Originally Posted by
LarkSFO
Did you do the dinner at Pak Bilal's last visit? (sp?) That was a highlight one evening at Jiwo.
On Ericka's recommendation, we also booked the steam train one day - What a wonderful experience. We ended up inviting a few Jiwo employees and their families to join us, and we all had a great day.
The damage from Merapi was frightening (we were there 4 months after the eruption). The landslides / flooding / washing away of entire small towns was catastrophic.
Sean and Lindsay were wonderful to us, our next Aman trip we are going to make sure we are staying at one of the Aman's he is in charge of!
Yes, we has a really wonderful private dinner at Pak Bilal's hut last time and the Gubug Sawah dinner which was at one of their Bale looking over the paddy field. I guess we could try the Selamatan dinner this time at Dalem Jiwo suite but we're not too crazy about having a whole gamelan orchestra playing during our meal...
We actually asked one of the guides to drive us up to Merapi for a day trip and we saw remains of lava river wiping out an entire village. That was about 6 months after the eruption, the guide later brought us to have tea down at one of the local villages by Merapi and we chatted a local who lost nearly everything after the quake. Heartbreaking stuff...
Who do you contact to book the steam train? I'm not sure if their website is still working.
We'll hopefully be seeing Sean at Amanusa later this year, not too crazy about Nusa Dua area in Bali but having high hopes with Aman working its magic there
Some pictures I dug up from Jiwo:
Dinner at Pak Bilal's
Gubug Sawah dinner looking out to the paddy fields with smoking Merapi
Ruins around Merapi
