Indonesia - Malang

Malang, they say it is the second biggest city in East Java. I met a new friend over there, his name is Reza. We met in this traveler website called couchsurfing.com and He guided me to Batu city. As soon as I meet him, I asked for the famous local cuisine, bakso malang (Malang meatball). We had a quite long ride (he was riding motorcycle) just to find a good place to eat this special meatball, until we finally set our final destination to eat meatball in a place which location is quiet hard to reach. And I don't want to disappoint anyone here, but I think the meatball has nothing special (besides its size), the taste is just the same with any other regular meatball.

He then took me to his place. His place is quite nice, he lives with 3 other people in one shared house. He actually is not from Malang, but he came all the way from Medan to study there in Malang. The nice thing of his house is that we can see the view of a mountain.

Stomach is filled full, power is up, we went for another ride to Batu city, 30 minutes from Malang. And our first destination is a waterfall called Coban Rondo. I really enjoy waterfall, but to be honest, coban rondo did not really amaze me, but the journey did!! The road to coban rondo was bloody amazing. We went up to the mountain we can see the whole city and going inside, trees, vegetables, fields, all green and mist!! I can't believe I would say this, but the mist was beautiful, it was so perfect with the surroundings. I felt like I did not want to stop, I wanted to be on this ride with a breathtaking scenes all around me.

Coban Rondo waterfall

To those who wonders how to get there, it is really difficult to explain ... the easy way to say is "follow the direction" and public transportation? forget it. Bring your own vehicle, or rent one!

The weather was not really good for traveling actually. It was rainy and the road was really slippery and muddy. Our motorcycle got slipped and we almost fell twice. I should say that the road in Batu is somewhat poor. Batu city has awesome spot with spectacular view but yet it is a pain in ass just to get there. The road is hardly accessible and it is dangerous, I would say. I think this is a big problem in Indonesia's tourism. This happened to us on the way to Paralayang spot. We had to go through villages and to climb up the mountain. The bad road was really horrifying, plus it was so much misty. We even got lost in a resort which we thought it was the place we were going to but it was not. And after a long ride in a horrible road, we finally made it to Paralayang, even though it was ... sadly, misty which made us could not really see clear the below. And oh, that made me want to try paralayang someday.

Going through a village, but the view was so nice

Paralayang, very misty

But after a while, tadaaa ... made me want to jump

The end of the show. I was so grateful to have met Reza. He is very nice guy who has a big dream to go to Russia to see the architecture of the buildings. I, myself, believe that one day I will see him again, maybe here in Korea, or somewhere in Indonesia, or who knows maybe I will see him in Russia.

Me (left) and Reza (right)

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