Nothing’s Familiar

First place of relevance was Puala Nias, an Island which has been devastated by the Tsunami, then flattened again in March this year by a 7.7 earthquake. Buildings were ruined, bridges were destroyed, people’s boats, surfboards and most of their posessions washed away. The Island is now covered in UNICEF tents and make shift schools. However, I am yet to find people so friendly, welcoming and sincere than the people on this Island. Once you’ve brushed past the touts, sellers and hecklers the ‘real’ genuine people on this island couldn’t be as kind and as welcoming.

Nias has the best ‘right hand’ waves in the world, reaching crazy heights in season and decent size waves in the off season. I was pretty stoked to be riding these gnarly waves for my first bodasheoas experience at surfing. Dudes. I totally sucked on the first day as I had a board smaller than me and I manage to rip a mole off my chest, something which I’ve never done before. That made my day.

So, any how. Like my last e-mail I’ve been spending as much time on motorbikes as possible, It’s a guaranteed way of having a decent adventure, avoiding regular tourist haunts and meeting with locals who don’t see you as a walking cash machine. The Children in Indonesia are great, as we ride around on the bikes they are either walking to and from school or working on farms – balancing incredible weight on their heads. So, after a quick chorus of hello from them I give them a drive-by high-five and continue on my little mission – I might consider not doing this from now on, as yesterday I accidentally smacked a kid in the face…..sorry little man.

By far the cutest kids I’ve come across where all playing outside their nursery school, I stopped by and they all ran towards me curious and wide eyed. I held my hand out to shake a little boys, he just touched my hand and grinned, which then started a riot of all the kids giggling running up to me just to touch my hand. After about 5 minutes their teacher started to shout at them to leave the tourist alone and they stood back and stared at me until I drove off.

The next day I rented a bike the back wheel came loose as we were driving on probably the dodgiest roads in Indonesia, in search of some megalithic stones. Some locals came and fixed it, then I drove on again for 5 minutes before it broke again, more locals came to the rescue – same thing happened after another 5 minutes. The next time it broke one local removed the chain, removed some links added a few screws, patched it up and sent me on my way. It didn’t break again, but, I did drop it a riding along a track the same size as my wheels, with a big drop to a deep puddle on my left and a rice paddy to my right, I suddenly released it would really be a bad Idea to fall into the rice field damaging someones lively hood and then lost control falling towards the puddle. I managed to fall off my bike and support it for a while but it slipt, then, bringing it to the ground I twisted the throttle revving the bike fast and spinning it around before landing on my leg and sitting in the puddle!

I also fell down a cliff later that day, which scared the pants of me – I even let out a feeble “I’m about to fall to my death” yelp, then fell about 1m, twisted on to my front and caught myself from falling backwards, my fellow travellers didn’t even notice. They were too busy playing in the river.

After relaxing a few more days and playing an insane amount of chess (pretty much 2 days solid) – we left the Island with literally nothing to our name, there was no ATM on the island so we were bloody lucky not to get stuck.

Yesterday I was on a lake with a volcano (and Internet cafe), a few nights ago I participated in a local indigenous dance in front of lots of people, then played guitar with some amazing guitarists, got drunk and sang an awful lot, awfully probably. – Oh I also bought a guitar, which has been great fun, everyone here plays, so it’s a great ice breaker.

Last night we arrived in Medan, the largest city in Sumatra – as usual the ‘Lonely Planet’ (the travellers bible) described this place as a hell hole, not really worth visiting. I like it, infact I usual like the places the Lonely Planet tells you not to go to. First off we indulged in the variety of activities, food and shopping available only in cities then found a live concert with hundreds of Muslims standing around. A few old women convinced me and Grant to dance with them, so we did, vagually intime with Batak music for about 5 minutes.

The next day I rented a bike the back wheel came loose as we were driving on probably the dodgiest roads in Indonesia, in search of some megalithic stones. Some locals came and fixed it, then I drove on again for 5 minutes before it broke again, more locals came to the rescue – same thing happened after another 5 minutes. The next time it broke one local removed the chain, removed some links added a few screws, patched it up and sent me on my way. It didn’t break again, but, I did drop it a riding along a track the same size as my wheels, with a big drop to a deep puddle on my left and a rice paddy to my right, I suddenly released it would really be a bad Idea to fall into the rice field damaging someones lively hood and then lost control falling towards the puddle. I managed to fall off my bike and support it for a while but it slipt, then, bringing it to the ground I twisted the throttle revving the bike fast and spinning it around before landing on my leg and sitting in the puddle!

I also fell down a cliff later that day, which scared the pants of me – I even let out a feeble “I’m about to fall to my death” yelp, then fell about 1m, twisted on to my front and caught myself from falling backwards, my fellow travellers didn’t even notice. They were too busy playing in the river.

After relaxing a few more days and playing an insane amount of chess (pretty much 2 days solid) – we left the Island with literally nothing to our name, there was no ATM on the island so we were bloody lucky not to get stuck.

Yesterday I was on a lake with a volcano (and Internet cafe), a few nights ago I participated in a local indigenous dance in front of lots of people, then played guitar with some amazing guitarists, got drunk and sang an awful lot, awfully probably. – Oh I also bought a guitar, which has been great fun, everyone here plays, so it’s a great ice breaker.
Last night we arrived in Medan, the largest city in Sumatra – as usual the ‘Lonely Planet’ (the travellers bible) described this place as a hell hole, not really worth visiting. I like it, infact I usual like the places the Lonely Planet tells you not to go to. First off we indulged in the variety of activities, food and shopping available only in cities then found a live concert with hundreds of Muslims standing around. A few old women convinced me and Grant to dance with them, so we did, vagually intime with Batak music for about 5 minutes. After retreating,  we met a motorbike taxi driver, with a sidecart for two. He was dying to take me and Grant for a coffee, then drive us around Medan late at night whilst all the time practicing his, albiet rude, good English. He informed us that the reason Indonesian girls love Western men wasn’t because of money (that was no 5 in his ‘what women like’ list) but because ‘you have big guns’ – the reason, apparently we like Indonesian women is because they have ‘small holes’. So Herman drove us around Medan begging us to point out girls we like, for no apparent reason, apart from his own curiosity. He would rate women on breast weight ‘one breast, one kilo’, then love it when girls laugh and smile at us. We were taken all over the city, for free.

Later on today we will head north again to hopefully see some Orangutans; Orang People, Utans Forest

I’m desperately trying to upload some photos now I am here in a city, but I’ve been sat here for nearly 1 hour and haven’t managed one yet!

Hope you are all well,

Rob-in-the-son Cruiso

 check out my photos – www.buzznet.com/burb

Selamat sore! Everybody,

I have to say, my first day in Indonesia sucked ass. I set-sail from Singapore at around 8.30am, it only took 1 hour to reach Indonesia’s border so relativaly short When I arrived in Indonesia, I didn’t have a penny to my name, not in any currency. I’m not to sure why I didn’t think I might need money to get a taxi from the border and I certainly didn’t think I would have to pay for a Visa, but I did, 25 US dollars to be precise. To make matters more interesting there wasn’t an ATM at the border crossing and they couldn’t accept credit cards of any type. So, in short I was fucked. No money to pay for a boat back to Singapore and no money to enter Indonesia. After a short while begging a interesting arrangement happened shortly after, I was to give my passport to a security guard, leave my rucksack at the border and jump in a taxi to take me 20 minutes to the nearest ATM machine. Everything above is usually a big no-no in the travelling world, but I had no option. Passport left, rucksack left, I jumped into an unmarked taxi and got driven off in the wilderness.
At the ATM I suddenly realised I didn’t have a clue about the currency, I clicked ‘fast cash’ and stared blankley at the obscene figures infront of me. I had the option of withdrawing the minimum of 50,000, so I withdrew 250,000 to be safe. I popped back to the Taxi and asked him how much it would be, 100,000 was the price. I wasn’t in the position to be bargaining seeing as all my life was left back at the border – so I returned to the ATM and withdrew a cool million.
Back at the border, getting the Visa now I had money was easy, so I walked to buy a ticket to take me to Sumatra – I couldn’t do this alone, oh no, I got about 10 people begging to take me there, eventully I shook them all off but, one man remained.
He honestly told me there are no boats till tommorrow morning and dishonestly told me all the hostels in the Lonely Planet had closed down and then charged me 100,000 to take me to another hotel, which cost 140,000 for 1 night. I still didn’t have a clue how much all this funny money was worth.

At the hostel I found out. I cried a little bit, got grumpy and then shadow boxed infront of the mirror, in my boxershorts, for no apparent reason.

I had just spend nearly 15 pounds (my daily budget) on Taxi’s, 15 pounds on a visa and more money on horrible food and that wasn’t inlcluding the additional 15 pounds to get to my next destination.

I tried to walk around Batam but got so annoyed with people harrasing to take me places, taxis slowing down and beeping at me, people begging for money that I surrendered and took refuge in a Mc-escape-culture-shock-Donalds. Paying a set priced pleased me, then I locked myself in my room and tried desperatly to learn the local language, before surrending and studying Thai for 3 hours before falling asleep.
The following day, I woke up at 6.30am to get a taxi (the same driver) to take me to the harbour, I was aware he was going to charge me the 100,000 again so I thought fuck it, after paying that, from then on I will bargain like del-boy and take no further bending over! So, when I arrived at the harbour he said 150,000 ‘because it’s morning’. I laughed. Gave him 100,000 declined his offer of providing him with a tip, smilled and walked away, seceretly depserate to find another traveller to make this headache situation amusing.
Luckily on the boat after 2 hours of watching Chinese New Year pop-videos I spotted a foreigner and inatiated converstaion. I travelled with Grant for 18 hours on buses and boats to get here, Bukkittingi.
Today was a complete turn around, myself and Grant were asked to go to a local school and chat with the students, but the teacher never arrived to meet us so we decided to rent motorbikes and visit a few things instead. We explored the Japanese war tunnels, which were nice, fed some monkeys, then drove off up hills, past volcanoes, into villages, over canyons and waved at every Indonesian we passed. It was amazing, the most refreshing and exciting thing I have done for a long time, we found small villages where people were playing, eating and actually pleased to see us, they didn’t want to sell us anything, get us to go anywhere, they just wanted to say “Hello” or ‘Hi” to us in English.

On the way back We stopped off and had a coffee in the most amazing cafe, chatted to a Muslim family, ate fresh cookies, then drove back and stared at rice fields, rice terraces and watched a farmer try and control 5 upset buffallos.

Splendid.

Tommorrow we will do the same, but rent the motorbikes all day instead and stop to chat to more locals on the way, then the following day continue heading north.

Sampai Jumper (Goodbye!)