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.