Indonesia (part one)

Like getting beaten up in a parking lot, or slipping off a diving board and landing in the water belly-first, Indonesia is an intense assault on your person, values, outlook and health. Not to mention your finances. Like an old van running on duct tape, rust and petrol vapours, it keeps ploughing forward against all common sense and logic, spewing exhaust into a greying twilight. Night is falling on the archipelago but the people either don’t know, don’t notice or don’t care. Quite possibly all three, but again, against probability herself, they appear entirely unconcerned.

From the silver and black dome of the mosque of Banda Aceh to the untameable tangle of deep, dark forests in West Papua, Indonesia stretches across thousands of islands; the heavily populated heartland of Java, the frontier outposts of Flores and Timor, the unlikely twisted volcanic sprawl of Sulawesi, the necklace of tiny islands of Maluku and the Banda Islands, the immense mass of Kalimantan and the huge looming figure of Sumatra. From one end to the other you’ll find no less than 300 ethnic groups and even more languages, but they all live under one flag, speak one language and live in one country. Of all the nations built by the colonising Europeans, Indonesia is the most disparate, the most unlikely of them all, but one of the most enduring. For one reason or another, it has all hung together and found a path (but more often than people might like to admit, the round hole has been hammered out to fit the square peg). Indonesia presents a picture so varied and disparate, it leads me to despair and excitement all at the same time trying to figure it out in my head, let alone write it down with any clarity. Because clarity is one thing that Indonesia lacks, in too many ways it lacks the easily navigable paths in society that many take for granted, offering either a spider’s web to untangle, if you have the patience and fortitude, or a maze of trees with plenty of roots waiting to trip you up if you lose either virtue.

After it was all over, the thing I found myself saying to most people about Indonesia was about the people. Ninety-nine percent of them were amazing, friendly, open, curious and genuine. The remaining one percent just wanted to attach themselves like parasites to my wallet. And it’s that one percent that come at you every turn of the way, the taxi drivers, the wannabe tour guides, the unscrupulous guest house staff, the ticket sellers, the self-styled parking attendants, the oppurtunising bus conductor. But more on all these scumbags later; they are the moon of shit that obscure the sunny smiles of everyone else who would brighten your day, everyone else who smiles at you and actually means it, everyone else who made the trip entirely worthwhile. Not many places will I tell you something like this, but Indonesia is not like other places in so many ways, it surprises me not one little bit – it might just be that the people outrank the places as the highlight of the experience.

The scope of this chapter is partly the reason for all this. Tourism in Indonesia is perhaps eighty percent focused on the tiny island of Bali. You might have heard of it, and you might well have been there too. You might be a writer on this very site, and have been there, and still not posted anything about it; I know we can’t all be prodigious writers, but I digress – the point is, most visitors don’t get too far from Bali, and even then neighbouring Lombok is the secondary choice. A comparative trickle make their way up through Java toward Jakarta, and those who would go out and see anything further afield are a true rarity. In Malaysia I met many folks who were heading north to Thailand who all dismissed Indonesia, and those heading south were going no further than KL or Singapore before flying elsewhere, or home. There was precious little love for Indo, and the reasons were simple enough to grasp. A tourist scene to intensely focussed on one area leaves little knowledge or development elsewhere, combined with a bad image and ongoing security concerns help would-be visitors consider safer options. Give a middle aged family man a choice between Thailand and Indonesia for his family holiday and even the smallest risk will likely steer him to the safer option. Understandable for Mr. Family Guy and his two week’s holiday in the sun, not so easily forgivable for would-be adventurous backpacking types, yet time and time again I heard people dismiss Indonesia for these reasons. While my opinion of these cowards is restricted to grievances in this forum, I know that the great God of Backpacking is watching and shaking his head, saying, I thought you were cool.

It wasn’t always this way. The combined body blows of nightclub bombings in Kuta and the horrors of the tsunami drove visitor numbers even lower, leaving a long established tourist infrastructure to service declining numbers, and while one might think this could lead to the cream floating to the top in the form of lower prices and survival of the fittest style remaining guides and whatnot, we aren’t so lucky. Those who survived are those who wanted it the most, and you better believe they did so not by being the best, but my whatever means necessary. Lean times breed tough people and tough types know the game better than you. Adding insult to injury, Indonesia hasn’t bounced back nearly half as well as some of the neighbouring economies have in the long wake of the 1997 currency crisis. This leads to further tightening of belts and a lowering of standards of public services. Your average traveller will notice this in certain places more than others and is best exemplified by the crater sized potholes that conspire to reduce sanity and increase arse-pain nationwide. Further compounding the mess is the ongoing search for political identity in a post Soeharto reality. While the old goat was mostly unloved by the people at the end, a good section of the public still say things were better under his iron hands and not just because his tourist visa policy was to give most nationalities a free, two month visa on entry. These days you must pay 25 US for a thirty day visa, or get a sixty day visa before you land. All in all, it’s not the prettiest picture presented to would be visitors and while I can see the point of view of those who shun Indo for easier pastures, I also stick my finger up at them as I fly away and shout, your fucking loss, wankers! So long!

With such hubris did I venture onward into the vastness of Sumatra. The background now painted, here’s the why of what I was doing out that way. My good friend Veronika, from such adventures as Last Time I Was In Indonesia and Fast Times At Takushoku High, got herself a job working for an NGO in Aceh, where post tsunami mopping up continues. She had long been wanting me to up and visit and somehow managed to be surprised when I told her I was coming. So from Medan I would arrange transport to Meulaboh, a onetime headline maker, but now relegated to footnote to a disaster. Meulaboh hit headlines on Boxing Day 2004 as ‘ground zero’ in the disaster and was near wiped off the map, along with Calang further up the coast. Much of the rebuilding effort was focused on this area, second to Banda Aceh. But I get ahead of myself, because the getting there was more adventure than adventure ought to really be.

All the posters make the same claim, so do the people selling the tickets. Four and a half hours to Medan, they say. They manage to fit two lies into that one grand statement, since the ferry takes at least six hours (six and a half for me) and actually goes to Belawan, a forty five minute and ten thousand Rupiah bus ride from the middle of Medan. So there’s that, and then the immigration facility that not only screams “you’re in Indonesia now, bitch, so bend over and take it like a man” but takes 25 of your dollars for a visa. Such nice people. At least it’s easy and the line as long as the ferry’s passenger list, so it’s over quickly. And unlike the airports in Jakarta and Denpasar, they couldn’t give a rat’s arse if you have a ticket out of the country – stick, stamp, tear, here you are, have a nice day. Next!

Then you run the gauntlet for the first time. Belawan has a unique mix of immigration officials, making sure you go the right way, ferry company people, directing you to their company bus, and the usual array of alternative transport providers attempting to get as much cash as possible from uninformed white folk. Who knows who to trust? I didn’t, and I’m a supposed veteran of the Indo hustle. Luckily I ended up on the bus, which was the right move – another group of foreigners wasn’t so lucky and I saw the vultures had moved in. Good luck guys.

And back in Indonesia. The senses are the first victim, the smells and humidity, the heat and noise are all amplified somehow, it all could be Malaysia still, only it’s like the grime and reality knobs have been pushed up a few notches. And the closer you get to Medan, the higher they go, and in the city they hit eleven. Medan is not a highlight on any itinerary, it’s a place to arrive in, then get the hell out of. It is unique, in that it’s the only place I’ve been where no-one has a single good word to say about it, the silver lining is only visible when you get to leave. It’s an especially soulless Indonesian city (which are like snowflakes and Sting albums, no two are exactly alike but they all follow the same sort of pattern) that goes on and on. The third biggest city in the country, behind Jakarta and Surabaya, it boasts little in the way of history or heritage, but I was later informed her shopping centres were second to none. Again, big deal. Attempts to describe Indonesian cities of any size stretches the vocabulary and explanatory abilities of most people, and going into the realm of simile produces such lines as ‘slapped in the face with a warm, rancid trout’ and ‘whirlwind of pollution, rust and concrete’, all designed to get across somehow the sheer assault on the senses being in these places produces.

They never stop moving, traffic is at dangerous levels, public transport is everywhere but it’s restricted to battered old busses of various sizes (known variously as angkot, oplet and a variety of regional variations, and the omnipresent becak, a motorbike with a two wheeled sidecar welded on the side. There’s seemingly no state-run public transport, from what I could tell in the chaos and dust is that the routes are agreed upon by consensus and which bus runs to where is knowledge acquired by either osmosis or telepathy. Becak are like taxis and he who would get in without agreeing on a price first values not the contents of his wallet very much. The bigger the city, the more these guys try to fleece the white man. And while it’s true that a few thousand Rupiah might not really mean anything to the average visitor, it all adds up to the locals who are living lean – but on the other hand, it becomes a constant growing pain as the nickel-and-dime-ing gets irritating, annoying and, at the end of it all, quite a lot of money. Especially in local terms, because while that five or ten thousand Rupiah means about a dollar or so, that’s half your bed for the night covered, or dinner, or most of a beer. Keeping it relative and the frustration grows all the more.

So the streets constantly rumble with these barely running vehicles and a staggering number of private cars, in varying states of disrepair. It really feels like nothing is new, or clean, or conditioned, or up kept past the absolute minimum requirements. After a few days, then a few weeks in country, it all becomes commonplace and routine, and it takes a really bad ride to shock you. But the initial blow is simply staggering, especially having come from Malaysia, which scores less points than more expensive countries, but in context, ain’t all that bad. In fact, it’s downright classy in comparison. All this begets a truly depressing level of pollution, smog that hangs in the humid air and clings in the heat. There’s nowhere to walk, you have to share the road and watch your back; rare pedestrian areas are badly paved and missing blocks lie in painful wait. It brings a new level of caution and danger to the simple task of urban trekking, as going outside for a walk becomes a chore to dread. This, compared with the total lack of interesting things to see, is why people come to hate Medan. As their entry city, they recall it with the same horror as the initial shockwave and the fact they had to spend any amount of time there.

The accommodation options are all equally horrifying. Cheap, yes, but in Medan you gets what you pays for. A bed, little more, and quite possibly an introduction to the Indonesian mandi. The places targeted by passing backpackers are run by friendly but oppurtunising locals. They’ll arrange anything for you but their commissions are truly greedy; they will happily get food and drinks and quote you a good price, only to show up with your hot meal or cold drink and show you, then tell you, “price go up”. What are you to do? Don’t worry, you think, it’s only five thousand Rupiah. That’s nothing.

So that’s Medan. I got on the phone to Veronika, she told me to get the bus the following night, leaving me with a tick over twenty four hours to fill in town. I used the chance to get some writing done. The transport came at about eight, it was what they call a kijiang, an eight seat Toyota people mover style vehicle. They are probably the same as a Tarago, or similar make, but they are badged as ‘Kijiang’, so that’s what they are called. I also heard them referred to as ‘travel’. Transport to the west coast of Aceh is almost all by kijiang and my lucky arse was in the middle seat, middle row. There was no seatbelt or leg room. I could go into staggering detail about that night, but to relive it seems somehow sadistic. It was dark almost the entire way and the road twisted and turned like a cut snake. The driver was putting in a good tilt at qualifying for the Dakar Rally, speeding as fast as he could and overtaking without caution, then slowing to a crawl in a second to creep around a pothole, then flooring it. I was thrown around like a ping pong ball at the Chinese nationals. Sleep was a distant fantasy, an illusion, a cruel idea fed by my brain, tangled in delusions.

We rolled into Meulaboh about eleven the following day. The guy next to me had found out where I was supposed to be going and told the driver to drop me there. I thanked all sundry and took a second to take stock. What the fuck had I done? Where was I again? Oh man, time to go see if I got all the details right. I approached the security guy with a hearty greeting and he knew my name. I was expected. He took me inside where I was met by a young lady wearing a headscarf. All I saw was the headscarf, an item that instils an aura of distance – not out of aggression or attitude, but more out of respect and lack of insight into the world it comes from. I made the politeness thing happen in my daze and missed her name, all I got that she was a friend of Veronika’s and she gave me water – or offered it and I was being Mr. Polite Guy. I wasn’t allowed to stay inside an office on my own, so I was temporarily placed out the front porch with the security guy. This was fine, since I had a comfy plastic chair to sit in and read, and later to sleep in, and headscarf kept coming to make sure I had water and snacks. So I sat and marvelled at the sensation of sitting in a chair that wasn’t bucking me around like the most pissed off bull at the rodeo and everyone passing through came to meet me. I had a good chat with the drivers, all locals, and all doing their utmost to improve their English, since every second assignment involved moving one of the foreign staff. It was here I heard my first tsunami stories, just bits and pieces, since I wasn’t exactly in a position to go digging too deep. Lost almost my whole family, lost my house, but I’m still here – now that is a positive outlook.

Eventually Veronika showed up. I’d been forewarned that hugging was off the agenda, but unsure as to why I settled with the handshake. She looked exactly the same as I remembered. I was told that I still had to remain where I was for a little while and afterwards I would be escorted to my new temporary residence. This was fine by me – by that point, everything was fine by me. Headscarf was hanging around, making sure I was ok, and the drivers came and went with various staff members. Staff members I also met and whose names I forgot almost instantly, something I take no responsibility for. Eventually this all ended and I was taken to a building not two minutes walk around the corner and I got to take my pick of shitty rooms. It was a beat up building all right, they called it the Barrack House, and it was a tsunami survivor. I figured decent buildings were hard to come by, and there’s also that line about beggars and choosers. I took the cleanest looking room and got given a mattress. With my bags, the mattress was the only other thing in the room. It looked a little on the empty side, but it wasn’t without some kinds of simple charm. Lord knows, I’ve paid to sleep in worse than this.

The content of the days there in Meulaboh were simple, charmed and yet somehow totalled a week before I eventually left. Looking back, the combination of the distance from the beaten backpacker circuit and recent tragic history make it possibly the nicest place to be, at least in terms of all the things that make Indonesia a tough place to be. There’s no gauntlet of people harassing you at any point, the becak drivers only wave or honk once. I didn’t see a single taxi driver and the two visits I made to the bus station were almost sane experiences that resulted in me paying exactly what anyone else might. Traffic around town is noisy, fair enough, but at a level you’d associate with sanity rather than the usual story of bruising craziness. It is a small place, with a big reputation. I heard of only one other backpacker being sighted in town, and by all accounts he looked lost and confused, as he made his way down the west coast on some crusade to avoid the mainstream. It also became clear in hindsight that in terms of South East Asia as a whole, Indonesia is an appendix in most people’s books and in that Sumatra is a footnote. Aceh is but a sentence of that, and Meulaboh a single word.

And to pretend that word isn’t ‘tsunami’ is to be looking the wrong way. Even if you had no idea as to what happened, it’s impossible to miss the rows of identical concrete houses, like they came on a freighter from IKEA in a big box marked ‘HOUSE’. Then there’s the foundations and rubble, the half-trashed houses still to be cleaned up. You can almost use these as a guide to get to the beach, because they get more and more frequent the closer the waves come. Then there’s the beach itself, the sands polished by the pounding, and a line behind it of what once was a building lined highway. The stumps of a bridge are all that’s left to remind you that there was even a road there in the first place. Land that’s no longer usable has little but the foundations of the old houses, derelicts stand in some places, left that way because while the building might have stayed upright, the entire family that once lived there didn’t make it back. The beach is lined with palm trees, easily thirty metres high, all which survived that day. The locals told me the wave was higher than the trees.

Into this the world’s better off peoples donated millions of dollars. The 220,000 people who come under the dead or missing columns in Aceh alone actually saw most of this help them, but a natural disaster is a lot like a wedding. It brings out the best and worst in people, and anyone with an eye on the media at the time probably remembers beat-up stories about donated money going missing or misused or finding its way into corrupt official’s pockets. This happened in the post-Soeharto days, and every president since has made it part of their addenda to at least look tough on corruption. Following the poor showing after the Bohorok floods in North Sumatra in 2003, the government, fully aware of just how many eyes would be on them this time, were extra tough on making sure the cash got where it was supposed to go. But perceived slow progress lead to questions being asked, and in too many cases, answers being made up. The west coast of Aceh was a hard place to get to in any case, what infrastructure had been there pre-tsunami had been extremely compromised by thirty years of civil war and upkeep was little more than a cruel joke in such time. Even with the construction of a new highway, it takes about 15 hours from Medan, and 9 hours from Banda Aceh. Things were always going to be slow, and the other striking thing about Meulaboh is the sheer number of international NGOs and relief agencies who still have headquarters in town. That’s a lot of chefs in the pot and while I hear co-operation was the order of the day, things were always bound to his some speed bumps.

In the most recent peace deal, Aceh was granted special autonomous status within Indonesia, rather than full-on independence. This lead to two things. First, Sharia law became law of the province. This lead to the entrenchment of an already hardcore Islamic mentality, which in this post War On Terror society is always going to have a few eyebrows raised at it, especially by xenophobic Americans. Not that I want to stereotype or over-simplify, but when the foreign invasion happened, when the charity of the west was unleashed, with it came the dogs of war on both sides. The other thing was the Sultanate of Brunei built giant mosques in nearly every little town, as a congratulations present for putting the war behind them and embracing a similar level of religious fanaticism.

Best exemplified by simple incidents and at worst, incited full on racism, one story from Veronika’s NGO was from the first Ramadan after they came to town. The Sharia police showed up and told them they couldn’t operate the in-house kitchen or employ locals to work there, because the smells were upsetting the fasting neighbours, and by extension the staff must be uncomfortable too. They were asked to stop cooking for the month. How to handle this? It could be taken as a cheap shot from the locals, wanting any excuse to take the foreigners down a peg, or a slightly messy grasp of how to do business in Aceh. In the end a compromise was reached and the kitchen stayed open (a good thing, since getting food was otherwise near impossible during Ramadan) and both parties walked away having scored points, but it was far from worth it. Feet were stepped on all the way. To their credit, the foreign workers adapted pretty well to the local customs and laws – things that even other Indonesian workers sometimes had to pause and consider, even the Muslim ones – but let’s not pretend that they were out rapping with the people every night, or going to the mosque, or learning Achinese. The public relations issue was perhaps the core problem, outside the one everyone had to face up to.

For me, walking out of the Barrack House to get some lunch turned into a parade. Every child playing in the yard, every schoolkid outside and within shouting distance, every local man sitting around waiting for some business to come his way – they all shouted to me, the chorus of ‘hello mister’ and ‘where you from’, and a litany of others, ranging from the overly welcoming ‘I love you’ to the polar opposite ‘fuck you’. No doubt there was no true malice (or, unfortunately, passion) in these sentiments, it was just a snippet of English they had picked up. But after the first day of this, it gets so very old, and I could easily imagine the life of the NGO worker, having uprooted and moved to the arse end of Indonesia to help out these unfortunate locals, dealing with the daily parade his life has become. So I can’t blame him for spending his days moving from air-conditioned office to air-conditioned brand new clean NGO branded four wheel drive to air-conditioned house, all without having to see or deal with the locals. The Indonesians he sees are his workmates and they all speak English and the novelty of working with a white man has long worn off. He makes a salary that would be enviable in his homeland, which equates to a king’s ransom in local currency. He is seen by the impoverished, disaster struck locals riding around in his charity-money bought 4WD chariot, with his nice clean clothes, and living and working in houses that they could never afford. They see this, and look at the concrete building that was given to them and the lack of options for their life, and where the sense of disenchantment comes from is not hard to fathom. Both sides need to take a better look at things and possibly adjust their behaviour, but if it were somehow up to me to suggest an alternative – well, I’d be fucked.

So it goes on. By now most of the rebuilding is done, most homeless have been re-homed and only a handful live in shanty towns (but there’s still enough). Education is now the biggest priority, as most of the children don’t have teachers or even parents. This part of the operation, the end game, is at a crossroads, as the NGOs weigh up the value of spending money this way. My god, I’d hate to be the person having to make that call. The vestiges of all this generosity on the locals became clear when I got to be photographer for the day and followed Veronika to work for the day. We went to a school about an hour from town, where they do classes about simple things like hygiene and the importance of not shitting in the drinking water, stuff like that. I was not officially there and so took full advantage of my position of novelty. They’ll be talking about this for years. All I did was hang around and play stupid games with the kids and I was the centre of attention. And the first thing a lot of these kids did to me? Stuck their hands out and asked for money. Already they knew to associate white man with free money, and so the origins of their attitude and behaviours become clearer. I was told the Achinese were far from poor, and while not exactly able to finance the rebuilding of their shattered lives by themselves, didn’t really need all that money that had been donated. It wasn’t a lack of funding that was slowing things, far from it, and neither was there any problems getting it where it needed to be, it was the bureaucracy and bottom-line reading NGOs and the unrealistic expectations of their home offices, far away on the other side of the world.

It’s a messy place, a messy picture, and it’s so very Indonesian. Let me tell you about the beach instead. It stretches as far as you can see in both directions and the small waves pound right on the shoreline. The yellow sand is hot and warm and clean, and huts provide shelter and food. And coconuts from the palm trees get served up with a spoon so you can get all the flesh out. You could spend days just sitting down there and staring, and since the Sharia cops don’t come by until sundown to make sure no-one has any fun after dark, you can get your shirt off and swim all you like. Possibly the best part is that almost no-one else is there, so you more or less have the whole thing to yourself. The locals, never much of a beach loving folk to begin with, are still understandably spooked by the events of that Boxing Day.

That’s the portrait I saw of the town. Every night, Veronika was busy with her boyfriend, someone I met and liked, but he felt very clearly threatened by my presence. So it was up to her friends to show me around and take me to get food, and the chances I had to actually talk to her were limited and far between. Quite an odd thing, really, given how far I had come to be there, but she’s still Indonesian and some things you can’t break into. Good thing her friends were so nice. The first night was with Iwi, who was from Jakarta, and we took a becak tour of the sights, as much as they were, and then to get food. She knew quite a lot about the town and what had happened where, who built what and where to get some good food. The second night, and almost every night after that, I was carted around on the back of a motorbike driven by none other than Headscarf, who turned out to have a real name. Astuti, known as Tutie to her friends and workmates, and she became the first Muslim friend I ever made. To her credit she took my not-so-subtle take on atheism (when religion came up) and didn’t get offended at my jibes. Addressing remarks to the ceiling, and so forth. And more than that, she gave me an inside peek at the real life of a Muslim, an small insight into real-world Islam. I think we were equally as curious of each other, me having never really spoken to a genuine headscarf wearing Muslim past what it took to buy something, and her, with a deep curiosity about the west and English slang expressions. I take credit for teaching her to say ‘king oath’ at the appropriate time, which is of course, whenever possible. And the obedient little girl she is, she went right on and used it – to be fair, she already knew quite a few blue expressions, having dated an Aussie guy for more than a year. I say dated, but in the details she breezily and happily imparted to me, it became clear that she would not yield to him against Allah – they never so much as held hands, let alone threw down in the bedroom. She told me how he would try and talk her into it, and by the sounds of it there was some serious blue-balling going on. She said she would have married him without question and then given herself to him, but he was adamant about ‘trying before buying’ and thus it ended. I personally can’t bring myself to think too much of whoever this guy was, but I sure as hell could see what he saw in her.

She was a special person, no doubting it, and it’s one of the happier accidents so far that she got to look after me almost every day and night I was in town. So much better than being left to my own devices in a place like that, where the beach comprises 100% of the interesting things to do – and fellow travellers are non-existent. At least I had someone, and if it had to be anyone, how good that it be her. When it came time to leave, I was genuinely sad and knew that I would miss her a great deal, but not even my hopelessly romantic mind could concoct a scenario whereby anything could be made of it all. At very least I wouldn’t be able to wander around any further, and almost certainly being an atheist would be a little bit of a problem. Not to overstate it. But when she explained the headscarf and why she chose to wear it, I know it was the personal nature of the explanation that had me entrapped, but I then and only then fully realised why anyone wears it. And the benefits of a clean life, without vice, including all my favourite ones, seemed not a far away delusion but almost the inevitable path worthy of following. Yes, dear readers, I was enamoured. Was she really all that? Or was my brain finding a new way to torture me? Either way, amongst the separation anxiety I was somehow glad to be away from her and her positive influence, free to cock things up as I saw fit, but all not without taking a few lessons and a new perspective on things.

Also, I must add that she lived in the same company house as Veronika and I was invited over there to eat several times and at home, in the company of her housemates, she dispensed with the headscarf, letting me see what would in a stricter time and place, be reserved fully for her own family and husband. I’d gotten to know her with it on all the time, and had grown to know and respect her as a person that way. When she took it off, you could see just how beautiful she was underneath. Her natural beauty would have made her a heartbreaker back home, and that was when I truly realised the reasons for covering it all up outside. Maybe we men really do just see a pretty face and a hairstyle. Maybe. It could have just been she was really pretty and it blinded me all the same. Either way. I can’t say too much for sure, but yeah – probably for the best I was on my way.

The last night I was in town there was a going-away party for someone, so there was a large gathering, and it was good to have all the people I’d met in one place to say goodbye to, even if it wasn’t really for my benefit. The weekend I had stayed for had been a bit strange, with rumours floating around all week about a giant crocodile leading everyone to go looking for it. We indeed went out on a search for information and eventually saw in a newspaper t hat it had been caught and taken to Medan, ending any adventure we might have.

It was all a lot to take in and think about, and I could have stayed longer if I’d wanted, but it was odd enough already that I was there, and another week would have been outright strange. So I got a bus ticket and headed down the coast to Tapaktuan, where more beaches awaited. And a waterfall, so I heard, and it meant that I wouldn’t have to go all the way back to Medan in one go – after the first such trip, I was in no hurry to do anything of the sort. Tapaktuan it was, so I said goodbye to everyone and packed the mozzie net up and took to the road again.

It struck me as I walked around the small town that it was the first time I’d been on the road in Indonesia by myself – Veronika, or someone appointed by her had always been there with me. It was without apprehension, indeed, with a spring in my step I left the hotel in Tapaktuan to find the treasures it held, all without asking directions or anything, and joy as I felt that undeniable rush of being on the road. The road is life, and somewhere unexplored is undeniable.

I was walking, it transpired, the wrong way. A couple of times I attempted communications but to no avail. Eventually, on the edge of town, a guy on a motorbike stopped to talk and he took me on his bike, and we went to where I thought the beach was. I was wrong, but it was still ok, because he took me to the waterfall. I was more than a little paranoid, not just because he looked a bit strange and there were two teenagers follow with machetes – in hindsight, I should have bolted like a rabbit – but it was all cool, and he took me to the waterfall. There was a pool to swim in and it was a pleasant little place indeed. Later I would find out this was not the famous waterfall, but a nice place is a nice place. I could sleep easy even knowing I hadn’t found the right place because surely I’d made it somewhere few backpackers stumble over. So there.

I got a ride back to my hotel and left with an unclear message. Would he come back to show me somewhere else? Did he expect something? Did he really have my name totally wrong? These things and more would have to wait as I walked the other way down the road in hope of some sand and waves. I did indeed find some, and a nice plate of noodles, and another sunset. I didn’t swim there and the sand was pretty rocky. A reef just off the coast meant the breakers were a way off, so it all about the pretty scenery. And noodles. It later turned out that this wasn’t the famous beach, but I cared not a lot, because I still found a beach and a waterfall in Tapaktuan, and that’s why I went there.

The next day was me back at the crazy races. One bus to Subusalam, where I caused a scene by being the only white guy to hang out in probably forever, and another to Berastagi, where the girl sitting next to me crept closer and closer and eventually used me like a blanket – slash – pillow. After the no-hugging rules of Aceh, I was happy to have someone to hold onto like that, although it was a little weird given I didn’t know even her name or what she was trying to do. I asked people about it later and they all said the same thing, that it was really odd and I had just happened to meet an overly-friendly local who took her chance to cuddle up to a good-looking white boy. Spluttering in embarrassment at the ‘good-looking’ part, all I could do was marvel. And curse my inability to not speak more than a handful of Indonesian, least of all I see if she wanted to hang out some more. She was cute, after all. Somehow innocent and yet somehow a little lascivious, that bus ride was. On top of that I got to see the scenery of the Sumatran interior from pretty much coast-to-coast in a day, the same scene I had missed out on on the way over. It was incredible, so wide and green, every hill crest bringing with it a panorama of jungle, or plantation, and rolling hills as far as the horizon. Green, life, green like I’d never seen before. The wet season was just wrapping up, so this was possibly as colourful as it was going to get. Good thing, because any greener and my eyes would have been hurting. Hurting, I tell you. The hills roll on and on into mountains, volcanoes in fact, as Aceh and North Sumatra share in the same area no less than four of the biggest in Indonesia, and this is a country with a lot of volcanoes. It was volcanoes I was heading for next, because Berastagi, where I disembarked is a painfully dirty, painfully typical Indonesian town on the road, and if it weren’t for the two giants sitting either side of said road, no-one would bother getting off the bus. Sibayak is the easier to get to of the pair, and easy is right. There’s a paved road most of the way up, a point from where all you need to do is scramble about half an hour to get to the top.

But I get ahead of myself. The bus disengorged me into the darkness, so finding my target was a little tricky. I say bus, but for the record it had been all Kijiang since Meulaboh, and the guest house I was aiming for should have been right close by. My wandering took me to some even darker streets and then I went back the way I’d come, only to find I’d almost exactly been dropped right at the gate. Duh. Inside I found a very friendly family-run establishment and a big, cheap room that could have been better sealed from the elements. Not to complain about it, for the price? Such is the tale oft-repeated in these parts. There was one other foreign couple staying there, and the guy was a nice Dutchman, with curly red hair that made him look a little like a hamburger selling clown of repute. He was up for tackling the volcano in the morning, but his girlfriend was apparently not so hot on the idea. I elected to give it a swing on my own, and got some food then headed to bed.

I didn’t get going as early as I might have liked but I still made it to the entrance and onto the road heading up, then down, then up again in good time. I ran into quite a few Indonesians coming down as I headed up, making me think I might have left my run too late, but I was OK. The sight of me coming the other way, bouncing around and singing over my headphones, must have been one to remember.

The top had a genuine caldera and lots of genuine gas vents. It all smelled like rotten egg farts. It was more than allegedly active, it was downright grumpy. All the water on the ground was green from the sulphur and the rocks around the vents were all fluorescent yellow. It looked like it had been spray painted deliberately, until you realise that no-one could possibly get there to do something so menial. I scrambled around the crater-shaped crater, totally happy it looked and smelled like a real volcano ought to, and found a nice high point to sit and eat lunch. The clouds had rolled in and obscured the view somewhat, but there was just enough room as they floated around to get a good glimpse of the valley below. It was almost disgustingly picturesque. All that was left to do was walk back down the way I’d come. A turn off at the bottom took me past a pack of stray dogs, who had colonised part of the road, and the under-construction geothermal power plant, to the hot springs. There I had a nice long soak in the hot water and made friends with the local family also taking advantage of the hot waters. Not for the first time I made some people genuinely shocked that I was still unmarried and without children at the ripe old age of twenty five. Then, all I had left to do was get the oplet back to town and lie about for a few hours, and then feed myself.

Berastagi behind me, and with no desire to hire a local guide to take me up the other volcano (dare I say, seen one active, gas spewing volcano, seen them all?) I jumped a bus heading to Medan and stayed there long enough to get a bus out of there . Bukit Lawang (“Lawang Hill” for the sticklers out there) would be the arse end of nowhere if there wasn’t an Oran Utang rehabilitation centre there. A small town on the edge of a massive national park, it won a kind of lottery when it got the nod for the primate palace, and has been a high point on the Sumatra stumble since way back. Watching the Orang Utangs, sadly endangered, is an activity both locals and visitors can enjoy with equal joy, but during the week it seems to be mostly tourists who show up to the daily feeding sessions to see the giant orange furred creatures show up to swing around and cop a free feed. The town is perched on either bank of the Bohorok River, which in 2003 flooded and wiped out 95% percent of the buildings. Caused by illegal flooding making the area unstable, it was big enough and in a notable enough area to attract international attention in the form of aid money. Locals talk about the flood without hesitation but are all equally mystified as to where all the cash went, seeing as they all had to rebuild their homes and businesses with their own hands, time and money. I later heard that locals were even charged 36 million Rupiah (almost four thousand American) for reconstructed homes that cost no more than half that to build; deaths were compensated to the tune of three million Rupiah – a slap in the face to the bereaved. But this is Indonesia, and life goes on.