviously bad for the health of the sharks. Most tourists (whether Indonesian, Chinese or foreign) were happily swimming with the sharks and were obviously too excited by the “amazing” experience to realize how stupid and bad the whole thing was. People often leave their brain at home when they travel, unfortunately. Anyways, if you go to Karimunjawa and book some sort of boat expedition, ask if it includes a visit to the shark pool, and if it does, choose a different tour operator! Nothing rewarding with swimming with overfed sharks in a man-made pool in the middle of the sea.

Karimunjawa-sharks — Overfed sharks locked inside a pool. Sad.

On my third day, I just rented a scooter and went driving all around the island – there is a couple of nice viewpoints worth going to and it is genuily fun speeding along the rice terraces and the local villages stretching further away from the main part of the town. My favorite viewpoint was a bit hard to get to and you really had to know it was there – first go one street up from the main street (on the same street you need to take to access Cocohuts and Cumi Restaurant). Keep walking towards the Western part of the island until you see a sign announcing “Wana Wisita Bukit Jakatua” (if you walk all the way until the cemetery, you are too far, walk back). Pay 10,000 rupees and hike up all the way until the end. You get to see a weird squeletton on the way and stunning views at the end. Not many people know about this place, I found it randomly!

As for eating options, being on an island and all that, you are obviously more limited, but there is still a few good spots worth checking. Café Amore is the best and also not too expensive – it is located on the main road and close to the ferry terminal. It has an amazing garden full of flowers, a nice view for sunset and a good menu with a lot of Indonesian and Western options. Staff speaks some English so you can ask them questions about accomodation, boat schedules or other things to do on the island.

Karimunjawa-Cafe-Amore — View from Café Amore!

Cumi Restaurant is a bit further away, but should not be a problem to get to if you rented a scooter (or like walking for 25 minutes). The view is great and there is mostly Western options – I liked the tuna tartare and the bruschettas. They also do good smoothies, but tell them to do them without added sugar – otherwise they pour a few sugar packets in your smoothie – which is already full of natural sugar because of the fruits. It is a bit more priced than the other options on the island.

Finally, Coco huts is a great place to go. I went there for breakfast and had some banana pancakes – they were really good, but they do add greasy chocolate syrup all over them unless you mention you want them without anything on, so be sure to tell them that, unless you like chocolate syrup. Lunch and dinner is a little bit pricier and they serve pizza – but someone told me it was not very good, so might be best to stick with Indonesian fare! View from Coco huts is stunning so make you sure come here at least once.

As always when traveling in developing countries, do not forget to bargain onKarimunjawa – especially for activities like boat trips to the outer islands – I saw some tourists who were newbies at the whole traveling in Asia thing and did not bargain at all and paid ridiculous prices. For instance, two guys I did the second boat trip with each paid more than the double than what I have paid!

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Visit Indonesia

Kamis, 17 Mei 2012

Bogor, West Java