Off-Topic General Discussion - Page 4954

On May 09 2015 05:56 Gahlo wrote:

It's an emote.

http://twitchemotes.com/emote/_DansGame_

On May 09 2015 06:16 Alaric wrote:
Oh hey Frudgey how's Jojo so far?

Guys just tell me it's not upbeat and fabulous

On May 09 2015 08:24 Ketara wrote:
So, story time.

I went to Kawah Ijen yesterday, which is a place I did not know existed and was pretty sweet.

By the time I got there I was already exhausted. Following 29 hours of air travel, the volunteer program coordinator had screwed up and not told anyone I was arriving 2 weeks early, so there was nobody at the airport to pick me up. I ended up taking an overpriced taxi to the address I thought I was staying at, only for the owner to be like "there was some problem and t2t moved locations a week ago." So I had no support and didn't know where I was going, pretty great right? It took most of the day to get an Indonesian SIM in my phone, track down the t2t people and get to the right building, and I was tired. Once I got there they were pretty nice though. Guy named Budi offered to take me to the bus station the next morning.

So, next morning I got on a local bus and spent 12 hours going from Bali to java, which included bus transfers in which no English was spoken, a ferry ride, and a zero toilet bathroom. Standard stuff. I ended up in a town called bondowoso at like 8 pm. Got a room in a guest house there, and it turned out the owner was from LA and ran the UCLA panda express during the years I was a student there. So we had a fun time chatting. Old friends immediately and so on.

That night I went straight to Ijen, because you have to see Ijen at night, so zero sleep for me. It was a 2 hour ride on the back of a motorcycle up a rainforest covered mountain. I know I saw monkeys and I'm pretty sure I saw a very large cat. This was fairly midlserable because the other volunteers at t2t said I didn't need to bring my jacket, so I was going up a mountain at 40-50 kph at night on a motorcycle in a t shirt. Pretty cold and windy. But fun.

So, I got to Ijen at like 1 am. There's a tiny town and then a 2 hour walk up the mountain. The name means "lonely mountain" in bahasa, so I was expecting dragons and buried treasure, but unfortunately I had to settle for something almost as cool. At the top of Ijen there is a sulfur mine as well as an active volcano, and apparently there are only two sulfur volcanoes in the world. What's awesome about this is the volcano heats the sulfur until it turns into a gas, and this sulfur clowd billows out of the volcano crater. Sulfur gas is poisonous obvs, so after 2 hours up the mountain it was 1 hour down the crater with some local miners, while wearing a gas mask. My mask wasn't super fancy so it still burned my throat a little when the wind pushed the gas cloud into our faces, but we got down okay.

The reason why you go after dark is because when the sulfur is ignited in the volcano it burns blue, but can only be seen at night. It looks like this: + Show Spoiler +

Another hour back up the crater, then another hour to the very top of the mountain to watch the sunrise, which is where I got that picture I posted earlier:
+ Show Spoiler +

You can kinda see the sulfur gas cloud on the far left of the pic. Then back down the mountain, a brief lunch of fried rice in the town, a detour to a small sulfur waterfall (not very impressive but neat because the water was bright green like a sprite bottle) and a bike ride back to the hotel at bondowoso. I slept 5 hours, then ate enough dinner for 3 people, then slept another 9 hours, and now its the following morning.

Good trip so far.

On May 09 2015 08:27 Frudgey wrote:

Jojo's pretty good so far.

The part with D'Arby the Gambler was the best. Thinking of taking a break after Stardust Crusaders though.