Travels in Indonesia: Surabaya, Old Town and Chinatown

Surabaya is not a tourist city, but it does have many things that may interest tourists, and definitely interested us. We went exploring the city, heading north from our hotel. It was a holiday, so many businesses were closed, but we also felt that, from what we saw on our walk, that some of these businesses were closed permanently.

Our first stop was the Monumen Tugu Pahlawan (Heroes Monument) dedicated to the Indonesian freedom fighters who fought the Battle of Surabaya in 1945. The monument site also has a large museum, but it was closed due to the holiday, so we could only see the outside of the large park with monument in the center.

We were near the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and you know we like visiting churches, so we stopped by and were welcomed by a friendly man who led us inside. It was so hot and humid, and there was no A/C in the church, that we didn’t linger long. It was a pretty church, inside and out.

The stained glass was very bright on this sunny day, and one of the stained glass behind the cross was of the Annunciation, which is my favorite Catholic scene (usually we see it as a painting or carved in wood).

Nest, we went to look for some of the Dutch colonial buildings that googlemaps had marked (incorrectly), but we didn’t find them, and were a bit leery walking down empty streets that had definitely seen better days, and clouds of smoke from trash being burned.

This did, however, lead us past a odd temple, that seemingly felt out of place in this neighborhood, named the Suka Loka Temple (or Hok an Kiong Temple). The Temple, originally built in 1821, sat on the corner of two nondescript streets, and was built for the Chinese, who had begun immigrating to Surabaya in great numbers. It actually covered three Chinese religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, called the Tri-Dharma. In China, we never saw one like this; all the Temples are devoted to only one religion.

Inside it did look like Temples we saw in China. Notice the symbols of each of the religions in the below left picture.

We continued on toward Chinatown, as you can see by the red lantern street lights.

We knew we arrived when we saw the dragon gate. It was very quiet, though we’d heard it doesn’t get going until the evening, with a kind of a street market. We thought that perhaps the holiday accounted for the streets and businesses being so quiet though.

We didn’t linger too long, as there wasn’t much happening. We crossed the Red Bridge (Roode Brug in Dutch),

and entered Kota Lama, or Old Town. There was a large square with a park, and many white, colonial buildings.

We did find it a bit odd that the sign, with all the things Not to Do in the park, included no holding hands or smooches, so we refrained (even though we are married, and the sign translates to “it is forbidden to commit immoral acts while dating”).

We continued on our way, past some nicer streets and some not so nice; past an old sugar factory turned into a museum (that was closed due to the holiday).