Chillin' in Malang

After two tiring days without sleeping and covered with dust...sands precisely, we're heading to Malang hoping for a nice rest. We had no idea at all bout Malang, the only thing I knew was the weather is nice over there :p It's Devi, Malang CS moderator that came to the rescue, she recommended a nice affordable hotel-Helios. We paid IDR 85.000 for a decent and basic twin room, this hotel also arranges special jeep tour to Bromo. If I'm going to see Bromo again next time, I guess I'd love to go with this tour, the jeep passes through Bukit Teletubbies (Teletubbies Hill), savana that look so nice, and a waterfall!! what more can you ask, eh?

It felt heavenly to have such a nice hot water shower and rolled over spotless clean linen bed, the plan to do nothing and go nowhere was changed in minutes, feeling clean and fresh literally charged up our spirit, you'll get it if you ever felt dusty, sweaty and sticky when there's no other thing in the world you ever want but hitting the shower.

And it's time for afternoon strolling of Malang for make benefit glorious Warung Bakso Bakar of Pak Man. As a big fan of any MSG soups, me and Shanty would do anything to find the so-called most famous bakso bakar in Malang, but pathetic thing is we didn't even try any of Bakso Malang which is typically served in lots of shapes and variations. Warung Pak Man itself is a humble stall with lots of achievement proves hanging on the wall, from MURI (Indonesia Record Museum), newspaper scraps to pictures of celebrities ever drop in. They have both sweet and spicy bakso, the sweat one is mediocre,and the spicy one is drop dead spicy for my taste bud, we ended up mixed both bakso to get the perfect one anyway. The noodle soup itself is scrumptious tho it looks not so convincing, and it's all you can eat!! We did regret only took one bowl for sharing. Me and Shanty walked out grumbling 'we should have two bowls each instead' LOL


It was Devi, our savior again, arranged a small gathering for us. It's always a great feeling for being part of family in places you never expected before, and found out that actually Malang CS community has ton of things in common with one we have in Medan, is a nice surprise. Martha and Wempi joined our little hangout that night at a cozy cafe named Illy, they should open one in Medan! I meant it!! Lucky us, we were there during weekend, and there's a morning bazaar on Sunday. Lots of foodies to be tried, tho our bellies weren't too cooperative to try them all, from Nasi Jagung (Java always has the best Tempe and Tahu, guess it's the soybean that matters), Botok (weird fermented soybean with mushroom), plenty of fruity kripik (how come they make kripik out of any kind of fruits, even guava and dragon fruit) and last but not least 'Krupuk goreng pasir' (Krupuk fried with sands that tastes so good, not oily and cheap! pfftt.. I have the tendency to eagerly mention something cheap :p




Notice the huge bag of Krupuk Shanty's holding that only IDR 3.000 :p

With Malang Couchsurfers, in front of the famous Toko OEN

I'll pin Malang for my personal most livable town in Indonesia (so far), not only the nice weather, good foods, cozy cafes, laid back lifestyle and walkable. It's also relatively near to gorgeous places, either beaches, volcanoes, highlands & countrysides, you name it! Also it's not far from big buzzin' Surabaya to fly to other parts of the world. So LUCKY you, peeps that living there. [Still wondering why it should be named 'Malang' which literally means 'UNLUCKY' in Bahasa] What a contradiction!!