Lockers on the Loose World Trip

It's a shame that the "Superior Executive" night bus from Bukittinggi to Parapat didn't come with the comfort implied in its name. Whilst there were only three seats across the bus, so that in theory there was more room than we were accustomed to, seats could be reclined to an almost horizontal position so that the space immediately in front of each passenger's legs was drastically diminished. After a few customary random stops, the bus also acquired boxes, big bags and pieces of wood which were jammed into the aisle. The bus driver drove like a maniac so that our bodies and the lose objects were flung from side to side as we descended the mountain roads. On top of this, it was extremely cold due to the air conditioning being on full blast (I had both my fleece on and a blanket over my legs), the lights above our seats didn't work, karaoke songs were played non-stop throughout the night and I discovered bugs crawling up the wall next to my head about half way into the journey. I think I slept a maximum of 2 hours on and off, having a pot noodle for dinner at some point in the middle of the night as I couldn't face the fish heads from the roadside stalls we stopped at. Neverthless, it seems to be that whenever we have an horrendous journey, we then arrive in paradise. It's as if we have to go through a degree of pain to appreciate and deserve the destination more. This was the case after travelling for some 16 hours from Bukittinggi to Lake Toba.

On the postcards which are sold there, it's stated that Lake Toba is the world's highest volcanic crater lake. In the middle of the lake is the island Samosir, which, according to the travelling bible, is a mass of land bigger than Singapore. Attached to Samosir is a blob of land with a town on which shares the same name as one of the modes of transport we had used throughout Asia: "Tuk Tuk". It was on this blob of land, an island in northern Sumatra, an island itself, where we spent four lovely days, surrounded by water and green hills. The scenery was wild but tranquil and reminded me somewhat of Scotland ... if it were not for the warm weather and women with towels on their heads. Our hotel was also perfect: a room for $8 with plenty of space, ensuite bathroom and balcony with tables and chairs overlooking the lake.

While Tuk Tuk is an idyllic place for worn-out travellers in need of a few days to recharge and gather enough energy to face another Indonesian bus journey, the locals have been suffering from the downturn in tourism since the late 1990s. Empty restaurants and guest houses abound and people sit on the steps of their properties just hoping that the few travellers who haven't been put off by the headlines documenting Sumatra's unfortunate history, will be enticed into their restaurant rather than the other thirty or so possibilities and pay what could only amount to a few dollars, even for a very indulgent meal. I really don't know how the people who live there can even buy the basics they need to live on. 

We got to know onw local, a lady called Ellie. Ellie begged us to eat in her restaurant on our first night. We sat on her balcony and were served a wonderful plate of homemade bread with guacamole dip followed by a chicken dish that wasn't on the menu (isn't it wonderful when someone takes away the difficulty of choosing your meal by asking, “shall I just prepare you something I think you will like”?). While we we sat enjoying the home cooked food, we began to hear people praying and then singing downstairs and worked out that Ellie was holding some kind of bible club in her living room/restaurant. In fact, by peering down the stairs we could see enough pairs of legs to indicate there must have been some 30 people in the room. Not wanting to interrupt the spirituality of the session by requesting the bill, we consequently got stuck on the veranda, listening to prayers and singing in Sumtran for over an hour. We eventually crept down the stairs when we thought the readings were coming to an end. Ellie apologised for forgetting we were up there and pleaded with us to return the following day when she would make us a larger amount of bread and even tastier guacamole. The next day, Nick got accosted when he walked by Ellie's place in the morning, listened to Ellie explain how she desperately needed tourists to visit her restaurant and ended up committing us to an evening meal there again. I wouldn't actually have minded going as the food had been great but the others were worried that she was going to preach to us, plus it was raining in the evening so we ended up eating in the hotel. I felt guilty about the fact that we hadn't gone so I went to her place on my own for breakfast the following morning where she sat with me and told me her story. In a (coco)nut shell, she had been asked to leave the property she had been in for years at the end of the 1990s. She had to pay for a new place to be decorated precisely at the time that tourism started to dwindle in Sumatra. She said the rent for her new place is about $400 a month. On top of that, she has to pay overheads and ingredients and only charges between $1 and $2 for meals. Now I haven't studied economics but something there just isn't right. She can go for days without a getting a single customer and has been praying to God for some tourists. She thought that her prayers had been answered when we went into her home/restaurant our first night in Tuk Tuk. Whilst we were chatting over breakfast, her neighbour arrived to lend her some money. She has been borrowing for a while off her so that she can pay the rent. She begged me to bring the others back for a meal so that she could pay back her neighbour some of the money she had borrowed. Again, I saw no harm in doing this as her food really was delicious but the others, understandably, also wanted to try other places and distribute the money we were spending between different restaurants. I did, however, succeed in convincing Nick, Sam and Robbie to go to Ellie's for Robbie and mine's last meal in Tuk Tuk. She was delighted to see us again and asked us to tell all our friends to visit Sumatra, the forgotten island. So, go everyone and pass on my regards to Ellie if you make it!

Shamelessly, alongside this relative poverty, Nick, Sam, Robbie and I spent one afternoon in Tuk Tuk consuming quite a lot of vodka and coke. It started out when the clouds came over Lake Toba and we decided to trade in lounging next to the lake for playing cards on Nick and Sam's balcony. We flipped between playing “Rummie” and “Yarnef” (our current favourite travelling card game) and only broke the party to go and eat and to buy “just one more small bottle of vodka” ... until they were sold out, after which we moved onto the big bottles. At about 3am (yes, we really got into the games), someone remembered that they had seen a sign for a “discotheque” so we set off in excitement to try to continue the party on the dance floor. Not surprisingly, given that there were only about another dozen tourists in the whole of Tuk Tuk and the town is half asleep at the best of times, the disco was closed. We walked back to our hotel disappointed and after a quick game of “how well do you know your travelling partner (questions and answers)” we called it a night as the vodka had all been drunken, the eyes were going and I'd accidentally smashed a glass which was a good a sign as any that the party was over. It seems like when we are not torturing ourselves with night bus journeys, we're depriving ourselves of sleep in some other way be it with night volcano descents or runaway drinking sessions. I'm sure such behaviour will change when I turn thirty.

Now I know I keep writing this about places, but I really could have stayed in Tuk Tuk longer as it is a truly stunning place and we didn't even have time to go and explore the island Samosir. I could have, that is, if I wasn't so excited and determined about seeing orangutans in the jungle before flying to Singapore ...