A Big Boat and a Big Lake

May 10, 2011

A tearful goodbye to Ibioh was followed by a taxi through the jungle, which led to a ferry across the water, which led to a 100 tonne freighter 4 km from the coast. The 2004 boxing day tsunami, while a distant memory for most of the world, has littered the city of Banda Aceh with daily reminders. The largest of which is an enormous electrical cable barge that was washed 4 km inland by the enormous wave. Miraculously, the boat settled upright and the one crewman that managed to stay aboard actually survived the ordeal unscathed. Standing in the bridge of the 4 story boat, I cant even see the water. The city, sprawling to the coast, was covered by 7 meters of water at the boat and as much as 20 meters nearer to downtown. Without the periodic immovable artifacts, you would not be able to tell. The homes and bridges have been rebuilt, the roads cleared, and the community grown tighter than ever. The only other reminders are the gruesome photo displays set up to remind people of the ocean's awesome power and to encourage donations to the reconstruction fund.



I spent only the single day in Banda Aceh before making my way to Danau Toba (lake Toba) and the forgotten island (technically a peninsula) of Samosir. I opted for the 'local bus' instead of the much more expensive 'executive' service. By the third stop to load various collections of livestock, produce and 'organic fertilizer', I regretted my decision. While it was very interesting to see how locals move about the country, I could tell that even they were beginning to gag on the rich, non conditioned air that was hanging in the bus. Thankfully the old woman with her bag of durian did not get hungry enough to start eating one (for those of you that know durian, you will sympathize, for those that don't, see wikipedia for an honest description of the fruit).

Lake Toba is an enormous lake, the result of what must have been a volcanic blast of epic proportions. The crater is over 100km long and 50km wide, with a second caldera (Samosir island) rising from it's center and filling about one third of the lake's area. The lake sits at a cool 950m above sea level, with the plateau of Samosir 200 meters higher; night time temperatures can actually dip below 15 degrees!! It was quite amazing to sleep under a blanket without the normally requisite AC.

Geographically, Samosir is quite an anomaly. It is an 'island' (technically it's connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, but who's keeping track?), in a lake, on an island, and has another lake on it. Still with me? It also repeats it's peninsular likeness to the east with another narrow isthmus and smaller peninsula called tuktuk. It's a veritable Matryoshka Doll of nature.

Tuktuk is the island's tourist center with 30-40 guesthouses and hotels lining the beach. The strange part was that there did not seem to be more than 30-40 people staying in all of tuktuk! What used to be a hippie hotspot, and host to full moon parties and throngs of foreigners has fallen victim to the rise of Bali as Indonesia's premiere tourist destination. The streets are quiet, the restaurants empty, and the prices so competitive that a night's stay can cost less than $3. I spent the days here touring the island on a small scooter. Visiting waterfalls, villages on the plateau, and dodging potholes on the one paved road that circles the island. On the rest of the roads, I was dodging asphalt bumps instead. I was greeted along the road by groups of young schoolchildren in their unmistakable uniforms, villagers offering songs on their bamboo flutes and buffaloes doing their part to clear the road of unwanted, but delicious, obstructions.



My stay on the island (on the lake, on the island) was magical, relaxing, and unbelievably scenic, but could not last for ever. With only a few days left before I would be re-united with Sarah, I started on my way to Jakarta... But with a short stop along the way.

Sander

Two Weeks in Cambodia... oops!

May 10, 2011.

Well, you'll forgive the gap between my blogs - though I should say that I have been exceptionally busy, while Sander's lack of blogging is surely due to insatiable laziness. Or is it the other way around?

Having meant to spend 5 days in Phnom Penh, I can only smile and shrug when I tell you I spent two weeks there. Who could be surprised, with Ben as my host and an inexhaustible number of things to do, including my ultimate mission: buy the tuk-tuk. After shopping around for the perfect tuk-tuk, using Ben's contacts and friends of the OMB family, it occurred to me that if we did manage to (somehow) get a tuk-tuk across the Cambodia-Vietnamese border, neither Sander nor I was able to ride a motorbike big enough to pull it. Scooting about on a Vespa only qualifies one to wear a billowing white scarf and stylish sunglasses ... not to haul a metal cart filled with passengers. But! ... if Cambodia, with it's overladen trucks, swerving motodups, relentless potholes, and meandering road animals isn't the perfect place to learn, I don't know where is. How hard could it be? Plus, I had a good teacha'; one who had only been in ONE serious moto-related accident at the time this blog went to press. I vowed to be the only white person in SE Asia without a festering pipe burn on the inside if their right leg and set to it with Ben, my qualified teacha'. Thankfully, I had gotten most if my clutch-related swearing fits out if the way when Dad taught me to drive a manual car at home years ago, which made Ben's only job patience, not crowd control. On what could loosely be called a 'country road' outside Phnom Penh, Ben's fingers bruised my ribs while I worked to speed and we rode towards a fantastic looking storm cloud at the end of the highway. If I had had an internet connection when we pulled off the highway, with heavy tropical downpour only seconds away, I would have bought a big bike on eBay and had it shipped home immediately. I would buy an much cooler helmet to be sure, but riding a big bike is fantastic. We relaxed under a leaky canopy with some cool, albeit disgusting 'fruit' juice, while the street flooded. Seriously, it took me 10 minutes to put my finger on it, but this 'juice' tasted exactly like the milk left at the bottom of a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Having come from a house where we went through 4L of milk in a couple days because of the unholiness of cereal-contaminated milk, this says a lot. As suddenly as it started, the pouring rain abruptly stopped and the streets drained as quickly as they had filled. Ben drove us home, through Phnom Penh's mentally exhausting city traffic, where I promptly emailed my mom telling her what I had done and that it had ended safely all at once, thus avoiding any unnecessary maternal panic. Feeling like a master of the 250cc domain, I felt ready to explore the options for the border crossing. We planned a long weekend trip to the border, a simple task since May is Cambodia's month of public holidays, including but not limited to: the Kings birthday weekend, a couple Buddha days, and National Plough Day. I spent the week exploring Phnom Penh on foot, taking several amazing and memorable strolls, and adding some finishing touches to Ben's ever-changing bachelor flat. With his lady arriving within the next week, someone would have to clean the damn place, as well. The long weekend finally arrived and we headed to a small town near the border by the awesomely air-conditioned Cambodian bus fleet. To make a disappointing story simple, we discovered quickly that the only way to have a Khmer person take the tuk-tuk across was to register it to their name at the border, thus creating a world of problems for Sander and I, with a pile of mismatched ownership and registration paperwork. Deciding that two white people driving a tuk-tuk might attract more than a little attention from local law enforcement pretty much everywhere in Vietnam, I crossed this idea off the list. The only way it could be done would be to purchase the tuk-tuk and the bike (which by itself would have been difficult to get past officials), and head to the border with a pocket full of cash. But how much would they ask for? Needing to run the idea by Sander - the options being to give the unknown amount of cash to Vietnamese border officials on arrival or head to a different continent - we left the border area and tried to figure out what to do with ourselves for the rest of the King's birthday weekend. Having already left Phnom Penh, we decided to hit the beach and enjoy everything it had to offer: awesome rooms, cheap beer, and (for me) pounds and pounds of fresh mangoes from my 'fruit lady' (who made me pinky-swear that I would buy my mangoes from her, and her alone). No problem, fruit lady, you bring 'em ... I'll eat 'em.

To succinctly summarize the rest of my stay in Cambodia would be impossible. Like being anywhere familiar, you manage to accomplish so many things that are, especially in retrospect, difficult to describe since the time just seems to escape while you're busy enjoying it. Though my mission had failed: Sander and I will be excluding the Vietnamese tuk-tuk journey from this year's travel adventure, I merely blinked and more quickly than I had wanted, it was time to put my backpack back on. Plus, without me and my wily woman's intuition and knowledge of first aid, Sander was probably out of food and trapped at the bottom of a crevasse with both legs stuck in a bear's den.

Slaughter.

Lonely Sumatra

May 3, 2011

Sumatra has been an interesting experience for me. After having left Sarah at the KL airport two weeks before arriving, and then touring my mom around Malaysia in comparative luxury, landing in Medan was a shock. For the first time in 3 months on the road, I was alone. I was the only westerner on the flight in, I was the only westerner in the airport, and apparently the only person in Medan that spoke english. While tourism is an industry in Sumatra, it seems it's spelled with a small 'i'. My phrase book got me to an ATM and to the bus station where my taxi driver excitedly pointed out the window saying 'ke Banda Aceh!' (to Banda Aceh- port town to Pulau Weh). I smiled, nodded and grabbed my bag without a clue where I was. Within the first few minutes stumbling through my phrasebook trying to purchase a bus ticket, I was struck by the country's eagerness to communicate. A young student on his way to Jakarta was able to decipher what I wanted with his one year of English study and bought me a ticket to Banda Aceh. He sat with my for the next 6 hours in the bus station teaching me Bahasa Indonesia (lit. Language Indonesia) in exchange for some help with English. I left that station with a mild grasp of the numbers one through one hundred, 'thank you', 'where is', 'do you speak English?' and 'help'.

It took 2 days before I met any other foreigners in Sumatra. You rarely hear much positive about Islam, but I think, ironically, that there is credit due in keeping Sumatra as unspoiled as it is. I can only assume that the same negative press that inspires mosque graffiti and racial slurs has alienated much of Indonesia from the backpacker community as no other reasonable explanation comes to mind. Absolutely beautiful areas are neglected by all save some apparently 'brave' souls, but i have yet to see or experience anything to make me think twice about my route.



On the ferry to Pulau Weh, and the village of Ibioh, I met a german (yes, again...) couple that had also recently arrived in Sumatra. We talked a bit on the boat about where we had been, where we were going, and decided to make our way to Ibioh together. The jetty presented us with 3 clearly distinct options for transport. A taxi for 50k each, the back of a motorbike for 50k each, or imitation Kawasaki ninja's with sidecars for 50k each. It was not a difficult choice. The sidecar race was an amazing introduction to one of the most beautiful islands I have visited yet. The 25km trip through overhanging jungle, mind bending hairpins and breathtaking viewpoints delivered us to a quiet rocky beach on the most northern tip of Sumatra. My first beach in Indonesia was quieter than the last beach in Thailand.

Daniel, Miri and I spent the days relaxing in hammocks, snorkeling the crystal waters or waiting at mama's single table restaurant for another dinner of sambal fish, chicken satay, or curried snapper. (Dinners were served communally at a single family table, with orders made by 4pm) I am sorry mom, but your peanut sauce may have met it's match. Don't feel bad though, it was made by an Indonesian grandmother, in Indonesia, with peanuts and chilies that were grown less than 50km away; and everyone knows that grandma's recipe is best. :-).

The amazingly warm people, and the outrageously warm weather made my third week away from Sarah almost bearable. The only thing that made it all ok was knowing that I would certainly have to come back here to show Sarah what she missed.

The lack of English, and white people for that matter, while a shock initially, has forced me to learn the language and interact with the local people on a level I've not yet experienced in Asia. It's allowed me to look past the 'scary' religion and see a startlingly free culture and engaging people. It's allowed me to order off the 'local's' menu and see people's faces light up when you try to make conversation in what is obviously a new language. The loneliness disappeared almost as fast as my daily evening meals at Mama's.


Sander

Pimp My Tuk-Tuk

April 30, 2011

Work. Yes, "work". I'd heard of such a thing; a dustball of recognition rolled out from the little-used corner of my brain, as I remembered something involving payment for hours spent and polyester-wool blend trousers. I was sitting with my back to a coconut palm, when I decided to circumnavigate the globe to find out more about this adventure called "work". 

As my tan peeled from my bones, my iron mindlessly pressed uniform collars into perfect points, and snow accumulated on April flowers, it dawned on me that this "work" thing was massively overrated. To paraphrase: work sucks, so I went back to Cambodia. Though I generally dislike feeling at home when traveling abroad, Phnom Penh seems to have settled in my blood, so here I am again. With Sander already diving his way through Indonesia in the company of some new friends, the purpose of my stop-over in Cambodia is to purchase a tuk-tuk. Yes, purchase a tuk-tuk. Additionally, Ben had admitted to hemming his own clothes, which, if you'd seen his stitching, was reason enough to come back. A joke tossed out over a round table stacked with empty pint glasses had originally given birth to the idea: Sander and I would buy a tuk-tuk in Cambodia, import it to Vietnam, and traverse the country in quirky and practical style, picking up passengers as we please along the way. Down the road, we could be the stars of our own show: "Pimp My Tuk-Tuk". I was already planning my outfits. This is how a backpack's worth of dirty lady-clothes and threadbare paperbacks have come to find their home on every available surface in Ben's bachelor apartment. A fellow CouchSurfer and an ever gracious host, he is walking around picking up stray hairpins while we brainstorm practical ways to get the tuk-tuk safely over a border. 

As soon as I get over my jetlag and the scorching heat subsides a little, I will be ready to continue the adventure ....

Slaughter.