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Yogyakarta Part 3: Timang Beach & Wedi Ombo Beach
September 03, 2018
WARNING: A LOT OF BLUE AHEAD. After a nerve-wrecking morning at Kali Suci, we headed to Timang Beach which is well-known for its gondola and the big splash that occurs when the waves hit the rocks below the cliffs.
On a side note, for those who have not been to Yogyakarta, going to most of these places require you to alight at a certain station to take the jeep to your destination. This is because the terrain leading to your destinations are made up of rocks and stones that are not suitable for the normal car tyre.
Not only that, many blogs describe the journey as "bumpy rides" but that is an understatement. The experience was no where near bumpy. It was ROCKY. And when I say its rocky, I really meant that you move from left to right, front to back uncontrollably while holding on to the handle bars hoping you won't fly off the backseat. The road filled with rocks and large stones will give a few bruises here and there for knocking on the handles or your friend's helmet. I think the rides gave us a few arm muscles and a good ol' firm butt from holding on to the handle bars and bouncing around the jeep seat.
Now, the suspension bridge or the gondola? We opted for the less expensive suspension bridge and to be honest, the bridge was way more scarier than the gondola and way more worth the money and experience. The gondola costs IDR 200K and is manually manoeuvred by the workers there. Also, you have no control on where it stops or how fast it moves, so if the guy hangs you in the middle of the line, there you will be.
The bridge on the other hand, cost IDR 100K, half the price of the gondola and really gives you the chills when you cross it slowly. I thought I could stop midway to take a photo of the scenery but with one hand off the ropes, I immediately felt the swaying worsen and couldn't balance myself properly.
The bridge on the other hand, cost IDR 100K, half the price of the gondola and really gives you the chills when you cross it slowly. I thought I could stop midway to take a photo of the scenery but with one hand off the ropes, I immediately felt the swaying worsen and couldn't balance myself properly.
Now, if you want to experience the famous big splash at Timang Beach, you can experience both on the gondola and bridge IF the winds are strong. When we were there, the winds weren't very strong so the splash did not occur frequently but when it did, it was crazy. Check out the photos below:
For this trip, I brought along 5 rolls of Agfa Vista 200 and another 5 rolls of Superia 800 but at this point of the trip, I felt that they weren't enough at all. Usually, I take a lot of photos of nature and not so much of the people that I'm with but as I was adamant to have my Yogyakarta blog posts only filled with film shots, I had to be much more generous with my frames. Meaning, I would have to have photos of both nature and people.
So while I kept googling for film shops in Yogyakarta to get my extra film rolls, I decided to take more photos of my friends too and better still, to train myself to take better photos of people. This explains all the vain photos of my friends below:
After taking a million shots of each other, we walked back to the main land and of course, makan! With 3/4 of the group being boys, it's normal that we stop for food most of the time. Again, it was Indo Mi or Mi Ayam which always had that puddle of seasoning at the bottom of the bowl after the noodles are finished. Food is very cheap in Yogyakarta so don't worry if you are a big eater and need at least 2-3 bowls to fill up your tummy.
After more posing and photo taking, we were off to base camp rocking to the left and right throughout the journey. And as always, due to our large group, it's sometimes awkward at certain situations. So we wanted to use the washroom but there were no public ones there. What happen was that one of us went into a nearby home to use the washroom. Soon, all 16 of us were lining up in a small home that had 2 man-made pond with lobsters in their living room (pic below). Well, some of us walked out of the line and waited outside instead of actually going to pee because we felt really bad. I waited outside because I felt so bad even though the home owners were okay with us using the washroom. So remember to go pee pee whenever there is a toilet and also there might be instances where there are no toilets too!
Before dinner, we stopped by Wedi Ombo Beach for awhile and I was dead tired already for the day (which explains the lack of photos taken). Woke up super early for Jomblang Cave but had to go for Kali Suci instead before heading over to Timang Beach for the most part of the afternoon. If you ever go to Wedi Ombo Beach, remember to buy the seaweed packets which does not look like your usual processed seaweed. The ones they sell there are very original and is a really tasty snack! I bought 4 packets home and distributed to a few friends and everyone gave thumbs up too. You can get it in town but it's waaaaay cheaper at the beach!
All photos in this blog are taken on a Pentax Spotmatic with Agfa Vista 200, developed and scanned by Bang Bang Geng.
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