Uneasy rider

The evening has just taken a turn for the worse. The artist has confessed to once stealing a penguin from Amsterdam Zoo - she was only 18 at the time - and is now trying to talk me aboard a cycle rickshaw, which she has "borrowed" from a nearby street corner. It is midnight, 30 degrees in the breeze and the electric rumble of a monsoon deluge is closing in on us like a bus with no brakes. With four miles still to go to our hotel, the rickshaw is our last best hope.

The evening has just taken a turn for the worse. The artist has confessed to once stealing a penguin from Amsterdam Zoo - she was only 18 at the time - and is now trying to talk me aboard a cycle rickshaw, which she has "borrowed" from a nearby street corner. It is midnight, 30 degrees in the breeze and the electric rumble of a monsoon deluge is closing in on us like a bus with no brakes. With four miles still to go to our hotel, the rickshaw is our last best hope.

Yogyakarta, the historic heart of Central Java, is quiet at night. As we weave our way through the soggy city streets - the rickshaw is surprisingly difficult to control - we have only the snarling stray dogs for company. Until we are spotted that is. Westerners are rarely seen pedalling a rickshaw in these parts, word travels fast and by the next crossroads, we have quite a crowd waiting for us, hollering and waving. I feel like someone out of a reality TV show. Hell, if it's a slow news day, we might even make tomorrow's papers. But all ends well. The rickshaw is returned without incident (as, it turns out, the penguin had been), a small fee changes hands and we reach our hotel safely. As the artist finishes her beer and wanders off to her room with a camera full of images for her next project, we bid goodnight to another day in Indonesia - where adventures come as standard.

Three days earlier and I am traipsing through the guts of a volcano on the back of a pony. Mount Bromo, Indonesia's most notorious volcano, puffs away inside the vast caldera of a far older peak.

Indonesia is one of the most explosive countries on the planet. One of the biggest bangs of modern times had its epicentre in Krakatau, only 500 miles away. Smoking mountains should always be approached with care. But Bromo, walled in by the fortress cliffs of the ancient Tengger caldera, is one of Asia's great landscapes. Even the duvets of choking sulphur smoke, sloping off the summit, fail to deter the tourists. Busloads of daytrippers are taking photos from the Penanjakan viewpoint high above us. If they are anything to go by, package tours to Hades should soon be on sale.

The Bromo area is home to the Tengger people, the last remnants in Java of the once powerful Hindu Majapahit empire. Word has it that the king's youngest son once threw himself into the flames to appease the gods here, and as I puff my way up the 250-odd steps to the top of Bromo, Boléro is playing loudly in my head. Gazing into the crater at the summit is like staring into the gummy mouth of Jonah's whale - a little part of you wants to leap in and find out what's inside. I resist the temptation, however, and reach for my disposable camera instead.

Back in Cemoro Lawang, a ramshackle village tinkering on the edge of the Tengger caldera, the view stretches across a desert sea of sand and out towards Bromo itself. The pony, which earlier carried me across to the volcano, is munching hay; I am drinking cups of strong Java coffee. Nature's architecture, it seems, is grander than anything we can muster.

I follow Osama bin Laden back down to the lowland plains. He is daubed onto the back of a bus and is ironically framed by a brace of American flags. The bus is taking the hairpin bends with all the imprecision of a nuclear blast and my driver, keen to assert his machismo, is following suit. The landscape is lush and green but is passing in a high-velocity blur; at this speed the hills look like plates of mushy peas through the dusty windscreen. By the time the ocean appears on the horizon, I am feeling distinctly seasick.

Java's historic glory days were lived out in the twin cities of Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta) and Solo. Both stretch out from old royal palaces, or kratons, and both sustain a centuries-old artistic heritage. Solo is also home to some of Indonesia's most vociferous firebrands - on several occasions, residents have taken to the streets and burnt down a shopping mall or two - but Yogyakarta remains one of the country's foremost tourist destinations. In fact, if there is a correlation between visitor numbers and the amount of tat sold on a city's streets, Yogya (as it is known to its friends) comes up trumps.

But Yogya's biggest drawcard is 30 miles to the north-west. The ancient Buddhist stupa of Borobudu dates back to the ninth century. This colossal monument to times past is now one of South-east Asia's A-list postcard cover girls. It has survived terrorist bombs, volcanic eruptions (courtesy of Mount Merapi), lightning strikes and the wear and tear exacted by a million pairs of flip-flops. Borobudur jostles for supremacy with the shantytown of souvenir vendors selling models of the real thing at its base, but it remains Java's talismanic Big Ben.

I arrive in the dark on the back of a moped. A snake is slithering across the car park as we dismount and a boy wearing an "Osama don't Surf" T-shirt (a big seller on the streets of Bali) is tentatively pursuing it with a plank of wood. I battle through the souvenir stalls and climb to the top. There are 432 Buddha statues on Borobudur's flanks and it is impossible not to soak up a little of their serenity. By the time the first flickers of sunrise spark on the horizon, I am even trying to fold myself into the Lotus position. "That's not bad," says my guide, "but it looks very painful for you. Perhaps you should just sit normally."

With stiff legs I embark on the trip to Pangandaran, Java's budget beach resort. This pretty overgrown fishing village sits on a narrow peninsula with black sand beaches on either side and a flush of thick jungle to the south. That night, as I wander along the empty sands, it looks like the entire town is out, flying plastic bags on bits of string. "What are you doing?" I ask one group of young men. "Catching bats," they reply.

Bat, which with a little imagination tastes like pigeon, is a delicacy here. Every night, the bats fly out of the forest and shark down the coast in eerie squadrons; the villagers, plastic bags in hand, are waiting. Later that evening, I wash down a grilled bat breast with a bottle of local Bintang beer. I am just waiting for the Caped Crusader to turn up and dish out my comeuppance.

The next day I breakfast with an English expatriate. He is retired Royal Navy and claims to have spent many a night in Malta drinking in The Gut with Oliver Reed. Tourists are few and far between in this seaside town and the handful of expatriates pretty much have the place to themselves. Today, only the hardcore surfers, who camp out in nearby Batu Karas, are making up the numbers. The Bali bomb of 2002, it seems, is still taking its toll here - along with the warnings of more attacks on Westerners.

Time is running out and so I head back to Jakarta. The capital is a nonsensical place, a 10-million-strong city with no coherent centre. The country's dictator, Soekarno, tried to tame the city by giving it a central square (Lapangan Merdeka) and capping it with the unashamedly phallic National Monument. He didn't have much luck. The pillar has now been dubbed "Soekarno's last erection" and the chaos is as intense as ever.

Luckily, Jakarta isn't all gridlock and tower blocks. The streets of Kota (the old Dutch city), Sunda Kelapa (from where brightly painted Makassar schooners sail to the four corners of the archipelago) and Chinatown still have a few surprises up their sleeve. After a five-star meal in the colonial-era Café Batavia, we head to Jakarta's most infamous nightclub: Stadium, open non-stop from Friday night until Monday morning. Raucous and decadent as a night at the fin de siècle Moulin Rouge, this is the country's high-octane modern face. In the pitch-black dance hall, I half expect to see bats illuminated in the strobes.

The back streets of Jakarta are a long way from Bromo, but they are just as explosive. In weird, wonderful Indonesia, living under the volcano is simply par for the course.

TRAVELLER'S GUIDE

GETTING THERE

Both British Airways and Garuda, the national airline, have abandoned flights between the UK and Jakarta. But plenty of connecting flights are available, for example via Singapore or Amsterdam. Emirates (0870 243 2222; www.emirates.com) flies from Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow to Jakarta via Dubai. Return fares in July start around £700.

STAYING THERE

Grand Hyatt Jakarta (0845 888 1234; www.hyatt.com). Doubles start at 1,598,000 Rupiahs (£91).

Bladok Restaurant & Losmen (00 62 274 560 452; bladok@yogya.
wasantara.net.id), Yogyakarta, has doubles from 122,900 Rupiahs (£7), room only.

VISITING

Borobudur (00 62 274 496 408) opens daily from 6am-5pm. Entrance is 114,105 Rupiahs (£6.50).

GOING OUT

Cafe Batavia (00 62 21 691 5531), Taman Fatahillah, Kota, Jakarta.

Stadium Nightclub (00 62 21 62 63 323; www. stadiumjakarta.com), Hayam Wuruk, West Jakarta.

TRAVEL ADVICE

The Foreign Office (0870 606 0290; www.fco.gov.uk) says: "There remains a high threat from terrorism in Indonesia. We continue to receive reports that terrorists in Indonesia are planning further attacks on Westerners. Attacks could occur at any time and are likely to be directed against locations frequented by foreigners."

FURTHER INFORMATION

Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia (020-7499 7661; www.indonesian
embassy.org.uk)

Tourism Indonesia (www.tourismindonesia.com)

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