Surabaya was surprising.. I mean, I was really surprised by the extraordinarily dry and hot weather.. also surprised by the food which was excellent.. the trip was pretty much like my nowadays infrequent visit to hometown.. everything was so well-provided, from food to transportation to accommodation..
Speaking of being braver.. I survived staying alone in a pretty big-ass room for more than 10 nights and I am very proud of that..=P when the receptionist said “ur room is a business room, number blah3.. “ I was like “what?!? I’m gonna be alone in the room so I prefer a junior room, the standard one.. can u please exchange that for me ?” receptionist: “sorry, no, we ran out of junior room..”
I was very disappointed and scared.. but u know, it's kinda true actually when ppl say that the thought is always scarier than the reality? turned out, it wasn’t that bad afterall.. my imagination did run wild a couple of times at night but since I had been avoiding watching horror movies and listening to ghost stories… I was doing just fine in the end.. =P
We made visits to places like House of Sampoerna and the active volcano Mount Bromo; watched sunrise, climbed up to see the crater and me rode a horse (ehem).. bfore I went there, one of my colleagues warned me that it’s very cold up there, around 5 degrees C.. I didn’t totally believe that inside my heart (who knew there was such a cold place in Indonesia?) so I bravely went there with a thin scarf ard my neck and lecture-theatre-jacket, if u know what I mean.. Jan, from Bangkok did it even more bravely, by wearing only a t-shirt covered with a shirt.. and there we were, shaking like nobody’s business.. I could assure u it was definitely below 10 deg C… damn..
many thanks to Ida for bringing us around!