Family holidays and Gado Gado

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Checked out and left bags at hotel while we tried to figure out how to get to Bukittinggi. Then the best thing happened we walked into a tour place and the guy in there said 100,000 for the two of you, then he came with us to help carry our bags to the lovely air-con 4WD he had! There were 2 other women in the car with us and a teenage boy (it was a 7 seater and we picked another woman up on the way), we thought maybe we had invaded a family trip or helping to fund it :p.

Journey was stress free, only hard part was the toilet stop where I had to wee in a room with gutters in it, a bush out back would have been nicer! Scenery was fantastic, jungle, mountains, fast running rivers, we even saw a quite impressive waterfall and Rob spied monkeys eating outta bins. We were dropped off in a touristy area and we booked into Hotel Asia (which only had economy rooms available so no en-suite, no fan, no mozzy net 😞). Hoping to swap to a standard room tomorrow.

Rob tried Gado, Gado for dinner (a salad w/prawn crackers and a spicy peanut sauce). Food seems pretty cheapo. No Diet Coke anywhere though 😞 We were stopped by 2 girls in the afternoon that wanted to record a conversation with them in English so I spoke to them for a few mins. They seemed really sweet and nervous. Most people here still take a double take of you, smile and say hello. One little kid ran up to us (while his parents watched him smiling from their shop door) to ask where we were from etc.

Walked to Sianok Canyon for sunset, you can see the volcanoes from here. There are 3 surrounding Bukittinggi. We spoke to a shopkeeper for a bit who told us that one had been smoking just that morning eeeek. He also said how 10 years ago there had been loads of tourists here then it just stopped. We saw a couple of monkeys. The canyon is really beautiful (see pics 😊). Once the sun set the bats came out and they are BIG (about 1mtr across), looked more like eagles swooping around the canyon.

We ate at Cafe Turret and had veg pasta which was more like spag sweet and sour, tasted quite nice though. Spoke to 2 guys from NZ that gave us a brochure for the place they stayed in Bukit Lawang and warned us that the bus trip to Lake Toba from Bukittinggi is literally hell on wheels! Not much of an atmosphere here at night due to lack of people so we just grabbed some water and mooched back to the hotel. The shared bathroom was icky, sink was blocked and full of murky brown water and fag ends urrgh!

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