On The Sea Again, I Just Can't Wait To Get On The Sea Again: Trowulan Torture

Sunday we were docked in Surabaya, Indonesia.

We booked an excursion through Get Your Guide - the Trowulan Private Tour of Majapahit Kingdom. I will try to keep this post short so you won't have to endure it like we did. Let's start with the "Private" part of the tour. Turned out that there were 9 of us loaded into a van. Then it was a 1-1/2 hour drive from the port to the Trowulan area during which our guide gave us a 1-1/2 hour lecture on history and religion. Thankfully, it became easy to tune him out and count the mosques we passed along the way.

In the interest of brevity, let's just say that we visited several gates and towers that dated from the 900's until the 1400's. They were Buddhist and Hindu in origin and were parts of villages occupied until the Muslims took over in the 1500's. Here's a sampling of what we saw.

At one point, we were supposed to visit the museum but, just after we arrived, 3 busloads of Oceania excursions pulled in. Our guide decided we would come back later.

So we continued on to more towers.

Finally, it was lunch time. We were supposed to have lunch at a "nice" restaurant, but our guide informed us that we would be having box lunches. The excuse was that restaurants were closed for Ramadan. Well, let's say that that wasn't quite true. We wound up eating our box lunches at an open restaurant by a not so nice man-made lake.

I have to say that the box lunch was astounding - that is, astoundingly bad. Some kind of mystery meat sandwiches and soggy fries. A couple of pieces of bread was all that I could force down.

One of the more interesting sites that we visited was a former village where not very brave people lived. It's Yiddish name was Candy Tuchus or Candy Ass in English. Okay, it was actually Candi Tikus in Indonesian meaning Rat Temple.

The final stop was back at the museum where there was a collection of stone sculptures. By the time we got there most everyone was totally spent by the heat and humidity. That didn't keep our guide from trying to lead a tour around the museum. I think that only 2 people kept up with him. At least at the museum, that had a site that had been undergoing excavation (until they ran out of money) and I spotted a couple of pot shards. Now that was of interest to a former volunteer at an archaeology museum.

Thankfully, on the ride back to the port, our guide remained silent. It was a very disappointing tour, to say the least. Hot, long, and dull. After 2 days of long excursions, we decided to cancel the 7 hour Oceania excursion that we have booked for a few days from now. The heat and humidity are just too much for us SoCal wimps. When we returned to the ship, we ran into our guide from the previous day. She had been leading an Oceania excursion. She greeted us warmly and made us long for the good, old day!

As we sailed out of Surabaya, we passed what seemed like miles of anchored cargo ships. Was it a junkyard for old ships? I'll have to try to find out.