- Right behind me is an active volcano,
you can see the crater,
you can feel a bit of the heat coming off.
(melodic upbeat music)
East Java, it's a name you've
probably never heard before,
but I can guarantee you
you're about to start
hearing it everywhere.
Whether you're a broke backpacker
with nothing in your wallet,
an annoying travel influencer
or you're simply way too woke for Bali,
(light melodic music)
then this is the perfect place for you.
Unlike Bali, this is not five star travel,
there is no luxury to be had here,
this is going to be raw and real travel,
long days in the back of a van,
early mornings when you'd rather be in bed
and physical exertion
beyond you can believe,
you're going to have moments on this trip,
where you're sweating through
your entire change of clothing
and you're thinking to yourself,
that Bali villa sounds
really nice right now,
but this is what separates
you from the other travelers,
you put up with all this
discomfort for a few key moments,
that you will never forget
and that's what we're
gonna focus on today.
So let's get started with how you're going
to be starting your trip
at the Surabaya Airport.
(melodic upbeat music)
Fresh morning and it's a fresh start,
we've arrived here in Surabaya, Indonesia,
we've just got ourselves a transport car
and I'm actually gonna be
traveling with someone,
he's said to be down to film.
Word up, I'm Baz Marks.
- Yo.
- We're here .
You're gonna be spending
a lot of time on the road
on this trip and so one important thing
is to hire yourself a driver,
I highly recommend you get
somebody who has an SUV,
verbally confirm that with them
and typically prices can range
anywhere from $50 US per day,
as far as, well, basically
what I paid, $125 US a day,
I decided to pay premium money,
so that I could get somebody
that was skilled, knowldeged
and had the right connections,
unfortunately that person
had none of the above
and so for that reason,
I'm not gonna be recommending
them here in this guide.
One thing you can definitely expect,
when you come here on a
road trip through Java
is a lot of traffic, like
some of the most in the world.
Even though this is not the order,
that Zac and I traveled East Java in,
I've optimized the route to make sure
that you spend as little time on the road.
Our first destination is
going to be going down south,
all the way from Surabaya to
the Malang Rainbow Village.
Apparently we're here,
we just pulled over,
there's like 45 minutes until sunset,
even a little sooner, hoo, we gotta go.
Hello.
(speaking in foreign language)
(laughing)
Guys, I've gotta say, I'm surprised,
I pictured this being
like a really tiny town,
but this is like in the
center of a big city,
but they've taken this whole area
and they've made it beautiful.
This is crazy.
(melodic upbeat music)
From there, we're gonna get into our van
and do about a two and a half hour journey
to Mount Bromo, one of the
highlights of this trip.
(melodic upbeat music)
Now Bromo is the place that
you need to be for sunrise,
so it's important to get
there in the evening.
(cheerful pop music)
Yeah, welcome to Bromo?
- Bromo!
- People with the happy faces.
From Canada.
You meet a lot of nice
people here in Bromo,
(speaking in foreign language)
and they happen to sell things.
(speaking in foreign language)
Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Welcome home.
Boys are living large tonight,
233, we got the best
accommodation in town,
right outside of Bromo, thank you, sir.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Wasn't that a great nap?
Time to start our day.
Instant lattes, instant fun.
Cheers to the good life.
It's time to get the spread.
The next morning, I was extremely excited,
because we had organized for ourselves
to have two dirt bikes for about $30 each.
Now the problem was.
Oh.
Bike number two won't start
and sunrise isn't gonna wait for us,
so we're trying to figure
out a replacement right now,
but it's like two in the morning
and no one's answering their phones.
So that left me scrambling
to basically borrow my guide's bike,
which was a bald tire street
bike, basically a crotch rocket
and I had to take it
off-roading through sand dunes,
it was a bit of a nightmare,
but ultimately we did prevail
and we made it to the top.
Now I will say if you're not
comfortable riding a dirt bike,
this is not the place to do it,
this is definitely some pretty
advanced driving conditions.
So what you have to do to get up top
is to go into town and find
one of the countless drivers,
that have one of these 4x4 vehicles
and they will gladly take you
up at a very similar price
to what we paid to rent
one of the dirt bikes.
Hey.
- Holy,
that was the most wild thing
I think I've done in a while.
- It's a lot more developed up here,
it's a lot busier than I expected
and coming up here was
like serious Mad Max vibes,
4x4 cars ripping passed each other,
it was like survival of the fittest,
you saw cars breaking down on the side,
you saw people who were
like not making it up
with their bikes, but we made it.
(melodic upbeat music)
We were lucky enough to get
Bromo's best shooting conditions
and it was a morning,
that I will never forget.
We have shared something
very special here today.
- Dude.
- That was crazy.
- That was literally, oh, uh!
(speaking in foreign language)
- 10 out of 10 conditions,
we are so lucky,
you always wanna get
the under-hanging clouds
right below Bromo, we had that,
we had a cloud above
it, but not blocking it,
we had a beautiful sunrise
with like no obstruction from clouds,
today was a 11 our of 10.
It definitely draws a
crowd, but it's a big area,
you can find little pockets,
where you can kind of
sneak away from people,
have your own privacy, have
your own little photo shoot
and just most of all
enjoy what's right in front of you here.
Kind of similar to Angkor Wat,
this is a sunrise destination
and so after about an
hour of the sun rising,
pretty much everyone disperses
and what was like a busy
mogul here full of people,
it's just a couple of
photography stragglers.
Now one of the highlights of Bromo
is actually at the base of it,
so when you get back down the mountain,
you have this incredible
desert-like sand flat
and if you're comfortable on your bike,
it's so much fun to rip around.
(melodic upbeat music)
And the final thing to do here in Bromo
is definitely going to be the crater hike.
No, we're not walking into Bethlehem,
we are on our way to the crater,
which apparently is a
huge tourist gathering,
bit of a bad vibe about
it so far, but we'll see,
never really like to see a
ton of horses all roped up,
a lot of times, just not a good thing.
Today's video is about
overcoming mountains,
craters and challenges,
anything is possible.
Hello.
So was it worth the hike?
- I mean, the hike was
only about 25 minutes
and I think this is
probably the coolest thing
I've seen in my life, so I
say that about everything,
but this is pretty cool.
- Tough day.
You can feel a bit of the heat coming off,
you can smell the sulfur
and this morning, when we
were on the other side,
those cliffs on that edge there,
you could actually see the smoke rising,
which is incredible,
it's stopped rising now,
which is probably a good thing,
otherwise we might get smoked out.
You've gotta get passed a big crowd,
but it's worth it just to see this.
(light melodic music)
- When you come to Asia,
you will get a lot of people
wanting to take photos of you.
- We're basically celebrities.
- We're basically celebrities.
- Come on in.
- Come on in, right in the middle.
Woo hoo!
Woo!
- All of that shooting
and it's only 10 a.m.
and from there, it's time
to get back on the road,
because we wanna fit
in one more thing today
and that is the, let me
get the name, Madakar,
Madakaripura, Madakaripura waterfall.
We're exhausted right now,
we slept what, two,
three hours last night?
- Not very long.
- And we shot so much today.
- In the meantime, planet Earth,
we're crushing planet Earth.
We've got some rhinos and elephants here.
Hello, hello!
- Let's do it.
You will get assaulted by
people trying to sell you stuff,
they make you pay for the toilet,
they make you pay for everything they can,
I really hate the feeling
of being here so far,
but if the waterfall makes it worth it,
then sometimes you've
gotta make sacrifices.
- No, no, no, no, no, you
guys, rock, paper, scissors.
- I don't know.
(melodic upbeat music)
- You're definitely gonna
wanna get one of these,
'cause the entire waterfall
is like inside this amphitheater,
it's so beautiful, but the
thing is you do get really wet.
So far this waterfall is one of a kind,
I've never seen anything quite like it.
It's very extensive,
there's probably about 20
of these different waterfalls running
and they seem to come out of nowhere.
The one downside to the place
and unfortunately it's a very big downside
is the way they harass you
to sell you things like this.
10,000?
- Yeah, 10,000.
- 10,000,
woo hoo, what a deal!
- If you're willing to put up with that,
enjoy this beautiful
waterfall and some crowds
of mainly local people.
(melodic upbeat music)
From there, we're gonna be
heading back to our driver
to get us over to our
next set of waterfalls
and we need to be there
for the crack of sunrise,
so we've got about a four
and a half hour journey
and I highly recommend
finding yourself a guesthouse,
that's as close to the
waterfall as possible,
that way, we can make our sunrise,
wake up as painless as possible.
I would say your average,
comfortable guesthouse with AC
will go anywhere from 10 to 25 US dollars,
we paid a bit on the upper end,
because, well, I believe our guide
took us to his favorite spots,
again, that's why he's not in the guide.
Well, lucky for you,
today's probably gonna be
the most physically demanding
day, aside from tomorrow.
Let's get started, because
we have two waterfalls
to climb to and they're both exhausting.
Good morning, my dudes.
Finally got a good night's sleep
and we started our
morning around six a.m.,
it's about a one hour drive
to get to the next waterfall
and if you've seen my old videos,
you would have seen that I've
actually been here before,
it's called Tumpak Sewu,
which means 1000 falls
and it is the most beautiful
waterfall I've ever seen,
I'm excited to share that with you, Zac,
share the beautiful views.
- I'm excited too.
- Damn, there's a rainbow
this morning, guys.
Now you have two options,
you can either view
Tumpak Sewu from the top viewing platform,
but if you wanna really experience it,
you have to climb all the way down,
it's gonna take you
about 45 minutes each way
and that's even being maybe
a little bit conservative.
And so it begins, my
first step on the trail
and I almost ate it.
So this is like one of the
craziest paths you'll ever take,
very steep hill, very steep steps
carved into the side of mud,
you've gotta go down about 45 minutes,
some pretty treacherous steps.
So if you come here, this
is what you're looking at,
luckily it's been recently renovated,
they didn't used to have these metal bars,
everything's looking really nice,
structural integrity, 1000.
So entrance into the
waterfall is gonna cost you
about 30,000, 20,000 at the top
and then they charge you
another 10 at the bottom.
(melodic upbeat music)
If you wanna see all that
Tumpak Sewu has to offer,
you'll probably want at
least five to six hours here,
we're gonna get out of here
in like two and a half hours.
There's actually another set
of waterfalls down there,
that look like this.
(melodic upbeat music)
If you would rather do just
one waterfall for the day,
then I recommend going over
and checking out those falls as well,
but if you're planning to make your way
to our second waterfall,
then you're gonna have to move on,
hike back up that
incredibly sketchy staircase
and make your way over
to the next waterfall,
which is only about 15, 20 minutes away
and that is Kapas Biru.
Oh, this is not my favorite thing.
So far, it's looking like a 45
minute to an hour hike again,
a lot of up and down,
but it's so beautiful,
rice terrace here,
waterfall in the distance,
waterfall over there, waterfall behind us.
This is Kapas Biru, it
is incredibly beautiful
and there's a few waterfalls
in this region actually,
I'd be curious to check more out,
but again, we're on a
really tight time crunch,
I would definitely say
you could at least spend
a good three to four hours here.
(melodic upbeat music)
My thoughts are this,
it's a bit of a quieter
waterfall than Tumpak Sewu,
in total we paid 7,000
to get in, super cheap,
the only people here are locals,
that's kind of the
theme here in East Java,
maybe after this video, it
may change a little bit,
but that's for your benefit.
I hope that you guys get to explore it
and see the things that
very few people have seen.
Back to back, this is like one
of the most cardio intensive workouts,
these two waterfalls are
giving me my Bali body.
On Zac and I's trip, this is
basically where we headed back
to Surabaya and called it the
end of our East Java trip,
but because I wanna make this
a guide to all of East Java,
I wanna also include two other spots,
that I visited on my previous trip,
that are absolutely mind blowing.
Now the first spot I need to
mention is a surfer's paradise
for those of you, who
are looking to learn.
Gnarly, let's do this!
On the Southeast of East Java,
there is a tiny area by
the name of Red Island
and the waves are not massive,
which makes them fantastic for learning.
I had spent a couple of
days there at a surfer's art
with Mojo Surf and it was
a really great experience.
Now the thing that is a must
for anybody that is coming to East Java
and who still has enough
energy in the reserve tanks,
head over another six
and a half to eight hours
to Mount Ijen, this is
one of the highlights
of my entire travel career,
la piece de resistance de East Java,
it is the number one thing to see here.
As if getting up for
sunrise wasn't hard enough,
well, now you're actually
gonna be getting up
like a good hour and a half,
two hours before sunrise,
because you need to start
hiking up this volcano
to make sure that you're at the top of it
by the time the sun starts to rise,
that way you can view the sunrise
from inside of the volcano,
you actually have this
beautiful blue flame,
that can only be seen, when
there's no natural daylight,
it's like nothing I've ever seen before,
you're gonna have to
deal with your exhaustion
and just do it, just do it.
Now if you're as lucky as I was,
then you'll get one of
the most glorious sunrises
you've ever seen and there you'll see
this incredible emerald lake revealed
right in front of your eyes,
you'll see a massive plume of yellow smoke
just coming out of the side of the volcano
and this is actually the reality
to where so many people work,
it is some of the most
grueling work conditions
you'll ever see, the sulfur
miners here work through
the most difficult
conditions you've ever seen,
they lift some of the heaviest weights
and they carry them up and
down that volcano all day
for the equivalent of
about $7 per journey.
Now once you do that journey once
and imagine putting 200 pounds
on your back, while doing it,
you probably wouldn't wanna
do that job very long,
in fact you probably couldn't
even make that journey once,
I know that I couldn't.
Kawah Ijen was a life changing trip,
it showed me a landscape I
didn't know was possible,
it showed me that the human body
was capable of so much
more than I ever imagined
and most of all, it got me
some pretty sweet Instagrams,
so that's kind of what
travel is about, isn't it?
If you don't already
follow me on Instagram,
then go peep, hit that Follow button
and follow your boy, LostLeBlanc.
- [Zac] It's perfect.
- So now that you've completed
some of the major attractions
here in East Java,
you've got a decision to make,
either go about six and
a half to eight hours
to get back to Surabaya
or you can actually have
an even quicker journey to
get back to Canggu Bali,
which is about five and
a half to six hours,
depending on traffic,
keeping in mind that
also involves a ferry,
there could be a bit more
of a discrepancy in time,
what I'm getting at here is this could be
the perfect way to start your trip to Bali
or if you're ending your trip in Bali,
you could do this itinerary
I just gave you in reverse
and it would be the most
efficient route possible.
I hope this video saved you
so much time in research,
because I know when I
first arrived in East Java,
I was trying to take tiny
bits and pieces of information
from all over the internet,
from friends, from family,
no, not from family, I was
literally DMing friends
to ask their friends how
they had done things,
so I'm glad I could put
this all together for you
in one bite-sized package
and I hope it shows you
that there's so much more
to Indonesia than Bali,
there's Lombok, there's
Java, there's Flores,
there's so many incredible things
that Indonesia has to offer
and I wanna make guides
like this to some of these other regions,
so if you enjoyed it,
I would love to see it
with those thumbs ups,
it's one of the best
feedback systems I get.
Also if you're new here,
hit that subscribe button
to join team Get Lost,
hit the bell button,
so that you're notified
when the next video goes up
and I should mention that if
you are planning to go to Bali,
I actually have an entire
travel video guide to it,
get a free preview of
that guide down below
to make sure that you make
the most of your trip.
Guys, I will see you next Saturday,
until then, let's Get Lost
again in the next one.
