The active Kawah Ijen Volcano on the island of Java, Indonesia is famous for its electric blue flames, controversial sulphur mining, and worlds largest acidic lake.

Tours from Yogyakarta were crazy expensive; in excess of €200, and would have meant spending nearly 24 hours on a mini bus — not our idea of fun! Our plan was to travel East towards Bali anyway, so it made sense (and was muuuch cheaper) to arrange our own transport to the volcano.

Getting there

We arrived by train into Banyuwangi late at night. There was little sign of life so we walked the 20 minutes to our hotel along the road in the dark. We made it half way when we were called over to a travel agents with almost the same name asking if we were heading to the Java Sunrise Homestay.

We had booked 3 nights but the agent who greeted us informed us that there were no rooms for that night. However, we were “in luck” as there was a room available in their office building. We viewed said room which can only be described as an actual crack den — no windows and a dirty mattress on the floor. We swiftly refused.

Then the next option was presented to us, a beautiful cottage 20 minutes away. He kindly offered to drive us there for that night, and then bring us back to our homestay the next day. He bundled our bags into the back of the car but smelling the unquestionable stink of a scam, and not wanting to be left with nowhere to stay, we insisted he take us to the homestay to check we couldn’t stay there first.

When we arrived at Java Sunrise I stayed in the car clutching our bags and James disappeared for about 15 minutes. The driver started muttering to me that he was ‘just the driver’ and his boss told him there were no rooms. In the meantime James had woken up the staff who were sleeping on the reception room floor and and managed to determine that there was actually a room but there were no pillows. Hold tight, because somehow this gets more weird.

We were completely knackered, and we had no intention of being taken to a random expensive cottage, so we said “no problem — we have our own pillows!”. The receptionist contemplated this, disappeared for a few minutes, and then came back with new information. Now there were pillows but no pillow cases. “That honestly doesn’t matter!”, we exclaimed — we didn’t need pillow cases, we just wanted to sleep. Seemingly convinced she ran to make up the room.

When we went finally set foot inside there were both pillows, and pillow cases!

We have no idea what happened here. Was this just useless staff or the worlds most disorganised scam?

Given what a shambles our check-in was, we were surprised when we awoke the next morning to a prepared breakfast. We learned from the other guests that their check-in processes hadn’t gone perfectly either, that the homestay had only been open a few weeks, and the staff weren’t yet trained!

Despite this, the homestay comprised of several absolutely gorgeous bamboo bungalows in the middle of some rice paddies with hot water and A/C! We managed to sleep through the shockingly noisy wood worm (who knew that they could be so loud!?) eating the walls around us and ended up really enjoying our stay.