World Tourism Blog

THE scene was straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. A line of workers in black rubber boots struggled up a steep trail that emerged from the volcanic crater of Mount Ijen on the Indonesian island of Java. On their shoulders, each carried a pole with two baskets of bright yellow chunks of sulfur that had been hacked out of a rock wall near the crater lake.

Step by step, the laborers, some carrying 200 pounds, trudged up to a point directly below the 7,769-foot summit. Other workers would soon take the loads and walk two miles down the slope. Eventually the sulfur would be sold to Indonesian companies that use it to make medicine and other products. For their efforts, the 400 or so workers are paid 14 cents per pound of sulfur. Day after day they do this, inhaling sulfur fumes, the stench of rotten eggs clinging to them.

My wife, Tini, and I started down the trail toward the crater, along with a few other travelers who had come with us to this plateau in eastern Java. “The workers start at dawn and have to stop by 1 p.m.,” said Alim, our guide, who chose to wait at the top. “The fumes get to be too much, even for them.” His warning to us: Be aware of the fumes and climb back up soon, or feel the wrath of the volcano.

Flirting with the fury of a volcano may not sound like the usual tourist fare, but in recent years, these imperious volcanoes have become an increasingly popular draw that is away from the crowded resorts of Bali, which lies just east of Java. Last year, more than 93,000 people visited Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, Indonesia’s most famous volcano preserve, up 78 percent from the previous year, according to the park’s main ranger station. (Numbers had fallen earlier this decade after terrorist bombings in Bali.) Several high-end hotels have opened in recent years, catering to volcano tourism, including Ijen Resort and Villas, which lies among verdant rice fields to the east of Mount Ijen.

Exploring Mount Ijen and the other volcanoes that form the spine of Java offers travelers a chance to understand how geology has so deeply influenced the lives and culture of the people who reside in the highlands. Over the centuries, eruptions have buried villages, destroyed farmland and filled the air with black haze, contributing to the ancient belief that the volcanic gods must be appeased.

Watching the sulfur workers toil on Mount Ijen is one way for visitors to experience the role Java’s volcanic landscape plays in the modern day-to-day lives of locals. Across Java, there are opportunities to appreciate the sheer physical beauty of the volcanoes: spectacular vantage points from which to watch the sun rise above the lava-spewing peaks, and trails where hardy travelers can lace up their hiking boots and trek across the lunar-like terrain or right up to the maw of some of the most active cones.

To properly explore the volcanic landscape, a west-to-east traverse of the island made sense to us, starting at the ancient temple of Borobudur, which lies in the shadow of two volcanoes, and ending on the far side of Java in the crater of Mount Ijen.

Borobudur, the sprawling stone monument that was completed by Mahayana Buddhists in the ninth century, is ringed by rice fields where people farm as they did centuries ago. The monument, said to have been built from two million stones, is a mandala made to reflect the order of the cosmos.

The nearby volcanoes have shown little mercy to Borobudur. After nearby Mount Merapi erupted centuries ago, the temple lay beneath ash until it was cleared in 1815, when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles governed Java for the British Empire.

At dawn, we walked from our simple guesthouse in the rice fields to the base of Borobudur. The monument has five square platforms topped by three circular ones, each adorned with bas-reliefs depicting religious episodes and scenes from the Buddha’s life. The statues of Buddha at the top gaze out serenely at the perfect cones of the two nearby volcanoes, Merapi and Mount Merbabu.

Smoke trailed from the cone of Merapi, signaling that it was still active. Among the Javanese, it is widely feared — having erupted dozens of times in the last century — and guidebooks advise travelers to check with local authorities before trying to climb to its 9,550-foot summit. Early the next morning, Golan, a worker at our guesthouse, took us to a point atop a hill where we could see the sun rise over Mount Merapi. The jungle lay before us, the mandala of Borobudur in the center. A thick mist rose skyward from the trees, the moisture of night burning off. We had considered hiking up Merapi overnight, but were warned that the trail could be treacherous in the rainy season.

The drive to Mount Bromo, the most-visited volcano on Java, took a full day. Our driver took us along the west slope of Mount Lawu, an inactive volcano, and we stopped at Candi Sukuh, a temple that seemed to have been the house of worship for a fertility cult — stone statues with gargantuan genitalia stood on the grounds. In the afternoon it stormed, and rain was still falling by the time we arrived at Cemoro Lawang, the gateway village to Mount Bromo.

By EDWARD WONG

Exploring Java’s volcanoes offers travelers a chance to understand the influence of geology on the lives and culture of the people who live in the highlands.

Jakarta is the capital city of the Republic of Indonesia, a country composed of more than 13,000 islands with a population of over 180 million. Comprising more than 300 ethnic groups speaking 200 different languages, the Indonesia population exhibits marked diversity in its linguistic, culture, and religious traditions. As the Capital City, Jakarta is a melting pot of representatives from each of these ethnic groups. Jakarta is a special territory enjoying the status of a province, consisting of Greater Jakarta, covering of 637.44 square km area. Located on the northern coast of West Java, it is the center of government, commerce and industry and has an extensive communications network with the rest of the country and the outside world. Strategically positioned in the archipelago, the city is also the principal gateway to the rest of Indonesia. From the Capital City, sophisticated land, air, and sea transport is available to the rest of the country and beyond.

Jakarta is one of Indonesia’s designated tourist areas. It is a gateway to other tourist destinations in Indonesia and is equipped with all the means of modern transportation by air, sea, rail, or by land. It has the largest and most modern airport in the country, the most important harbor in Indonesia and is well connected by rail of good roads to other destinations in Java, Sumatra, and Bali. As Indonesia’s main gateway, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport serves a growing number of international airlines and domestic flights. Jakarta is a city of contrasts; the traditional and the modern, the rich and the poor, the sacral and the worldly, often stand side by side in this bustling metropolis. Even its population gathered from all those diverse ethnic and cultural groups, which compose Indonesia, are constantly juxtaposed present reminder of the national motto; Unity in Diversity. Hard money training

Since the 7th century, there was a lot of Kingdom, which emerged in Central Java. Kalingga Buddha Kingdom of Jepara, ruled by Queen Shima emerged in 674. The colonization by the Dutch lasted for about 350 years March 9, 1942. The Japanese occupation forces landed in Indonesia for 3,5 years. The August 17th, 1945 the Indonesian people proclaimed their independence to the world. Nowadays, Central Java territory is administratively a province, which was established under the law No. 10/1950.

History oozes from every corner of Central Java, an area rich in a culture and tradition cumulated from a powerful Hindu and Buddhist past and more recent Islamic influences. Under the Sailendra and old Mataram kings, the Hindu Javanese culture flourished between the 8th and 10th centuries. It was during this pinnacle of power that Java’s most remarkable religious monuments were built; Borobudur, the biggest and most magnificent monument to Mahayana Buddhism in the world; the enormous Hindu temple complex of Prambanan, dedicated to Shiva and built by the rulers of the Sanjaya Dynasty, and the ancient site of the oldest Hindu temples in Java on the magnificent, heights of the Dieng Plateau. All of these and more are testimony to the ancient power and influence of the region. The first Islamic kingdom in Java saw its beginnings in 1511 in Demak, not far from the capital, Semarang. Here one can find one of the province’s greatest Islamic structures, the Grand Mosque of Demak, which has said to be built in a single night by one of the nine early leaders of Islam in Java. Symbolic of the way the new faith was introduced, the mosque displays a curious combination of Islamic and Hindu architectural influences and is still revered and worshipped in by Javanese pilgrims who regularly visit the area. National Hard Money Association Conference

Indonesia is an archipelagic country of 17,508 islands (6,000 inhabited) stretching along the equator in South East Asia. The country’s strategic sea-lane position fostered inter-island and international trade; trade has since fundamentally shaped Indonesian history. The area of Indonesia is populated by peoples of various migrations, creating a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and languages. The archipelago’s landforms and climate significantly influenced agriculture and trade, and the formation of states.

Fossilised remains of Homo erectus, popularly known as the “Java Man”, suggest the Indonesian archipelago was inhabited two million to 500,000 years ago. Austronesian people, who form the majority of the modern population, were originally from Taiwan and arrived in Indonesia around 2000 BCE. From the seventh century CE, the powerful Srivijaya naval kingdom flourished bringing Hindu and Buddhist influences with it. The agricultural Buddhist Sailendra and Hindu Mataram dynasties subsequently thrived and declined in inland Java. The last significant non-Muslim kingdom, the Hindu Majapahit kingdom, flourished from the late 13th century, and its influence stretched over much of Indonesia. The earliest evidence of Islamised populations in Indonesia dates to the 13th century in northern Sumatra; other Indonesian areas gradually adopted Islam which became the dominant religion in Java and Sumatra by the end of the 16th century. For the most part, Islam overlaid and mixed with existing cultural and religious influences.