My Year in Review: 2014

"It's been a great year! Thanks for being a part of it." – that's the default tag line of recent Facebook's new feature: Year in Review. You can easily generate a nice post based on your photos in 2014 with only a few clicks, instead of writing a long post like this boring blog post. However, Facebook algorithm wasn't perfect, it forced painful memories of some users back to the surface.

xkcd 1302: Year in Review

Before you waste time reading the remaining paragraphs, I suggest you to check these cool "year in review" by Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Tumblr, and TED. My most favourite one are from Google..



.. and from TED.



And yeah, like my Facebook post said, 2014 has been a great year for me :)

Trip to Mount Bromo

Mount Bromo is an active volcano located around an hour drive from Malang, East Java. It is part of Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. Bromo is not the highest peak of Tengger massif (~ 2.3k metres), but is the most well known, as it's one of the most visited tourist attractions in East Java province. Mount Bromo sits in the middle of a vast plain called "Sea of Sand" (Segara Wedi). You can also find a Hindu temple (Pura Luhur Poten) in the sandy plain, as the name of Bromo is actually derived from Javanese pronunciation of Brahma, the creator god in Hinduism.

Mt. Bromo in the Morning

Last November I had a chance to visit (Malang and) Bromo with some good friends. We got the open trip info from a travelling daily deals site. You can also find other open trips from other backpacking forums, such as Backpacker Indonesia. We departed from Pasar Senen Station on Friday afternoon by train to Malang. It took more than 16 hours to get there! Anyway, our train, Matarmaja, was the best-valued public transportation, cost Rp 130,000 ($11) only for Jakarta - Malang roundtrip!! Other trains would cost $100. If you want to have more comfortable trip, you can take 90-minutes direct flight to Malang for $130-$200 (roundtrip).

Jakarta - Malang : more than 16 hours by train