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.