Padang
Before playing the game with tywan and his mates we went down as far as the coast, the trip on the back of the bike took quite a while, we spent most of the time on unimagineably bad roads or off road tracks across bridges that wouldn’t look like they would take a kids tryke let alone two grown men on a bike, tywan assured me that he knew where he was going though evidence to the contrary was growing and growing fast. We made it eventually to the coast and the longest beach I have seen in my life, not a trace of human existance it was proper robinson crusoe stuff.. We only spent about 20 minutes there as kick off was approaching, it is worth mentioning purely for the fact that it altered my intended plans for the next week. I reported back to adam and rose about the beach and they were similarly enthused, so we set aside a couple of days for the beach in padang.
After a night back in bukitinngi where I stocked up on pizza and beer (both conspicuous by their absence through my volcanic adventure) I took the 2 hour bus to the capital of west sumatra, its a pretty big city – 1 million inhabitants and all the noise and dirt that goes with that many people, I didn’t hang round longer than it took to grab an objet (local bus service) out the road to pasir jambag where Uncle Jack has his hostel. It took a little amount of negotiation to get dropped to the door but in no time at all I was signed in at uncle jacks, had a room reserved for the nam couple the swimming togs were on and I made a beeline to the sea, which is about 50 yards from the door of my 2 euro a night bungalow.
Uncle jack enjoys somewhat of a monopoly in pasir jambag, there are no obvious restaurants and no other places to get accommodation. As a result you are pretty much tied to the place, its a good job that the food is pretty good and the staff are quite funny, despite the fact that not many of them have good english, especially the lads who look after it at night. Food here is padang style, something that is famous all over indonesia apparently so it would be seriously amiss not to dabble in some while I found myself in rome so to speak. I think I may have mentioned it before but basically what they do is they put out a whole host of small sample like dishes which you gorge your way through at a frenetic pace. It can be hot though, I was left pouting like a fish out of water a few times due the amount of chili they slyly laced the dishes with…
For 6 days I did feck all in jacks, always planned to leave the next day but due to a late night watching the euros or the blatant appeal of hammocking by the ocean I ended up staying that long. There was a pair of dutch doctors staying in the hostel also, they motivated us to take a boat trip out to an island off shore (erm is there such thing as an inshore island??). To do this we approached one of the local fishermen and asked him if he would take 5 of us out there for the day, no bother, even got a bit of lunch thrown in. Jack had sold us the trip on the promise that there was good snorkelling out there but compared to thailand, the pippos and malaysia it was terrible. First of all there was the god awful coral bank that you had to walk across to get somewhere that you could actually swim, everyone had cut up feet by the time they took to the murky water where you could barely see more than a couple of metres into the sea. I did though, much to the annoyance of the other 4 see 3 turtles swimming around in the murky depths. Rather than brave the coral again I had to swim around to the other side of the island completely – sounds like more iron man stuff peesheen but I should mention that the island was about 500 metres in circumference.
And thats about the long and short of my time in padang, on the 6th day I took the bus from hell to Medan up in the north of sumatra. 26 hours…. Anyways thats another story.
Later,
Phil
Tags: Indonesia, padang, sumatra, uncle jacks
Phil Gill
Speaking of Islands and the like, you’ll be proud to know that my sister Sarah made a right spanner of herself on Aran Islands Inis Mor last week – had only arrived on the Island 3 hours and had to be helicoptered off to Galway Hospital – was it the whiskey or the local brew? – no – she feel down a rabbit hole and broke her leg in 3 places !!!
Strange. your recent account of your stay at uncle jacks is very similar to my own experience which took place about 10 years before yours. I just wonder if ‘nan’ still works there, or that pirate on the beach who had been de nosed, de legged and de armed and abandoned for his crimes.