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Published: April 22nd 2012
It’s just turned 12 noon and we’re still in our PJ’s, sat on our balcony overlooking lake Toba on the beautiful island of Sumatra, Indonesia. There is an old Indonesian guy in the room next to us singing along to the Smiths, the sun is shining; the temperature is perfect and the scenery stunning. Judith’s relaxing, having a cup of tea, reading the Lonely Planet and Footprint guidebooks planning the next leg of the trip. She’s debating whether we should head to Bali or travel straight to Cambodia. I on the other hand am desperately trying to clench my butt cheeks together as hard as I can to stop a repeat of what has made me so well acquainted with the toilet in the past 24 hours. We arrived in Sumatra about a week ago and have already had more cold showers, death buses, illness and general mentalness than we experienced in 3 months in New Zealand and Australia. It’s like we never left South America. It’s madder here though. Everyone is our best mate. People keep stopping us in the street and asking us for our photo. Judith thinks it’s because of how we look and where we’re from but
I know that it’s because I’m in the Leeds based indie rock sensation ‘Defender’ who are pretty big (probably) in Indonesia.
I last wrote to you when we were about to leave Auckland. We had sold our campervan (car with a mattress in it) and were looking forward to investigating Sydney for a couple of weeks. We arrived into Sydney to be greeted by Nicki my old chum from school who made us feel right at home (in South America) with her driving back from the airport. We stayed with Nic in her Bondi crib on and off over the next few weeks. It was amazing. We had a comfy bed, a clean kitchen and bathroom, a garden patio, a sofa, a TV, we were in heaven and Nicki looked after us with the type of hospitality that only a Bradfordian can offer. She even had Yorkshire Tea. We made the most of our first few days there by sleeping for about 11 hours each night and then sitting round all morning having leisurely breakfasts, finally getting off our arses in the early afternoon to go for a stroll to Bondi beach or
whatever.
On the third day we rose again from the couch, leaving Nic behind and headed off to the Blue Mountains, about 200km south of Sydney. It was only to be our second train journey of the whole trip, the first being to the town near Machupichu, Peru. We stayed at a hostel which Judith stayed at about 7 years ago. Being Australia, one dorm bed was more expensive than a deluxe double room with ensuite bathroom including breakfast in South America, so we had little choice. Australia seems to attract younger travellers (people on holiday) whereas South America is definitely an older crowd. So thanks to that we had to share our dorm with 5 snot nosed pretentious European art students who left all their crap over the floor of the room. I kindly asked once for them to move their stuff to which I was greeted with a half arsed attempt to move a couple of shoes before they turned back to making a statue of a, well I don’t know what it was. Like a giraffe made of match boxes. I’m sure what ever it was will be imperative to
the future of the human race in preventing world famine or the spread of AIDS or something like that.
In Oz they have these supermarkets that just sell booze. They are amazing. I picked up some local brew one night to have with my tea. We were making a mustardy chicken salad thing. We got chatting with this young lad about the local beers and he suggested a couple. Judith however pointed out that I was taking beer recommendations from a guy who was eating plain spaghetti with baked beans on top and barbeque sauce. I thought based on what he was eating his advice on beer was probably solid. We became addicted to Tim Tam chocolate biscuits whilst in New Zealand and were pleased to see that we could get them in Oz. I have a massive problem with biscuits though. The problem being that I can’t eat more that 2 at a time without feeling guilty. When we were kids my folks said my sister and I could only have 2 biscuits at any one time and it is still engraved into my brain. The hostel offered ‘free breakfast’ and ‘free
wifi’. Oh thank you so much Mr hostel owner you are so kind, offering us ‘free’ breakfast. How can you ever afford to make a profit from the $56 a night my wife and I pay you for a bunk bed in your damp dormitory. Your generosity and kindness in unparalleled. You’d give Bob Geldof a run for his money. Maybe you and Bob could go to Africa and give away some free breakfasts for $56. Have a word with that stuck up Swedish girl in our dorm she may lend you the AIDS giraffe to take with you.
Australia is just as I expected. People do actually say “g’day” all the time, and they carry boomerangs and wear hats with corks dangling from them. I was really miffed that I didn’t see anyone from Neighbours. Someone told me that I wouldn’t see anyone from Neighbours because its filmed in Melbourne. What a load of tosh, everyone knows its filmed in Erinsborough. I haven’t seen Neighbours for ages but I miss that bit on the theme tune they took out from the 80’s that goes ‘Next door is only a footstep away……’ You
can’t mess with a classic. When my sister used to miss Neighbours she’d ask us what happened and my dad would always say “Mrs Mangle got run over by a steam roller.” Ha! Australians are the same as Kiwis but different. If you go into a shop in New Zealand they will chew your ear off for ages, all friendly like, whereas in Australia they’re not really that bothered by you. However if you meet a Kiwi on the road they will try and kill you for no reason but in Australia they will go out of their way to stop and let you cross. Same but different. I didn’t notice too many, if any, chavs in New Zealand whereas Australia – holy guacamole. The ozzy’s would give Jeremy Kyle a run for his money. You get out of Sydney and you’re into Deliverance Country. If you see a banjo, you run. Especially if it’s covered in human skin.
The Blue Mountains were stunning. We took in a couple of walks to see the sights and got right into the forest which was cool. Three nights was enough for me in a dorm
so we headed back to Sydney to see Nic. We thought we’d best head into Sydney and see some sights like the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and what not. From a distance the Opera House is amazing. Close up it’s covered in ceramic tiles like you’d find in a public toilet. Inside it looks like a lecture theatre at Leeds Met Uni. Still nice though. We headed to the Botanical Gardens where we saw some of the craziest looking birds I’ve ever seen. They looked like something off Jurassic Park. One of them looked like Eminem. The landscape and the wildlife in New Zealand felt all too familiar, similar(ish) to what you’d find in the UK or Europe but Australia is something else. They had flying foxes just hanging from the trees in the middle of the park. Crazy looking things and massive too.
We enjoyed a few more days relaxing in Bondi. We caught up on internet stuff and what was going on in the world on TV. Australian TV has got to be the worst I have ever seen. We watched the Ozzy equivalent of ‘This Morning’. It should
have been called ‘This Moron’. The whole show was one big shameless advertisement. “Let’s go over to Sheila who’s going to talk to us about family debt.”
“Thanks Bruce. G’day I’m Sheila and I’m here to talk to you about family debt but I am going to speak to you like you are a 5 year old. What I may as well do to make it a little bit more patronising is put on a couple of hand puppets and act out how sad a family in debt looks like. Then what I’ll do is tell you that
www.iwouldkillmyowngrandmothertotakefeesfromyou.com is a family run business so we understand debt and we just want to help you with your problems.” Unbelievable.
We met up with my old friend, Halifax geezer and Stump Cross Stallion, Chris “Turkey” Barker in Bondi and had a trip out in his swanky soft top Lada Samara or whatever he reckoned it was. I didn’t ask him who he’d car jacked it from I just enjoyed the ride. Nicki, Turkey, our Judith and I went out for fish and chips. Four West Yorkshire Tykes having Fish and Nurks.
They didn’t serve it with bread and butter or scraps or gravy or owt but it were still reet nice.
We headed out over Easter weekend with Nicki and her crew on a Kayaking camping trip to Kangaroo valley. I’ll be honest with you I was a bit scared. I was going into the wilderness with a load of people I’d never met, one of them had an axe and one had a panda hat on. The guy who lent us the canoes was a bit sketchy on the details too. He just said we head down stream which would have been obvious if the river wasn’t completely still with no current. We opted to go right and thankfully it was the correct way. After 3 hours of pleasant kayaking we arrived at our campsite for the night which was right by the river. We made a fire and no one got murdered or anything. It was class. Oh but we did have to dig a hole to poo in which was a new man skill I can now tick off the list.
We said our
goodbyes to Nicki and Turkey and left Bondi to stay for a couple of nights with Lucy and Ben, the Docs we met in Roatan, Honduras. They cured my parasite in Honduras therefore they are my favourite doctors in the world. I’m sure they’d be disappointed however with the current state of my pathetic immune system. I may fly back to Sydney to see them. Or maybe I should just send them a sample. I’ll have a think about that one. We shared a couple of cracking meals with them and spent the last couple of days getting sorted to head back to Crazyland. Starting with a 2 night whistle-stop tour of Singapore.
We arrived at Sydney airport and did all the stuff you have to do in duty free like testing out aftershave and free vodka samples and then spent a bit of time messing around with loads of gadgets that I’m never going to buy. The plane was immense. It had a camera on the tail so you could see it land and take off on the screen in front of you and because you could feel the movement and vibrations
in time with the video it was like you were really there.
We took a taxi to the hostel on arrival. The driver did that horrible snooking thing up his nose for most of the way. Not like a sniff but a proper snook like he was going to do a gob. It was horrible. We arrived at our hostel at about 11pm. As it was Singapore it was a weird. We were in a dorm in a bunk bed but the bunk bed was a double but it was pointing 90 degrees to how a normal bunk would be and it was all lit up with neon blue lights like something off Tron. It was cool. And they had Cocopops for breakfast. Yes! Singapore eased us into Asia nicely as it is very clean and civilised but a bit crazy. As we only had a day we did Singapore proper tourist style on an open top bus. We had an amazing veggie curry pancake in Little India and then headed to Raffles to pay through the nose for a deliciously average Singapore sling (has to be done though). Everything in Singapore is
lit up at night apart from steps. Quite a deadly combo I think.
We decided to head to Sumatra to meet up with Toby (the South West country bumpkin we met in NZ). Before we left Australia I said that I wanted to go somewhere mental. Careful what you wish for. We flew from Singapore on Friday the 13
th. Two days before our flight there had been a massive 8.6 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra. As the tsunami warnings had been called off we decided to go anyway. Our driver to the airport was almost nodding off at the wheel and was swerving lanes and that. He asked me to keep talking to him so he didn’t fall asleep. We just about made it there alive and then whilst checking in we realised that we were flying with a company called ‘Value Air’ which I hadn’t realised when we booked through Skyscanner. Brilliant, Value Air on Friday the 13
th this should be fun. The plane looked proper ropey but we did manage to land safe into Medan, Sumatra. When we got to the immigration desk the guy asked if we
were on our honeymoon so we said “yes” to which he laughed his head off and said, “In Medan? Have you not seen it on the internet.” After we’d been laughed out the door by passport control we arrived in sweltering heat at our hostel. There was a mosque down the road belting out prayers, traffic everywhere, car horns, noise, pollution yet everyone we met was so incredibly nice. It felt good to be back into the mix. We met Toby, had a beer then headed out to a restaurant in China Town called Tip Top. We decided to go in style with a few other guys we’d met. I was on the back of a motorbike whilst Judith and another lass were in the very small side car. Toby and two lads were on an identical death bike along side us. Our drivers thought it would be funny to race each other through the really really really busy streets and then we got lost. Because we’d said Tip Top restaurant in China Town they interpreted it as lets drive around the city like maniacs without crash helmets. We eventually found it and it turns out that it was pretty
much round the corner from our hostel. I think we dealt fate a pretty easy hand on Friday the 13
th and thankfully he didn’t kill us.
We didn’t stick about in Medan (because it was a hell hole) and we headed north to Bukit Lawang to hopefully see some Orangutans. Our bus dropped us as close as he could get us and then we walked the last 15 minutes through the town to our hostel. It is the rainy season at the moment which means that there are not too many tourists about but it is still redders and it doesn’t rain that much. We went to change some money one day but the money man was not about so we waited with a neighbour who had an art shop. After telling her we were from England she said, “my name is Norah Batty, he he he he he.” She gave us tea and some of her sister’s birthday cake (don’t know if her sister knew) and then taught us some Batak dancing which is what the local Batak people do. It was mad. She even invited us to her wedding but we
couldn’t make it.
Whilst having breakfast one morning we saw our first semi wild Orangutan (lives in a huge protected jungle reserve) across the river from where we were sitting. It was carrying a baby too and just chilled out in the tree opposite for most of the morning. Amazing! We decided to take a punt to see some wild Orangutans in the jungle so Toby, our Judith and I headed off on a three day, two night trek. The day started by being ridden to the next village (1hr away) by motorbike. This was Judith’s first ever experience on a motorbike and what a way to start. I tell you, South American death buses are old news, its all about death bikes now. We kicked off into the jungle with 6 hours of arduous trekking. The guides were properly chopping their way through the forest with machetes and a customary fag hanging out of their gob. We had been warned about leeches’ pre trip but we didn’t realise how many of the little buggers there would be. There were thousands of them. They crawl up your leg, get in your boots, through
your socks, round your waist. I even had one in my belly button. They don’t hurt when they bite but they don’t half make a bloody mess. They are nigh on indestructible too.
We camped the first night in a make shift bamboo tent in the jungle by a river and they cooked us amazing food. The second full day of trekking was so tough and humid but we got through it and spent the second night in the home of one of the guides in the little village we started the trek in. We got cleaned up and headed up to the local café and had a brew and they made us try bettle nuts which are these nuts that make your spit red. They were disgusting but you’ve got to try it. The locals love it and some mix it with chewing baccy. Yummy. The electricity in the village comes on between 6pm and 10pm so as soon as the power was on the tunes were blasting out and everyone had their telly on. We walked past one house and they were watching ‘Shaun the Sheep’. Brilliant. We went back to
our crib and had an incredible feast of local curries and then watched the Indonesian equivalent of ‘Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway’ followed by ‘Con Air’ then bed. The last day was a steady 3 and a half hour walk back to Bukit Lawang in 30 odd degree heat. We were totally knackered. Over the 3 days we saw some wildlife, but not loads nor did we see wild Orangutans but it was a great experience.
We had one last night in Bukit Lawang before heading down to Lake Toba so we took advantage of seeing the semi wild Orangutans close up at a feeding platform. Man did we get close. Sumatran Health and Safety standards are slightly lower than South America. But it meant we could really see them up close. It were brill.
So then we came here and I got the shits. I’m going to have to go and dig another hole in the garden if you know what I mean.
See you in a bit
Lots of Love
Ste and Judith x
More photos Sydney
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150691860267532.399515.581642531&type=3&l=56f4e9d16f Blue Mountains & Kangaroo Valley
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150691888372532.399520.581642531&type=3&l=0d9bce1bdd Singapore
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150693413397532.399757.581642531&type=3&l=27d77f9363 Bukit Lawang
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150693590632532.399766.581642531&type=3&l=64dea32fb2 Jungle Adventure
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150693624942532.399770.581642531&type=3&l=c93616821d
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littlewing
Cindy
Love your blog!
Gday from an Aussie ;) you were flying in on friday the 13th as we were flying out. Honeymoon in Medan LOL! Great blog gave me a great laugh thanks happy travels.