The banana backpacking trail is an infamous route through South-East Asia connecting Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam and expanding outwards to Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. It was named after the “network of guesthouses/hostels/restaurants serving up fried banana pancakes and other westernized treats to the throngs of foreigners exploring [this part of the world]”.

As an avid traveller, I’ve read countless travel posts and seen an innumerable amount of backpacking videos covering this area. It’s well-travelled, packed full of beautiful locations, brimming with adventure, and easy for the wallet. I’ve been dreaming of going forever and was so excited at the idea of finally going.

The pancake trail covers a HUGE area of the world. We truly could have planned our Asia trip in twenty different ways, but there was one place which offered beaches, mountains, diving, culture, and which had been on my travel bucket list since my gap year. Indonesia.

We thus left Malaysian Borneo and hopped on a flight for Jakarta. Rivalling Tokyo, Jakarta is one of the world’s megapolis, with close to 42 million inhabitants. It is also the (recently) former capital of Indonesia, since the country’s capital is now on Borneo. Jakarta is located on the island of Java, Indonesia’s most populous island. Rich in history, from ancient Hindu-Buddhist empires to diverse cultures and a Dutch colonial footprint, Java is also geographically stunning with dramatic landscapes stemming from its numerous volcanoes and rice fields.

In Jakarta, we discovered some of this diversity by doing a political walking tour, which walked us through Indonesia’s recent history, from Dutch colonial rule to its independence, proclaimed in 1945. We then savoured some of the country’s flavours by doing a food walking tour and tried satay, nasi goreng, STMJ, Gudeg, Rawon, Semarang, and a lot of sambal. Yum!

From Jakarta we headed to Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta). Java is home to a robust train system connecting its major cities; its trains quite literally meander through rice fields and volcanoes, making for a contemplative journey observing the background and the local workers in the fields.

Yogyakarta is the cultural center of Java and Javanese culture. While Indonesia is predominantly muslim, Javanese spirituality mixes elements of Islam with older Hindu, Buddhist, and animistic beliefs. Those elements are found in the culture’s performing arts such as wayang kulit (shadow puppet), gamelan music, and its textile craft known as batik (a wax-resist dyeing technique).

Yogyakarta is also a political center as the only Indonesian royal city with a reigning Sultan. His palace is situated in the center of it all, and one can visit the complex’s various buildings of Javanese and European style, many which host daily cultural performances. We spent many days simply wandering this city-within-a-city, stopping to listen to a performance and pursuing forward to find our new favourite piece of batik clothing.

The city is also close to major ancient temples. We combined a visit of Borobudur, a Buddhist complex, with Prambanan, a Hindu temple. Considering that there are three important ancient archeological sites in SEA, Angor Wat in Cambodia, Bagan in Myanmar, and Borobudur in Indonesia, we had to visit and learn more about the ancient civilisations that once prospered here.

Indonesia is located along the Pacific ring of fire, and as the name connotes, there is an important number of volcanoes in the country. Therefore, after appreciating the arts in Yogyakarta, we headed towards East Java to watch the sunrise rise over Mount Bromo, a sight to see.

We had also heard about a blue-flame volcano, where sulfur fumes ignite and shine blue in the dark. Our next stop was thus Mount Ijen where a midnight start led us to the top of this mountain before hiking down inside the crater. While we didn’t see blue flames, we did witness local miners harvest the sulfur in concrete pipes, fumes directly in their faces before hauling their load in wicker baskets on their backs up to the volcano’s crest.

After a few days hiking, our next stop was Bali. I think I first heard of Bali in the movie Eat, Pray, Love starring Julia Roberts. In the movie, Bali seems to be a truly magical place filled with healing, beautiful locations and my favourite, love. While I had the love with me (my boyfriend), rest and wonderful views were most welcome after our numerous early morning starts of the last days.

Bali turned out to be just that. We enjoyed massages, napping on the beach and visiting local temples. In contrast to the Bali of Eat, Pray, Love, the island has developed immensely in the last decades with some parts of the Denpasar region being quite westernized and catering mostly to tourists. After our time in Yogyakarta and East Java, this felt like a 180. But we were starting to understand how Indonesia’s motto “Unity in Diversity” applied itself in its political, cultural and geographical landscapes.

But idle we could not, and next we headed to the Amed region in eastern Bali to go diving. Some call this area the Bali of Bali’s past, resembling what once was before mass tourism arrived. Definitely much quieter than Denpasar, we booked a villa by the beach where we lounged in the afternoons after our morning dives. We dove onto the US Liberty wreck, an impressive World War 2 wreck just off the beach near Tulamben.

Invigorated by our time in Bali, our next adventure was hiking up Mount Rinjani on Lombok island. Lombok is just east of Bali and after a quick stop in the Gili islands off its western side, we were already at the base of this volcano. You can summit it in two days, but the boyfriend and I choose a three-day option with porters which brought us through a different part of the park through hot springs and jungle.

After a relatively gruelling upward hike on day one, we summited Mount Rinjani early morning on day 2 in time for the sunrise. What a view! By the end of the afternoon, our camp had been set up by our guide and porters, a true luxury, and we were bathing our aching muscles in the hot springs. On day three, we hiked up from the crater lake down the volcano’s slopes back into the jungle. We had so much fun and can’t wait to thru hike some more, just look at the sights!

With that, our time in Indonesia was already over. With our interest sparked from other traveller’s stories of areas we hadn’t had the time to visit, we knew we would be back someday. But our trip in Asia wasn’t yet over and onto our final destination we went.

(If you are reading this in real time, yes this blog post is many months late. After the end of our trip, life got busy so here it is at last!)