Everthing everyone said about the terrible roads in Sumatra is true. They are pockmarked with potholes and huge craters, and the traffic tries to slalom between the holes and craters, regardless of what is coming in the opposite direction. At times the tarmac is missing from the road surface altogether, which slows the traffic to a crawl amidst clouds of billowing dust. Our minibus had doors that didn't shut properly; there was a half inch gap between the doors and the frame of the minibus. The engine cover was in front of the back seats warming up everyone's feet nicely and oil leaked from the dashboard onto the feet of passengers sitting in the front seats. The driver stopped for anyone who waved him down, until no more passengers could squeeze in. At this point people climbed onto the top and sat with our luggage on the roof rack, as the minibus careered round corners, potholes and obstacles in the road.
As we went further and further from the city of Medan with its endless sprawling suburbs, the villages grew smaller and smaller, always surrounded by the ubiquitous palm oil plantations that are spreading like a fast growing, green cancer, devouring the lush, tropical rain forests that once covered this beautiful island.
I was travelling with a young German couple, who I met in the airport in Medan. (The ferry from Penang to Sumatra went out of business due to the excessively cheap plane tickets everyone could buy in Penang, so, reluctantly, we flew from Penang to Medan, in Sumatra.) When we got on the bus a man from Bukit Lawang got into the front seat. He greeted us with a smile. It started to rain. Our luggage was on the roof. Eventually the driver climbed up and took it all down and stacked it inside. When the rain stopped he put it back on the roof again. The man from Bukit Lawang chatted to us, showing us photos of jungle trekking. "Here we go" I thought "He's going to take us to a guest house and pressurise us into paying loads of money to go trekking."
After several hours we came to Bukit Lawang bus station - a piece of rough ground where mini buses seemed to park more or less anywhere they liked. Our 'friend' from Bukit Lawang piled us into two motorbike rikshaws and jumped onto the back seat of one of the motorbikes. Sure enough when we arrived he took us across a wobbly, swinging bamboo bridge to a guest house, where he seemed to know everyone. The rooms were cheap so we checked in. Then he sat with us and started the hard sell. I walked away and left my new found friends to argue with him about prices and numbers of days hiking. He ran after me and asked "Do you want to do one day's trekking tomorrow? I can give shoes. What size your foot?"
"No thanks. I don't want to go trekking."
Bukit Lawang was presumably a tiny village by a river overshadowed by steep, forested mountains on the edge of a national park. then some years ago it became an obligatory stop off on the tourist trail. So bamboo huts and small tasteful guesthouses sprang up like mushrooms. Then, according to some people, tourism waned due to long haul flights no longer stopping in Sumatra, according to others this is the low season, because it's the rainy season. April is supposed to be high season, but I would have thought it would be too hot. Anyway for whatever reason tourists are very thin on the ground and most of the guest houses are empty. Hence the touts riding the buses to drag tourists to their guest houses and sign them up for expensive treks.
My room had a hole in the floor, mould on the walls and a hole in the mosquito net. I decided to look for something better. Many of the guest houses seemed to have no staff - maybe they had given up and gone to sleep in a back room - but I found a room with traditional woven bamboo walls, right on the river bank for £3. One of the young men who worked there came with me to fetch my luggage. He told me he was a flexible Muslim, meaning he drank alcohol and charmed the young female tourists into his bed whenever he could. "I want to marry western girl" he told me "but very difficult. They stay with me few days, then leave. But I try and try." Like many of the young Indonesian men aiming his sights at young western women, he kept his hair long. I'm getting a feeling of deja vue. Wasn't it like this in Bali thirty years ago?
This hotel is thriving. The rooms are beautiful, with private balconies looking out into rain forest. The is restaurant stylish with hand crafted furniture. They charge ten times what the other places round here charge and they have a continuous stream of guests!
What a relief to have left the city. On the last night in Penang, where ten of us were paying £2.50 each for a bed in the dormitory with one fan, it seemed to be hotter than ever. A slight breeze from the fan just reached the left side of my bed but not the right side, where mosquitoes were free to linger, waiting for a chance to home in on a piece of unprotected skin - usually my face - and launch an ariel attack. I tossed and turned, sweated, and turned some more. Eventually I got up and crept out to the terrace to read my book. People came and went along the corridoor constantly. Carl got up, got dressed and took his computer downstairs. Chinese voices rose up from the street below. It was one of those nights.
Here you get a whole room for £3 and apart from the occasional motorbike, no traffic. Just the deafening sound of crickets, followed by a thousand Japanese drummers on the roof, as torrential rain drums on the corrugated iron. Then a little later a band of shrieking monkeys running through the guest house compound. It's hot and very very humid but nights are not hot like in Penang.
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