What to See in Surabaya, the 'City of Heroes' in Indonesia, after trekking up Argopuro

Surabaya is the second city of Indonesia, after the capital Jakarta. Surabaya calls itself the city of heroes. 

Let's start at the beginning. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indos (Ἰνδός) and the word nesos (νῆσος), meaning "Indian islands". 

Lots of islands. Mostly Moslem. The wine making is in Bali which is not Moslem.

My family frequently climb the volcanoes in Indonesia.
"What?" I gasp, "Volcanoes!'

My family reply, "Indonesia is all volcanoes. All the mountains are volcanoes. You are on one or under one."

Really? They didn't teach me that in school.

So, my intrepid trekkers, went on yet another long weekend to trek up the Argopuro volcano in Indonesia. The island has several volcanoes. Every now and then a volcano sens up a plume of smoke and a trek is cancelled or postponed. So, off they go to another nearby mountain. the mountains are not only hot inside, but have trees and lakes and trails trodden by feet and worn down by mopeds and
signs at the top giving you the elevation.

Plus local guides. Local taxes to enter national parks containing valcanoes, fees which are higher for tourists than for low-paid locals.

Does that money go on signs and paths or the pockets of people, as legitimate salaries, wasted on admin, or bribes, or to help local infrastructure? We may speculate, but we have no time to investigate that. We are too busy organizing flights and maps and tents.

The first night hotel was:
Utama Raya Beach hotel
on Jalan R aya.

At the back were inflatable boats, brightly coloured. Across the car park is a Starbucks.

Our group had supper together at the back of the hotel, on heavy iron seats, which look red in the pictures. Perfect for dinner outdoors overlooking dark sand beach with pebbles at the back and boats.

Next day the trek starts. It is a one way trek with the minibus meeting you at the other end, so if you want to turn back, do so early. It is steep and tiring.

One of the older hikers turned around on the first day. He went back to Surabaya and waited for the return flight.

The rest of the group soldiered on and slept overnight in tents. Everybody gets up at 5 am.

Indonesia is mainly Moslem so no much alcohol. Surabaya has a large Chinese population who are ethnic Chinese but speak bahasa (language) Indonesian.


Entrance to Chinatown, Surabaya, Indonesia. Photo from Wikivoyage.

The city, a Singaporean friend tells me, after he stayed there at a friend's house last year, seems much safer than the larger capital city of Jakarta.

At the top of Argopuro you can pick up a sign with the name of the mountain, on what looks like a car number plate and hold it up for a photo.

Coming back, half way down, you see a very peaceful lake. Local have built a jetty where you can sit and take a peaceful picture, not a sound for miles except the occasional bird.

Our group of expat climbers met the locals who had just rebuilt the jetty. A local girl said, "Come to Surabaya and visit the chocolate shop where I work!"

If you are stuck in Surabaya, or have time on your last morning before the lunch time flight back to Singapore, what else is there to do?

Surabaya Sights
1 See two bridges: the long bridge across to the island, Suramadu bridge lit at night.


2 The Red bridge.
3 The museums about independence.
4 A high statue of an Admiral, representing the fight for independence, from the Dutch.

5 A giant green Russian submarine, now a museum.
Cafe alongside.


Photo by Midori in article on Surabaya in Wikivoyage.

6 Some strikingly pretty mosques.
7 A chocolate shop whose website shows fabulous chocolates and cakes.
8Traditional Hotel.


Surabaya is the second most populous city on Java. However, my relative was tired from the trek and decided not to go into town. His excuse was that the traffic was so bad that he did not want to risk missing his flight.

What to buy? A charger at a service station, good value, takes two phones or devices.

Costs
Flight from Singapore.
Jetstar flight.
Pay extra for checked in luggage.
Two Leki brand sticks. (We previously had cheaper ones which fell apart.)
On the return flight the airport staff tried to take the walking sticks away. An elderly traveller argued that he needed them.

Payment to local guide who carries your overnight bag. Tip to guide on last day for general help.
You need a day bag contained lots of water. On one day, day one, one of the hikers drank four litres of water.
Small fee to trek organizer, who does not go on treks.

Finally, once home we looked up the song about Surabaya Johnny for The Threepenny Opera.

Author
What to buy? A charger at a service station, good value, takes two phones or devices.

Indonesia is mainly Moslem so not much alcohol. For sharing out food at camping breakfast time, one traveller brought dates. Another had the smallest coffee pod coffee maker and coffee pods. Another had cheese.

One traveller found that after several years of service his tent was starting to leak in the rain. At the end of the trek, he gave it to one of the porters. 

I am a great fan of recycling. Nonetheless, when I heard this story, back in Singapore, I protested, "Maybe the porter wouldn't want a leaking tent! Would he patch it up?"

The reply I got was, "I promise you, dear, the porter would be very glad to have it."

Travel Tip

When you get off your group coach always keep your phone with you to contact the others. My relative got off the minibus for a coffee in Starbucks. When he emerged the minibus had vanished and so had his group. He did not have a phone to call them. He did not know the name of the hotel. Eventually he crossed the car park and went into the lobby of a nearby small hotel. He told the man on the desk he had lost his group, and their minibus had vanished. 

The man on the desk reassured him:

"You are in the right place. They have just checked in. The minibus has gone back. All but one. You must be ..."

The phone he left on the bus was with the group organizer. The moral is, even if you are just rushing to the toilet and the coffee shop, always have your phone and your group leader's number and your destination hotel phone number and address with you.

Useful Websites

Jetstar

Singapore Airlines

singaporeair.com

indonesiatourismboard.com

traveloka.com (comparison and booking) pairs up the different legs which saves searching

booking.com gives each leg of your journey separately.

INDONESIAN AND MALAY LANGUAGES
If you are planning a trip, you might like to brush up your Indonesian vocabulary and grammar (pretty much the same as Malay, which you hear in announcements and read on the four language posters on every journey on the MRT in Singapore

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

What Is Or Isn't Kosher. What About Vegetarians, Vegans, Other Diets?

Kosher McDonald's, Argentina

English: kosher McDonald's restaurant in Abasto shopping, Buenos Aires, Argentina Español: McDonald's, kosher, en el Abasto Shopping, Buenos Aires, Argentina Deutsch: koscheres McDonald's-Restaurant, im Abasto Shopping, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Date	9 February 2011
Source	Own work
Author	Geogast

Kosher
Kosher food laws followed the laws in the bible. The book of laws, translated from Hebrew into Greek is called Leviticus (then translated into Latin and finally into English).

The food laws include, but are not limited to the following:

No pork.
No shellfish.
No meat mixed with milk.

Food must be either prepared by somebody Jewish (so they know about all the above) or be supervised by a learned Jewish person such as a rabbi or shochet. (I remember reading that at the turn of the 1900s a wealthy orthodox man - I think there was one in Singapore - employed his own shochet to kill the meat and prepare it, when at home or when travelling, having first inspected the animal to see it was not diseased. )

Observing The Sabbath
The Hatch End branch of B & K, according to their website is now kosher. I had a chat with them once about this. They said as far as they are concerned, they service kosher food, like your mother does. But they can't get a Kosher license from the London Beth Din (or Manchester or any other UK city), which is an advantage because they don't have to pay for the inspection. The reason was that to comply with the Beth Din, they would have to close on the Sabbath, sunset to sundown, varying in the UK with the season (like restaurants and shops in Golders Green and North West London.

Kosher - if you care, or care to know
However, since the supermarkets such as Tesco are selling kosher food in a chiller cabinet, and kosher wines, in a shop which is open on Saturday employing non-Jewish staff (who by Jewish laws, according to one law must be allowed to rest on the Jewish Sabbath, but that presumes they are in your employ and work on Sunday, or are allowed to work on the Sabbath like the kosher goy who can light your fire. (Elvis Presley was the one who lit the oven for the Jewish lady who lived upstairs.)

So, assuming it is OK for Tesco and other supermarkets to sell kosher food on Saturday, it should be OK. (It is rather like your Jewish mother or granny, if she is frum - meaning orthodox, serving food on Sabbath. How can she do that? She can say, 'this is one I prepared earlier'. In my view, logically, it would also be OK to be served by non-Jews who have a different day of rest.  Then it must be OK for the owners, who are not Jewish, or not necessarily Jewish. The same must apply to their staff who for a day of rest get Monday off.

Unfortunately, recently I have seen supermarkets cover their Jewish section on Jewish holidays, which is a real nuisance if you are on your way to an event and urgently need a bottle of kosher wine, whether it is to serve to Jewish people or be props when you give a talk to a mixed audience about the Jewish holidays.

Other kosher foods may be distributed around a supermarket, such as chocolates which are marked as kosher, in case Jewish people want to buy them, but are generally bought by any passer-by who happens to want a cake or biscuit.

In practice, I expect somebody could tell Tesco or another supermarket to cover their kosher section during a religious holiday or the Sabbath. 

However, large numbers of kosher items, packaged goods with the words kosher in tiny 10 point type, find themselves all over huge supermarkets. Matzos are often found in two places. In the kosher section. Again in the bread sections. The same goes for cakes, biscuits, chocolates, halva, wine. 

I am not an authority. This is just to give you a pointer as to what to check on.

Stories

Barmitzvah At An Italian Restaurant in London, England

What could go wrong?

1 To economize and for convenience, a non-Orthodox family holds their son's bar mitzvah party, not in a kosher restaurant, not at a synagogue hall or banqueting hall with a kosher caterer, but in a nearby smaller Italian restaurant. To please their more Orthodox Jewish friends the family has asked for a meal with no pork, opting for a fish meal so they can have milky coffee and desserts contained milk and milky white sauce on the fish. 

It is all very grand and appealing. We start with smoked salmon. However, the restaurant serves the starter decorated with prawns! 

Oops. Prawns are shellfish. Not allowed. What to do? 

Send all starters back? Chuck them all in the bin?

Surreptitiously remove prawns from the ones served to the first table? Or leave prawns as leftovers for the family and staff. Manage to serve the rest of the food without the prawns. Provide a fruit alternative to those ultra-fussy people who now suspect that the chef has simply removed prawns and sent back the contaminated smoked salmon.

Who will pay for the mistake? What about the delay waiting for food? The embarrassment. The stress.

The restaurant and staff are no longer there. This event was in the nineteen-nineties at an Italian restaurant in Hatch End which closed down and changed name and ownership and food nationality several times. The boy is now an adult. But we often talk about it. 

"Do you remember the time when the restaurant served prawns at a bar mitzvah!" 

"Oh, yes!"

2 You would think that the simple solution would be to stick to a vegetarian diet for everybody. Who could mind? What could go wrong.

Your Jewish friends are happy. Their Moslem guests knowing there's no pork will be happy. (Although one said you should not mix eggs and fish.)

3 What about your other international guests with assorted diets?

Some 'vegetarians' avoid meat but will eat fish.

Story

INDIAN DIET

We went out with Indian friends to Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Two married couples, English and Indian. We had a buffet, shared the food platters which included at least one meat meal.

A couple of weeks later, I invited my new girlfriend for lunch. I suggested an Indian restaurant. She vetoed it. She was eating vegetarian. I was puzzled.

"Why?" I asked. I thought you ate meat at Raffles?"

"Yes," she said, "But today is devoted to a different God, and I have to be vegetarian."

We went to a vegetarian restaurant. It took me a day or two to feel relaxed about this idea. I had grown up in England, at that time surrounded by people following two of the world's one God religions, speaking English. I went to a local Church of England secondary school, but the day's of the week in English are named after pagan or Norse gods. Monday is moon day. Thursday is Thor's day. I reasoned that the days of the week are named after different Gods.  

Christians change their diet. Catholics used to give up meat and eat fish on Fridays. Out of deference to the Catholic girl pupils and staff, my Church of England girls' grammar school on Friday served fried fish or a quiche containing eggs and cheese but no meat.

During Lent, Christians give up certain foods. Each household has a different diet normally. So each person can choose what to give up. (No point in giving up meat if you don't normally eat it.)

Jews give up leavened bread for Pesach (Passover). According to a Discovery programme, this might go all the way back to a rainy spring in Pharaoh's time. The moisture from one year's wet weather caused the stored grain to grow mould. It led to what used to be called St Vitus's Dance. The eldest boy child would be five years older than the next. The firstborn would get a double helping of food at late night dinner time, in the year of contaminated harvest a double portion of the contaminated food. Hence the death of the firstborn who were all found dead, slain by an invisible force in the night. 

To prevent last year's crop infecting the new spring harvest, all the old flour was finished off with spring cleaning. The mould situation was so serious that every year you had everything cleared out. Stored foods had no 'use by' nor 'sell by' dates in those days. Besides, the majority of ordinary people could not read.

Story

I went to visit Jewish friend whose daughter had married an ultra-Orthodox boy. I played safe and took them a pot plant. They said they would have to keep the pot plant in the garage during Pesach, in case it had any insects which would contaminate the house.

Vegans

The vegans are stricter than vegetarians who won't eat meat, and the no meat and fish eaters. Vegans won't eat anything taken from an animal. They won't have eggs, milk, milk products such as butter, cream, yogurt and cheese.

Ok, so we've cut out meat, fish, cheese, eggs, milk, butter, what else could go wrong?

The Jains only eat food from above the ground, so no potatoes. 

No fish and chips then.

Let's look at it another way. Who can we invite?

Let's invite the Chinese over for a Chinese meal. It is said that the Chinese eat anything (with four legs) except the table!

Oh, but what about allergies? One in four Asians has an intolerance to milk. The Asians are therefore not big on cheese. The Japanese don't like spicy food.

A Chinese friend of mine has one daughter who eats and drinks everything, another girl can't tolerate milk products.

My other good friend who is Chinese is married to a man who developed or discovered late in life that he had a gluten intolerance. She started a gluten free food business in Singapore. Her husband can't eat bread. Biscuits. Gluten is in everything. Or might be. As my husband once said of me, when I expressed lukewarm enthusiasm for accompanying him hiking up Everest with a Sherpa who would be carrying and cooking vegan rations, except for Yak food.) "Don't come with us, dearest. Even you enjoyed yourself, nobody else would!" 

Gosh - everybody's got a problem with something.  Those who don't have a problem today could develop an allergy tomorrow. So could I.

I think I'll just sit on my own and eat a grape and drink water. But I can plan my next restaurant meal. Let the other diners and the restaurant manager sort things out for themselves.   

Sometimes it seems as if the world's problems and difficulties are multiplying since I was a child, multiplying every day. But that's what happens when you travel and others travel to you. A constant discovery of new products and new ideas.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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Moslem Greeting Eid Mubarak - how do you reply?

Problem
Cards and greetings, from family, friends, strangers, businesses, people overseas - I received a Muslim greeting on what's ap, a picture with Arabic writing and the words in Roman script:
EID MUBARAK.

I am sure this person didn't send me a greeting last year. Maybe that's when they were overseas and could not use phones which work with the UK, or maybe they just joined Whats Ap, or maybe they sent to everybody they knew, and accidentally included me on the list

Regardless of their motivation, how do I reply.

My first thought was to reply in English, briefly: Many thanks, and all good wishes to you and your family.

Somebody else said, you don't have always have to reply. Then, as if in answer to my question, up pops the answer on the internet.

WHICH FESTIVAL?
Moslem Festivals
Firstly, I thought Eid meant any kind of celebration or holiday. Then I thought, it's only the big two, one of which is Ramadan. Ramadan is the whole month of fasting during the day, eating after sunset and before dawn. Ending with a big feast and lots of outdoor food stalls in Little India in Singapore and many more in the Malay area.

(If you are in Malaysia during Ramadan, the food shops and restaurants will be shut during Ramadan However, in the suburbs you will see Chinese restaurants with Chinese writing or orange lanterns serving food.

Then I read about the festival being connected with the sacrifice of firstborn son Isaac by Abraham, the death being averted by the signal from God when an animal ran forward to be sacrificed instead.

Jewish New Year
I had attended Jewish New Year several times, and eventually discovered that the reason the story was so familiar was that the entire bible is read through the year, started again with the first story about the averted sacrifice of the son each Jewish New Year's Day.

So if you only attended synagogue for the Jewish New Year, every year you would hear the same story (in English as well as Hebrew at the Liberal Synagogues in London, England).

Ramadan and Jewish New Year are the same time of year, following the lunar calendar, not the solar calendar.

Christianity and Sacrifice
Christianity, with the sacrifice of God's son, Jesus, recalls the earlier biblical story.)

The Greeting
EID MUBARAK

Two possible replies:
KHAIR MUBARAK

This sounds balanced.

JAZAK ALLAH KHAIR is an extra word, and can be translated as
May Allah reward you with goodness.

That sounds more formal. Should I act like the Chinese and Asian system that you must give back more than you received?

Am I using the right language, if it's Arabic? I thought, if that's Arabic, some Muslims are not Arabic and don't speak Arabic. But if I have received a greeting in Arabic, I should reply in Arabic, unless the greeting is more or less the same in all Arabic speaking countries, but the reply is in various languages and dialects.

As the hours went by and other events interrupted, I worried that if I spent too long on research, I would be too late to catch the event and out of politeness I should reply within 24 hours.

In 2017 the Eid ul Adha lasts until Tuesday September 5th 2017.

Tips
https://www.quora.com/When-is-the-best-time-to-wish-Eid-Mubarak-to-Pakistani-friends
https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-respond-to-Eid-Mubarak
http://metro.co.uk/2017/06/25/eid-mubarak-how-to-wish-someone-a-happy-eid-in-11-different-languages-6721865/
https://www.slideshare.net/AbdulaiAbarika/eid-cards-sms-and-images
http://metro.co.uk/2017/06/10/five-places-to-eat-in-london-this-eid-al-fitr-6700005/
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16511473/Happy-Eid-Everyone-Here-s-How-To-Greet-Muslims-in-Eid

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages.

Arabic, Israeli and Jewish Wines, History & Visits For Travellers

Ironically, although Jews and Moslems are known for not drinking much wine, yet the history of wine dates back to biblical times and before. Our English word alcohol comes from the Arabic.

    What is safer to drink, water or wine? It depends where and when you live or lived and travel or travelled.

Water, Tea and Beer
    In olden times those who had access to fresh water from wells and springs and fast running rivers and rain were lucky to be able to drink fresh water.
   But when I travelled to India, Indians from England warned me not to drink the water. The same used to be said to British travellers to France. The locals could drink their own water because they were immune to local bugs.

 When in India I was warned not to drink local water. When drinking bottled water, often the bottles warned you to not accept water in a bottle if the seal was broken, only if the seal was broken in front of you.
What do you drink, if you cannot drink water, and there's no fresh milk and no alcohol? Herbs in boiling water. I remember my mother insisting the tea must be made with boiled water. Only recently did I realise that boiling water not only affected the taste, it also helped hygiene.

  Before London water was purified, it was safer to drink beer. Beers varied, but might have a low alcohol content of 4%.

   The World Travel Market in London every November has a charity Just a Drop raises money for water.

  If you are in the travel trade, go to the World Travel market where you can taste wines and spirits from Europe, Israel and America.

Grapes turn into wine. Dates turn into wine. Grains can be turned into alcohol.

 Bans on Alchohol
  What about drinking alcohol nowadays in Moslem countries? When I travelled to Malaysia, because I was a woman, even if a man ordered wine in a restaurant, my wineglass was removed.
   But wine is produced in the Lebanon. Only made and sold by Christians? No.

(To be continued.  I shall come back and give information on pubs and prohibition, Roman water ducts at archaeological sites, Israeli wine, Kosher wine, Mouton de Rothschild labels, wine from Lebanon, Mousard.)