Disappearing For A Day Or So

Thursday, November 1. It's morning. We had breakfast. Now we're packing. We'll leave our stuff in the lobby long enough to go to a store and get snacks for our almost full-day train ride from here to Bangkok. Grab snacks, grab luggage, walk five minutes to the ferry, and pay 30¢ for the ride across the bay to the train station. We have sleeper accommodations, so we should arrive in Bangkok rested and ready for a quick look around. More here in a day or so.

Someone wrote to ask about weather. Always very hot, always humid, sometimes rainy. Just what we expected.

Penang Plus Some Old News

Wednesday, October 31. What a difference a one hour plane ride makes. Last night's quick, prop flight from Indonesia to this Malaysian resort island of Penang took us to a different world. It's a very interesting and diverse place. The Malaysians here seem heavily influenced by the Brits who grabbed control of the area way back, and the Chinese who were imported in huge numbers to do the work. A large number of Indians are here as well. Now that we've walked for hours I've decided it reminds me of both Miami and London. The fact that the British ran the show for so long explains city names like George Town and Butterworth.

We're here because we really want to take a famous train that runs between Singapore and Bangkok. We will catch it tomorrow and travel overnight to Bangkok. On that topic - It costs about $30 for a taxi from our hotel in George Town to Butterworth on the mainland where the train station is. But if you ask enough questions, you find out you can walk 5 minutes, get on a ferry, cross the bay and dock at the station for 30¢. And it takes 15 fewer minutes.

A couple of posts from earlier in our journey were written but never showed up at this blogspot. The highlights of what you missed: 1) On all three of the Delta flights coming here Marty was bumped up to Business Class. But when we had to fly China Air for the final leg, he had to sit in coach with me. He shook my hand and introduced himself. 2) However, I was allowed to join him in the Delta Clubs in each of the Delta airports. Very nice to be able to rest, eat, pee and wait in comfort. 3) We observed a fistfight between our bus driver and a woman passenger soon after arriving in Sumatra. I'll reconstruct what I wrote about that and post it here when we get back. 4) We are NOT roughing it, except sometimes. That's our room - second floor, just to the right of the palm tree. It looks out on the Indian Ocean.

Glued To CNN

Tuesday, October 30. We spent the first part of this day glued to our room's TV watching CNN report on the storm. Marty has a co-op on 24th Street on Manhattan and learned on TV that there's no electricity below 39th. His place is dark.

Once we pulled ourselves away from CNN, we wandered around in our section of Medan. The shopping mall photo with this post tells the story of the modernization of the city. It's not entirely a good story in a city now choked with pollution and traffic, each vehicle fighting for an extra inch of space on crumbling city streets.

At 4pm we headed to the Medan Airport for a one-hour flight to Penang in Malaysia. Arriving in Penang is like arriving on any of the world's fully developed resort islands. Wide boulevards, massive condo buildings, clean, orderly, sea views, and lots of light after dark. A real shocker after Sumatra. For the next two nights we are at the restored E & O Hotel (in the British Colonial days it was called the Eastern & Oriental) in George Town (a World Heritage site) on Penang. We are very, very comfortable, as you can see.

Touring The Countryside

Monday, October 29. A Retraction: The roads are not as crappy as I thought, then claimed in an earlier post.

We spent today on a day trip to villages in a circle, starting where we are in Medan and ending back here. Think of it as a country drive. Uniformly good roads, but with lots of traffic.

First stop was Berastagi, two hours from Medan and way, way up in the hills. Beautiful country, mostly agricultural. Next was Lingga, best known and most visited village in the Karo Highlands. Interesting traditional Sumatran homes against a backdrop of volcanoes. We were surprised by the next village - Dokan. It was loaded with traditional houses. More of them and in better shape than those in Linnga. Yet Lingga is treated better in the guidebooks. Why? Better Public Relations is my guess.

I have no idea how many photos this app will allow me to upload, or how they're arranged. So here's what I HOPE shows up. A photo of Marty's plate - heaping with Indonesian breakfast and he went back for more. A photo of my plate and I only went back for fruit. Then photos of a flower market, a dried fish stall, a chicken being cooked with a blowtorch, some traditional houses, and the hard way to wash clothes.

Please, Shoot Me.

Sunday, October 28. If any of you ever hear me say I want to take a 7-hour jungle trek, you have my permission to shoot me. It was the physically hardest thing I've ever tried to do in my life. At one point Marty took my pulse - 120! It came right down, but even so. It was very dramatic, powerful, to observe orangutans in the jungle. We saw monkeys, turtles and peacocks too.
But in order to see all that you really do have to walk into the jungle here. I'll try to capture the experience in two sentences - We walked straight up and then straight down trails so slick with mud the trails might just as well been covered in grease. No switchbacks.

There were four of us. A guide - no one is allowed in the sanctuary without a licensed guide - me, Marty and a wonderful youngish Spanish man named Pere Puic. (Our picture is included with this post.) When he saw I was in trouble, he put my big water bottle in his backpack. Later, after breaking my fall when my feet simply flew out from under me, he put every worldly possession I was carrying in the bag. Even with that help, I fell twice more. Worth it? I'm not sure. But the orangutans were unforgettable.

Orangutans And Public Relations

Saturday, October 27. Our objective today is to get to a small city north of Medan, Bukit Lawang. Near there is a famous Orangutan sanctuary we'll visit on Sunday. It's one of the few places in the world where you can easily see them in the wild.

Here's the problem. From Padang to Bukit Lawang is 24 hours by bus. Or, a one-hour flight to Medan plus 2-3 hours by car. Twenty four hours versus maybe four? We chose to fly, but on an airline that crashes about one out of every ten flights, so it was a cheap ticket. But we made it and we're in the car on the way to Bukit Lawang as I write this.

We spent much of today talking about Public Relations. Marty, who is an expert on planets, stars and galaxies, asked me if I knew what the largest planet is. I said, "Sure, Mars." He said it's Jupiter, and he wondered why I didn't know that. I told him it's because Mars has the better PR Department. They work hard to keep Mars in the news. Jupiter's PR staff is on flex time, and some are allowed to work from home, knocking off early each day to watch Judge Judy and Dr. Oz. Pluto's PR was so bad Pluto got kicked out of the Planetary Country Club.

Same thing with oceans. Marty can quote the exact square miles for each of the world's oceans. The Pacific is way, way larger than the Atlantic, yet which gets the best press? The Atlantic - better PR. The Arctic Ocean is almost unknown. That's because it has a one person department, the recently-divorced aunt of one of the administrators. She needed a job

It's now 10pm. We're at the Ecolodge - sort of a green/hippie hotel and lodge - near the Orangutan Sanctuary in Bukit Lawang. It's in a jungle. Arrived at about eight, ate dinner and now we're in our room. There's an honest to god orangutan outside our window making orangutan grunts. Accompanying the grunts is a cacophony of jungle sounds. It's a thrilling experience for me. Marty would call the front desk and tell them he can't sleep, but there's no phone in the room. Tomorrow we spend most of the day in the sanctuary. Videos of this place - searched, I suppose, under Bukit Lawang - may be on YouTube.

The Bukitinniggi Market

Saturday, October 27. Putting these posts and photos up from my iPhone is clumsy at best. But I'm going to try and jam in a bunch of photos taken this morning at the massive open market here. No idea how many will actually post. If you know Cincinnati's Findlay Market, think that market times 3,000 and you'll get a sense for its size and variety. These photos are just a tiny sample. One will be of a stall that sells breakfast.

Corrections, Additions and Zombies

Friday, October 24, second post today. These travel updates have gotten out of sequence. That's why I'm now dating them.

Corrections: There are conflicting opinions here about the name of the holiday today in Indonesia, that it's a holiday to celebrate the end of the holidays that celebrate the end of Ramadan. That's not what I said in my earlier post today. Two people here speak with seeming authority. I guess if I really cared, I'd Google it. Another correction - I also said I couldn't add photos through my phone's blog app. I can.

If these mistakes have upset you, there is a full money back guarantee for readers of this blog. (I lifted that line from a Tim Fischer email he just sent me.)

Additions: Gonna try to add more than one photo to this post.

Zombies: The Internet is buzzing with information about the coming Zombie Apocalypse. Google the term and you'll find many websites offering weapons and supplies about the Apocalypse. Even Costco sells a survival kit. My son Joe told me about this and says using the word Zombies is just code for liberals or blacks or jews or gays or whatever is the fright du jour.

Slaughter On Ten Avenues

Friday, October 26. A national two-day holiday started today here in Indonesia. We were told by an American couple at breakfast that it's called Idul Fitri, a holiday celebration marking the end of Ramadan. So when we went out to explore the center of Bukittinggi, especially the famous market here, we found everything closed. That was disappointing. There's wasn't even traffic on the streets. And that was weird considering how frantic traffic is almost around the clock.

A few words about photos in this blog. Rather, the lack of them. I'm posting as often as I can but only from an app on my iPhone. Not at the Google Blogspot site on the web. Indonesia blocks lots of sites, perhaps the blogsite is another one. That's a whole other story. The app lets me post text and headlines, that's it. I'll edit in photos when we return.

Back to today. Marty lined up a nice guy to drive us around. We visited all the notable sites in the vicinity. But some, that usually allow people to enter, were closed. That didn't spoil our day, because in making a giant circuit around Bukittinggi we got to see a slice of Indonesian life and countryside that we'd miss any other way. But there was one thing I didn't need to see on our circuit. For some reason, on this holiday, animals are slaughtered in public, seemingly everywhere. Water buffalo, cows, goats, and god knows what else. I mean kill the animals in front of a crowd, then do all the butchering necessary for the watchers to take home and eat the meat. I thought I'd puke. Not Marty. He stopped the car. Practically jumped out while it was still moving and got as close as possible to get the best possible photos.

We're off now to dinner. I'm eating vegetarian.

A Very Interesting Day.

Thursday, October 25. It's morning and Marty's out improvising. He's trying to fly to Padang, our next stop. Padang on the Indian Ocean puts us only two hours away from Bukittinggi, Goggle it, should be a highlight - a full stop to sightsee up close.

The problem is this - Padang is a ten-hour bus ride from here unless he can find for a way for us to fly there. A third choice is to scrounge up a driver. I'm in the hotel writing this while Marty's out doing the hard organizational work. It's not lost on us that this is not really hard, close-to-the-ground travel. If we don't want to endure hugely long rides, we can always resort to flights and drivers.

Marty's back. No flights. No busses. It's a national holiday tomorrow and everything is booked. But he found a driver. We're off on a 12 hour drive direct to Bukittinggi!

We are now in the car and this has to be the smoothest, safest driver Marty and I have ever experienced. In most emerging nations traffic is controlled chaos and insanity. Controlled in the sense that everyone understands how the game is played. But it's incomprehensible to us Westerners. Don't believe me? Look up traffic in India on You Tube. This guy's car is fueled by gas, not testosterone.

We just stopped at Muara Jambi, Sumatra's most important historical site for Hindu and Buddhist temples and temple remains, some dating back 1,000 years. Fast visit. Back on the road now. We shouldn't have gone there, as important as the place is. We were told it's right in the way. It wasn't. An hour and a half out of the the way. This means we get to Bukittinggi around midnight.

It's now 3pm here. Our car is stopped in line, but there's no clue how long the line is or why. Just found out why from a biker coming in the opposite direction - construction ahead. Bikes are cutting through. If I had to guess the ratio of motorcycles, scooters and motorbikes to cars and trucks in Indonesia, I'd guess four two wheelers for every car or truck. At every big city traffic light they weave and push to the front, then fly off like a swarm of bees. In moving traffic on the highways they dart in and out often faster than the vehicles, yet these are almost all low-powered, low-displacement bikes. The highways are crappy at best. Never more than two lanes, at least on Sumatra so far.

We're here! It's 1:30 am and we just checked in to The Hills Hotel. Tired and happy. It was a fascinating 13-hour ride.

Don't Ask Why.

Written on Tuesday, October 23. Got up at 6am to have breakfast at our very nice $40 hotel before our ten- hour train ride north. The Indonesian breakfast was rice, vegetables, chicken, eggs, noodle soup, toast. More like a lunch for us. No sweets. Got to the hot, sweaty, jammed train station at 7:30 to buy tickets for the 8:30 train. We're in an air conditioned car, and I'm writing notes as we go through the day. We're not in a first class car, just an economy car but with a/c. We paid $8.50 for this ten-hour cool ride, extremely cheap. Same car, but no a/c, crowded and extremely hot is $1.50. I try to sell the idea that we travel with the locals, and we do. But in this case we're traveling with the better off locals, at least in this car.

We're moving - very slowly - through Sumatra countryside. Past some small, dusty towns, and fields being farmed probably in the same way they've been for centuries. Particularly true, I'm guessing, in the many rice fields we see. Even workers wearing coolie hats as they work bent over.

The ten hour train ride turned into almost thirteen by the time we got to Palembang. That's it for today. It's late. Time to sleep, because we travel again tomorrow. We've been on the move with no stops except to sleep since Saturday morning. And tomorrow is yet another travel day. Don't ask.

This May Work

It's been impossible to post at this blog for days. But this work-around may get the job done.

Wednesday, October 24. We are in some sort of very small mini van headed to the city of Jambi. The drive from Palembang, where we now are, to Jambi is 6 hours. No idea if we go in this vehicle or transfer to a larger vehicle.

Now we know. We've been transferred to a larger and more comfortable van. Three rows of seats with plenty of leg room. While waiting for this van to fill, Marty began to improvise using advice from someone he met. To save ourselves from another 10 hour bus ride and a travel day, he wants to fly to Medan from Jambi. We'd fly late in the afternoon tomorrow, so we can visit Muara Jambi, Sumatra's most important historical religious site, in the morning. Of course, that plan could change at any moment.

We're now in Jambi, but not at the hotel. Instead we're waiting in a long gas line at a station. In fact, the ass end of this van is hanging out into the street blocking traffic. This'll take a half hour at least. On the bright side, it's 4:30 and this is the first time we've arrived at a city in daylight. We can actually watch everyday street life while we wait. Since there is virtually no light at night in what are now called emerging nations, you have no idea except for traffic if you're in a large city, small or medium. Of course there are lights, but a bare minimum are kept on. The darkness is very weird to experience, especially when you wake up and see there can be a population of over a million around you.

OK, we're checked in to the Hotel Abadi. It's in an interesting part of town. We're going to scope it out quickly before it's in total darkness.

Can't Post

Having problems posting. Managed a work-around to get this up. We are well and exhausted.

Not Exactly Roughing It, Yet.

We are sitting in the very, very nice Delta Sky Club at the Tokyo airport. Marty currently has a balance of 450,000 Delta Frequent Flier Miles after just burning off 300,000 of them. That gets him (and me) into these clubs. No waiting at the gate. And of course he got bumped up to Business Class for our 11-1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Oh yeah, he got bumped up for the flight from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, too. My only consolation is that we both arrived at our destinations at the same time. In about an hour we catch another flight that'll take us to Taipei. We'll sleep a few hours at a hotel there, then catch a morning flight to Jakarta. That's where the real journey begins. 

I'm composing this on a Delta computer where I can control type fonts and sizes. When I compose on my iPhone, I can't. 

Almost Forgot.

We leave today. The core of our journey will be Sumatra, a place red hot with malaria and the mosquitos that cause it. We have our medication, pills we take every day and continue to take for a few days after we return. Marty called last night to go over a few things. He reminded me to bring mosquito spray. Good, because I forgot to pack it.

We leave Cincinnati at 9am. From here we fly to Los Angeles, then to Tokyo, then to Taipei where we sleep for a few hours, and finally on to Jakarta. So, we start on a Saturday morning and arrive there Monday afternoon. There's an 11 hour time difference. It's about 5:30am now in Cincinnati - 4:30pm in Jakarta - so travel time is a little less than it looks. But it's still a long journey.

Personal messages. I've gotten questions from a bunch of people asking why Bill Brinkmoeller's name was first on the mass email I sent out alerting people about this trip and this blog. He was first because I like him most.

We Just Got Warned

John and Joyce Gardner are volleyball-playing friends of mine. Their son Scott is a very experienced, improvisational traveler. Here's what he wrote to his father after learning what Marty and I are about to do. "Wait, have I met this person? Either way, I hope he realizes what he is in for. I haven't been to Sumatra but when I was in Yogyakarta last year I met a couple guys who had each done Sumatra overland and I got to hear their stories of 42-hour bus rides. Jakarta to Bangkok overland in two weeks is pretty crazy. Like something I would do. And that's not even considering the fact that the rainy season in Sumatra should be starting any day now."

The General Plan

In an earlier post here I mentioned that what Marty and I do is travel improvisationally, that is, make things up as we go with no reservations or transportation arranged in advance. But certain dates can't be missed, like getting to the airport for a flight home. So, some reservations must be made. 

Here's what we know in advance. We arrive in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital city of 10 million people, at 1pm on Monday, October 22nd. We will leave Cincinnati at 9am on Saturday and spend Saturday, Sunday and a chunk of Monday on various flights as we work our way to Indonesia. From Jakarta we'll improvise on local buses starting at the southern tip of Sumatra, the largest of the Indonesian islands and the sixth largest island in the world, to its northern tip. That journey is the core of our trip. I'll report here as we travel. 

Once we get to Medan at Sumatra's northern tip, we'll jump to Penang in Malaysia, where we'll spend a night - reservations there have been made - and then train from that area to Bangkok for a flight home. It was crucial that we have train reservations for that overnight journey, and we do. 

Marty organized everything himself, using the internet, even getting a friend in Thailand to go to a train station to buy our train tickets so we won't miss the flight home. 

Trip Summary: Cincinnati to Jakarta; Jakarta north throughout Sumatra to Medan; Medan to Penang; Penang to Bangkok; Bangkok back to Cincinnati. 

What We're In For Weather-Wise

Lonely Planet spells it out: "Straddling the equator, Indonesia tends to have a fairly even climate year-round. Rather than four seasons, Indonesia has two –  wet and dry – and there are no extremes of winter and summer. In most parts of Indonesia the wet season falls between October and April, and the dry season between May and September."

Well, notice when we going? Wet season. I just checked the weather in Jakarta for the next four days. High of 95 every day, lows in the mid 70s. Scattered thunderstorms every day. Did we know that before deciding to go in October? Sure. Adds to the adventure. 

6pm Wednesday. Tickets!

I don't know how he does this. Marty has devoted most of today to finding the cheapest airline tickets, but with no or low sacrifices on our part. Remember, this is virtually last minute travel - we leave in two-and-a-half days. Most convenient for us is going in and out of Cincinnati on Delta. But round-trip flights were in the $3,300 - $3,500 range. At 6pm he called all torqued up because we will go in and out of here on Delta for $1,800. Leaving Saturday at 9am to Los Angeles, to Tokyo, then to Taipei, where we'll sleep. Next day to Jakarta, where we'll try not to eat in any outdoor restaurants full of Europeans and Americans. We'll work our way from there up through Sumatra to Bangkok. Bangkok to Tokyo to JFK and back here on November 3rd. Amazing. My job in all of this remains the same - pick up the Malaria pills. Seems fair. 

5:25 pm Wednesday. No Tickets.

My friend Marty Fritzhand, one of the world's most experienced improvisational travelers, called me on Monday morning and said, "Let's go somewhere for a couple weeks. Like on Saturday." We're going. Improvisational travel means that he, sometimes with me trailing along way behind him carrying my backpack and his, arrive in remote parts of emerging (what used to be called third-world) nations with a sketchy plan, no reservations and a Lonely Planet Guidebook. In the backpacks are two extra shirts and a change of underwear. That's pretty much it. The basic plan on Monday was a trip to Indonesia - Bali, Java, Sumatra. But as I write this, I have no real idea where we're going. In fact, we don't have airline tickets for a Saturday flight, but an hour ago he told me not to worry about it. So I won't. I'll do my part and pick up our Malaria pills. 

A little more about Marty. There is virtually no area in the moderate and warm weather world he has not been. Sometimes visiting a place multiple times, wringing more adventure out of it with each subsequent visit. For example, he and I were in India four years ago. It was his 12th visit there. That number is now seventeen. We went to an obscure country in West Africa once, Burkino Faso. Heard of it I don't think so. He'd been there before. 

When I know more about where we're going and what we'll do, it'll be posted here.