After enjoying a peaceful Saturday morning, my aunt was taking us to visit Tretes night market food stalls. I was expecting a great scenery, clear view and starry sky just like I experienced in Yogyakarta. Though, I was really not in the mood, I decided to go.
Tretes is a popular weekend getaway for the people from Surabaya which is the provincial capital of east-java. Surabaya is hot and heavily polluted as it is an industrial province in Indonesia, so many people retreat to tretes, trawas, or pacet which is only about an hour and half from Surabaya. While for me, the place is about 2 hours and using the toll road.
I often went to this area with my family to stay in a villa for the weekend. But it has been more than 13 years since I last visited. I started to get a bit enthusiastic knowing that I might see something good.
My uncle was driving 100 to 120 MPH and I had many heart attack moments. Imagine you are inside a racing car, that was how it felt like. On the way, we saw toll road accident. Despite seeing that, my uncle was not showing any attempt to slow down the car. He drove the car through steep hills and wasn't slowing down. To illustrate how he drove fast, this was one of the picture taken while inside the car and on the way to the area.
At around 6:30 we arrived into the parking lot of Tretes Nightmarket stalls. There's really nothing interesting to see for me yet I spotted a few of foreign tourist or could be workers there. This area is known for its rabbit meat.
Ray told our niece " don't you feel sorry for the rabbit?" and our niece, who is 6 chuckled. In this area, there is also a famous hotel that has been run for decades. Other than that, there's really nothing good in sight.
Strangely, this place is overcrowded. It is really difficult to find seats. Thankfully, we got seats just after 4 minutes standing.
The menu in this food market is usually various satay with rabbit's being the highlight. There's also grilled corn everywhere. I decided to order chicken satay while others ordering rabbit meat. Since I was curious of how rabbit meat looks, I took picture of it. At glance, I don't think there's any difference. The price of food in this place ranges from 1$ to 1.8$. It's still expensive than many other places where I live. But it was understandable since this place is considered as touristic.
By this time, my mood dropped and I was already uninterested about the place. There was nothing worthwhile to see. In fact, I was wondering why so many people were there. I wondered if they aren't afraid of covid-19 anymore or is really looking to catch one.
Then, my aunt took us to the next place, which is a garden cafe with a villa next to it. It was already a bit too late for us because many menus aren't there. So we just had drinks and some simple snacks like fried mushroom.
It really looks interesting down below. I got into the bridge part and In the future, I would like to visit this place in the morning.
Visiting this are at evening, I still have yet to find what is actually good from this place other than it's colder than Surabaya. After visiting this place, I really got too tired and was too exhausted. I ended up sleeping about 16 hours the next day. I was suspecting that the ginger I bought had too much sugar.
Overall, this was not the kind of trip that was really memorable. In fact, it's one of those trips that I feel regretful of going. I really should have not gone there. In fact, I should have stayed in that coffee shop and wouldn't go home feeling too sick.
