Bucket List Journey

Monday, February 25, 2019

Journey to East Java - Mount Bromo and Ijen Blue Flame (5D4N)

Indonesia February 25, 2019 4

Journey to the East Java (5D4N)

View from King Kong Hill,
Surabaya, Indonesia.

It was Tongariro Alpine Crossing (An active volcano in New Zealand) that started my obsession with volcanoes but it was Mount Bromo that really sealed the deal. East Java is a place where you can visit an active volcano, milky way and majestic waterfall through horse rides, desserts and cold mountain weather. I was so excited while planning for the trip because mountain, milky way and

waterfall are my top favorite thing.

We booked a tour guide online after comparing price and services with few tour providers. With a group of four, it’s cheaper and better to hire a local tour guide so we can avoid some hassle from taking public transport and getting lost in the city.

Cost of the tour

*4 pax = Rp 2,750,000/pax ==> 4 pax (in total) =RP 11,000,000

*Entrance fee Bromo (Weekday) = Rp 230,000/pax ==>Rp 920,000

*Entrance fee Ijen (Weekday) = Rp 100,000/pax ==>Rp 400,000

*Tips for the driver =Rp 100,000

*Tips for tour guie =Rp 100,000

Total = Rp 12,520,000

Included

-5d4n transport and accommodation

-tour guide

-Entrance fee in Bromo and Ijen

-Mineral water

-4 x hotel breakfast

Excluded

-Lunch and dinner

-Riding Pony horse to Bromo Crater

-Travel insurance

-Personal expenses

Day 1

On the first day, we reach Surabaya airport around evening time. Once we reach there, we were picked up by the tour guide and drove to Bromo directly for hotel check in. We stayed at Bromo Ecologde Hotel for the first two nights. What I remember is it's a pretty simple hotel with basic supply like hot water shower, wifi and breakfast. We booked two rooms and I stayed with my friend, Hanna Yong. The room is quite small, imagine we can't open our luggage at the same time due to limited space. Overall, it's not a fancy hotel but fit our basic need.

After we took a short rest and had our dinner at the hotel, we headed out for milky way. On the way to the view point, I was so excited because we had a clear night sky with milky way on the sky above our head (Sometime we can't see milky way even the sky is clear because it is not always well placed to be seen, like the sun, the star rise in the east and set in the west, due to Earth's rotation. Sometime it's lie flat around the horizon).

We had an hour of car ride to a peopleless forest viewpoint. It was freezing cold up there, I was underestimated the weather in Indonesia. We reached the viewpoint around 11.30pm and we were the first and only group up there for the milky way, once our tour guide dimmed the light of the car, we waited for few minutes to let our eyes adopted to the low light and this was what we saw when we gazed on the night sky with our bare eyes! Breathtaking <3

We even managed to see few meteors bolted through the night sky! What an unforgettable night.

Milky way at Bromo
Photo by John Lau

Day 2

Bromo sunrise tour starting at 3am, I can barely open my eyes. It was still completely dark outside but the area was incredibly crowded with cars, jeeps and motorbike parked on each side of the road. We were forcing to walk in the middle of the street and once we reached the entrance, a footpath lead all the way to the view point. As expected, full of people cheerfully sit and wait for the sun to rise. Wish we could depart much early so we can find a good spot to sit and chill.

View from KingKong Hill
Photo by John Lau

Managed to take a photo together after sunrise. The view is absolutely stunning!

Horse ride to Bromo Crater
Photo by John Lau

The next stop is Bromo Crater. The walk to Bromo Crater isn't hard. It took around 45 mins to an hour walk all the way from the drop off point to crater. Wearing a bandana or mask is high recommended as there is quite sandy along the way to Crater.

Bromo Crater, Indonesia.

Once we reached the top, we smelt typical rotten egg stench, it was the sulfuric gas from the crater. Again, it's crowded up there. We hardly have space to stand. We just took a few wefie with the crater and chill for 15 minutes before heading back to packing lot. The cool thing is you can actually walking along the crater! We didn't do that as we are short of time and it was pretty hot that time =D

Whispering Sand, Indonesia
Photo by John Lau

We spent some time to take some photos with the Jeep while on the way back to hotel. Typical tourist. HAHA

Day 3

The next day we headed to Bondowoso (5 hours drive from Bromo) around 9am and we managed to

visit the beautiful and powerful Madakaripura Waterfall along the way to Bondowoso. This incredible waterfall hidden at the end of a deep valley. This tour consist of 20 to 30 mins mortobike ride follow by a 15 minutes walk before reaching the waterfall. For most of the way, we walked through the river without getting wet but for some point we have to pass to the failing water. After made it through the river and climb a little section, we made it to the main waterfall. A 80m height massive waterfall with leafy wall curving around us. It was pretty impressive!

We continued our journey to Bondowoso after visiting the waterfall. Reached hotel around 7pm. We took a nap and departed to Ijen for the blue flame hike around 11pm.

Day 4

The journey to the Ijen Crater took around 1.5 hour. Then the hike to viewpoint took about 90-120 minutes. On the clear day, you can see the magical blue flame. Unfortunately, it was raining cats and dogs that day. We reached around 1am and yet we still want to hike even it's raining out there. The hike was not hard nor easy. We shared the narrow rocky path with other hikers. There was no time for photo, every step was carefully calculated. The wind was strong and at some points, the sulfur gas was so strong, we were still uncomfortable even with our gas mask on. Sometime the gas covered us from head to toe and made our eyes water.

Me at the Ijen Crater

Sulfur given by a miner :)

Was it an incredible experience? I'm sorry to say, for me, it wasn't. It was cool. But I was so disappointed of the crowds and the rainy weather during the hike. We were not able to see blue flame, sunrise and even the view at the viewpoint was not pleasant, covered by haze and gas. The scary climb and the danger of being exposed to acidic sulfur gas just wasn't worth the hike (Just my personal point of view). Hope you guys enjoy reading it =)

Mount Bromo and Ijen Crater Adventure Trip

A journey to the East Java. Visiting an active volcano, milky way and majestic waterfall 💦through horse rides🐎, deserts and cold ❄️mountain weather🌳

Monday, January 28, 2019

9 interesting jobs I tried in New Zealand

New Zealand January 28, 2019 0

Random stopover during roadtrip.
Queentown, New Zealand

Jobs on the road

This is how I fund myself to explore this isolated island in the South Pacific without watching my bank account dwindle.

1. Avocado Packer - August

My very first job in New Zealand after days of job searching around Te Puke (Kiwi fruit capital) and Auckland. As a fresh seasonal worker, my job scope is pretty simple. I just have to get the right amount of avocado into different boxes and place them on the respective pallet.

2. Kiwi Repacker - August to October

One of the most common backpacker job. I have to say shifts at the kiwi packing factory were torturously long. Staring at kiwis for 10 hours a day can get a little dull. Fortunately, the long working hours were broken up by breaks every couple of hours. We just have to count down to the next 'smoko' or lunch break instead of thinking we had 10 hours left. To pass the time, we would do some exercise and sometimes I'd sneak a peek to try do some learning during the shift from Argentina friends ( Caro, Mauricio, Andrea and Isabella) starting from a song, 'Duele El Corazon'.

After about 2 months of long days and nights, kiwi season came to an end and we had built up

some savings and were ready to say goodbye to Te Puke. Kiwi packing was tedious, but looking back on our time spent in Tauranga and Te Puke, it's the beautiful surroundings and the the quality time spent with my two travel friends and awesome people that I get to know from the pack house make me remember it all with fondness. This is the happiest job I have in New Zealand! I'd do it all again, 10 hours kiwi packing shifts and all.

A short video I captured during the last working day at

the kiwi fruit company.

3. Raspberry Picker -November

When I first heard that the farm I was going to be working on was paid per kilo, I had hopes for myself that I'm going to earn alot more than packer. However, it didn't go quite as planned. The biggest disappoIntment came when I discovered how little I could make getting paid per kilo. The hint for this job is get two hands in the bushes and keep plucking those raspberries as fast as I can no matter there are thorns and spiders all over the place. The faster you fill up the bucket, the faster you are able to make money.

Daily routine in a Raspberry farm.

4. Farmer - November
Had a chance to work in a farm located at Te Pohue.

Kindly check it out at the link below. I wrote a blogpost about the experience.
WOOFing in Nirvana farm

5. Painter - December
We got this job all in a sudden while scrolling those online backpacker board. It stated no experience is required. Basically, this is a WOOFING kind of job (work in exchange of accommodation or food). The host is located at Rotorua and they are very friendly. What we need to do is paint inside and outside of their house for 2 hours a day. It was quite interesting
as I never paint a house before (Haha).

PS: Thanks to the host and travel mates for my birthday surprise. Appreciated!

6. Cherry sorter & packer - December to February

After having almost a month break travel from North to South Island. We decided to stopover at a small town, Alexandra. There is where we got a seasonal job as a cherry packer. My job scope is to get rid of the cherry in bad condition and pack the qualified cherry into a ready plastic box. We worked almost everyday during cherry season and we can take a rest if only cherry harvest of the day is low. I got cold injury on all my fingers due to long exposure to freezing cold cherries for hours during cherry sorting.
There was where I see cherry as big as an apple, met new friends and helicopter park at the car packing lot.

7. Mussel opener & packer - February

Frankly, this job is rather easy. Grab a mussel from the belt, use a knife to twist it open. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. The tough part is I gotta open almost 5,000 mussels per day! Basically, I worked 8 hours everyday, which mean I have to open a mussel every 3 seconds. Encounter back aches and neck pain for being stand still in a stationary position for long hours.

I was salivating when seeing those fresh and big mussels on the moving belt. Haha!

8. Salmon farm - February to April

What a dream come true to work in Salmon factory because I'm a salmon lover. However, the job is not as easy as previous jobs because it's all about processing salmon and chemical for cleaning and sanitizing food premises and food equipment. In my opinion, removing pin bones from salmon fillet was the toughest part of the job in this salmon farm. The steps are simple, run your fingers down on the fillet, feel the bones' tips, remove it with a needlenose pliers, repeat until the fillet is bone free. Can't really feel my hand for the first week. Apart from slicing, smoking and packaging, storing salmon, the complicated parts was sanitization and cleaning.

Have a chance to join salmon harvesting located at Akaroa. Basically, what they do on that day was salmon feeding, and harvesting. According to the worker, salmon are raised at the farm site for up to 22 months and upon reaching the target weight of approximately 5 kgs, they are scheduled for harvest.

It's an awesome experience! Just that I had a serious seasick all day long. Haha! Had some fun with Reene fishing on the boat. It was funny where both of us know nothing about fishing but able to catch a fish within mins. Haha

9. Sale assistant - Armageddon 2017
During one of the weekend, managed to join Armageddon Expo (One of the largest public convention held in New Zealand) as a helper. I was amazed to see there're a lots of youngster in the event. Some of them spent hundred to thousand nzd for the costume, some dressed like a comic character and some even spent thousand nzd to get an Ultra pass of the event in order to get an autograph and photo session with the celebrity guest .

Photo of me: Playing around with the costume and wig there while having a short break.

WOOFing in Nirvana farm

New Zealand January 28, 2019 0

Nirvana Farm located at Te Pohue, New Zealand.
Photo credit to John Lau

What is WOOFing?

WOOFing. No. This isn't a typo. It's stand for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Fram. The concept of WOOFING is to work in exchange of food and accommodation. We tried our luck in applying WOOFing in Nirvana Farm. Once we got his approval, we drove to Te Pohue all the way from Te Puke to start our farm life.

What I do in the farm?

It's sound nice to own a farm. Nirvana farm is a 700 acres farm encompassing of mountains, rivers, streams and wild life. When talk about farm life, it conjures up those romantic moment of rolling hills and vast, open spaces, cute farm animals and an abundance of vegetables all glimmering in fairy dust and rainbows. I'm wrong. If it's one thing that I've learned in this WOOFing, it's this: Farming is a tough job.

Feeding and shifting the cows.

Feeding dairy cows and cattle.

The farm is divided into parts and it is still under construction. The 3 main parts are where cattle, dairy cows and bull were being keep. They live separately. Basically, me and my travel mates will feed the cattle by shifting them to the part of dairy cows(cattle and dairy cows live separately so dairy cows able to rest and reproduce milk for cattle) were staying for milk feeding twice a day, 7am and 5pm. After cattle feeding, we will then separate them and move dairy cows to a new part of field for grass feeding. The process took around 2 hours because the farm is really big. I smell like a bull poop almost all day because of this routine. I can't really justify it's the smell of the cows or from my boots. Haha!

Collecting woods and Craig ( The owner of the farm) show us the way of building up fences from A to Z.

Building up fences.

I didn't expect this is part of farming. Not only are concerned on growing your crop and feeding your dairy cows, it's all about running a business. So there's accounting and expanding your farm in order to make more money to keep the farm business running. We will head to the top of the mountain right after our breakfast by Craig's telescopic wheel loader and ATV.

Try to zoom into the picture on the left, look at the pole on top of the hill. There was where we build the first pole. After that, each of us will be carrying a set of tools (hammer, wire cutter, shovel, tamping tool, etc) with a 2m long wood along with us to the next check points. We were first marked 12 checkpoints where we are going to build up a pole before starting the job. Where I was standing to capture this picture is only about 1/3 of the way to our last checkpoints.

Not to mention about setting up the poles. Firstly, you need to dig a vertical and square hole as deep as my height blablabla...........(Dare not to write in detail, if not I might have to name this blog post to 'how to build fences')

My favorite activity of the day - Feeding the pig (-(o o)-)

Household Feeding
What I miss most about Nirvana Farm is the nine little piggies. Those piggies are always run freely around the farm. There is no specific cage or parts for them, they go wherever they want to. However, they will show up around chicken coop every evening right after I gathered some food scraps for them. Pig feeding was the peaceful moment while I was staying at the farm. I always stayed a little longer to play around with them.

Life lesson I've learned from this WOOFing experience in a farm.
Don't be afraid to get dirty and great things take time. It teaches me to be patience. Patience to accept what was, what is and what will be. Even if I fail, I can start all over again.

Monday, June 25, 2018

5 Things I learned from New Zealand Working Holiday

New Zealand June 25, 2018 0

Papamoa Beach, New Zealand
Photo credit to John Lau

I can hardly believe that it's been a year since i ended New Zealand Working Holiday. New Zealand has been everything I wished for and more. It’s hard for me to articulate my feelings and emotions so far for this adventure. If I had to sum up my experience in one sentence. It would be, "wow, isn’t this what we live for?"

1 . Humble happiness I learned from New Zealand.

Kiwis don't focus on status nor power. They are not in a continuous comparison battle and are not overly focused on personal achievements. I feel that this is why Kiwis are able to appreciate the simple things in life This is why New Zealand is always is the chart of the World Happiest Country. They have enough time to do things they like, be outdoor and be proud of whatever they are doing. I learned that we don't really need to be a banker or consultant to be happy. It's not about status. Work is important, but not more important than living a good, fulfilled life. I quit my white collar job (Business Development Excecutive) and worked for a wide range of blue collar jobs (Such as kiwi packer, cherry sorter, rasberry picker, painter, farmer, salmon packer, sale assistant etc). For me, I found that it is not about the tittle of your job but how much you like what you are doing. I have never been so happier while working with a bunch of backpackers and locals.

We met in Kiwi packhouse located at Te Puke (North Island). 3 months later, we made an effort to gather in a homestay located at Alexandra (South Island). I still remembered the moment when we are having light beer, music and talking about the big plan - 3 years later from today, we will meet each other in Canada, buy and live in a bus together, some of you guys will sell pizza and I am going to teach Chinese to earn a living and continue our wanderlust together. (Update: I can still feel the simple happiness while writing this post, make me realize how precious the moment when we talked about dreams.)

One of the things I enjoyed doing was getting to know good people and I enjoy listen to their life experience. They inspired me alot. So glad that we are still sharing new moments with each other even until today.

Farewell dinner with Kiwi in Alexandra, New Zealand. They just can't get enough of 'coke chicken' prepared by John. Haha!

2. Nature is amazing!

Almost every backpacker I've met there is crazy about the nature there. After spending 9 months there, I know why people can't get enough of New Zealand's landscape. There is no doubt that New Zealand is a nature paradise. Hiking trails and mountain bike tracks are almost everywhere, and just about every 5km, I was surprised there will be a sign to notify people to stop and admire the scenery. Having the opportunity to stop and appreciate something like a clear milky way, starry night, meteor rain can make me feel how tiny I am. There comes a realisation - we are always living in a busy and fast-paced urban jungle where we do not even know what’s happening around, because we never have a chance to even slow down. Fact is, when you got a chance to witness a clear Milky Way, starry sky or meteor rain, you’ll realise how insignificant you and your so called problems are, or even how tiny the existence of the Earth is in this universe. So did I.

Some of my favourite spots in New Zealand

- Wharariki Beach

- Wanaka Tree

- Hokitika George

- Mount Cook

3. Don't lose curiosity.

This is very important because we keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things. Curiosity keep leading us down to new paths. I found that when I am curious, I will find lots of interesting things to do.

Camp life

We are always curious and want to travel in a more flexible way. Hence, we bought a tent which can fit 3 persons and started our on and off camp life from North Island to South Island.

Photo taken at one of the holiday parks in Hamilton.

Sea urchin picking

Got to know about sea urchin picking from the local at our workplace. During one of the weekend, we drove to New Dick's Beach (What a strange name *—*) at 4am in the morning for sunrise and to search for sea urchin. Luck is with us! We managed to get some fresh mussels and sea urchins with some tips from the folks who live by the beach there. Or else we might go home empty handed. Haha!

Catching sunset, starry night and sunrise on Roys Peak.

Happened to come across a stunning photo from the Internet (Roys Peak). Decided to try staying one night on the mountain for the breathtaking scenery. Have a really tight schedule (Cherry end season party, farewell dinner, gotta pack and move to other town within 2 days) but still tried our best to fit it into our plan. We don’t want to miss it and regret for life! It’s a 3-4 hours hike (1 way), we carried more than 10kg backpack per person including tent, sleeping bag, camera equipment, food, drinks, speaker, cloth, etc. We made the decision not to bring our drone which made me regret until today but we really couldn’t carry anymore. We were able to reach the top before sunset, the scenery was lovely!

My feeling at the top - I miss my family because it was day two of Chinese New Year 2017 and I was supposed to spend time with them. Also, it was kind of my lowest point of my life as I just broke up with my ex 1 week ago. Thanks to my travelmates (John & Poo Wen) for the support and hugs.

4. Language is not a communication barrier.

At the very beginning, I was worried about communication barrier. Imagine you are working together with people from all around the world and everyone is having conversation with their friends in their own language. What I heard was English, Cantonese, Mandarine, French, German, Spanish, Hindu, Vietnamese, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Malay etc. Can you feel the complexity of the conversation? In addition, New Zealand slang can be quite hard to understand especially on top of their fast and harsh sounding accent. Surprisingly, I found it was pretty interesting after interacting with them for a few days. We started to learn other languages beginning with some simple number and swear words (Haha!). Another good way of interaction was through music! Each of us was given a chance to play some of our favorite music while working in the packhouse and I got to know a lot of cool music and having so much fun. We danced, we sang together, making the work environment stress-free and full with positive energy. Well, I guess language shouldn't become communication barrier, it depends on how strong you want to connect with other.

5. Working holiday is not just a bed of roses.

It’s not that I have regretted giving this lifestyle a try, I just want people who are going to have their working holiday to know that this path is not all smiles and rainbows.

Having proper expectation is important. Travel adventures always doesn’t go as what I've planned. During the whole journey, I was trying my best to find the balance between earning money and travelling. When we are not taking pretty pictures, we were probably doing some laborious hard work or squeezing our brain juice to plan for the next trip as well as budget planning for daily expenses.

Behind those fairy tale photos we took in New Zealand, there were many little road bumps that happened along the way. One of the incidents was that our car broke down and delayed our trip for days. We have no choice but to stay in Christchurch to fix the car. Another incident was a car accident during road trip and insurance company refused to pay for the loss. We didn’t give up and eventually found evidence and headquarter approved our claim. Also, we were unable to find a home-stay in Alexandra due to the high demand during cherry harvest season, we set up our tent in a local's garden and lived for a month with bare necessities. I found that all the road-bumps and heartaches are actually magical little fairies setting a bigger plan in motion and made me a stronger person.

The more I push myself to really live and really experience things and step outside of my comfort zone, the more the songs are allowed to flow.

New Zealand - magnificent, uncrowded, green and peaceful. Grateful to have working holiday experience in this spectacular country. It’s definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Quit my job and backpacking in New Zealand

New Zealand June 13, 2018 0

Roy Peak
One of the popular track in Wanaka, New Zealand

Taking a gap year is considered the norm in some countries including Australia, Argentina, Germany, France and United Kingdom while it is not so common in Malaysia. Does it sound crazy to just quit and go backpacking for almost a year? Potentially giving up a good job position. Also, would it look bad on my resume? Sounds really crazy to me.

The decision to go for working holiday was not an easy one to make. I’m an ordinary girl from a typical cina family who never leave home too long. Even when I started my career, I was still staying with my family. Grow up, study, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, this is the ‘ideal’ life being taught when I was a child. Leave my comfort life and take up a path that is full of uncertainty? I could hear collective gasp of a huge number of Asian parents.

Mount Cook, New Zealand.
One of my favorite places.

What trigger me the most was those experiences and photos of New Zealand Working Holiday shared by a friend (Rottenapple) on Facebook. From his facebook post, I get to know the application of NZ working holiday visa opens soon. There was an announcement once I clicked into New Zealand Immigration website, Application for the Malaysian Working Holiday Scheme, limited to only 1150 people per year, will open at 5am on 22 January 2016.

I took a day off on the opening day, drove to my friend’s house who have high speed internet connection. Started to log in with 2 laptops, 2 smartphones and 1 Tablet at 4am in the morning. After almost 6 hours of torturing, form has been submitted and payment successfully made at around 10am. Two days later, I received an congratulation email about visa has been approved. I was so excited but dilemma, long discussion with family and rationalisation on whether to go or stay at the same time.

Convincing my very conservative Cina family was not easy. I'd regret if I missed this chance, but at the same time, I was afraid it would be a irrational move. Fortunately, I was able to have two travel mates who share the same vision with me, we made a team of three and plan for the getaway.

Sometime, there is no next time.

Sometime, there is no second opportunity.

Sometime, it's now or never.

So the journey begins.

New Zealand Life - 274 Days of Adventure

New Zealand Working Holiday

To all my friends, thank you for making my year AWESOME♥️!

We will meet again for sure!

Adventure Awaits.

- - https://berynbucketlistjourney.blogspot.com/ - https://berynbucketlistjourney.blogspot.com/

Monday, February 25, 2019

Journey to East Java - Mount Bromo and Ijen Blue Flame (5D4N)

Monday, January 28, 2019

9 interesting jobs I tried in New Zealand

WOOFing in Nirvana farm

Monday, June 25, 2018

5 Things I learned from New Zealand Working Holiday

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Quit my job and backpacking in New Zealand

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