south east asia

8 a.m. - The hostel provided some simple breakfast and afterwards I got ready for the day.

9:15 a.m. - Our little group of four got picked up from the tour guide.

11 a.m. - We drove quite far outside in the mountains where we arrived at the Kawah Puthi vulcano. He is not active since years so you can go in the crater which is 2400m above the sea level. I went im shorts and it was freezing, especially the wind was really bad. In the crater is a bluish lake which changes color depending on the concentration of sulfur and the temperature. The sand and rocks surrounding the lake have been also leached into whitish colours through interaction with the acidic lake waters. We spend there around 30min walking around and exploring the crater. Afterwards we visited a coffee plantation where our guide explained us how to make the finished coffee beans we know from the supermarket. Furthermore how to get the most expensive coffee of the world, the Kopi Luwak coffee, which is originally from Java. Coffee beans, as we buy them in the store, can be produced in several ways. After harvesting, the fruits of the coffee plant, called coffee cherries, are processed in a special way. The preparation exposes the bean inside the fruit. The beans are then sent to coffee roasters, who - as the name suggests - roast and grind the beans in a complex process. Only then can coffee be brewed from them. A distinction is made between dry preparation and wet preparation. In wet processing, the coffee cherries are soaked in water for several days to dissolve the pulp through fermentation. This fermentation process has an essential effect on the taste and quality of the coffee beans. It is precisely this fermentation process that makes the difference between Kopi Luwak and other coffees. Indonesian creeping cats have a preference for coffee cherries. They eat the fruit, but unfortunately they can only digest the pulp and not the coffee bean inside. The beans go through the animal's entire digestive process before they eventually excrete them. Due to the moist environment in the intestines and the right enzymes, the digestion also triggers a fermentation process. This special fermentation gives the cat coffee its typical gentle aroma. Moreover he showed us the cinnamon tree.. Basically the just cut the skin of the tree, dry them and then you have cinnamon. Afterwards we got lunch.

1 p.m. - In the afternoon we went to the tea fields. I was already at some in Cameron Highlands and those are the same but I learned something new. The farmers can harvest the leaves every two months until a certain point where they need to cut them down. Afterwards I takes two years until they can harvest again. Black, green, white tea is from the same plant they just use different aged leaves. The youngest and smallest one is used for white tea and is harvested by hand. The next leave is used for green tea and the third for black tea. Both get harvested by machine. Later we went to a natural hotspring. The weather so far was alright, cloudy but no rain. But when we arrived at the hotspring it started to pour down rain. However perfect wether for a hotspring. There were two different ones, a smaller but hot hot one and a bigger one with a pleasant heat. Although the smell of sulfur is disgusting it was very relaxing and we spent 2h there.

4:30 p.m. - After that we went to a café where we got the opportunity to try a cup of Luwak coffee with a great view. Of course I did. It was a good coffee to be honest and it tasted a bit different than the normal one but not very special. Furthermore I probably wouldn’t tasted the different if I didn’t knew.

6:30 p.m. - We arrived in the hostel and figured out that we leave the next day in the morning. So I already packed my stuff and picked up the laundry.

8 p.m. - We went out for dinner in a local restaurant. The guy from the hostel recommended it and they had a lot of vegetarian options. The food was amazing and I didn’t even paid 1€ for a hole meal.Leia mais