Indonesia Travel Itinerary: Java and Bali in 2 (and a Half) Weeks

Here we are, after so much effort to give the blog a boost, which I hope was not in vain, I can finally tell about this famous 3-week trip (18 days exactly) in Indonesia, more precisely in Java (central and eastern) and Bali. I'm just making a slight time lapse because we first went to Singapore in March but as I haven't prepared these articles yet, I'm posting the ones on Indonesia first...

A journey that could be summed up as follows:

– 18 days / nights
– 11 nights on Java including:
-> 7 in different hotels
-> 1 in a train
-> 1 between a lounge bar and a car (4×4)

– 7 nights in Bali in 3 different hotels
– 36 showers (2 per day due to either the heat or the sweat from the long walks)
-> 12 hot showers “only”, and yes you should know that hot water is rather a luxury here…
-> 3 showers, half hot and half cold (meaning that it might have worked in the morning but not in the evening or vice versa…)
-> 18 cold showers
-> 3 non-showers, either because of travel or because the shower was really too cold…

– A day without a photo (this is rare and notable enough to be highlighted 😉
– 6 days without rain… (but only 2 with rain all day, it was in April)

It is a course that included the following stages:

Day 1: Arrive in Surabaya in the evening after 23pm
Day 2: Surabaya -> Yogyakarta (by train)
Day 3: Yogyakarta -> Borobudur
Day 4: Borobudur
Day 5: Borobudur -> Wonosobo (by bus)
Day 6: Wonosobo -> Dieng Plateau
Day 7: Dieng Plateau -> Yogyakarta
Day 8: Yogyakarta -> Prambanan ->Yogyakarta
Day 9: Yogyakarta -> Malang (by night train)
Day 10: Malang (rest)
Day 11: Malang -> Bromo -> Bondowoso (just a stopover for the night)
Day 12: Ijen –> Bali via Ketapang
Day 13: Bali -> Ubud
Day 14: Bali
Day 15: Bali
Day 16: Bali -> Jimbaran
Day 17: Bali
Day 18: Bali

So we were leaving in the middle of the afternoon at the beginning of April, which meant I would miss the wonderful Thai New Year celebration that is Songkran… but I would quickly forget this detail because of what I would experience during this stay.

Which gives the following route for the island of Java:

In "wait" mode we had planned for a long time in case the queue was long at immigration (which seemed to be the case recently) which ultimately will not be the case so plenty of time to eat and rest.

Have a good meal, of course !

re bon appétit! (4 hours have already passed since the previous photo)

The outward flight lasted 2h30 (compared to 3h for the return)

The currency is the Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) (not to be confused with the Indian Rupee) The exchange rate for us was around 1 Euro for 12.500 IDR

Indonesia practices the "on arrival" visa, which is very practical when you don't necessarily have time to go to the embassy before getting your visa. Arriving at the counter I thought that we asked it directly to the officer at the counter in question... at least I made him laugh and he redirected me to the specific counter to get the visa on arrival, go upstairs and count $25 per person and presto in less than 5 minutes it's done.