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.