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Blogs from Lake Maninjau, Sumatra, Indonesia, Asia
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The shoe crisis - Emails from Sumatra, August 2011
Published: March 19th 2012Asia » Indonesia » Sumatra » Lake Maninjau
March 16th 2012
Mel No trip with Lydia is without a shoe crisis, despite that I these days take the precaution of taking extra pairs of shoes for us both. Yesterday, I ended up jumping in the lake fully dressed to rescue my last pair of spare shoes, which I have had to give to Lydia, because she has broken all her own. I was so eager to avoid the Koh Pha Ngan type shoe crisis of a few years ago, in which I arrived in Bangkok shoeless and dirty footed, after my shoes broke when we were just about to leave the island. That cheap bus ride had the disadvantage of stopping at every muddy food vending roadside hovel, where we had to wade through pools of dirty rain water and push asside vegetation to get to the ... read more
Travel virgin(just about) on the loose. Dirk Jan comes to SE Asia - Emails from Sumatra, August 2011
Published: March 16th 2012Asia » Indonesia » Sumatra » Lake ManinjauMarch 12th 2012
Dirk Jan After I'm back, it's only a few more sleepings until I fly over to Bangkok, it's getting really close :) Mel Can't wait to see you over here. And, you can meet . Maybe we can persuade him to come to the Petronas Towers for coffee, or maybe to join us for some of our time at the rollercoaster place while Lydia plays there. I am getting really excited about you being here. Bangkok should be particularly good, because there is some really cool stuff I want to show you there. Hopefully you will like it as much as I do. Dirk Jan Back from Summer Breeze. It was absolutely brilliant. The weather has seriously turned around now: today we're getting over 30 degrees and that's gonna last all week - so I ... read more
Lazy Dayz - Emails from Sumatra, August 2011
Published: March 6th 2012Asia » Indonesia » Sumatra » Lake Maninjau
February 29th 2012
Mel I forgot to mention, the name of the place we are in, so you can see photos of it on TravelBlog or someplace.It is Danau Maninjau. I will email again tomorrow or the day after. :) I had an amazing curry, at our livingroom this morning. The guesthouse guys mama really is a good cook. So, what are we doing with ourselves? : There really is not much to do here except drink hot sweet ginger coffee by the lake, and yawn and stretch with the cafe and guesthouse cats. When we first arrived, I liked the relaxing layed back feel of the place, but wondered what I would do to keep Lydia amused. Efforts to keep her amused generally negate anything that is relaxing about a place for me. But, there wasn't a need ... read more
The guesthouse by the lake and Cafe 44 - Emails from Sumatra, August 2011
Published: February 25th 2012Asia » Indonesia » Sumatra » Lake ManinjauFebruary 20th 2012
Dirk Jan Now, I'm packing for the last festival of the year, I'll be leaving on wednesday morning. Mel Is your inexpensive tent holding up OK? Dirk Jan At Wacken it had to endure very heavy rain and it kept watertight (just about, only a few drops here and there) so that was 14 Euros well spent :) At Wacken my frail old chair finally died, but now I know where to go: I got another one at the place where I got the tent. 4.99 and I was sorted :) Mel Those chairs are generally good priced in the ALDI too. we can look out for one. :)We left Bukkitinggi the day before Indonesian Independence day. I told the owner of the guesthouse, ''if you meet any Dutch people tomorrow, be sure to wish ... read more
January 26th 2011
Sumatera has been a dream of ours for some time and to finally be here is wonderful. This place has delivered far more of the adventure than we expected to find and yet my spine is in quite some pain. There is a trans-sumatera highway that runs an incredibly zig-zaged path from Banda Aceh (north tip) to Banderlampung (south tip). There are few stretches where the road travels straight in any direction, you are always crawling uphill or hurtling downward at unsafe speeds and angles. From lake Toba we reached the unimpressive capital Medan with our one goal of obtaining Iron Maiden tickets. This goal was easily completed as the mall where they were sold was 2 km from our mini-hotel. In a stark juxtaposition the grand mosque of sumatera is across the street from where ... read more
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May 25th 2010
Went straight for a swim again first thing (well 11:30ish :p) this morning in the lovely warm lake then dried off whilst waiting for brekkie, pancakes mm mmm. Sitting on the grass we noticed that we had the tiniest of leeches on our feet that were a right bugger to get off! Sat in the restaurant to eat and played a game of chess. 2 guys from Switzerland came this morning (the Malaysian have left can't have it getting too crowded) and we talked at length about our travelling and theirs (1 of the guys had been like everywhere so it was very interesting to listen to his stories and opinions). They mentioned the infamous horrendous bus trip to Lake Toba that we're doing in a couple of days (they took the same bus as the ... read more
May 24th 2010
So it was that time of year again, another year older but this time it was probably unlike any other birthday I've ever had. Just outside our bungalow we were greeted by a calm, beautiful lake Maninjau so we headed for a swim to start the morning. The water was lovely and warm, warmer than most swimming pools (even Mum would have gone in). Naturally I tried to swim in all the photos of the scenery that Suse was attempting to take. Once out we laid on the lawn to dry off. I had an awesome coconutshake (fresh from the tree) and taught Suse how to play Chess. Whilst we were laid out enjoying the sun and the peace (we were the only guests at the bungalows) one of the guys who helps out round the ... read more
May 23rd 2010
7 seater 4WD picked us up at about 10.30am. We then spent the next neigh on hour picking up locals and carrier bags and boxes. By the end of the hour Rob was squished behind a woman with a kid that had reclined her seat into him and I had boxes balanced precariously behind my head though the girl next to me was worst off as the boxes kept burying her whenever we took a tight turn! The guy was a rubbish driver who seemingly wanted us dead and didn't understand the meaning of gears however after about 1hr 30 we got there alive (after 44 hairpin turns, a stop while one girl was sick and driving past lots of cheeky moneys that were not at all perturbed by cars) and it was well worth it! ... read more
March 3rd 2010
Tultiin niin myohaan jarvelle, etta jouduttiin yopymaan kaupungissa ja lahtemaan saarelle vasta seuraavana aamuna.... read more
August 10th 2009
hello all, as another week bites the dust it is time for another installment from the past week and its adventures. 4th Aug We decided we'd have a lie in for once, unfortunately we were woken once again at 4.30 for another prayer session so that was that out the window. We headed to the local markets for a couple of hours to see if we could see anything worth purchasing, there wasn't - unless we wanted a giant bag of dried fish with eyes. Later on we headed to a local park called Panorama Park, so called because of it's view over a huge canyon and the surrounding volcanoes to watch the sun set and see the aerial show put on by the bats. Here we bumped into lots of monkeys which was fairly unexpected ... read more
