How low can you go? (Very low actually)

11th September
We climbed off the bus in Bukkittingi like released prisoners: not sure where we were, what had happened to the last 18 hours and what we were supposed to do now. I sheltered in an amusement arcade while Jo went to get some money. Children on their 'lunch-hour' (no eating during the day at Ramadan) stared at me with curiosity. All the cafes were closed, there was nowhere to get any decent food. So we jumped on the buses to Lake Maninjau. A taxi driver wanted to drive us all the way there and even pulled the dirty trick of trying to convince us there were no buses to the Lake, but we're too wise for that now! We sat on the bus and the driver had the biggest sub woofer ever under the back seat we were sitting on, I felt quite sick from the tremors.

We realised a bit too late that this place was nothing like Lake Toba, the accomodation was more spread out, so while we were waiting for the mosques to thin out a bit, most of the guesthouses passed us by, and we had to walk back up the road with our bags. The accomodation was very basic but kind of nice in a bungalow-with-porch-on-the-lake kind of way. The restaurant was running low on food but tomorrow it was market day so we were told we'd be able to order more than just rice. We met an Aussie who was doing a similar overland trip to us and reckoned he'd cracked the Indonesia-Australia overland puzzle and described what amounted to a covert operation from some port in Jakarta.

Our bungalow was set in rice fields at the edge of the lake.

12th September
We went for a morning swim in what has to be one of the finest lakes, or indeed stretches of water, I have ever swum in - a surface as still as if it was glass, not too cold and surrounded by mountains wreathed in cloud. After the bus journey, we didn't exert ourselves too much. The restaurant had more food this time, but the place was full of weirdos and hippies trying to get a sing-song going which was a bit excruciating.

13th September
It took the restaurant 45 minutes to make 2 pancakes. The 'cooks' close the door to the kitchen so you're not too sure what they're up to (and maybe I don't want to know). Judging by the serving times they have a little sleep. The restaurant clientele look like computer nerds and one is dressed like a Chinese communist, so I'm getting some bad vibes from the place. There is one hippy we keep seeing and she's always doing something wrong, like missing the turning for the bungalows on her bike, or dropping things out of her shopping bags.

We have a real problem with change here in Indonesia. Every time you try and pay with a 'big' note, they'll frown and ask if you have the exact amount. I got tired of squirrelling around for change and didn't really see it as my responsibility, that's why shops have float isn't it, so I started having stand offs at the till until they went and got some change - which they were always able to come up with by the way. Somewhere, someone in Indonesia is hoarding a mountain of 5000 Rupiah notes.

Jo goes for a ride round the lake and I organise a canoe, which wasn't an easy process, the lady thought my paddling motions were a request for a broom. From our bungalow we had watched the locals lauch these little canoes and they looked fairly unbuoyant, but I didn't realise how unbuoyant until I sat down in this one and promptly fell out. Luckily I was only in a metre of water but I looked pretty pathetic chasing my bag and shoes around the lake and trying to bale out 10 cms of water in the boat - all in full view of the family who owned the bungalows who made a pretty bad attempt at trying to hide their amused gazes. But I mastered it in the end and it was pretty special paddling around the lake.

The sun sets over Lake Maninjau. About 18 hours later I was capsizing a canoe in a spot at the bottom right of the picture.

14th September
We'd paid well over the odds to make the difficult trip to Padang a lot easier and quicker by booking a private minibus. Unfortunately the Indonesians think nothing of hijacking this kind of thing and tryng to cram in as many people as possible to make a little extra cash. When they tried to shoe horn the 9th passenger into a 6 seater, trying for 4 people and a bunch of coconuts across the middle row, we cried foul and funnily enough they realised the game was up, the driver handed the wheel to another passenger and presumably rode the rest of the way on his mate's moped. Unfortunately he handed the wheel to a guy who had been grinning inanely all the way and who I was sure was a sandwich short of a picnic. But we got there in the end. Jo ate like a king in the restaurant and then nearly had a heart attack when she realised the crab she had ordered was most of our budget for the day. But we did have a small victory when we discovered they had tried to charge us for a bag of peanuts that we didn't have. But it was a small victory, tiny really.

Jo and her crab. That smile disappeared pretty sharpish when the bill arrived.

Padang was much hotter than the Lakes and so we were back to sweating buckets just walking down the road. We got to the Internet and I was happy to learn that Australia had approved my working visa application, and in just 48 hours. I must be good (or they must be desperate!)

A very tasteful towel rack in the hotel room in Padang.

15th and 16th of September
The long distance bus journeys were coming thick and fast, here was another one from Padang to Bengkulu. Unfortunately, Sumatra is massive so travelling times are large, and the south has less sights than the north, so there seemed to be few places to break the journey and not feel like we were wasting your time and money. We also couldn't afford the time to stop and rest up.

Padang had made the inspired decision to move their bus station out of town and well off our map. When we got out of the minibus where they said it was the bus terminal, there was not a bus or terminal in sight and we were hassled into getting onto some motorbikes. They drove us back 400 metres the way we had come, to a little wooden shack at the side of the road. The motorbike rider then decided he was now the bus ticket agent and wrote out a ticket on a crumpled piece of paper he'd got from his back pocket. He obviously thought Eid had come early as he wrote out a ticket for 700, 000 Rupiah, about 3 and a half times what it should have been. Unfortunately for him, we had the mind - much to his protests - to walk across the road where the bus times were pinned to the wall of a run down office, along with a price list that said it should be 200, 000 Rupiahs for both of us. We had a guy who looked a bit more official write out a ticket for the proper amount. The motorbike guy was going frantic by now, jigging around watching his profit margins slide away, and resorted to openly asking for money for his assistance in fixing up the ticket. It is not unusual in Indonesia for people to get money for arranging things. But he wanted silly amounts, and we had only wanted a motorbike ride from him, for which we had duly (over)paid him, so we waved him off. He was a bit angry but we were in no mood for it, facing an overnight bus journey.

The bus turned up at 11am and I knew it was going to be a long day and night. It was a small coach similar to a very old school bus, bench seats and the like. The seats were ok for about 50 minutes and then they just had to be endured. We left at midday and then drove through Padang at 15mph looking for more passengers. Articulated lorries were overtaking us. After 30 minutes we stopped at a depot and some guys manhandle massive packages onto the roof. These guys formed a little bus crew that manned the entire journey, to be a member of which you seemingly had to have no obvious abilities other then being able to lug heavy boxes up to the roof. One guy looked like the missing link, like they'd dug him up in the desert. Unfortunately, the lack of brain cells meant they had no reservations in making our journey a misery - laughing at us, trying to take our food, making us feel like we weren't supposed to get off the bus when they stopped for a rest. We were completely at their mercy, I'm sad to say, it's not like we had anywhere to go. We were worried to go to sleep because of the strong possibility they would rob us of everything. Not that I could sleep much on a seat like a sack of potatoes, with no head rest or leg room and with the constant fear of having a bag of rice thrown on me. The air was thick with smoke as the entire bus, made up mostly of men, chain smoked for the whole journey as soon as the sun went down (smoking is considered one of the items that Muslims can't do during the daylight fasting of Ramadan).

The 22 hour Happy Bus. It was so distressing that this is the only picture I took in the whole 22 hours.

After an agonising night, and a morning spent constantly hoping that our destination was round the bend only to be crushed by the fact that it wasn't, no mileage markers to speak of, and small children thinking they had died and gone to hell such was the look of terror and utter desperation on their tearful faces, we got to Bengkulu at 10am, 22 hours after setting off. The grunts looked like they'd had a great time of it and looked sad to see us go, but I got my bag and just ran. Unfortunately this wasn't the end of our problems as Bengkulu wasn't in our guidebook, so we had no map of the area. The one hotel we did know the name of looked completely uninterested in us, so we managed to communicate beachfront with the help of swimming gestures and a taxi driver overcharged us for the 5 minute journey (we didn't know how far it was so couldn't fix the price beforehand), then stopped short and demanded yet more cash to drive 100m to the actual hotel entrance. The hotel turned out to be a luxury resort, room prices were 390,000 rupiah. Our daily budget is only 480,000 rupiah (30 pounds sterling) so that meant pot noodles for dinner but after inspecting some truly awful beachfront bungalows infested with mosquitoes and decorated with lurid green and pink wallpaper for 220,000 we decided enough was enough and went for the luxury resort. We tried to negotiate prices down and failed, despite the fact we could see all the room keys obviously still on hooks. We took a shower and the water ran black with all the dirt, ash and god knows what else that had attached itself to us over the 22 hours, then collapsed on the bed - the first sleep we'd had in about 30 hours.

The next morning after a disappointing buffet breakfast of fried rice, fried noodles, fried eggs and "orange juice" (squash to the rest of the world), we decided to make the most of the luxury resort and took a swim in the suspiciously green looking pool. Suddenly it became apparent why all the room keys were still available. A mating pair of toads were living in the luxury resort pool, and as we swam around the gelatinous strands of toadspawn could be felt brushing our legs! Needless to say we kept our mouths closed while we swam.

We moved on to find a cheaper joint and found a reasonable looking place, Losmen SS for 80,000, not far from all the bus companies, so handy for our onward travel. Then headed out to find a bus south for the next day. It proved a bit tricky but after shopping around we got a bus to Jakarta for 280,000 rupiah (16 pounds). This is pretty pricey. Till and Clarissa got a flight from Padang to Jakarta for only 500,000 so on the whole our no-flights strategy isn't that cheap.

Anyway we finally found the proper centre of Bengkulu and it's actually pretty nice. It has a colonial era fort, a harbour and an exciting beach complete with outrigger boats and driftwood. However there are virtually no western tourists so we were celebrities, shouts of "hey mister" "hey missus" "hey miss" and once, "hola senorita" serenaded us as we walked around.

That night, 17th September was possibly my worst night's sleep in a hotel to date. Since it's Ramadan the owners of the guesthouse got up at 3am to cook their pre-dawn breakfast. They had absolutely no consideration for their guests not being muslim and wanting to actually sleep through the night - and nattered loudly, laughing and joking as they made nasi goreng (fried rice) for breakfast. I got so annoyed I actually got up to tell them they were being very noisy - but by then the damage had been done. Also, I can only guess at the times but I estimate from about 12 midnight an abandoned kitten in the alley next to our room called for its mother. The mother repeatedly attempted to reach it by climbing across the corrugated plastic roof of our room, and calling down to it but couldn't get through. So this went on all night until 6am when we'd had enough and Jo went and caught the offending kitten and moved it away from our room.

So the executive bus to Jakarta (reserved seats!) was heaven to us after the sleepless night and we finally relaxed as we headed south along the coast road.

A day in the life

Wednesday, 10th September 2008

8am: Steve prepares for a record-scoring dive into Lake Toba before breakfast

Instead does a record-scoring jump

The water was lovely

I walk the gangplank

Then back off... I'd already had my daily swim earlier

9.00 am Our regular pineapple pancakes for breakfast

10.00am Steve tries to return a library book - no-one in the shop but a little boy who phones the owner and gets Steve to talk to them to get his deposit back

11.00am Internet in Indonesia. This one was about 1 pound an hour - cheapest we've found so far is 15p an hour.

12.00 midday The local sweetcorn processing factory. They rub the kernels off the husks then dry them in the sun for sale.

13.00 Lunch with a view at Poppy's Fish Farm, Tuk Tuk, Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia.

13.00 Grilled fish for lunch. Yummy.

14.30 Waiting for the ferry to take us to the mainland. Here we are fully laden. We waited over an hour for the ferry and were getting really nervous about missing our bus connection, so much so I had to compulsively eat Oreos and couldn't manage to take any photos of the ferry.

16.45 And what a relief when we made it to the bus depot 10 minutes late to find the bus was "always late" so don't worry... Here are Till and Clarissa similarly relieved and having a celebratory Bintang.

17.30 The "Executive" Bus to Bukittingi overnight. It had people sitting on stools in the aisles because it was overbooked.

17.45 On the tastefully decorated bus - our beds for the night. My chair didn't work and reclined at will when the driver accelerated, then shot forward each time he did an emergency stop.

19.00 This one didn't come out well, but it is the bus broken down 20 minutes outside of the departure town of Parapat. We waited there for about 2 hours while the drivers faffed around fixing it and then going to pray and eat as the day's fast (it's Ramadan) ended with sunset.

23.30 Dinner at 11.30pm - rice and chicken for about 60p.

My "brush with death"

The Lonely Planet's "South-East Asia on a Shoestring" guide lists ten items which make you a South-East asian veteran, including being able to walk through a pack of stray dogs without flinching, find an internet connection in the smallest places, and being able to list more than one near death experience.

The flaming petrol tanker in Ulan Bator was probably one, and I now have another to add to the list.

In Tuk Tuk, the resort town on Pulau Samosir, the largest island-within-an-island in the world, we could see a waterfall outside town which we thought we'd walk to. As we approached the cliff locals pointed the way, clearly many tourists had passed this way before. The path got steadily steeper and more slippery and Steve very sensibly (as it turns out) decided to turn back. I pressed on although I was a bit wary when the path

The Americans struggle down

a difficult part of the route

turned out to be a stream bordered by a narrow row of rocks, cliff face to one side and drop to the other. I made it up without incident though and near the top the path looked even more precipitous, necessitating scrambling and climbing over rocks to get to the falls themselves. I would have turned back but then I saw a bag and two pairs of shoes which earlier climbers had clearly abandoned there to make the final climb easier, so I pressed on, also having to abandon shoes near the top, and met Americans Mina (half Iranian and repeatedly subject to demands for her hand in marriage on the streets in Indonesia due to her "ideal of Asian beauty" looks - i.e. pale skin) and Carolyn and their Indonesian guide Athan. The falls were nice and after a rest, we all turned back together. I was faster than the others so soon found myself ahead.

I must say at this point that I wasn't hurrying in a dangerous way, just walking briskly as I do. I am sure that what happened was just bad luck, if I had been walking more slowly it would still have happened. I basically stepped down from a stone onto the path with my left foot, and the wet ground crumbled away beneath my foot, taking me with it.

I remember thinking "I'm falling", then momentarily panicking, then it all stopped pretty quickly. I fell feet first, there was nothing at all to grab onto even if I'd had time to think of it. What happened was I fell onto a looped triple-stranded liana and basically ended up suspended in it, my feet dangling as I ended up straddling the liana like a rope swing. As I finished falling I collected myself and my first thought was that I was physically unhurt apart from a graze on my left foot where my sandal had been wrenched partially off and a scratch up the inside of my leg (I was wearing a skirt) where the liana had scraped up as it caught me. Then I realised I wasn't moving, the liana was holding

This is the very unimpressive cliff I fell down.

The camera really doesn't do it justice...

me firm and that it looked like I should be able to climb back up. Then I am ashamed to say I noted with pleasure that my camera, which was in my skirt pocket, was still there (strange how this was a concern when facing falling to your death!)

Below me the ground sloped steeply away down to the stream - if I hadn't become entangled in the liana I probably would have hit the slope about 2m below where I was, then rolled down the slope some way before hitting a tree. As it was I was maybe 3m below the level of the path.

I yelled "hello" several times because I knew the Americans wouldn't be far away, and I had a crazy idea that maybe their guide was carrying a rope (deluding myself that I was in safety conscious Europe for a moment). After 30 seconds their guide appeared on the path (ropeless of course) and announced that he was coming down to help. I knew that was going to be much more dangerous and that I could climb out myself so I told him to just wait at the top, I just wanted some helpful hands at the top to grab me if necessary.

Climbing out was easy enough once I'd put my sandal back on and swung around in my liana loop so I could get a foothold, and at the top Athan had a hand out to help me onto the path. I probably could have made it back alone but it was good to have someone there. Physically I was fine but the adrenaline was pumping and I knew I needed to get down to Steve quickly as he would be worried I had taken so long. As I continued down the path I slipped again - this time on a slippery rock as I hurried, but this was a calculated risk on a flat path, and there was no cliff to fall off at this point, so I just landed on my bottom feeling stupid.

When I got down to Steve he was about to call me to see where I was. I couldn't stop grinning, I was just so glad to be alive. Covered in mud though and people we passed later laughed at me which made me a bit annoyed. Later that evening we went to meet the Americans to buy their guide a drink for helping me but he is a Jehovah's witness and didn't want one!

I can't say for sure how close I came to something bad happening but I know if I hadn't become entangled in that liana I would have had a worse impact injury when I landed, instead of just a scratch where it caught me.

Not that muddy really considering I fell down a

cliff, but look at the grin you couldn't wipe off my face.

Indonesia at Ramadan

Just after Steve's photo blog we popped into the Batu Caves: a Hindu temple set in a massive cave just outside KL. A cheeky monkey (we later found out it is a long-tailed macaque) terrorised Steve into handing over his drinks can - it tried it on with my camera too - not sure what it planned to do with that (!)

Then back to Penang for the ferry journey to Indonesia. We stupidly missed our drop off on Penang island and only realised when we started to head back over the bridge to the mainland. By this time it was 12 midnight and when we were finally able to stop we were a good hour away from our booked accommodation. Fortunately another couple (from Brunei/Dubai) had been equally stupid and had also missed the stop and we shared a taxi back to Penang island, finally arriving at 1.30 in the morning. It looked like a party was going on at the beach resort of Batu Ferringhi (it was the eve of Malaysian independence day), and what with that going on outside our window, motorbikes revving up and the call to prayer from the next-door mosque from 4am to 5.30am, you can imagine how much sleep we got. No matter though as a day on the beach passed sweetly (though another night was interrupted by the mosque).

The ferry to Indonesia set off on the 1st September, the first day of Ramadan. I was a little wary about eating or drinking in public, but fortunately I spotted people eating and drinking early on so felt relaxed about it pretty soon. On the ferry we met Jurgen, a swiss ski instructor who spends half the year entertaining ski students and half the year entertaining the rest of the world on his travels, and Leo, a teenager rich from experiencing 6 months in India (next time for us perhaps...) who was travelling with his guitar. The ferry was fast but airtight and super-cooled by air conditioning, the jumpers came out on the way. Half way both Steve and I were convinced we were going to throw up as the tossing and turning got too much (others did) but we made it to Indo stomach contents intact in the end!

The first thing that happened over the Straits of Malacca was we got conned into buying a bus ticket to Medan (we'd been told it was included in the ferry price) - but we didn't seem to have much choice in it since we were stranded at the port. The night out in Medan was an interesting experience. Medan has an edge - and we were definitely targets. In the Ramadan market after dark we met Stella, an English student (here with Leo). She couldn't believe I was 31 (bless her). We walked for half an hour to find a place selling beer. I've never had to look so hard for alcohol but I guess that's Ramadan in a Muslim city.

The next morning, after the third night in a row woken by a call-to-prayer at 4am we made like trees and got the hell out of Medan to Bukit Lewang.

The way it works in Bukit Lewang is this: Touts hang out outside Medan and check on each bus to Bukit Lewang to see if there are any westerners on board. If there are, they board the bus and make conversation with the westerners. You are then their property for the duration of your stay in Bukit Lewang and they will try to convince you to go to their hotel and to go on their trek. If you comply, all is lovely. If you use another guide, or if you don't want to go on a trek, all hell breaks loose. Luckily for us, we did want to do a trek, so we just took the path of least resistance. In the end it all worked out well as Ali and his brother made our trek really enjoyable. Ali calls himself Bruce Lee.

He wore a red bandana and smoked A LOT. So did Jose (our trek companion, the almost horizontally laid back Puerto-Rican American who'd been teaching English in Hunan province where eagle-eyed readers will recall we had also been in China - so we had stuff to talk about). We last saw Jose heading off to meet a drug dealer in Bukit Lewang so we hope he's not now in someone's car boot!

Basically the "trek" involved walking around in circles looking for Orang-Utans before wandering to a campsite on the bend of a river, then chilling out for hours before dinner and bed, then waking up, chilling some more before heading down river on "tubes". It was cool, though some other tourists were disappointed by the fact it wasn't a trek so much as a walk down pre-determined paths to a well established campsite. We saw it more as a camping trip to see Orang-Utans so thought it was great.

We saw four Orang-Utans, including a mother and child. All were semi-wild, in other words they had been rescued and re-released. This is great for tourists taking photos as they hang around humans in the hope they will get some food. One tried to steal our lunch so we had to leave her behind. Orang-Utans are like very laid back humans. They just chill out all day, hang around (literally) and when it rains they stay in their nests and hold big leaves over themselves to stay dry. Very sensible.

Next stop we decided, was Berastagi. This is a hill town about 2 hours from Medan, which meant we had to go back through the horrible place. We stumbled upon a market in Bukit Lewang by the bus station where big wodges of rubber from the rubber plantations were for sale. Also lots of fruit, fresh and dried fruit etc.

Anyway, we got into and out of Medan as fast as we possibly could, but this was not that quick since we needed to get some cash. We found an ATM, but it was broken, so I headed off to find another while Steve guarded our bags. Every five metres someone would say "Hey miss / mister (depending on how observant / strong in English they were) where you go?" One guy chased me along the road in a becak (motorbike side car) saying "I just want to help, get in, I don't want money". Needless to say I refused all offers of help and found an ATM, then we got the hell out of Medan.

The journey to Berastagi was fun. A windy road, reminiscent of trips to ski resorts around hairpin bends, though no snow of course. The driver was crazy and overtook on hairpins. Needless to say we made it to Berastagi in record time. Berastagi is a really nice place that has a sculpture of a giant cabbage (don't ask me why). We stayed in a great guest house (Wisma Sibayak if you ever pass that way) where they helped us prepare for our trek up Mt Sibayak with a packed lunch of special fried rice and chicken leg and fruit for about a pound.

Mt Sibayak was an easy walk, most of the climb is on a tarmac road, but once you get off the road near the top the steps are heavily eroded and it's a bit more adventurous. Near the top we spotted fluorescent yellow steaming fumaroles that look and sound a lot like boiling kettles.

We posed for this shot, then the heavens opened. After cowering under a rock for about an hour and eating our special fried rice with rain dripping down our necks we gave up and went back down the easy path. By the time we had reached our goal, the hot springs, we were both incredibly wet. The only dry item of clothing I possessed was my T shirt which the paramo (shameless plug of product I like) jacket had kept pretty dry. My trousers weighed at least double the normal weight (yes ben I know I should have worn lightweight quick dry trousers).

Here's the before and after shot from the same spot. Steve was pretty miserable waking in the rain but I was enjoying it, at one point it was literally walking down a river - the reason why the path was so eroded became blatantly obvious.

Anyway the hot springs (about 40p entrance) were just the tonic after a walk in the rain. There should be more of them in the UK! I was a bit embarrassed in my (quite modest) swimming costume though as Indonesian women bathe fully clothed in public, and even manage to soap themselves down fully clothed. Don't ask me how!

We were forced to carry our still wet clothes on the buses with us to Lake Toba. It was remarkably smooth since the route between Berastagi and Lake Toba is well worn and all the bus drivers knew where we were going. We arrived at Parapet, the port town, got on the ferry and laid out all our clothes to dry in the sun while choosing a guest house from the many available on Tuk Tuk. And that's where we are now, chilling out in a quiet and cheap resort town. Lovely.