On To Java

From Lovina we headed west along the coast road to Gilimanuk and the ferry to Java.  The driver of our shared van taxi seemed like a textbook Balinese.  In the two hours it took us to traverse the 100km he stopped four times at different shrines/temples to make offerings and get blessings.  While that was amusing for me to see, what surprised me about the ride was that over half of the passengers were Muslims, not to mention to the dozen of mosques and Islamic schools we passed.  Is this an invasion?!

The ferry terminal is very huge, looks new, well organized, and the boat sea worthy, sparsely loaded.   However, the 3km crossing took a whole hour!  The course was as circuitous as can be, interspersed with mysterious pauses and sideways hovering.  No one around had enough English to enlighten us with the cause. [John thinks we were waiting for a docking slip to open up.]

Walking off the ferry, we were in Java.  Since we wanted to catch our onward train during the daylight, we had to spend a night in Banyuwangi at the very eastern end of Java, looking over to Bali.  Once again, I liked our hotel, but failed to understand the draw.  For dinner, we made a bolder choice to eat at a warung (canteen) on the main road outside our compound; finally having success explaining our vegetarian ways at the third place we tried.  It was run by a young Chinese woman, third generation, particularly genial.  She had about the same amount of Mandarin Chinese and English as John's Chinese.  We had jackfruit (lodel tewel) for the first time, as far as we could tell.  I was very skeptical at first.  It looked so much like pork!

It's great to be off the beaten path!

It's claimed that a ferry between Bali and Java leaves every 30 minutes, but it must be more often than that as this shot shows at least 4 ferries ready to dock in Bali.


Waiting for the ferry to pull out. Behind Sun-ling is part of the ferry terminal. And beyond that the hills of Bali.


These 4 young women appeared to be ferry cadets in training as they sat in the bridge once the ferry was underway.


Mainly scooters on our boat.


First stop in Java is the Banyuwangi Station to buy next morning onward tickets to Surabaya. Check out SL in full travel mode. ;-)


After buying our train tix we hoofed it 2 kms down the road to the Ketapang Indah Hotel which was pretty posh but not expensive. We were ready for some pool time for sure.




As SL said above, we had a tasty dinner and made a new friend (who looks like she came out of a Tang Dynasty painting) at a warung just a few meters from the hotel entrance.








The hotel breakfast featured many choices of Indonesian breakfast food including some fruits new to us like this salak.