BALI / MT BROMO

7 - 15 Jun 97

Mt Bromo

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It was the tradition of the club to return with award winning (in international salon competition) photographs after every oversea trip. Moreover, Bali and Mt Bromo were renowned for their beautiful scenery. I paid $1388 for the 7 days trip without any hesitation even though meals were not included and I could have gone for a trip to US with that same amount of money. I didn't mind paying the extra as long as I could get beautiful photographs. Being 'kiasu', I even got 3 other members to join me and extend the trip for another 2 days so that we could have more pictures from the rest.

We arrived in Denpasar, capital of Bali, after a 2 hours flight. The coach and 2 Chinese guides were already waiting for us. Fefe looked young and seemed to be still in her teens. She spoke Mandarin with a funny accent. Chinese was not taught in Indonesia and she learned Mandarin from her mother. Jimmy was much older and seemed to be more experienced than Fefe.

On our way to the hotel, we had to remind the guides that we were not the normal tourists visiting the usual tourist attractions and going around shopping. We were a bunch of insane men and women who would wake up at 4-5am to catch the morning sun and visiting unusual places. As Tony summed it all: "Photography's our first priority. Photography's our second priority. Photography's our third priority!"

Our hotel (Jakayata) was located in Kuta, which was just a short drive away from the airport. Kuta had a huge concentration of shops and was infested with tourists just like Thamel in Kathmandu, Nepal. Our hotel was just located along the long stretch of black beach. The black sand was due to the eruption from the volcanoes.

I rushed for the 2X converter and zoomed in to 400mm on the 2 beautiful topless ladies who were sun bathing by the poolside. My eyes were having a great feast as I walked around the hotel pool and the beach. 'Angmoh' girls in their sexy bikinis were all over the place and I had to consciously stop my eyeballs from popping out. I cursed as we had to leave the hotel after lunch for shooting.

We left Bali and headed west for Mt Bromo the next day. Mt Bromo was located in east Java and the journey took around 12 hours of bus ride. The journey was somewhat uninteresting. We only stopped for some photography of the padi field in Bali during the morning before we cross over to Java via a 20 minutes ferry ride.

The single attraction of Mt Bromo supported at least several levels of the tourisim industry in Indonesia. First, half way up the mountain, we were transferred from our tourist coach to some smaller mini buses to get us up to our hotel - Bromo Cottage. To watch the sunrise at Mt Bromo the next morning, we have to travel on jeeps first and followed by a 10 minutes horse / pony ride.

We were late by the time we arrived at the volcano. The day was getting bright and there were already many tourists up on the rim of the crater waiting for the sun to appear. We immediately set up our tripods and on the ready for the golden sunlight to strike on the winding path leading to the volcano. Some of the tourists started to leave, via that winding path as we had anticipated. However, the most important element of the golden ray was missing and the atmosphere was too cloudy.

We choked and coughed from the occasional attack of the sulfur gas emitted from the active volcano. I suspected that the failure of several camera equipment were casued by the dusty air rather than mere coincidence. The list included the lenses and bodies of Leica, Nikon and Canon. I was relieved that my EOS 100 and the 70-200L lens remained working flawlessly as I did not have any backup body.

Here's the group of crazy men and women at Mt Bromo

For the rest of the day, we drove down the mountain searching for scene of ox bathing by the stream and farmers working on the padi field.

We returned the next morning to a much higher vantage point for a different perspective of the volcanoes. The atmosphere was clear with no clouds and the sunlight was beautiful. This kind of weather was exactly what we had wanted the day before but not for now! Had we swapped the weather for that two mornings, it would be PERFECT! Well, many times, you needed the element of luck to get a nice photo.

We wasted another whole day on the bus trip returning to Bali. However, the consolation was that we would be staying in the same hotel again with the nice swimming pools and girls in bikini.

We had to show some photocopied black and white pictures to the tour guides in order for them to bring us to the location we had planned. Many times, we either could not locate the exact (or similar) place in the photo or the lighting was not right.

Villagers watching us in action

After waking up at 4pm and arriving at the location to realize that it was not suitable, our leader was under pressure. He desperately directed the driver to turn into some small road hoping to find a suitable place. The road was winding and too narrow for our coach bus to make any U turn back. We traveled for more than half an hour before we hit a road junction with a low overhead water pipe. The aircon unit that was sticking out from the roof of the coach was unable to clear. We couldn't bash through nor saw the pipe off as it was meant to supply water to the whole village. And the skill of our driver is not way near to the standard of reversing the big coach all the way via the winding narrow road for that half an hour of journey! I had almost given up hope until some 'engineers' from the village came and lifted up the pipe for the coach to clear.

It was seldom easy for a group of 20 odd photographers to photographer the same subject at the same time. There would either be 20 different ideas or all would be fighting for that ONE particular good camera angle.

'Salt farmers' in front of their hut

The fight of Royston verses (more likely to be beating up) Tony almost started that morning. We had engaged a local to pose splashing water at the beach. All was going on fine until Tony 'found' his camera angle and started directing the local to pose according to his requirement. In doing so, it disrupted the composition of those standing at the other corner. And Royston, who had not been in good terms with Tony, was one of those being affected. Had it not been Beng San who stood in between the two overgrown boys holding 2 Leica cameras in each of his outstretched hand trying to stop the fight, Royston would have strike with his Tae Kwan Do kick. A photographer should not destroy a camera, said Royston later.


Dancers

Some of the local could turn nasty at times. We had engaged 2 young dancers and we brought them to a temple for shooting. As I was wearing shorts, I had to loan a sarong to enter the compound of the temple. I threw the piece of cloth away after the shoot thinking that I had actually bought the sarong. I was immediately spotted after walking down the hill as I was flashing off my sexy legs. The whole gang of sarong loaners immediately surrounded me. They demanded me to either return the sarong or pay them an unreasonably large sum of money. I declined to pay them for the sarong or the motorcycle ride up the hill to retrieve the sarong. Luckily, I managed to retrieve the sarong after 10 minutes walk up the hill.

The four of us decided to go Lake Batur for the extension of our stay. Jumid had earlier broken up from the group during our trip to Mt Bromo and ventured to Lake Batur alone. We were lucky to have him with us as he knew where the goodies were.

Nudity photography and painting of Bali girls, which were once readily available, were now banned by the authority. Nevertheless, we still wanted it and asked our driver to arrange for us by asking the locale discretely. We requested to have someone young, had a firm body and preferably good looking.

The next morning, we hopped onto the pickup happily thinking that the driver had already arranged for the nude model. As we drove past a small village, the driver halted and started shouting loudly to some of the villagers as to who would like to pose nude for us. Immediately, a big crowd appeared from nowhere and surrounded the vehicle. He repeated the process again at the next village after he was turned down at the first. We started to get upset from the unwanted attention and worried that we might alert the authority.

Breast feeding

Nonetheless, we managed to have some take some topless photographs but the model were far from what we had originally requested. In fact, the driver had to persuade his wife to pose for us by having her normal routine of bathing by the lake.

I enjoyed the stay in the peaceful Lake Batur. The scenery was beautiful and the villagers were nice people. We found more variety of photography subjects than we had when we stayed with the main group. And best of all, we did not have to rush nor travel far.

The overall result from this trip was disappointing. None of the member seemed to have any gold medal photograph. Tradition was meant to be broken afterall.

Photos from Bali / Bromo Trip

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