Guide to Malang: The Underrated Base for East Java’s Best Adventures

The first time I travelled through Java I honestly skipped past Malang entirely. Like many backpackers, I had booked an all-in-one tour from Yogyakarta all the way to the volcanoes of Mt. Bromo and Mt. Ijen, so I saw Malang only briefly en-route. On my Java re-visit I had more time available and I realized Malang can be absolutely worth staying a couple of nights. While my multi-day tour had been an easy shortcut for covering East Java, this time I was able to pick off various sights one-by-one using Malang as my base. If you’re not in a hurry, then this is the approach I can definitely recommend. Malang is locally known as Kota Dingin, literally “cold city”. To anyone who’s lived in an actually cold place, Malang is definitely in no way cold. Still, thanks to an elevation between 440 and 667 meters, it is a fair bit less sweaty than elsewhere in Java. All along the main road I even saw countless stalls selling apples, a produce that grows well here thanks to the cooler highland climate, despite being in the tropics. First impression: a soup sandwich of traffic (but that’s just one side of Malang!) Malang can be quite noisy and traffic-heavy at times, though I find it a far more pl...