Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park Trip: Day #3 (Batu City)

The third day, December 19, 2022. It wasn't a busy day. We were just moving from Bromo to Batu, a very touristy city that only took ±3 hour drives from Bromo, then had lunch at an old-fashioned Indonesian food restaurant called Khas Jawa 1985, then checking in at the best four-star hotel I've ever been visited, Senyum World Hotel.

Khas Jawa 1985

Khas Jawa 1985 is a restaurant that sells Indonesian foods, mostly East Javanese foods. The restaurant is giving off a very classic, Javanese vibes, I think it's pretty good for tourists or you simply want to adore the place while eating here. The four of us ordered the same dish, gudeg with chicken. And for the drinks, we ordered Es Dawet.

That's what my food looks like.

Ooh, now this is my favorite part: the food. 

My gudeg consist of rice, gudeg itself, krecek, and spicy seasoned chicken. Gudeg is made from young unripe jackfruit, stewed for several hours with palm sugar, and coconut milk; while krecek or sambal goreng krecek is a traditional spicy Javanese cattle skin stew from Java. Traditionally it is made from the soft inner skin of a cattle (cow or water buffalo), but the most common recipe today uses readily available rambak or kerupuk kulit (cattle skin crackers). The texture is very unique, it's chewy but soft and some recipe make it taste extremely hot, but some just make it taste a little bit hot. There's also a spicy seasoned chicken, which is pretty common in Indonesia. The portion of this menu is definitely enough for 1 person, although I can't finished it cause the krecek is way too spicy for me.

Let's move on to es dawet. Es dawet or es cendol is a drink that consist of a mixture of coconut milk with brown sugar and cendol, and cendol itself is a sweet, green-colored rice cake. It's sweet and I really recommend you to try it. This is not Batu's local drink tho, you can find this in Jakarta or maybe another city; it's a pretty common drink.

Overall, my experience there was nice. They got nice place and menus.

Senyum World Hotel

After having a lunch at Khas Jawa 1985, we washed our car at a car wash that we found on our way to Senyum World Hotel.

The lobby of Senyum World Hotel (2)

This hotel is a four-star hotel. My mom chose this hotel because they have nice facilities and they're exactly next to Jawa Timur Park 3, our destination for the fourth day. And I think what makes them unique is that they have different types of rooms. They have Indonesian room, Japanes room, Moroccan room, European room, Chinese room, Mexican room, African room, and Greek room. That's a lot, right? Every type of room has different theme, architecture and decorations. We stayed at Greek room, since we're really curious about it.

We were right, the room was awesome! Even they decorated the bathroom with Greek-themed decorations. Now let's talk about the facilities that this hotel has. They has:

- Kids swimming pool with some slides

- Adults pool, with a depth of 1.25 meters

- Small library

- A billiard table

- Two ping pong tables

- Ninja Adventure, which is like an outdoor outbound in one place

- Wall climbing

- Steam & sauna

- Jacuzzi

- Small gym

- Mini golf with 10+ holes

And you know what? They're all free. You just need lots of time and energy to try all of their activities.

Bakso Arief

We're a bit tired cause of the long ride, so we decided to just stay at our hotel room and lay back. For dinner, we saw a small meatball restaurant called Bakso Arief on our way to the hotel so we're gonna have our dinner there. Fortunately, when we got there, there's no other customer other than food delivery drivers picking up their orders.

We ordered bakso Malang. Similar to other bakso or meatball dishes, it consist of meatballs and noodles. The difference is in the addition of fried Indonesian wonton, fried tofu, and fried meatball. It's a pretty simple dish, but it taste really good and I'm sure the taste is suitable for foreign tourists that's not used to food with distinctive taste.

And with that, the third day has come to an end. We simply relax at the hotel after having our dinner at Bakso Arief, "recharging our batteries" for the fourth day, the last day. I'll see you on the next post, so as always, see you soon, reader!

All the love, -R-