Day 290: Cutting It Close

The previous day I had returned to the bus station as part of my city explorations to see about booking a bus ticket to Singapore for my flight out of Asia. At the office they told me that there were lots of free seats, and that if I just showed up the next day I could just get on one of the buses that left every hour. When I actually got to the bus station to do that though, I found out that the next two buses had been cancelled because nobody/not enough people had booked it. This meant that I had to take the 1pm bus for what was supposed to be about a 5 hour ride (including going through customs) to Singapore, and my flight left at 8:20pm. I wasn't sure how long it would take for me to get from the bus stop to the airport, or exactly how long before the flight the check-in counter closed, but I knew it would be tight.

I'm pretty good at planning out contigencies and figuring out how to streamline the events in my control as much as I can, and then not stressing out about the things outside of my control. I used the extra time I had at the bus station waiting for the later bus to eat and to convert the last of my leftover Malaysian currency into Singapore dollars so I'd have money for a metro ticket to the station, and once on the bus couldn't do much but sit and wait. It took just over 4 hours to get to the border, and with the two border stops and driving through to the city it took almost exactly the expected 5 hours. The stop was pretty close to the metro line, and I was lucky in that it was on the same line as the airport, and on the same side of the city. In the end I got to the airport with almost an hour and a half before my flight, which is plenty of time. In the end, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have worried as much as I did, because I find a lot of other people tend to plan things according to the best case scenario, which is basically what happened. I just know that there can be a lot of delays in a long bus trip crossing between countries, and only feel comfortable with a large buffer. In the end though, everything worked out this time.

My flight took me from Singapore to Jakarta where I was supposed to have a 1.5 hour layover. That turned into a 4.5 hour layover as there was an equipment problem with the plane and takeoff kept getting pushed back. Eventually they got things fingured out and we took off for the overnight flight to Melbourne.

Day 288: Travelling and Waiting

I got up early in the morning to take the first ferry off the island. Since we were on the far edge of town, I was the first on board and got to enjoy a nice ride seeing all the buildings along the island as we picked more people up.

Once on the mainland I had to squeeze into a van with 7 other people, none of whom spoke english fluently and 3 of whom were really argumentative about everything for the ride back to Medan. Luckily the ride that took about 7 hours getting in only took about 4 getting back, but this meant that I got to the airport about 8 hours before my flight. The Medan airport isn't exactly full of amenities, so it was a long wait. I mostly just worked through more of the book I'm reading.

The Kuala Lumpur LCCT airport is south of the city, in the direction I was going anyway. Once I got to the airport it was around 1am, and the bus I wanted to take south to Melacca didn't leave until 9am, so it was time for some more waiting. There were more things open here at least, and room to wander around a bit and to try to sleep, but it was a long day and night.

Day 287: Organizational Day

The last day at the lake was pretty overcast, and the three of us were all in the middle of long travelling stints, with more to come, so we spent much of the day planning our onward journeys and making preparations. For me this was mostly just research and contacting people in Australia I was hoping to stay with, but one of the others had to hunt all over town for a decent exchange rate to convert cash and trying to book a bus going further south.

Other than that, we just spent the day walking around and playing with all the dogs around town, a few of whom we got to know quite well in our few days there. We spent the afternoon watching a few movies on somebody's laptop back in our room and went for another swim and watched another sun set over the ridge of the lake.

Day 286: Single's Night

We decided we didn't really want to do anything too involved on the island, and we began the morning by opening the door, taking the 3 steps to the lake and jumping in for a swim. In the little cottage rooms above and beside us were 4 young Finnish men who were hanging out and swimming around, and we chatted with them for awhile.

After drying off we walked around the loop on the peninsula that makes up Tuk-Tuk, looking for food and for a place to use wifi since our guest house had none. Periodically through the day we'd see young men dressed up in suits with ties and elaborate plumed hats and sashes on, and by talking with a few of them we learned that there was a big festival going on in town in the evenings. Apparently once every 5 years all the young single men and women (and their families, and people just looking to party) from all the neighboring villages come for a festival/dance, basically to try to hook up with a prospective spouses. This sounded too culturally weird/awesome to pass up, so in the evening we met up for dinner with our Finnish friends (they had been on the island quite a bit longer, and took us to a much better restaurant than the earlier ones we'd had), then followed the sound of music through the city and the road away from the buildings of the town.

It was made pretty clear to us that we weren't to dance, and we sat to the side with what was presumably family members and well-wishers. Since none of what was going on was in english it was a bit hard to follow at times, but there was an MC who would walk around talking, and then the band would break out into the song. I say -the- song because there was only one. By the end of two days of this festival I got quite tired of it. I don't really understand why they have a large band to play the exact same traditional song over and over and over. They should just tape it and save some money next time. Anyway, once the music was going the two groups (male and female) would start dancing and slowly approach each other, dance a bit, then break back apart to their seperate groups when the music stopped. This happened over and over, and I guess eventually some prospectives paired up. In the next phase, All these matched pairs lined up facing a group of family members in an opposing line, and there was a sort of weird tug-of-war dance where one side would force the other side backwards, then they would reverse. All the singles who failed to meet anybody got to stand around feeling left out.

Afterwards the dance broke into more of a free-for-all (still the same song). A few of the Finns stuck around but most of us headed back to our sheds for the night.

Day 285: Trip to Toba

I had arranged for a tourist van to take me from Bukit Lawang to Lake Toba via Medan. Medan isn't really along the way, but the company swings by there to drop off people flying out and pick up more people, and all the best (barely) roads go from Medan, so it's the easiest route. Unfortunately the "best" roads are still pretty terrible, and traffic was very busy with everybody coming back to the city after the holidays. None of the roads are ever more than two lanes, and all the scooters on the road make travel a real pain. The total journey from Bukit Lawang to Medan to Lake Toba is only about 200km but that ended up taking us 10 hours to complete with all the traffic, rain and accidents along the way. I had been travelling from Bukit Lawang with an American girl, and when we finally got to the town of Parapat on the shore of Lake Toba it was just before the last ferry to the island departed, so we quickly rushed aboard. On the ferry across we met an American guy, and the three of us agreed to look for a place to share on the island.

I should explain a bit about Lake Toba and Samosir Island. Lake Toba isn't just a lake, but a supervolcano that erupted 75,000 years ago in what was the largest explosion in the last 25 million years. The result (beyond dropping the world's temperature substantially and destroying 20,000 km^2) was the Lake Toba caldera and Samosir island, which is nearly 30km long in the middle of the lake. We were heading for a little town called Tuk Tuk on the island to relax for a few days before continuing on our seperate journeys.

We spent a long time looking for a particular hostel one of them had had recommended, and were all pretty tired by the time we found it. They only really had one room available, and it was a pretty terrible room. I won't get into the details, but the horribleness of the room was balanced by the price (we paid $2 each / night), 2 ridiculously affectionate pudgy puppies that kept us company, and one of the most beautiful views of the lake.

Day 284: Tubing Home

The second day of my 2 day trek was a bit disappointing, since we didn't really do any hiking at all. We did a short walk in the morning, but it was only half an hour to go up to the hilltop garden near where we slept. After lounging around for the morning we got ready to tube back down the river to town. We sealed all our packs in plastic bags and hopped into the tubes. Local guides manned the front and back of our tube-raft to steer us away from rocks, and we were off. It was maybe a 45 minute ride back to town, and had some pretty exciting sections along the way. There was nothing wild enough to risk flipping us, but by the time we got back we were thoroughly soaked.

I had a relaxed afternoon. I booked my trip out of town for the following day and spent most of the day along the riverside, enjoying the day and watching people have fun in the water.

Day 283: Monkey Business

On New Year's day we finally got the jungle trek under way. We had a small group of our guide, an older but fit Australian, and my lumbering Swiss friend Peter. I was a bit skeptical at first how much of a "trek" it would be with two older men, especially since I'd had a good sample of Peter's fitness the day before. Much to my delight, our guide didn't take things easy for them, and while we did have to slow down a bit for Peter and take a few more breaks that I would have liked, the hiking was intense. We were climbing hundreds of meters up steep rock faces, sliding down clay and mud banks, pulling ourselves up slopes by the roots of trees, and almost always either ascending or descending. Our focus was on finding animals, and the different guides would text each other when things of interest were spotted, and we'd take off trying to find them. Through the course of the day we saw gibbons, macaques (which are the usual monkey seen everwhere in SE Asia), Thomas Leaf Monkeys, and two different orangutans, which are the real prize of the national park.

The rest house we stayed at for the night was alongside the river. Luckily we didn't have to stay in a tent, since it rained rather hard all night again, but we were in the open air under a tin roof. Dinner was a vegetarian mix of dishes from things grown in the jungle nearby, as was the dessert of passion fruit, bananas, pineapple and oranges.

Day 282: Bat Cave and a New Year

I got up early in the morning for my trek only to be disappointed by learning it was being postponed a day. According to the planner it was because other tourists had chickened out because of the rain through the night, but I also suspect the guide was eager to stay in town and party for New Year's. I was a bit bummed, since it meant I'd have to stay in town for New Year's as well, and it would probably force me to cut out something else I wanted to do in Sumatra, but I was mostly just making everything up as I went anyway, so I wasn't too heartbroken.

Since I suddenly had a free day I started looking for alternative things to do, and was intrigued when I learned about a fairly extensive cave in the jungle. I ended up going with an incredibly awkward middle-aged Swiss man (more on him later). The organizer for our trek tried to convince us to take a guide, but he was telling us it would be about $10 each, which was ridiculous. $10 doesn't sound like much by our normal standards, but in Indonesia I've generally been able to get accomodations and all my meals for a day for $10, and services are even cheaper. Instead we went on our own, and near the cave met a local man who offered to show us the cave for a much more reasonable $1.50 each. [As an aside, I'm converting to familiar currency for your sake. $10 CDN is roughly 100,000 Indonesian Rupiah. Despite the nice clean conversion, I've had a bit of trouble with the currency because of how many decimal places are involved, and how many bills there are. The only coins in Indonesia are 100 and 500 rupiah, but for bills they have 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, 20000, 50000, 100000. Having common bills of 1000,10000 and 100000 means that you're always having to double check exactly how much you're giving over. It's also the only country I've ever been to where I'm regularily inconvencieng people by making them try to break the equivelant of a $10 bill.]

I was very pleasantly surprised with the cave. It's totally undeveloped and getting through it requires climbing, crawling, and quite a bit of maneuvering and balance. It's a mix of total darkness you need flashlights to navigate and holes in the ceiling opening up to jungle and sky. The variety of the caves was a lot of fun, and while it wasn't a terribly hard workout for me, poor Peter (my Swiss companion) was covered in sweat and bruises by the time we exited.

After lunch I explored Bukit Lawang. The town is spread along both banks of the river with 3 plank foot bridges connecting the two sides. It's very touristy, but still manages to have some personality. One feature I found particularily funny was a guy that squatted down at the side of the path playing the watch-carefully-and-guess-what-cup-the-pea-is-under game. A crowd would stand around him and people would throw their money down on their pick, and then he'd turn up the cups and pay off any that guessed right. As far as I can remember, it's the only time I've ever actually seen somebody running that game in real life, and he seemed to be there consistently from morning to late evening every night I was there. Another major attraction in the town is tubing down the river. Foreign tourists often combine tubing from deep in the jungle as part of their trekking, but there were far more domestic tourists who were in town for the holidays and they would just set up along the river and spend the day picnicing and playing in the water, much like how we'd go out to the beach for the day.

I had dinner on the hostel's patio and spent the evening talking to an American volunteering in the area and some Europeans who were now living in Indonesia. My entire time in the country I'd been pretty surprised at how flirty and forward the girls were (in a few days I'd accumulated a small collection of phone numbers I could do nothing with and requests for my facebook/email address) and these middle-aged English and German men and their considerably younger Indonesian wives reinforced my suspicion that if I was ever desperately in need of a wife, Indonesia could probably provide me one in a hurry. A lot of the younger crowd in town set up bonfires along the river, and around 11:00 people started shooting off fireworks. Fireworks in Bukit Lawang was a bit worrisome. It felt a bit like the spiritual equivelant of lighting a stick of dynamite and tossing it into the air. It wasn't -quite- that extreme, but only just. The fireworks were about the same grade as you see in the big city-organized displays, only this was locals along the river shooting them off. They were often at quite low angles so they exploded close to buildings and jungle, and a lot of the people were just holding the fireworks as they launched them, which made me cringe. In the end, they made it to 2013 with nobody getting hurt and nothing burned down, and the effect of dozens of big fireworks being launched all up and down the river had an impressive effect.

Days 280-281: In and Out of Medan

As I said before, Medan isn't much of a tourist destination. The only real sights are a mix of temples, churches and mosques, and while at times these can be quite interesting, I wasn't really in the mood, especially after months of seeing similar things all over Asia. Instead I spent my time just walking around the city. I continued to do a lot of talking with locals, including flirtatious street food vendors, curious tuk tuk drivers and college students wanting to interview for school (4 different groups of them). I eventually got lost enough in the maze of streets that I had to get a tuk tuk ride back, but at least it was fairly inexpensive.

On my third day in Medan I stayed pretty close to the hostel. In the afternoon I was picked up by a tourist van going from Medan to Bukit Lawang, and spent the rest of the day on the road. Bukit Lawang is a small town along the Bahorok River right next to Gunung Leuser National Park. Bukit Lawang itself is almost entirely built to cater to both domestic and international tourists, and most people go there to trek in the park, particularily looking for wild orangutans. I got there in the evening after dark with the intention of heading into the jungle the next morning on a 2-day trek

Day 279: Medan

I had an early flight from Kuala Lumpur over to Northern Sumatra early this morning. The flight left around 7:30am, and it the bus ride to get to the airport is an hour, so I had to leave quite early to get to there with enough time to feel comfortable. I was flying out of the LCCT, which is the low-cost budget airline terminal, and you can definitely see where the low cost part comes in. Things were pretty disorganized and checking-in/dropping off bags was a massive free-for-all of people pushing towards the front without much of a queuing system. Luckily I came with time to spare and managed to get through everything without any of the frantic scrambling I try very hard to avoid.

Medan itself isn't much of a tourist destination, but it's the biggest city in the center of quite a few interesting things in North Sumatra part of Indonesia. It's one of those rare cities where the airport is actually near the city center, and I just avoided the swarm of taxis and tuk-tuks and just walked from the airport to my hostel and fortunately he extra weight of the stuff I bought in KL was barely noticeable. It was still early when I got to the hostel and my room wasn't ready, so I left my bags and went off on a lengthy walk without a map or any knowledge of the city at all.

Medan is a bit rough around the edges. It reminds me a bit of some of the more sane cities in India. It's hard to go a few minutes on foot without somebody trying to get you into their tuk-tuk or on the back of their motorbike, as if the only reason you were walking around has to be that nobody else has bothered to offer you a ride yet. I was obviously something of a rarity. All the old men sitting in front of shops would call out and wave to me, and lots of people came up to talk to me. Even though it does get a bit tiring when you can't just have a little peace, I much prefer the ones who just come up and want to talk out of curiousity to the ones always trying to offer you things. At least here people are pretty accepting when you just say no or shake your head, and don't hound after you. The streets all look virtually identical, full of squat little random shops and apartments. I can't think of a single building I saw with more than 3 floors, or a single recognizable brand name other than one McDonalds I came across.

My McDonalds anecdote deserves special mention. After walking around all morning after an early morning flight I was pretty hot and exhausted, so I went into the McDonalds with the intention of buying an ice cream. At the counter they told me there was no ice cream, so I left. I instead bought a cold drink from a shop outside and just sat on the patio in the shade relaxing. About 10 minutes later, a group of 4 Muslim girls who had been in the McDonalds came out with a bag of food. They, having seen but not heard my exchange at the counter thought that I hadn't had enough money, and when they saw me sitting outside had bought a meal for me. I was pretty embarassed, because obviously I do have money - probably a good deal more than they do, and I tried to explain the situation, but they insisted I keep the meal (I suppose there wasn't much else they could do with the food). I should have offered to pay them for it, but I didn't think of it at the time, and in a way I feel it might have cheapened their gesture. Instead, the only gesture I can offer is to mention this story and hopefully help out somebody in genuine need of a meal later in my travels. In the "western world" there's unfortunately a lot of negative feelings towards Muslims these days, but the fact that these girls were so willing to do something like that for a random stranger deserves special consideration.

I finally made it back to the hostel around noon and checked in. There's no AC and no windows, which means the one outlet in the room has to be for the fan when I'm in the room, which makes charging / using my tablet a bit of a problem. My plans in Indonesia are somewhat off the beaten trail, so it's very possible I'll have trouble keeping in touch for the next 10 days. If I stop posting things, don't worry - odds are I won't be dead.