Mbah & Atok go to… Malang, Indonesia - Puasa 2024

Mbah & Atok go to… Malang, Indonesia

Tuesday 9 April 2024

This is Mbah’s and Atok’s temporary hijrah to Malang, Indonesia for one year, for Mbah to pursue her research at Universitas Brawijaya (UB). The original posting was published in Mbah’s Facebook on 9 April 2024 (with some editing and formatting modifications made to suit this blog’s style and format).


Sabbatical etc etc
Puasa 2024

This year puasa is celebrated for a week in the homeland and the remaining weeks the land of others.

Imsak in Malang is at around 4:06 am while Subuh is at 4:16. The time difference is an hour later e.g. Klang 5:16 Malang 4:26. Not much difference in this sense. However, iftar is slightly earlier for we break fast at 5:35 but back home is at 7:35. We have 1 hour less of fasting, roughly. The equator plays a role here. The nearer you are from the equator, day and night is about the same length. That’s why summer at the North pole is daylight only. You don’t get to experience night.

Adzan. The one thing that we observed here is the masjids and mushola. Every few hundreds meters, you will find one especially in densely populated area. This might be due to historical reason where transportation is rather few. People used to walk to their destinations. Since it is 5 times a day, the need to have a nearby mosque or mushola is pressing. Many of these mosques are big with majestic domes while the mushola is smaller but with no less of a grandeur.

Since they are near to each other, during adzan, you could hear multiple adzan, overlapping one another. From SiGura (the name of our home), we could hear at least 5 with one of a kid’s voice.



“Imsak tinggal dua puluh minit lagi... 15, 10, 5”. The call for sahur is made an hour earlier and then announcements were made every 5 mins for four times before Imsak. This helps.

The activities at the mosque are plenty especially after Isyak:

  • Azan Maghrib
    • No activity as people are having their Iftar
  • Azan Isyak
    • Tarawikh prayer
    • Quran and shalawat recitation
  • Imsak call
  • Azan Subuh
    • Quran Recitation

All of these are over a loud speaker. Tried to record this but could not really capture it using this realible but rather an oldie devise (to suit the owner). We could clearly hear these adzans from home, especially of the kids for they appeared to be very enthusiastic. Allowing kids to call for prayer and to broadcast their Quran recitation are healthy activities and should be encouraged, more.

Eatery are opened for business as usual. You are free to patronise with nobody to judge. It’s very liberal in that sense.

The weather helps. The temperature during the day ranges from 26 to 30, so feeling thirsty is rather reduced. When it rains, it’s even more cooling. Fasting is made slightly easier but for a person who is sweet inside out, I need to be more observant of my conditions. The moment the moon and stars appeared during daytime, that’s the moment I have to break my fast. It didn’t happen often but there have been instances.

AK and I have experienced diverse hours fasting hours like from 4 am to 9 pm or from 7 am to 4 pm and the more moderate 6 am to 7 pm.

All in all, it is more of our believe in Allah and self discipline to go through Ramadhan. In sha Allah, all is well.

Morning kids. 
Morning all.

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