The Wobble

I left uncle jacks early in the morning, the girl that worked there had booked me onto the 11.30 am bus leaving padang city (which is 20km from jacks place) bus station. It was 11.01 when she informed me of this fact, so down the hatch with the lovely omlette her mother had prepared for me and off down the road like the clappers to catch this bus to the city of Medan.

I arrived into the bus station in a bit of a panic as the clock in the taxi read 11.45, a quick cross check of my own watch confirmed that the clock was 18 minutes fast, a different problem did present itself though. The Bus station, which was vast, was completely empty. It looked abandoned, like it hadn’t seen a passenger in years. There were two cobbled benches lying against a tattered fence which had a few people sitting on it chowing on nasi goreng (fried rice), I asked them where the bus to medan was and they just pointed at the big old building behind them. So with my backpack on my back I crossed the overgrown lawn which was drained my some massive unprotected ditches which I had to bound in order to enter the building. The building was big and continuing the theme of the station as a whole was empty, office after office was threadbare. It was like the start of 28 days later when cillian murphy walks through the streets of london and there isn’t a sinner to be seen anywhere. There was one office which had a poster on the window advertising the bus to medan, I knocked on the door which to my relief was opened by a tiny little man which glasses so thick they magnified his eyes so that they appeared the size of the rims. He informed me that the bus was not due to leave until 3 pm and that the only seat left was the one at the back next to the toilet. I took it, though with a bit more planning I would have been far better off to fly the trip at a similar cost.

So back out to the bench where I ordered some noodle soup and sat with the locals showing them how to play jenga. The bus came and we took off. The roads were windy.You get used to the twists and the turns after a while, some people suffer greatly from them but I reckon after my time in the himalayas I could handle any road this country could throw at me. They do make it incredibly hard to pee though, as there is a toilet on board the driver is less inclined to stop often to let passengers relieve themselves so you have to option but to use the onboard facility. As you can imagine there is more than a little stray liquid on the floor so you really have to be careful of your footing.

So 24 hours on this bus – every seat on the bus reclined allowing passengers to get into an almost horizontal position, a bit like those beds you see advertised on the shopping channel, they look proper cosy. Of course the only bloody seat on the bus that doesn’t recline is mine as it is at the very back, what space is behind it is dedicated to the second driver. So I was mr vertical for the duration. It was hellish, Its impossible to sleep sitting vertical! You start to go a little crazy after a while, I began to contemplate places where I could lie down. First I thought of the luggage rack but then dismissed this idea as lunacy, I mean how the hell could I get up there let alone fit into that squished space what wouldn’t even take my backpack. The aisle was also off limits due to the constant flow of people to the toilet. There was some floor space behind the second last seat and infront of the toilet, hardly the most hygienic spot in the world but with some bedding provided I ducked to take the space before some other person claimed it. It was tight but definitely better than the seat. I have mentioned the roads before but they deserve mention again as they played a vital role in my falling asleep, I’m sure what I am about to describe is pretty dangerous – when you are lying flat on your back on a bus that is taking corners of such magnitude at such speeds, it does funny things to the bloodflow to your head. Now I dunno whether it was the blood rushing too or from my head but no sooner had I lay down on the floor than I conked out.

I woke some time later, it was still dark so I figure it wasn’t that much later, to find my self sickly wet. The space between my shoulder blades was saturated, my first thought was that the bloody toilet had leaked, it was enough to make me wretch. But I soon noticed that I was parched, it was soo bloody hot. The sweat was flowing off me, the bastards had knocked off the AC in order to save on a bit of petrol. I had to get up to change my t-shirt and get some fluids into me, typically as soon as I got to my back – the conductor who must have marveled at my ingenuity or desperation ducked into my sleeping spot and snoozed away.  I figured I had enough kip to get me to Bukitt Lawang so I took to my seat again.

I must have resembled terry waite getting off that bus in medan, I was wrecked, bad hair day (not many good ones I admit) and worst of all bad mood. I found myself snapping at people which is not like me at all, I really had to sit down for 5 minutes with a coffee to gather myself together. The trouble here is that people are so desperate for money that they will pester you, especially when they see that you are a foreigner they are relentless. It is so hard to be nice to everyone even more so when you are in a massive town (3 million people live in medan)  and you have no map, just a very loose idea of how to get to your next port of call. Its all part and parcel of travelling I guess, but it does wear you down. I’d hate to give the impression that its all beaches, beers, pancakes and hammocks. Just 95% of it is 😉

I made my way through medan slowly to the bus station that services the north. From there I took what is easily the most battered up wagon I have come across in 7 months on the road. This mini bus makes tommy morgans look like one of the premiership team buses. Somehow they crammed 20 people into, add on top of that a few chickens and you have yourself a minibus headed to Bukitt Lawang. Halfways up the road it started to rain, rain heavy. All the windows are down, I was getting soaked, everyone was. People started to mumble, some even groaned. The bus driver eventually pulled out a lever and passed it around, he had one handle for the entire bus to put their windows up. You have to laugh, this bus would barely pass a recognition test let alone a NCT. I got into Bukkit Lawang at about 4 pm, made a fault start with the accomodation but when I found it eventually I lay my head to rest and slept solid for 15 hours!!!

Ciao for Now,

Phil

Check them out

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=57158&l=99404&id=718095519

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

Manijau is the name of the small village that lies on the northern coast of a stunning volcanic lake that measures 17km by 7km. The crater dominates the skyline for almost the entire circumference of the volcano, only breaking once allowing a road to pass through to the western sumatran capital of padang. Let me say it again the place is stunning. The second night of my trekking adventure with coing we stayed at Annas losmen(guesthouse). In the morning after all the beers and cards I stumbled out to see the perfect mirror like lake from a height, it whetted the appetite no end.

We arrived at the Beach Inn in the afternoon, it was minutes before I was re-united with my bag, off with the filthy jungle clothes and into a pair of swimming trunks for a dip in the volcano. Its 500 metres deep in the middle its not the kinda place you wanna get stuck out of your depth. After a swim or a successful attempt at not drowning, I went for a much needed wash and took myself up to the main building in the resort to get some food. Twas here that I was acquainted with adam and rose a canadian/american couple who were traveling around south east asia after spending 2 years teaching english in korea. It wasn’t long before the backpacking staples of jenga and cards were broken out and pretty much a good night was had by all – especially when we were joined by 4 lads from medan. Before hitting the sack we agreed to take on the 60 km ring road by bicycle the next day.

The mooted 10 am start turned into a much later 12 pm start – for once I was not the reason for the tardiness. The north american contingent were very slow to surface!! Anyways before we knew it we were on our way into the main village to pilfer some bikes from some unsuspecting grannies and off laughing manically around the lake. Pilfer we didn’t but renting the bikes was easy as. The ride around was anything but, the first few kilometres were easy out, but soon the saddle sores kicked in – we persevered. Stopping occasionally to take in the scenery, waving, always waving at the small kids sprinting to the side of the road to bid you hello, I swear my right hand barely touched the handlebar the whole way around such was the amount of time I spent waving. We also took in some really nice food on the way around. All in all it took just over 4 hours to get around the 60 km which wasn’t too bad. The last 20 km of it were pretty flat, removed from the lake so was hard going. I was glad to depart from the bike, a coke was demolished in miliseconds flat before we returned back to the hostel for some much needed rest.

The next day was my designated hammock day, I figured I deserved it after 4 days of solid exercise. Dozing awayin the shade of a coconut tree I was abruptly taken out of my slumber by tywan, a friend of the owner Bam Bam. He shouts at me something like, what are you doing lazy man, come with me, come with me!! I vaguely remembered talking to this chap the night before and I really should’ve told him where to go, that I wanted to remain a lazy man in my hammock but he was having none of it. After a minute I found myself on the back of his motorbike whipping around the lake to the aforementioned road to padang that goes through the volcanic crater. You get a sense of how high you are when you travel for 40 km and all of it is downhill. Eventually we arrived in this tiny village, seriously these people see martians more often than irishmen. They all mustered what english they could before splitting themselves laughing. Tywan took me into his house where I met his family, the da was there happy out sitting on a couch watching tv, the mother had 5 daughters running around the place to get me a cup of tea – all this time tywan was nowhere to be seen. It was bizaare, though his lovely sisters kept me entertained while he was away. He eventually reared his head again this time in full soccer gear – ‘We go play!!’, indeed!!! But there is a problem, I have no shoes, just sandles. No problem, tallest guy in sumatra lives down the road – He will give you shoes!!! So down the road, off the road, through the jungle on the bike across crappy little bamboo bridges I held on for dear life.. We pulled up at a lively household where the tallest man (a slight exaggeration) turns out to be a young lad, about 6ft 6 was sitting with his mates playing dominos. Some words from tywan in bahasa and he was up and off to collect his boots. Size 10, I am a size 13. They’ll do, sure its only a kick around I figured…

Kick Around? 30 minutes later I found myself with a number 6 on my back playing centre half for tywans team. It was hot and running wasn’t too comfortable, when is it I suppose? We won the game 5-1. nothing I could do with the goal but managed two assists in the right end. We had a guy upfront who was lightening, lumping the ball over the top proved a very adept if not very attractive tactic. With 10 mins left I figured the game was over and took my leave, feet in absolute ribbons… That night on the way back to the hostel I mentioned to tywan that spain were playing that night in the euro champs and it would be pretty cool to watch some people who could actually play football. He took this as almost a command to go on a mission, from house to house we went, he went inside and asked if they had sattelite tv and if they were going to watch the game. We found one eventually and with about 12 soccer nuts I sat down and watched football all the time being served some wonderful coffee by this sweet old dear. The coffee here is excellent, its as good as the tea in india!!!

It was to be my last day in manijau, the next day I had to return to bukittingi to collect some money from the ATM before meeting up with Adam and Rose by the Sea in Padang…

Over and Out,

Phil

I met up with Coing at 8 the next morning. I deposited my bag with his friend so he could take it all the way to some guesthouse in lake maninjau, which one I didn’t have a clue. It was a friend of coings so I figured sure it will be worth at least a look. We took off down the canyon like before though this time we headed west when we reached the bottom.

The canyon is beautiful, it really is. Last year a 7.8 earthquake hit the region and caused alot of damage as you can imagine to the canyon. Lots of growth from along the sides crumbled into the canyon floor leaving the place a lot more barren than before. We weaved our way through rivers, some so deep I had to toss my bag across to the other side to stop it from getting wet. We climbed up the sides of it, I dunno how I managed to get up some of the embankments they were so slippy. There was the obligatory dazzling array of wildlife as we went, the scenery again I have to say was just something else. You really do feel like you are in a david attenborough documentary at times, you need to pinch yourself to make sure it is real. We turned out of the main canyon into a smaller one, it was really claustrophobic with the canyon walls rubbing both shoulders, after about 200 metres we get to a dead end, a waterfall. Not for coing though, he insisted that we climb up through the waterfall and persevere beyond. After another 500 metres or so, through which you had to weave your way through hanging vines we found the climbing route up to the canyons edge. It was pretty precarious up there, the path was barely the width of my sandles so the going was slow as I tried not to slip over the edge. Everything was so green, greener than green. It broke eventually when we arrived at a tiny rice farming village and stopped for a cup of coffee.

After the rice fields we came across a trio of guys searching for gold in the river bed, we sat down to watch them for a few minutes before bumming a lift on the back of a bike to the local peanut, coffee and suger cane plantations. Coing talked me through the various processes. I got to see first hand the farmer process the sugar cane from scratch to produce loafs of brown sugar. The used a buffalo with coconuts on his eyes to spin a thresher which grinds the juice from the cane. It is then cooked and cooked again then cooled to create the rank looking but lovely tasting loafs. Out on the street, sheets on the ground are covered in coffee beans, gardoman, cinnamon, cloves and peanuts drying in the warm sun. I asked coing how far we were from the sea here, but he didn’t answer. Instead he dragged me right up through the steep sugarcane field, we walked for the guts of a mile before finally emerging at the crest of the hill, the view was stupendous, beautiful. We had reached the volcanos crater edge. We could see the entire volcano, the lake, it was massive. The lake is 17 km long and 8km wide so that should give you some idea of the sheer scale. We rested there for an hour before making our way down to our lodgings for the night in the middle of the jungle.

I really dislike descending in a rain forest, the grips in my sandals are pretty shoddy. And please do note that it is sandals that I am wearing, as I got molested by several leeches on the way down, they are not painful nor dangerous at all but they do make your feet bleed alot and for a long time so are a pure nuisance more than anything else. Plucking them off is not a nice task either. As we approached our lodgings we could hear a bit of a roar, reckon it was 100+ yards away, curiously I asked coing what that was. He told me, matter of factly that its just the Sumatran Tiger!! TIGER??? Panic, fock, Panic some more. A bloody tiger, I didn’t sign up to be tiger meal!!! He reassured me that they keep to themselves, so much so one hasn’t been seen in years, they are only heard. Still I was glad to make it to the lodge house where there was a dutch dude called arnold supping on a beer with his own guide. We all joined up, ate our food and enjoyed a spectacular sunset before settling down to the real business of the night, cards jenga and beer 🙂

I got up the next morning to take in a wonderful view of the lake, it was completely settled so reflected the volcano edge and sky perfectly. Devoured a much needed banana pancake before setting off with coing again. We took a round about way to get down, more leeches and some really nasty nettle like plants which left my ankles still stinging 4 days later. We searched for a waterfall but the jungle was thick plus we heard reports of a group of locals getting attacked by bees in the area the previous day – figured it was best to leave it. So we turned down towards the village, eventually the jungle cleared – much to my relief!! into rice paddies and fish farms. We made it to the lake shore for around 3 in the afternoon in time to catch a ride out to the lodge house where my bag was stowed. It was perfection, hammock heaven along a beautiful volcanic lake perfect for swimming. The owner a guy called Bam Bam, welcomed me and got me settled in. Reckon this will do for a week or so 🙂

All the best,

Phil

I woke up the next day grabbed a much needed shower and made my way down to the lobby. The hotel is quite nice, very nice actually. Waaay too classy for the likes of myself but I figure if I keep it low key I might just get away with it. I made my way past reception and cool as you like I bade the girl behind the desk a good morning – she chuckled, pointed up to the clock on the wall and said – ‘Its not morning sir, already 4.30’, hmmmm. Oh well, so much for making an impression. I deposited my key and made my way out to explore the town of Bukittinggi. Originally 5 separate villages it was all joined together around a fort the conquering dutch (suppose its a change from the brittish) built back in the day to ward off attacks from the pesky irate natives. So it covers quite a big area, I figured I would start in the middle and work my way out.

Tourists are rare in these parts, its the first thing you notice, or don’t notice. The Tsunami, insurgency, earthquakes, volcanoes…. this country can probably cease your stint as a human in a thousand different ways, its enough to keep most sane folk away but not me. It also meant that a little walk down the street earns you a hundred ‘Hello, How are you?’ giggle giggle then run away before you can even answer.

The fort is nice, plenty of nice views over the surrounding countryside which is striking in the extreme. 3 major volcanoes dot the immediate horizon, I am assured by locals that there are many more small ones in between. The landscape is so lush, completely covered by trees it seems with the odd break allowing some rice to grow. The best thing is is that there seems to be little in the way of pollution so you can see off to a perfect horizon unlike india which has a similar landscape but your view is very often scuppered by dust and smog!! The fort is joined to a nearby zoo which I wandered over to look at. It had a fantastic array of animals though their confines were pretty meagre, I’d go so far as to say it was cruel. Zoos are bad places at the best of times, seeing the orang utang sit on his haunches with no life to him at all broke my heart. Such a beautiful creature…

On my way back to the hotel I stopped into the Bedudal cafe for some grub. I was given a hand to clean up my plate by the resident 3 year old girl who sat up on my knee and rattled her way through her book full of pictures of animals. For all the teaching I did the day before I reckon she did a much better job teaching me the bahasa for tiger, monkey, horse etc etc. Funny little girl. In the cafe at the same time was a dude from cork who i ended up having a few beers with, we watched a terrible soccer match between romania and france before retiring our seperate ways. He was off to java the next morning while I had another day or two left in Bukittinggi.

I got up the next day earlier than the previous one which wasn’t too much of an achievement it has to be said. I went looking for the local canyon that I had heard a bit about previously. Turns out its not that far from where I was staying, inside a park called panorama I found myself with my jaw on the floor looking out over a really beautiful canyon. At least 100 metres deep and 40 km long its a pretty substantial canyon. I walked along the side of it taking in the various view points, lingering at one of these a little longer than the others attracted the attention of a souvenier stall owner called coing. Pretty quietly spoken he talked alot about the canyon, its history, dimensions, its wildlife and the life of the people who live in it. He then offered me a trek through the canyon to see some of the wildlife for the rest of the day. I agreed a price with him and off we went.

Any thoughts of a brisk yet manageable walk were quickly scuppered as within 10 minutes of setting off I was sliding on my ass down the side of the canyon, breaking my fall every so often with a bamboo branch. He had me crossing rivers at waist height, climbing up trees to smell flowers or cutting up small trees to sample spices we even clambered on our belly to get under some branches that were deemed to slippy and high to climb or bound. At one stage covered from head to toe in mud and dirt, soaked from the waist down I asked him ‘What are you doing to me coing?, He smiled and replied ‘You want to see the real sumatra or not?’ – I shrugged my shoulders and hoped the way back might be easier… The we started to see wildlife. Rare monkeys, afraid of humans bounding through the trees. Wild Buffalo’s and animal held sacred by the locals, so much so the architecture of their cultural buildings are inspired by the heads of these pretty placid animals. There were snakes and rhino beetles along with a selection of beautiful flowers etc etc. He asked me if I would like to see the flying fox, I never even heard of one as an animal. Figured it was just some kind of aussie public transport for getting drunken fools home from the pub in one piece. I was intruiged so our 5 km hike was now a 15k marathon. We walked to the northern end of the canyon as far as we could, criscrossing the river getting wetter and wetter still. I held my bag well over my head for fear off my passport or camera succumbing to the currents. When we got to the end coing told me to point my camera up at the sky and take pictures on his signal, so I stood myself there with camera in hand pointing it up at the sky like a proper dope in the middle of a canyon in the deepest part of sumatra you could image when all of a sudden coing started shouting and banging a log against the canyon floor like a proper mad man, the sky immediately filled up with these massive bats, 1 metre across there were thousands of them flying around woken up from their slumber I really felt for them, I have been that soldier so many times. An amazing sight, I caught it all on video and looking back on it it looks pretty cool.

I was expecting a return route right back the way we came but coing had other plans, we called into a silversmiths village where I got to see some mono dental men skillfully create some lovely bracelets and chains etc etc from silver taken from the canyon. Out of the village we made it back on to something resembling solid road. No sooner were we back on safe solid ground that we were off it again. Coing either knows an unreal amount about everything that goes on in his environment or he is an amazing bullshitter. It doesn’t really matter which is true as he is a cracking guide. As he led me through a maze of rice paddi walkways which are slippery feckers we passed by a mosque where the call to prayer was going out. There were three kids up on the 1st floor balcony who upon seeing my pink skin let out a shout in that in their cute this is all we know in english accent,  ‘Hello Mister, How are you?’. I went to return their salutation with one of my own, my own wave threw me off balance and into the mudbath that is a rice paddi with me. The three cheeky feckers fell over laughing, they nearly fell out of the balcony such was their reaction. Coing just looked down at me as if to say, what a bloody spanner!! I got back up and sheepishly listened to his lecture on rice harvest before catching a lift in the back of a pick up van with 3 lads after a hard days work in the rice fields. They peppered me with questions, but I hadn’t a notion what they were saying. Lots of smiling and nodding on my part, they must have thought I was retarded. They left me alone quick enough..

As thanks for an amazing day in the canyon, jungle and rice fields I decided to treat coing to this dinner. So we went to this favourite place for food. The way they do food in alot of places is called padang style. Basically you get served a plate of plain rice, they then put out loads of different dishes infront of you in silver plates. You take from which ever you want, be it beef, chicken, fish or veg and they just charge you for what you eat. Its a nice way to eat though its hard not to want to sample everything though that said it wasn’t too hard to pass on the cows stomach or the fish head curry. Over dinner I mentioned to coing that I was off to a nearby lake volcano the next morning by bus, he countered with a proposal to walk to the nearby town. He would guide me and will take care of my bag being delivered safe and sound to the guesthouse of my choice in the town of maninjau. The walk is 60 km and would take 2 days. I was very excited by the prospect, lots of exercise but it will allow me a guilt free conscience to enjoy the lake at my lazy leisure from the comfort of my hammock…

Thats another story…

Phil

I promise pictures soon, the connections here are a bit pants so it might be the end of the month. It is the most beautiful place I have been so far so it should be worth the wait…..

The Ferry across to sumatra was about as exciting as an episode of live at 3, we were cooked up in a pretty ordinary ferry not allowed to step outside so had to peer out through dirty windows out at a pretty boring calm sea. The whole journey lasted about 2 and a half hours most of which was spent on my part faking sleep so adolf wouldn’t continue his pleas regarding how un insane he was. We were both unsuccessful. The poor fella though, he had such a helpless idiot look about him, he was carrying 8 bags with him, I felt really bad about not giving him a hand to carry some of them for him but when it comes to crossing borders, especially between two countries where it is the death penalty for traffiking even the smallest amount of drugs if he was a sweet, blind, lame, deaf and dumb nun of 99 years of age I would still have left her there with her load. The risks are just not worth it. There was some staff there anyways so should be up to them.

Passing thru the border was little hassle, the usual admin stuff followed by an invitation into an office where the border official asked me about where I intended to visit on my time in sumatra, I rattled off about 6 places and parted with the requisite cash to get my visa. They only give you 1 months visa for this massive country which is totally retarded, its as if they don’t want any tourists in this place. I grabbed a cab into the middle of dumai.

When you get off the boat you are have to pass through a fairly modest looking customs building. Jail like fencing extended far on either side so there was no chance, if one had the inkling, of sneaking into the country without anyone noticing. The fence in any case was patroled by some army dudes and on the other side some curious taxi men hung out for a look at their potential fare.

The vast majority of the people on the boat were indonesian so they all walked straight through with just a flash of their Passport enough to get them in. Sticking out like a sore thumb I was brought down a different route. Ushered into an untidy office there was one lady there asking about my purpose in the country, she was standing next to a desk where this angry looking uniformed dude was on the phone, shouting something rather forcibly to the person on the other end. The sweat was pouring off his brow, he paused for a second to give me a look, a look of judgement and then burst into another rant at the person on the phone. It was like a movie scene…

Not offered a seat I threw down my bag and answered what questions they had for me. Where did I want to go? I mentioned some places in the middle, didn’t mention aceh in case it was sensitive. They made me wait and I have to say it was a bit nerve wrecking. Eventually the woman emerged with a printed out visa, I was good to go. I walked out the doors and took in my first free steps in sumatra.

I mentioned the guys at the fence before, they must have some sort of rota going on. One guy inside the building had already negotiated my custom. He didn’t want any money, nothing in this life is free. I know I will pay for this later but there seems to be some sort of union like pact amongst the taxi wallahs here. I jumped in the front seat with my bag secured and off we went.

Dumai is a pretty unremarkable town. Its buildings are square, run down and dirty. It is set out in a grid like fashion which would suggest that it is a new town, I reckon it must have built itself up since they found oil in nearby pekenbaru. The Americans who so selflessly offered to show them how to dig the stuff out built themselves a really souless characterless town, something you would expect in eastern bloc europe. Kinda ironic considering this would have been done right in the middle of the cold war.

Twas about 1 in the afternoon and I was starving, I had my first indonesian meal in a roadside cafe not far from the bus stop. The first thing that strikes you about the place is the lack of billboard advertising, so far it feels a bit like rural phillippines. My bus wasn’t leaving til 4 so I was looking at a fairly blank 3 hours, there didn’t seem like there was anything doing in this town. While either shuffling my feet or twiddling my thumbs I was approached by this small dude who began with asking the usual questions about where I was from, what I did for a living and what places I had visited. After giving him the standard burb which I have delivered it must be 10000 times already, it seemed it was enough to convince him that I had something bearing a resemblance to a grasp of the english language. He then revealed his true mission in coming to speak to me – he ran the local english school and had a class starting at 2 and wanted to know if I would go and give the lesson for him, or at least talk to the kids and improve their confidence in speaking in english. I had 2 hours so figured, what the heck!!

Onto the back of his bike and we took the spin across town. We arrived a little early but it wasn’t long till the kids in dribs and drabs filled up the classroom. Before I knew it I was buried under a barage of personal questions from the girls such as where was my wife/girlfriend? what religion was i? what countries I have visited? to much more pertinent questions from the boys such as – Who my favourite football team /footballer was? I was there for about an hour, time for my bus was close so with a heavy heart I had to leave them there though with a promise to call in again before I returned to malaysia.

I made it back to the bus stop just in time to catch my minibus to the town of bukittingi. The driver said it would take 6 hours. He lied, it took 12. It was like getting a lift with postman pat, he called into every house along the way to see if they wanted any parcels delivered to BK, the funny thing was that most of them did!! So we had to drive around to every bloody house that he had a package for. To make matters worse the roads here are terrible, I’m sure the ones on mars would be better. They completely scuppered any notion I had of slumber!! I arrived in BK begging the driver to just drop me off first, but he insisted on dropping off the parcels. I was in agony, I needed sleep so bad. Zombified I found myself standing outside hotel asia at the top of the main drag in the town of Bukittinggi. For the first time in my life I was in the southern hemisphere but that revelation didn’t hit home till the next day. The hotel was locked up, gates chained together with little life inside the main door. I almost cried!! Sleeping on the pavement became a very appealing prospect, though even that desperate measure wasn’t possible as it was very very cold… Remember that I am virtually straddling the equator here and I am a shivering wreck, I thought I might be sick but what souls were on the street at the time all had big jackets on so I stopped fearing for my health. What could it be? Thoughts of parallel dimensions entered my impressionable mind – sleep deprivation is a common torturing technique the americans pioneered back in the 50s. I felt like a test subject. Finally it tweaked, altitude…. I rattled the gates some more and to my delight a porter reared his sleepy head. I signed in at reception and made my way to bed, at last….

After the islands I felt ready for the trip down south. While it wouldn’t have upset me if I had’ve gotten stranded on the islands I reckon 4 nights was just about right. So the plan is to get to indonesia asap where I get 1 months visa after which its time for big bad oz. I am kinda eager to get to the land down under at this stage, a wee bit of normality wouldn’t go astray. Though I am sure a couple of days of western high prices or a downright lack of hey mister, take a picture could have me scurrying for my poor excuse for a passport to get myself back on the road back to asia.

I made it to the town of kota baru close to the thai border which is the starting point of the jungle train, a track that cuts right through the heart of malaysia on its way down south to singapore. My intended destination is the town of Melaka which is malaysias historical capital and a handy departure point for the island of sumatra. Kota Baru is a small enough town – probably about the same size as galway. There isn’t a whole lot to do there other than wait for the train that leaves at 6 in the morning. There is a cool market in the town where I sat for a couple of hours eating and reading, the food in Malaysia kicks ass. I don’t know what alot of it is in the menu but I am brave enough to just pick one thing at random and hope for the best. The only think I don’t like are the fish balls which look like table tennis balls but just don’t taste as good. Once you avoid them you are laughing, though I have heard reports of skewered cats from fellow travelers, I cannot say that I have witnessed such cuisine myself, nor would I want to!!

There was an early rise required to make the train, I shared a taxi with two french people who were on their way to the national park in a place called taman negara, a place which I probably should’ve would’ve taken in were it not for my eagerness to push on further down the path.

The train ride itself was very nice and the time absolutely shot past. The scenery was amazing, thicker than thick rainforest’s broken up occasionally by massive chocolate coloured rivers and some unusually massive limestone rock formations that jut straight up out of the ground in an uluru like fashion.

The french dude i shared the taxi with had just come from sumatra so I was able to pick his brains on what to do there and what the place was like in general. He gave it a seriously good review, describing it as the most beautiful place he had ever visited. They got off the train after about 6 hours so I was on my own for another 6 till we reached the town of gemas, it was 6.10 on the button when I walked out of the station, down the road and into the bus station to find out that the last bus out of the town left 10 minutes beforehand. There was a fleet of taxis and their drivers begging me to hire them to take the 110 km to melaka for a pretty extortionate price – it would’ve cost feck all come to think of it, in irish terms. Probably about 30 euros, but thats 3 days budget over here and I couldn’t justify it. So I decided to check into the local hotel, park myself infront of a tv and catch up on what is going on in the world, that plan could’ve worked if I understood Malay – the fecker at the front desk lied to me when he told me there were english channels on the box. Oh well, an early night was had instead.

I  finally made it out of gemas early enough the next morning, I arrived in melaka in the afternoon just in time to get the last bed in the travellers inn. The guy who landed before me was some character. He had just cycled up from singapore after flying from london where he had cycled to from Stolkholm via germany, holland, belgium and france. He was booked onto the sunday morning ferry to sumatra where he planned to cycle south through java, bali north to borneo (kalimantan) before cycling through sulawesi to the place of his birth. I couldn’t even begin to count how many miles that is, sumatra (the worlds 6th largest island) is 2000 miles long for starters, java isn’t exactly small and borneo is even bigger than sumatra. Add to this that he will be performing a neat little weave around the equator, it ain’t gonna be cool, when it rains it bloody well buckets down and the roads are woeful!!! The man is 68 years of age, I asked him if he was crazy? He nodded, smiled a little before saying kinda sadly ‘Thats what everyone says, but its just a challenge’!! Theres always someone raising the bar. I asked him what his secret was but its not fit for print, I just wish I am crazy enough at 68 to do something like it… You meet the strangest people on the road, this hostel seemed to have ordered them in especially. There was an american guy (there are very few people from america traveling, I’ve met just 2) who I reckon was about 50 who was the spit of terry gilliam, a bit of a hippy effort this thinning hair fell down his hairy bare back to his ass which was just about and no more covered by a pair of ripped up fisherman shorts – he looked like someone who was left on a desert island for years on end. He kept talking about how he has lost his american drawl in what I thought was a very strong american drawl. Then there was this old cantancerous aussie fella who was the most foul mooded individual I have ever  come across, he spent his days chasing around the workers in the hostel complaining about absolutely everything – those were just the ones that I met, I fitted right in though. It did make me wonder what is it about melaka that attracts these crazies…

Its a cool town, sitting on the sea it is well developed with several shopping malls on one side of the river and on the other the standard malaysian issue that is china town and little india. Chinatown was cool, very small and compact if you wanted you could walk its entirity in a couple of minutes, I took time to take in the various chineses temples and mosques – the food inevitably was exquisite. I had my first beer in about 2 weeks over the hotest bloody thing to pass through my lips since god knows when. The euro finals had just started so I stayed up to watch the first game with a german guy who was working in malaysia, instead of watching it in his 5 star hotel he prefered to watch it in one of malaysias all night restaurants which is where i met him. They are excellent places, pretty basic to look at – you just ask the waiter for a plate of rice and then help yourself to the buffet style food. Stack it as high as possible, if you so choose and you still pay less than a euro for it. They are mad about their football so it wasn’t all that unlike going to get your carvery in dublin before watching the afternoon matches in the premiership.

I booked my ticket to dumai for the sunday morning, I woke up early and made my way down to the port. I met up with the crazy indonesian/swedish man there, him kitted out with helmet and bike ready for his big adventure, me there with my hurridly packed rucksack knackered after staying up way to late watching football my hopes of some sleep on the ferry were quickly dashed by the incessant conversation coming out of adolf.

So thats malaysia for now, so the affair ain’t fully over yet.

All the best,

Phil

Eddie was the manager of daniels lodge, he place I raved on about in my post about the Cameron highlands. Like alot of malays, he is of chinese descent and is a dead ringer for Ho Chi Minh. In my opinion he ran a really good shop in daniels, allowing the guests to make themselves at home – stay up as late as they want, not pushing any of the local treks on people etc basically he was a master at making you feel at ease and I reckon me over staying in the place had a lot to do with this laid back atmosphere. However business in the lodge has taken a bit of a battering, tourist numbers in malaysia on the whole are down from other years. The unfavourable review in the last lonely planet which was plainly untrue if nothing else contributed to the end of eddies tenure as the manager. Before he left he told me about D’lagoon, a resort on the perhentian islands owned by a friend of his that he highly recommended. He said he was going there himself for a couple of weeks before he gets a job elsewhere. So with this in mind I took the bus from panang to the port of Kuala Besult where a 30 minute speedboat deposits you on the island of your choice.

There are several islands that make up the perhentians but just two are inhabitable and go by the names of big and small island. D’lagoon is on the small island, on the north east coast of the island the resort virtually commands most of the north of the island with easy access to two larger beaches (Adam & Eve and Turtle beach) on west coast. The islands are designated national marine parks so they are flush with wildlife and some excellent diving spots which are quite importantly under protection of the malaysian government to ward away any poachers or illegal fishing by dynamite, practices which have ruined formerly great dive sites in the philippines.

The boat that gets you there only really gets you most of the way there, each resort has its own fleet of small fishing or speedboats which are summoned from the shore to come and collect you at the mouth of the bay. Switching boats can be alittle hair raising, getting the bag across with your passport and electronics is obviously the most important action, hate to disappoint you all by informing you that I made a dry transition myself also.

After signing into the place I got myself some well needed if not earned sleep before taking in what d’lagoon had to offer me. The resort is a collection of tree houses and chalets which make a reasonable effort at blending into the background, there is very little concrete on show which is always a bonus. The beach itself is small, barely 50 yards across and awash with dead coral washed up by storms there is a scattering of hammocks and plastic chairs there is even a pet monkey there to keep you amused incase you get bored reading a book or snorkling.

I did a hell of an amount of snorkeling while I was there. I must have gone out 3 or 4 times a day, I swam miles, getting good at the swimming. The snorkling gear myself and bob picked up in manila has more than paid for itself. Underwater the amount of wildlife is dazzling. There are sharks, turtles, sting rays and obscene amount of other multicoloured multisized fish that I couldn’t even begin to name or describe. The sharks are scary little feckers, they are just reef sharks so they measure only a couple of feet in length but when they whip past you at such speed it gives you a bit of a hop.

On dry land there is no shortage of wildlife to keep you amused also. Just lying back in your hammock it is only a matter of time before a snake crawls up your tree to have a look at you (its frightening), the island is full of monitor lizards which can grow up to well over 2 metres in length. The biggest one I saw was under two metres but an impressive beast nonetheless. One morning early, far too early the owner of the place woke everyone up to get out onto the beach, there was a turtle laying eggs on the beach. It only happens once a year and he was able to predict it, something to do with the moon that or he is some kind of nostradamus with a certain speciality in turtle cycles. I was there with a completely dopey head, not really grasping the specialness of such an occasion. I took a few snaps and let the turtle get on with business, I mean its not exactly the thing you would appreciate a crowd to gather for. I would imagine it was difficult enough for the poor creature as it was. It only really dawned on me how special it was to see it happening the next morning.

I stayed here for 4 nights, I would’ve stayed much longer if I had have given up my lonely planet boycott and read that the island has no atms – I had 300 ringit which is about 80 euro. With no drink I was able to make it stretch, life on islands is always pricier than the mainland. A couple of negative points about the place, there’s very little to complain about… but its an island, well at least the resort is geared for couples and thats what frequents the place mostly. You get feck all craic from them, twas only when eddie arrived that I had someone to eat dinner with and discuss various things. Later on a lovely scottish couple, steven and sam arrived. Hung out with them on my last night and we chatted about our past adventures, pity they didn’t arrive earlier. The bugs there are also a major issue, for me anyways who was too dumb/tight to invest in a mosquito net and was dumb enough to lose my mosquito repellent I was eaten alive by the little bastards. One night I couldn’t sleep at all with the humidity and the sheer itchiness of the bite makes left by the little cretins. When I did manage to source some repellent it made life so much easier, I recommend anyone going there to deet up to the max as soon as the sun sets. Oh by the way, the sun sets are amazing out in the western beaches. Oh those western beaches, you really do get a gilligan island feeling out there. So often, for hours on end you get a pristine white beach tinged with palm and coconut trees completely to yourself with the bluest of blue waters just a couple of feet away. Screw the thai islands if your idea of paradise is a beach then this is the place for you….

Running out of cash I had to bail out to the mainland and the town of kota baru where I waited one night for the jungle train to take me all the way down south in preparation for my trip to mighty sumatra.

ciao for now,

Phil