Long Weekend In Surabaya

The 1st of April this year marks the very first Labour Day in Indonesia. That means another long weekend for us! We took this opportunity to go meet our friends in Surabaya who are also visiting from Canada.

Our plane

To my surprise, Surabaya does not have Bakmi GM yet so I bought some at the T3 of Soekarno Hatta Airport to bring to them. We arrived at night, and I wanted to note here that this terminal is a newly renovated one. It was supposed to open on Valentine's Day this year but the eruption of Mt. Kelud that day delayed the opening. It was noticeably cleaner than the Jakarta airport and we were very impressed with the availability of trash cans and recycling bins! It was great to meet again after several years and after a lot of catching up (and still not enough!) we retired to our rooms when the sun was almost up. 

In the morning, the guys decided to take their own city tour while we girls hang out. They went and visited Surabaya Landmarks like the Temple of Heaven replica, the Red Bridge, the famous "Sharcodile" Surabaya Statue, and the submarine museum.

Temple

More temple

The Sharcodile Statue

The Submarine Museum

Inside the sub

Inside the sub

We girls had a nice lunch at Domicile. The restaurant and lounge has a nice atmosphere and I liked that I didn't see any smokers there. We ordered sea bass with dabu-dabu, but was a bit disappointed when we found out that the sea bass was deep fried. Still tasted good though. We shared a heavenly mille crepe for dessert before we went to catch up with the boys.

That evening we headed over to the west side of Surabaya for dinner at Kahyangan Art Resto. Why they call it art resto? No idea but the decor was quite nice. The food was not bad, and they have a keroncong band playing. 

After dinner we moved on to the Galaxy Mall, hoping for cream bath or massage, but they were either full or closing. So we had bubble tea at ShareTea in the mall and headed out to buy Martabak Terang Bulan. yummyummmm....... Compared to the one we're used to in Pecenongan Jakarta, this one is more dense.

Martabak Terang Bulan

The next morning, we got up a little late (oops!) and missed the chance to catch a tour bus as wek had planned. But I think it was still great, we got to start the day with Kaya Toast and half boiled eggs at Bangi Kopitiam. Excellent service! Food was not bad either, they half boiled the eggs perfectly.

Outdoor Seating at Bangi Kopitiam

From there we went to the House of Sampoerna, the cigarette factory/museum. I wasn't expecting much, but it was quite nice! They offer a free tour of the factory, mostly of the history. The view of the workers rolling the tobacco by hand were amazing! They were so fast the movements looked as if they were fast forwarded! The cigarettes are still hand rolled because according to the law, unfiltered cigarettes have to be hand rolled while the filtered ones can be rolled by machines.

By the tour bus that we missed

Printing machine

Mock cigarette kiosk

Vintage radios on display

Then it was time to finally get our cream bath, we went to Kirei Hair and Beauty Salon which was not cheap but the service was good, the place was comfortable, the washing station was very comfortable compared to others we've been to, and the shampoo smelled good :)

After Creambath

As fun as it was, sadly it had to come to an end. We had to go back to the airport to catch our flight, but not before meeting another friend of ours for dinner. We met at Wapo Resto which was more like a student hang out place, and it was suuuper cheap! There some of us got to try Rujak Cingur, a dish using cow snout. Dinner for the 6 of us cost about US$20 total!