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There's more to Indonesia than Bali

There's more to Indonesia than Bali.

True, it takes a bit more effort to get there, compared with the quick flight to Denpasar and the short taxi ride to the beach hotel. But you'll find much more to the country's culture and scenery if you take the path less travelled.

Take Surabaya, for instance. It's hard to see how you can hide a city of 3.5 million people (Indonesia's second biggest city) but somehow the capital of East Java, on the north of its coastline, has avoided detection.

Not many travellers have this destination on their radar, and it's probably fair to suggest that most Australians who do visit come primarily for work rather than sightseeing. The city itself is a sprawling metropolis without, at first glance, too many tourist attractions.

Others might arrive from Central Java - from Yogyakarta, with its popular drawcards of Borobudur and Prambanan temples, en route to Mt Bromo, the spectacular volcano three or four hours to the south-east of Surabaya.

But whatever the reason, if you have a day or so of spare time, there are a few places in the city and its environs worth checking out.

Surabaya takes its name from a mythical battle between a shark ("sura") and crocodile ("baya"). No one appears to know the outcome of what may well have been the world's first example of "extreme fighting", but it does seem to have given the city a fierce reputation.

Mongol invaders were repelled in the 13th century and a three-week bloody fight for independence took place in 1945 after the end of World War II against the British troops and the Dutch colonial masters, and led to Surabaya being nicknamed City of Heroes.

A monument dedicated to those who fell is called the Heroes Monument or Tugu Pahlawan and is one of Surabaya's most famous landmarks. The 45m-tall obelisk was built by the country's first president, Sukarno. Celebrations to mark Heroes Day are held every November 10.

A monument depicting the shark-crocodile bout is outside the Surabaya Zoo which is not the most engaging or well-funded of zoos. Indeed, it made the news in Indonesia recently over the poor state of its animal conditions, provoking the Government to take control.

We visited to see the komodo dragon. The world's biggest lizard is unique to only a few Indonesian islands and is classed as vulnerable.

The keeper shouted "Hum!" several times and 10 curious komodos ambled slowly over to the wall to see what the fuss was about.

Komodos live to about 60 and have a reputation for being fierce. Should you visit the zoo, try and time your visit for the fifth or 20th of the month, at 5.30pm, when the komodos are fed goat and chicken.

Another popular monument with tourists (and one close to Heroes Monument) is the Monkasel museum, which is basically a Soviet-made KRI Pasopati 410 submarine hauled on to dry land. It's a "whiskey class" sub, which saw active service with the Indonesian navy for many years.

I know this because the sub's guide, Dijono, spent 11 years on the vessel before he retired in 1994. The submarine retired the following year. Its top half is painted a garish green and it is now planted in a park in the middle of the city, next to the Kalimas River.

You can walk through the 76-metre long sub and let Dijono show you around. Perhaps not enough of a lure for a special trip but its location is close to the Surabaya Plaza shopping centre so there might be other reasons to take you to the neighbourhood.

It's also close to the Grahadi, a combined convention hall-cum-official residence of the East Java governor and another fine example of Dutch colonial architecture.

The House of Sampoerna is not, as its name might imply, the headquarters of a fashion label but a big manufacturer of clove cigarettes. If you're tired of Swan Valley winery or Margaret River chocolate factory and olive oil farm tours, and looking for something different, a tour of the cigarette factory might appeal as a novelty.

The House of Sampoerna's founder, Liem Seeng Tee, was an orphan refugee who started his business career as a boy, selling snacks on trains. The story of how he went from humble beginnings to establish one of Indonesia's biggest companies is told in a museum in the Dutch colonial building, which was an orphanage before he converted it to cigarette production.

Today, the building houses a shop (as well as the museum) from where visitors can observe the factory floor below where 500 or so women hand-roll tobacco-and-clove cigarettes at breakneck speed. A bigger factory has been built on the outskirts of the city.

Well beyond the boundaries of the city is the active volcano Mt Bromo. It's in the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, some three to four hours drive south-east of Surabaya, though it's also easily accessible from Bali.

Most people travel to Mt Bromo from the towns of Pasuruan or Probolinggo, to the east, and then to one of the villages closer to the volcano such as Ngadisari or Cemoro Lawang.

The lush vegetation surrounding those villages of brightly coloured houses is in sharp contrast to the immediate surrounds of the volcano, which are moon-like and called Laut Pasir or Sand Sea. The volcano can be climbed and tourists are encouraged to arrive at its summit in time to witness the spectacular dawn. It's an eerie experience to trudge in the darkness through Laut Pasir and be overtaken by other tourists on horses in single file.

It's all worth it when you get to the top. Given the right weather conditions, the sunrise can create a spectacular palette of colour on adjoining Mt Semeru.

I didn't visit Mt Bromo on my recent trip to East Java but on a visit almost 30 years ago. My diary from then reads: "Awoke at 3.45am. One hour trek to the top of the volcano. Sun rose at 5.30. Uncanny. Unreal. Sulphur belching out of the crater accompanied by a noise like a huge gas burner. Terrible smell. Mist all over the plain below, as the sun rose Mt Semeru was exposed in beautiful shades of brown and green. Best spot in Indonesia so far."

The next day, I arrived in Bali for my first visit to the Island of the Gods that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

But Mt Bromo remained my favourite.