Udin took us to the minivan he had booked for us from Bukit Lawang and on the way we picked up three german travellers who made us listen to Ace of Base most of the way! Lake Toba (Danau Toba) is a lake and supervolcano. The lake is 100k long and 30k wide, it is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. There was a supervolcanic eruption here about 70,000 years ago and it is the largest known explosive eruption anywhere on ea...

We had to take two flights and a bus journey to get to Bukit Lawang so we decided to stop over in Medan (the capital of North Sumatra) for one night. We flew from Solo to Jakarta with Air Asia and from Jakarta to Medan with Lion Air. We were lucky enough to see some volcanoes poking through the coulds below on the first flight and Medan looked massive from the air at night. We managed to flag down a becak and found a "hotel" to stay in for the night. We had a...

The train journey from Solo to Yogyakarta only took an hour and it was just like being on a train at home, very comfortable! We decided to get a becak to the area where the cheap homestays are and we walked around until we found Dewi Homestay, we had a four poster bed complete with Mozzi net and it was only 10 dollars a night so we were happy! Yogyakarta is a lot prettier than Solo, where we were staying there were lots of little alley ways with restaurants and...

We got the bus to Solo or Surakarta (both names are used) straight after our Bromo experience so by the time we arrived at 8pm we were very tired. We had read about a homestay which was run by a Javanese family who had a blood line to the Royal Family. We checked in and went straight to bed. The following morning we woke and realised what a big place we were staying in, it had a pool and many rooms based around the main house where the family lived. There wa...

We booked a bus from Bali to a place called Probolinggo which is the main base for tours to Mount Bromo. The bus left Bali at 10am and took us onto a ferry across to Java and we were finally dropped in Probollingo at about 9pm. As the guide book had pre warned we weren't dropped at a bus station but at a travel agency where a guy tried to sell us a tour to Bromo leaving at 3am to see sunset. We said we would come back the following day and took a cyclo to the ...