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Published: March 3rd 2007
Rafflesia Flower
Me with the Rafflesia!As soon as I arrived back in Bali I was greeted with the usual group of enthusiastic taxi drivers, each desperate to rip-off the westerner on his trip back to the hotel! I immediately felt back at home!!
As my plans were to start heading north through Java to Sumatra as soon as possible I was a little slow off the mark, nine days to be exact! It was a little too easy to just chill out in Bali for a few days with nothing to do but eat, sleep & attempt to surf (By the way i'm shit!). In the end I had to move and after my nine days I headed to Sumatra.
This is a monster journey and as it's much cheaper and quicker to fly some would ask why I decided to take it on by land and sea?...Well, it wasn't so I could meet the people or see the scenery it was because of AdamAir!...A popular Indonesian airline which 'lost' a plane only in January (and of course the 102 passengers) and the fact that Indonesias airline industry isn't blessed with the greatest of safety records (I believe the BBC said one incident a
Lake Maninjau
A view over a Lake Maninjau fish farm. week on average!). It wasn't long ago I was petrified of flying and I decided land & sea was definitely for me!... Yes I have heard about the recent ferry accident they had there, I was there at the time, but I can swim so I fancied my chances!
My journey didn't really get off to a great start, I arrived in Java from Bali & had to wait 13 hours for my damn train to Surabaya! With nothing to do and in a small town with nothing happening I befriended a nice guy in the station & spent my day sleeping in his office & going out for food with him. I promised I would say hi in two months when I returned and I headed off to Surabaya. After the overnight train had arrived I had another 12 hour wait for my train to Jakarta, I couldn't be bothered waiting and so decided to get a hotel for the day and sleep, this is where the 3 day nightmare begins!!... The hotel I stayed at was the worst hotel I had ever stayed in, it was 35,000 Rupiah (1.60p), it stunk, was filthy & even had an
Very Kind People
They made me feel really welcome and again I really enjoyed my time with them empty syringe packet on the floor! Great!...Even worse to come, time for checkout and instead of handing him the 35,000 I got my notes mixed up and gave him a 100,000 note mixed in with my others! Now officially the worst AND most expensive hotel! What a tit I am!
I made it to the station & onto my night train to Jakarta. Keeping in mind the fact that in all the guide books it mentions to take care of valuables in Indonesia and especially Java I decided to keep all of in my day bag and keep a close eye on it, I'll give you all a tip...if you are ever on a night train in Java, sleep with one eye open at all times, I woke to find myself a camera and mobilephone light! Could things get worse!! Come back Oz all is forgiven!! Haha
My faith in humanity was restored very soon after I arrived in Sumatra. I had been there a day and needed to head from Bandarlampung to Bukittinggi, yet again my bus was a 12 hour wait and I ended up meeting a really nice guy who showed me where the correct
My Crappy Bus!
This was when it was empty and it would have been bad enough spending 31 hours on it like this, never mind jam packed! station was and showed me around town a little. During my stay with him, he needed to go to a meeting of some sort which I think was a religious meeting, I tried to find out but my Indonesian aint great and his english wasn't either! Anyway, I say patiently and used it as an opportunity to take in their religion and culture.
At one point during the meeting one of the guys there started writing me notes in english wanting to know my name, age etc etc. He was meant to be paying attention to the meeting but focused it on me! Suddenly out of the blue he wrote... 'We are all muslims, are you afraid?'... Crikey mate! I will be if you get the orange jumpsuit and video camera out next but not yet!! haha
But seriously they were all very nice people indeed & later the guy showing me around took me to see his friend who spoke excellent english. She was very nice also and they spent their time helping me find a new camera, showing me around town and taking me for some traditional Indonesian cuisine in KFC! I even went to meet
Lake Toba...
I had great views from my hotel here and it was a great hotel for only 20,000 rp a night (A quid!) their family and it was great to meet people so hospitable, I ate with them and chatted to them about my travels. The father of the house was very kind and also very knowledgeable about the world. In the end they came with me and waited over an hour with me for my bus. I thank them all very much for making me feel welcome and wish them all well.
So, for trains and buses in Indonesia you buy your ticket based on one of the three classes of ticket available, there's ekonomi, bisnis, and eksekutif. I wanted my tickets for all the long journeys to be eksekutif as this meant that I would be on a bus like the normal coaches at home. So thats the ticket I bought, or so I thought!!!..... I should have guessed that things had been running a little smooth! I had a woman next to me who had about 20 bags with her, she used her seats to house her bags and my seat for her big bum! It was way over 30 degrees, 100% humidity, no A/C and the bus was jam packed with people seating and standing all over and
Great Waterfall In Toba
This was great to swim upto but it was pretty cold! right down the aisles (Not to mention the chickens and the constant smoking!). What a journey, at least it wasn't too long.....only 31 HOURS!!!
Once I arrived in Bukittinggi I headed for lake Maninjau, a lake formed in the crater of a volcano thousands of years ago. The place was so quiet and I only saw one tourist there. There was nothing to do except from taking in the beautiful views and recover from the journey so thats what I did and I loved it. Oh, I also used this place to catch up on all my blogs so i'm sorry that I bombarded you all with them.
After running out of money due to no ATMs I headed back to Bukittinggi where you can go and see the Rafflesia flower when its in bloom . It's basically the worlds biggest flower & unfortunately I wasn't anywhere near blooming season... but would you believe my luck had changed and one had bloomed! Not wanting to miss the chance I went to see it. The one I saw was probably half the size they normally get but considering that when I arrived none were in bloom, it takes 18
months to bloom and only lasts 7 days...I was blooming lucky!
Off to Parapat, a nice short 17 hour journey that was definitely an 'eksekutif' class bus, it was a breeze! Once there I got on the ferry to Samosir island which is in the middle of Lake Toba and is the size of Singapore. The views were again spectacular & this time there were many more tourists (Due to Chinese New Year mostly). A couple of days rest was followed by a boat trip out onto the lake to go and see a local school, a village & a waterfall. The highlight for me was the waterfall, really nice and most people jumped off the boat and had a swim in the cool water.
The following day, my last day in Toba, I rented out a motorbike & headed off to explore the island. It turned into a great trip, I went all around the island which is some 100km+. It was meant to take 9 hours (I did it in 7!). I saw lots of locals & passed through villages filled with school children making their way to school and each shouting the customary 'Hello Mister'
Orangutangs!
I'm sorry about the quality of some of my pictures but they are all pretty self explanatory... as I rode past. A day i'll take great memories from and also a sore arse from all the bumps on the dirt track!
I left Toba & with time running out before my visa expired I saved the best until last and headed to Bukit Lawang in North Sumatra. Bukit Lawang is a small town famous for it's Orangutang sanctuary. I had to rush to get onto a trek but I bought my ticket for a two day trek & headed into the jungle the next morning with a small group.
Our first encounter with the Orangutang wasn't great, we saw monkey renowned for being vicious and biting trekkers & we were basically told to just run! great, I love running in the hot sticky jungle! Later we found another group of Orangutang who were much friendlier. They came right down from the tree tops to see us and also brought with them a baby orangutang which was the most curious of us of the group and came so close you wanted to reach out and touch it. It was amazing and I just tried to get a decent photo which would do it justice but it
Orangutangs!
Sorry about the quality of some of these photos, but they are all pretty self explanatory... was impossible. In the end the mother had had enough and dragged her baby off back into the wild. We also headed off & trekked the rest of the day, only stopping to see some Gibbons which also came close. They were great too but the baby Orangutang experience won't be beaten anytime soon.
That night we camped out on the jungle floor with the creepy crawlies & rafted back to camp the following morning. Later in the afternoon I headed for Medan and the following day I managed to buy a flight for that evening to Kuala Lumpur, just in time before my visa expired.
Sumatra was a really special place and one of my favorite places so far. It's had a lot of problems over the last few years with Earthquakes and Tsunamis but its a place i'd recommend to anyone, really safe & full of nice people struggling to survive without the tourists who were once plenty. For me, I now have a month in Malaysia (Peninsular & Borneo)...Sorry to have written so much this time but I hope some of you still enjoy reading them!
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Marlow
non-member comment
Definitely not Oz
Cool blog. Sounds like you're having a cool time despite the ying & Yang. That bus journey really sounds like the worst ever, i don't know how you managed it but fair play. I wonder what the flight would've been like....!! Well done on spotting the Gibbons, looking at your pic i'm not sure how you managed it....lol!! Keep on keeping and i'll catch you soon.