My Philosophy: East Java Trekking Part I

I signed up for this trip in May...and i signed up alone.
The day i left for the trip, i was so full of excitement. To me, its either i enjoy the trip fully or i will feel very left out.
Jessie and Joyce came to sent me off...ermm as in kind of sent me off, since jessie wanted me to help me buy something ....and joyce was tagging along....
and Jen came as well...also to buy a camera....sigh...i just pretend they are genuine sending me off...haha
but i got this from Jen...A Very nice lady!

It was my first time checking in my flight alone, clearing the custom alone, boarding the plane and clearing custom alone.
It was only till i arrived at Surabaya Airport did i met up with the interest group.
My room mate was Leon, he was a really a Photographer with lots of passion! Carrying his full set of gear everywhere he goes and i bet its more than 10kg...

Anyway, we travel by 3 vehicles, 1 mini van which ferry 8 passenger and 2 other jeep following the van...
The whole journey from place to place is exhaustive and super tiring...Dozing off, waking up on the car and finding you are still hours away from the destination requires a certain amount of preparation.

The only time we mingle together with the others are during our meal or when we get off for photo shoots.

I am glad that this group is fun...really fun!

Our first stop over was at this place where the whole village was destroyed by a mud slide. Heard it was caused by some petroleum company. The whole place smell of crude oil and mud.

The villagers were poor victim of these..there was a mass evacuation even for people leaving near the area. It was basically desserted except some of the locals trying to earn abit of money by ferrying tourist around the whole area on bike...

I just keep waving no to them and they are quite persistent.

By the time we reaches Yoshii hotel, it was quite late...the temperature was pretty low around 10 degrees.
The locals were sitting by the fire place and bbq corn over the fire. It was so cozy!

I dragged my shutter for this shot and i simply love how the effect came out! This is also one of my picture that i shared with the group during our photo sharing session.

One of my group mate Gavin who was in the astronomy club decided to bring us on a star gazing tour...It was an amazing sight!

The place up the hill was light pollution free, there was no cloud that night and no moon. Basically the sky was so clear and bright with stars that all you need to do was raise your head and look up!!
Splendid sight that even my migraine cured itself!

He walked us through the different patches of stars...and pointed out the milky way to us...

The 2 ladies, Alice and Amy is cracking lots of jokes around...brightening up the area..and Leon was somewhere positioning his camera!

I even witness a meteor shower with at least 2 falling stars. Alice saw 5 of them!

We left the spot reluctantly at 12am...as the next day event starts at 2.30am, we had no choice but to leave...

Mount Bromo was the most anticipated of all places because that was also the place that we see on the brochure and pictures from others....
We departed Yoshii Hotel at 2.30am and took those rovers up to the viewing spot for Mount Bromo to view sun rise!

I really hate the ride...it makes me feel like vomiting and throughout the ride so jerky and bumpy that i felt i was taking another "Mummy revenge"

We reaches the place rather early, there wasnt much crowd and we all get to choose a spot for our tripod. The wind was blowing like crazy till i felt like i was back in the winter shanghai and im glad i changed into my jeans...
Just 30 mins later, the whole place was flooded with foreigners and there was not even sufficient place to move around.

But when the sun rises, the sight was magnificent...and seriously worthed all the preparation like waking up early, braving the cold winds etc.