Sumatra, the adventure begins

20th February 2018
Brown Bamboo Lodge, Bukit Lawang
A very pleasant 30c, with a breeze
Exchange rate 19,000 IDR = £1

Sumatra is turning out to be an interesting choice.  A nearby volcano (Sinabung) erupted yesterday morning, spewing ash 7kms into the atmosphere and depositing a fine layer over our little world.  It was dormant till 2010 and since then has been having a merry old time getting lively again.  Our host, also the victim of the 2003 flood in Bukit Lawang that wiped out the whole village, yesterday just raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders saying 'ugh, the volcano is making trouble again' and carried on sweeping the floor.  Life goes on.

The ferry from Melaka was very straightforward, it cost an extra 20MYR for each bike and they were safely stowed inside the boat, unlike the other passengers' bags and boxes that were stashed outside on the pointy bit.  Dumai is by no means a destination of choice but it's not that bad either.  We were totally convinced that despite everything we read on the internet we would be able to find a bus or minivan to take us to Medan during daylight hours.  This is what happens when you've spent a long time in countries which have good infrastructure and transport systems.  It's a bit like trying to imagine you will need to take a fleece and a flask of hot tea with you, when at the point of leaving it's 35c, it's difficult to perceive how and when the change will come.  There was NOTHING to Medan apart from the night bus, leaving at 7pm, 10 hrs, 554 kms.  We asked everyone we came across about transportation to Medan, blank stares were usually followed by a light bulb moment of 'ah Medan, night bus'. 

Just off the boat

A very large, well utilised, exercise area in the centre of Medan

Because we were so foolishly convinced of the transport situation we spent the night in Dumai in the City Hotel, although this did give us an opportunity to get an Indonesian SIM.  The only shop selling them was run by a Chinese family, who were packing up for the New Year but they very kindly opened up for us.  We paid 100,000 INR (about £5) for, we think, 2 gb, over 30 days, but we can't be sure because the language barrier kicked in and we cannot for the life of us find out how to check our balance.  When it runs out, it runs out.  Later on we discovered we didn't have the SD card but lucky for us, again, the owner was still in the shop so we were able to retrieve it and ALL our photos, phew.
City Hotel wanted a whole day's rate for a 4 hr late check out, which we politely declined, deciding instead to sit in their air conditioned lobby and use their excellent wifi.  We had eaten at a small warung the day before and the effects were being felt by both of us so we were glad of some clean facilities.  There is a type of food/restaurant here in Sumatra (named after a city in the south) called Padang.  The shop front displays the dishes on offer, the bigger the warung, the more dishes.  When you sit down all the dishes are put in front of you, you pay for the ones you eat.  Spotted the problem with this yet?  Cooked dishes are sitting in a glass window, they go to a table, don't get eaten (or maybe they get prodded a bit) and they go back to the glass window for the next customer.  Since then we've stuck to cooked dishes but we can see, as we move around, a LOT of places only do Padang food.  Thank goodness we have a cooker now, we could be eating a lot of noodles in Sumatra.

On the way to the bus station Dave was propositioned by a man on a motorbike.  We've read at least two other accounts of this happening, in and around the same area, so is it one person who is very prolific, or, are their lots of very frustrated men in Dumai?  Since then there have been a couple of conversations that make me think that Dave is going to be more of a target for getting hit on than I ever will be.  As I said, Sumatra is turning out to be very interesting.

As well as the unwanted sexual attention Dave is also the lucky person who now has to deal with all the bureacracy.  Women tend to stay in the background and the men all want to talk to Dave so, for a while anyway, I can just exist in the background and not have to deal with all the day to day rubbish, welcome at the moment, but I'm sure it won't last.  We've already worked out some 'safe' words/phrases to get him out of sticky situations. 

After the usual malarky with buying bus tickets, tout takes us (despite protestations) to the bus station (a ticket office just outside) but I don't believe him so hike off to the bus station itself around the corner only to find the prices are very similar (shame on me for doubting).  The bus turned out to be as comfy as a night bus can be, not too cold, we had blankets and some water and a food stop (50,000 for 2 bowls of soup, rip off, that won't happen again).

We'd read such a lot about Medan being a sh*thole, but really, it's not that bad, once you find the green spaces it's OK.  We found a mall just down the road from our GH with a Carrefour Supermarket so stocked up on essentials.  We were very pleasantly surprised to find cold beer at our GH (35,000 for a large bottle, only a 1000 markup on shop prices).

I have absolutely no idea

Cycling the roads in Malaysia had introduced us to the notion of bad drivers and we didn't feel very safe there.  Here, the roads are generally in worse condition, there are more belching trucks but the drivers aren't that bad.  The road to Bukit Lawang at times disintegrated into a potholed mess, usually around the villages.  As usual, the most difficult thing about the ride was the heat (my new pants seem to be working, fingers crossed) therefore plenty of shade and drink stops were required.

One of the things we weren't ready for were the full on, in-your-face touts, who began accosting us on their motorbikes about 2 kms from the village.  Most people arrive by bus, so I'm sure it's worse for them.  Dave ended up telling them to f**k off and leave us alone, but they just looked incredulous, they don't really understand people getting angry.  The reason for the aggressive touting is the very lucrative Trekking industry that exists in Bukit Lawang.  The touts know that if they can befriend you first, arrange a guesthouse (and claim commission) and get you to go on a trek with them, they will be quids in.

We visited Bukit Lawang in 1989 when there was an Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre here. After the Orangs were 'rehabilitated' (physical ailments etc) they were released into the jungle but fed twice daily, a deliberately boring diet of milk and bananas. For about tuppence you could buy a pass and that entitled you to 3 days' worth of trekking (twice a day) with the rangers, to the feeding platform.   Some Orangs would feed for a day or two and never be seen again, others wouldn't leave.  The ones that didn't leave are the ones that you will see now.  This feeding programme continued until 2015.  Unfortunately, now if you want to see Orangs 'in the wild' in Sumatra you will pay between £40 and £50 for a half day, depending on your haggling skills.  We've read and heard horror stories of terrible guides, some of which border on putting lives in danger others are just inexperienced or immature, but the common denominator seems to be that they all still feed the Orangs, which is good for business because the Orangs want food so they will come, that's what tourists want to see.

It's a tricky one, but we decided not to partake, despite our host trying incredibly hard to persuade us to go with his guide.   Had we not already seen Orangs previously we may have had a different attitude.  £40/50 is not a lot of money to someone from Western Europe, goodness, my neices and nephews think nothing of spending  £120+ on a night out but here it's a lot.  I've asked myself what the difference is between the feeding programme and the trekking business now and it's all about the money.  The feeding programme wasn't a money-making venture, but in all other respects, it's the same, so maybe we were no better back then.  We couldn't bring ourselves to pay so much money, to watch a guide feed Orangutans so we could take photos.  I talked to a guy in Medan who said that he had had an awful experience when a guide had fed a mother with her baby, there were about 30 people all snapping photos, he likened it to the papparazzi!  In fairness, he did say that the Orangs didn't seem to be bothered by any of the attention they were getting, but still, I think a similar experience would have made me uncomfortable.  I just hope that some of the money that is being made on the backs of the Orangs is being channelled back into their conservation, and into Bukit Lawang, but I'm skeptical.  We have had a fab few days in Bukit Lawang.  Don't be put off coming here if you don't want to trek, it's a very chilled out place to be, once you shake off the touts that is.

One of several footbridges across the Bohorok River, Bukit Lawang 

Anyway, you don't need to go on a trek to see wildlife, yesterday we saw a Thomas Leaf Monkey having a nosh down by the river.  Fabulous.

Thomas Leaf Monkey

Volcano permitting, we are heading towards Berestagi, not far from the volcano and then onto Lake Toba, we'll be checking the news regularly for updates, I don't fancy being fried alive in Sumatra.


Laters

PS  if the volcano doesn't get us the passive smoking will!

We went to Malaysia for a few weeks

14th February 2018
Swiss Heritage Hotel, Melaka
Very, very hot – about 40c!

I almost forgot about writing this entry, so keen are we to get on a ferry to Sumatra!  Only kidding, the past month seems to have flown by, so a brief update:

From Koh Lanta we backtracked to the mainland and headed south towards the Malaysian border.  Every now and again Maps.me takes us on a little adventure which, depending on how we are feeling at the time, we choose to take or otherwise.  In the Thale Ban National Park we let Maps.me do the guiding, only because it was 8 kms shorter than the main road and by that time of day we are getting well and truly fed up with the fishy smell emanating from the many trucks that whizz up and down the highway (what IS that smell?).   We were directed away from the rubber and palm oil plantations into a community forest.  Past a gathering of some sort, the man on the microphone making us the centre of attention for the 30 seconds or so it took us to cycle through.  Everyone stopped eating and drinking, started waving and clapping, smiling and laughing;  We felt like royalty.  We meandered through this beautiful area for about 5 kms, then it was back onto the main road.  Thank you Maps.me, a fabulous little diversion.

Rubber to the left of me, Palm Oil to the right, here I am ......

We crossed the border at Wang Prachan, incident-free, and the first challenge was to get over the 5kms of hills standing between us and Kangar.  The road was very steep at various points made more difficult by the midday sun and the fact that we hadn’t climbed anything steeper than stairs for ages.  Dave lucked out when he found a mobile phone (obviously fell out of someone’s pocket) so like the little Magpie he is stashed it in his pannier for later.  Lo and behold, once he’d cleaned it up and reset it (unable to find out who it belonged to sadly) it works perfectly!
 
Afternoon/early evening showers became a thing right from the start in Malaysia, so on our first day we spent an hour sheltering in a disused building waiting for it to stop.  Pretty much every afternoon, somewhere between 3 and 6, it rains for an hour or so, sometimes longer, torrential wet-you-in-a-moment kind of rain, that no umbrella will repel.  By the way, it's the dry season.

Stuck drinking beer while the rain stops, shucks

It became clear that my memory of accommodation in Malaysia was correct.  It is expensive compared to it’s neighbours, and the quality is, on the whole, quite poor.  Windowless rooms are common and one of them had 3 out of the 4 walls painted black!  We aborted our ride up to Frazer’s Hill because the hotels in Kuala Kubu Bharu were SO awful (and expensive) we couldn’t bring ourselves to stay.  Having said that, we had a fabulous room in Tapah, with floor to ceiling picture windows and views of the mountain, for just 10 Ringgit more than the ‘black hole’.  Also, where we are staying in Melaka is amazing, with an actual bath, balcony, fridge and we could have a game of badminton in it if we were inclined (we’re not) it’s so big.  So accommodation in Malaysia is, shall we say, a mixed bag.
 
We spent a few well deserved days off in Georgetown, re-acquainting ourselves with the old town and finding the street art that it is now famous for.  We found ourselves drifting back to Little India everyday for Roti Canai, Dosai and Thali, we had a 'western' style breakfast one morning but decided that was a mistake.  It really felt like being back in India.  Malaysia has very high taxes when it comes to alcohol so our ‘after ride’ chilled beer has been quashed.  However, in Georgetown we managed to find the ‘bar’ (it’s a little supermarket that just happens to have stacks of tables and chairs that people are able to use) selling cheap beer and liquor.  Locals rub shoulders with visitors, everyone shares tables and stories, it’s really quite sociable.  We're not sure how they do it but suspect they have a 'source' in Langkawi (duty free alcohol).

Right round the corner for The Seven Terraces, you can't miss it

I have little to no recollection of the quality of driving in Malaysia on previous trips, just as well because we probably would have avoided it.  It’s like Mr Bean meets every Sunday Driver you’ve ever known that SHOULDN’T be driving, or, Boy Racer in supped up cars (brand new and lowered suspension, or, old and battered, like the cars me and my friends would have been driving in the 70s).  We love the Malaysians when they're not driving, really we do.  I've lost count of the number times people have paid for our coffees or rotis, or stopped us in the middle of the street or a supermarket to say hello and have a general chit chat about where we were from etc.  We always feel comfortable in Malaysia in a way we don't in, say, Thailand, even though over the years we've spent the same amount of time in both countries.  Some places are just like that.

Malaysia is a proper melting pot of cultures and nowhere is this more evident than in Georgetown and Melaka, where we are currently.  Buddhist and Indian temples side by side, mosques share spaces with churches, incense mixes with chanting and bells, and the call to prayer wafts out of minarets that look like pagodas.  In Melaka we also have the Dutch and Portuguese influences so we can eat the little custard tarts we used to buy in Porto and sip a coffee, by the river, in an old Dutch Colonial building with a windmill attached.  The riverside walks have been regenerated and sitting with a coffee or a cold beer you could be anywhere in Europe.  We liked The Reggae Bar, not for the reggae but for the guys running it, it’s a very chilled place.

Melaka waterfront

To be fair, the cycling hasn’t been amazing.  We would have preferred to cycle the east coast, but as it’s monsoon at this time of year we stuck with the west.  The road up to the Cameron Highlands, thankfully, was wide enough to cater for everyone, the superbikes, the dotty drivers and the boy racers, oh and us, in our little lane to the side of the mayhem.  The road down to Tapah was not so great with potholes and, in places, no special lane for cyclists.  A bit hairy but very beautiful.  We took the Simpang Pulai to Tanah Rata route (94kms, 1500 mtrs), which was a challenge.  The steep gradients are at the start of the climb, 8.5 – 10%, thankfully when it’s cooler, (we set out at dawn) then it settles down to 3-5% for the rest of the way. Ten years ago we would have completed the ride in a day, but, this time we decided to do it in two.  Round the 47km mark there are a couple of cafes, with public toilets and mandis, which is where we camped for the night.   Ideal.  There’s very little on the road up to the cafes, so provisions and water are a must.

Strawberry anyone?

After our camping spot came the strawberry farms and eventually tea plantations.  The strawberries are grown in poly-tunnels the numbers of which are rivalled only by those in southern Spain.  Not terribly attractive.  Tea plantations are always beautiful as they have to be planted in such a way that tea-pickers can get to the tips of every bush to gather the ‘golden’ or ‘silver’ tips, so the texture of the landscape is quite stunning when viewed from the seat of a bicycle.  The ride down to Tapah was absolutely sensational.  We took our time and stopped regularly to admire the views and the Kampungs along the way.

Yes, run off from the mountain pouring down the gulley ALL night

We have ‘history’ with Kuala Lumpur roads and hoped that a bit of extra planning on our part would mean that history did not repeat itself.  Well, somehow, the planning and Maps.me went all to pot.  The way in wasn’t so bad but the way out was a nightmare, AGAIN, taking more than two hours to clear the main roads in.  We will never, EVER, cycle in KL again.  The city itself was much nicer than we remembered, it helped that the weather was cloudy most of the time we were there, plus lots of tall buildings means shade most of the day.  We stayed at the 1000 Miles Guesthouse, highly recommended by Travelfish and now us.  We met a lovely group of people too, which always makes any stay more interesting.

I’m sure there have been other days when I’ve been really fed up, but, the last three days, from KL to Malacca, have been really hard work.  A combination of pants trouble (ruching on the inner thigh) an uncomfortable saddle (or is it?  We just don’t know, I have new cycling pants which I’m hoping will sort out of the chafing problems), the heat – it’s really hotting up now, reaching 40-42c by 1pm, and undulating terrain that is never-ending.

Being in Melaka has cheered me up though as has seeing Hornbills, White Bellied Sea Eagles and huge Monitor Lizards, one was being stalked by a cat!  The incredibly large (dead) Python  we saw on the road up the mountain scared the bejessus  out of us knowing that we would be camping that night!  We couldn’t remember much about Malaka (apart from some canons which we found at the old fort, and the antique shops which it turns out is now the Jonker Street area) but suffice to say it is very charming.  Chinese New Year is just around the corner and the place is awash with red lanterns, juicy tangerines being offered to anyone and everyone and people “cleaning” like crazy, out with the old and in with the new, apparently.

Beautiful relief work

Here be dragons

Chinese temple

So the new for us will be a new country, Indonesia (Sumatra).  It’s looking a bit ‘wild west’ at the moment, there’s not much out there in terms of blogs or detailed travel (cycling) information, although we have found a few on the CGOAB site.  We have decided to concentrate on the north and have already hit a problem in trying to get a bus to Medan.  There appears to be one bus and it’s a night bus (taking 10 hours).  Both of us would prefer a bus during daylight hours, just because we value our lives really, so we will have to investigate getting a minivan.
 
Firstly, it’s a ferry to Dumai, and we still haven’t paid for the bikes yet although the woman who sold us our tickets has assured us they WILL be allowed on AND it will only cost 20MYR!

Laters

Link to all Malaysia photos on Facebook here