After a few well deserved beers Dean becomes at one with nature and investigates the local fauna…

Well here we are in shitsville again, camped out in a filthy hotel on the road between Bukkitingi and Lake Toba.

the view from the bed.

I don’t use the word filthy lightly, and am not usually fond of particularly nice hotels, but in this case the word filth is justified.  Nothing in this place has been cleaned for years, except possibly the floor, although that could be just that the parts that are walked on cant grow mould.

I won’t go into it too much, except to say that I had to drag Sal over to reception to see for herself, a dark brown patch on the (once) white wall caused by the owner leaning his dirty head against it over the years.

Sal has her t shirt wrapped around the pillow so she doesnt need to actually touch it, and the wall next to the bed looks like someone has been bouncing a mud soaked ball against it for hours.

“see babe, stick with me and I’ll take you to all the fancy places…”

Enough about that, the last few days have actually been a drastic improvement over Eastern Sumatra and Java, we’ve been riding in the jungle on windy roads leading to Padang, then onto Bukkitingi and the Harau valley, and today towards lake Toba.  The only shame, and it’s a big one, has been the constant smoke in the air from the fires in east Sumatra, it’s been gorgeous, but really hard to see anything.

What else…?

As I said, the ride today was really pretty, with the only hiccup being a flat tyre quite late in the day.  The end of a broken pair of scissors went into the rear tyre and cut a slice about 2cm long in the tube.  We arent carrying a spare rear tube, so I patched it and hopefully it holds until I can find another one.

The state of this room is quite distracting, I might add another picture…

this is the wall I was talking about, that’s the bed in the lower lhs corner.

and this is the bathroom…

“but where’s the shower?” I hear you ask.  Well let me explain.

That little trough in the corner is filled with water, and you use the filthy green plastic scooper that’s resting on it to pour water onto yourself to wash and rinse.

I have no problem at all with this system as a concept, it’s kinda fun to splash water all over the place and yourself, makes you feel like a little kid again.  However in this case the plastic scooper also gets used to flush the toilet.

Which is also not a problem.  So long as you stay a little distance away from it so any splash back doesnt get back to your hands or the scooper.

It’s the third use for the plastic scooper that leaves me feeling a little disconcerted.  If you’re particularly astute you may have seen that there’s no toilet paper, not even a dispenser.

“so how do you wipe your bum?” I hear you asking…

Well let me explain 🙂

Using your RIGHT hand, you take a scoop full of water with the (multipurpose) filthy green plastic thingy, you stand with your legs apart and lean forwards from the toilet, holding the scooper in front of you roughly between your knees, and place your LEFT hand behind you, and under the scooper.  Then pour some water from the scooper into your cupped LEFT hand and use that water to wash your bum.  Pour more water, splash some more, pour more, splash more and so on, until the scooper is empty or you’re satisfied that you’ve got all the poo off (sorry Mum).

Then still using your RIGHT hand get a few more scoops of water to flush the toilet, and return the filthy green thingy to the top of the filthy trough, ready to be used to wash the rest of yourself later on.

You have to try it before you knock it, and having tried it myself I can testify that it’s very effective, and actually leaves you feeling quite fresh!  It also keeps your right hand away from any hot spots so you can safely use it to eat with later in the day… (insert vomiting noise here).

EXCEPT THAT YOU INEVITABLY SPLASH SOME OF YOUR POO ALL OVER THE PLACE, INCLUDING ON THE PLASTIC SCOOPER.

If there were a different scooper for washing and toileting (genius?!), it might not be so bad, or if the scooper got a wash (or was replaced!) everytime the room was changed that might also be ok.

However using a scooper that’s covered in other peoples shit, to wash myself – is not cool.

Did I mention that the water in the trough has insects breeding in it?

Enough about that.

Another curious thing about indonesia is the numeber of Mosques.  They are everywhere, every kilometer of a built up area will have at least one Mosque, with as many load speakers as the local electricity supply can drive screaming out verses from the Koran at levels of distortion that defy my literary ability to describe.

And even where there are already so many mosques, they are building more mosques, built using the kind donations from passing traffic to pay for the construction.

Imagine this.

People lay lengths of thick rope across a road approximately 30m apart.  The rope is so thick that you really need to slow down for it.  Then this section of road is lined with people holding butterfly catchers in one hand, and a bucket full of money in the other.  Cars slow down, throw notes or coins out the window, and the people swoop it up with the butterfly catchers.  Of course they have already invested in loudspeakers set at maximum distortion, so loud that you cant understand anything they’re saying, and anyway no one else can either because it’s in Arabic of course, and most Indonesians can only speak Bahasa.  Brilliant.

I’ve started riding directly at the people who come towards us asking for money, it’s hilarious 😉

The last curiosity I’ll go into today is the holes in the sidewalk.  I call it a sidewalk because technically that’s what it’s there for, but no one here actually walks anywhere… Anyhow, there seems to be a nationwide project to install or improve the stormwater removal drains, that until recently were open drains, about a 2 feet wide and 3 feet deep along every bit of road in the country.

I guess it’s for health and sanitary reasons, but they’re putting tops on all the open drains, and just like magic you now have a sidewalk.  Which would be great, except that at irregular intervals, usually on poorly lit streets, the top is missing for a short section, which creates a pretty big hole to fall into.

So big, that Sal and I have taken to warning eachother about them by yelling “HOLE!!”   We’re both still here, so far so good.

We’re both looking forward to reaching lake Toba tomorrow, (where there will be cold beer and possibly even wine!), site of the worlds largest known volcanic eruption.  It’s very interesting for geeks like me, see this if you’re interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

I think that will do for tonight, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite, which is a real possibility tonight 🙁

Selamat Malam!

This was after a few hours riding, I hate to think of what we’re inhaling!

This came off my face after a couple of hours riding in Java, and it was quite clear at that point!

Apparently they’re burning down some more of the Sumatran rain forest to make way for more palm plantations, so the whole area we are in at the moment (along with half of SE Asia) is blanketed in a smoke haze.

Can’t really blame them for wanting to get ahead, after all we’ve destroyed all of our forests already, still it’s a shame.

We rolled into Cirebon last night after somehow making about 640km in a single day in Java, 14 hours in the seat, that works out to an average speed of 45km/hr, which is actually pretty good going under the circumstances.

How is that possible when we’re on the highway No. 1 in Indonesia?  I’m going to do my best to explain, so that next time i think that it might be a good idea to come back here on the bike, I will remember it, and chose more wisely. Flash back to today…

The road at this point is really good, 2 lanes both ways, so the collection of traffic that motors along at wildly different speeds is easy enough to negotiate.  We flash past a constant stream of little moto’s, most of whom are doing about 50km/hr and keeping mostly to the left, in quick succession then, it’s a bus on the right (they always drive on the right), a small truck on the left and then another three trucks on the right.  We’re passing a vehicle roughly every 5 to ten seconds, that makes a few thousand vehicles in a day!

The oncoming lane at this point is separated from ours by a median strip, only about a metre wide, and almost a metre high.  At far too regular intervals there is a break in it to let traffic across the road, and the high median strip hides the motos waiting to turn right quite well.

In Indonesia you generally give way to traffic entering a road, (even on highway 1!), so I need to be watchful for these guys making turns infront of us, or for other people entering from the left, as they dont even look for oncoming traffic sometimes, they just drive out infront of you…

We continue, another bus, another 5 trucks, another 20 motos flash past, the odd moto passes us too, sometimes i try to follow them as they swerve like motogp riders between trucks and buses, but they’re a bit narrower than us, and a lot more brave, so we let them go.

The road narrows now to a single lane each way without a median strip, this doesnt mean that we stop overtaking, just that it now happens in the gaps between oncoming traffic, or on the lhs of traffic.

In Java either you are passing people, or they are passing you, there is no happy medium.  I can only describe it as gently aggressive.  We need to pass this many vehicles to stay infront of the odd crazy mini bus driver or we’ll be run off the road, plus it’s HOT, and we want to stay out of the acrid smoke from the coaches and old trucks.

A bus pulls out in front of us to pass a slow truck on the lhs (in the moto lane), the buses here are maniacal, and the driver sounds his horn in long blasts to warn everyone to get out of the way, thick black smoke spews out of the exhaust covering us, I hold my breath for as long as I can, but eventually give in and breathe some in.

With inches seperating the two vehicles the  bus eventually gets in front and lurches back into the rhs lane.  While this was happening a group of 25 bikes has accumulated behind the scene, some are now creating a third lane on the rhs and driving into the oncoming traffic waving their arms for the cars and other bikes to make way, while the rest now pour through the reopened moto lane with us in their midst, the briefly clear road is a good opportunity to make some ground.

Just as we’re getting back up to speed an impossibly old mad pedalling a rickshaw pulls infront of us, he’s wearing a baseball cap and two different colour thongs, I need to brake hard while looking behind to see if there is a truck close behind us…

I judge the mans speed and decide that I’m better off to go on his left, but so do another 10 motos so I cant slow down too much, instead we carry enough speed to miss him by a few inches and remain in front of the group…

It goes on.

Without warning, and seemingly without reason the traffic grinds to a halt, and all the motos, us included head for the gap on the left, just wide enough for us to pass the gridlock at walking speed with an inch gap either side of the panniers.  We continue like this, in a congo line of little bikes for a km or so, before the cars lined up start to get impatient, and some have started trying to pass on the left as well, which obviously they cant.  This now means the motos need to stop, which no one likes.

One by one we all head onto the dirt verge, which doubles as a pedestrian walkway sometimes, but not many people walk anywhere in Indo (they ALL have bikes), so we weave in and out of the stuff that cascades out of the shop fronts onto the street.

It goes on some more like this.

Eventually we reach the cause of the blockage, roadwork, one narrow lane each way, which this time really is just one lane!  When this lane fills back up we stop and wait.  The temp readout says it’s 42 degrees, and the fans on the bike are running continuously.  Consequently the tank and seat, and my boots are starting to melt, so I turn it off and wait.

It’s been a while and the other bikes are looking for an out, the verge on the other side of the road looks passable, so a group of us cross the other lane, (more putting out hands and getting oncoming traffic to stop), and we get onto the far verge and keep moving.  It’s quite rocky over there, which the little bikes dont like so they peel off quickly, but betsy doesnt mind so we stay there a little longer and pass another 100 vehicles, before the road returns to 1 and a bit lanes each way, and we manage to negotiate our way back onto our own side of the road.

And just imagine that in this complete chaos, there is not an iota of anger from anyone…  except for Sally and I!

At another point we’re going along quite fast at maybe 90km/hr, again without even looking, two guys push a bicycke out on the road, it’s been loaded up with about ten lengths of bamboo pole, still rough cut from the jungle nearby, they’re at least 15m long, and consequently block the highway in both directions while this manouvre is being performed.  It’s not a close call, I brake hard, as do a few other vehicles, the guys push like crazy and the bamboo lurches off balance, but somehow they get across the road and everything continues.  I’m laughing at the absurdity.

My least favourite class of the road chaos is the Bemo.  A bemo is a little van (think toyota hiace) that’s been converted into a mini bus, and usually painted bright pink or yellow, with mag wheels that poke out from the wheel arches, usually badly rusted, and with blaring sound systems.  There are hundreds of them in every town, they use their indicators in some randoomised code of communication that we’re yet to decipher, sometimes left means right, hazard lights can be on permanently, or no indicators at all…  They are like another subclass of vehicle that’s immume to whatever rules everyone else follow.

They stop literally in the middle of the road, (the highway!) to take on passengers, seemingly so they dont need to merge back out, I sometimes find someone stepping out of one in front of me as i pass on the left, and they enter the road wherever and whenever they like, slowly meandering as though they arent sure whether they’ll join the traffic or not.  I hate them with a passion.  Many of the market areas and bigger schools have a sea of them jostling around, filling the whole centre of town, like boats in a harbour, not really moving but rolling backwards and forwards.

At many of the intersections there are old men waving flags, a substitute for traffic lights (most of which are broken, and the rest mostly ignored).  The men stand out on the road waving their flags like crazy, sometimes blowing whistles to try to make the traffic stop so someone can cross, either pedestrians, or to allow someone with a shiny new car to merge safely.  The car throws some money at the guy in return, usually about 1000rp, or ten cents.  The funny part is that the cars and buses usually respect these guys, but the motos will continue to pour through the gap for as long as possible until it’s blocked by the slow moving shiny car.  Many times I’ve squeezed through what I thought to be a very small gap, and thought it was even a bit too tight, when in my mirrors I see another 5 bikes swerve and jostle through before the door is shut for a moment.

After only an hour or two of this chaos my face has turned black, quite literally, black from the pollution and dust, so whenever we stop for food the ladies try to get me over to the wash basin but Sal usually has a wet wipe ready to get most of it off.

Rereading this, it sounds really dangerous, which in some ways maybe it is, but it’s more the pollution and heat and painfully slow movement that makes it hard going.  If you follow the rules, it all flows reasonably well.

The rules seem to go like this.

The slowest moving things (carts, cyclo’s bicycles and bemos) do not give way to anything, except buses, and even then, it’s begrudgingly.

The fastest moving things (generally motos) give way to everyone.

Buses are king, and you better get out of their way, or they will push you out of the way.

Any piece of passable road, footpath or median strip is considered appropriate to use when the traffic slows down.

Each lane can usually be split into two lanes, and sometimes a third is appopriated by taking one from the other direction.  This happens often and without issue.

Traffic lights are ignored.

Old men waving flags are to be recognised only at the latest possible moment, and can be missed by millimetres, no offence taken.

Indicators are some yet to be deciphered form of communication that in no way relate to any intention to turn.

Lights are optional when driving at night.

Most women wear a hijab, some also wear long sleeves and gloves, however the odd completely naked man walking down the highway is ok.

I’m glad we finally made it to the ferry and into Sumatra, for this island we’ve opted to take the smaller roads and already it’s been dramatically different.  Still slow going but no where near the traffic density of Java.

Until next time.

dm.