travel diary — day 285

In travel on 25 December 2009 tagged angry, animals, beer, book, breakfast, bukittingi, bus, chess, company, cop, email, fight, hotel, indonesia, lake, laundry, markets, mosquito net, padang, parapat, passengers, police, police station, sleep, sumatra, taxi, tourist haven, tuk tuk, wifi, zoo with no comments

day 281 — today i spent the entire day on the bus. it was a long, bor­ing trip. i man­aged to get some sleep a few times and i wore ear plugs for most of the trip (to drown out the indo-pop that they insisted on play­ing at full volume). i talked to the bus driver and he assured me that the bus would reach padang at 11pm. that was four hours later than i was ori­gin­ally told. i grumbled about it to myself, but there was noth­ing else i could do. i was lucky to have a double seat to myself, so i made the most of it.

at 11pm we hadn’t arrived and the bus kept going. there were fewer and fewer pas­sen­gers, many get­ting off dur­ing stops.

day 282 — at 1am we reached our des­tin­a­tion. the bus stopped and every­one got off. i asked if this was padang and was told no, we were in bukit­tingi. i knew where bukit­tingi was, thanks to the lonely planet map, and real­ised that we’d gone at least two hours past padang.

i got angry at the bus com­pany and stomped off to find the police sta­tion. the bus com­pany was being beli­ger­ent and shit­ting me waaay too much. they’d refused to help and i told them to call the police. they just poin­ted down the street ‘that way to police’ … fuckers!

after walk­ing for about 15 minutes i real­ised i couldn’t see the police sta­tion, i wasn’t sure of the dir­ec­tion and i didn’t want to walk around bukit­tingi at 1am. i walked back and star­ted yelling at people. we were actu­ally at the bus company’s office, so they’d stayed there to sleep until the first run next morn­ing. they told me i could wait 5 hours for the next bus. i said no. i told them i wanted my money back and yelled some more. then they called a taxi, which i thought would take me to the police sta­tion. how­ever, they had decided that the taxi was to take me to padang (which i was sup­posed to pay for). i refused and yelled more. even­tu­ally they gave up and the taxi guy went to the police sta­tion and brought back two police officers with him.

we talked and the police were not very friendly. i told the cop that i wanted his name, which he scrawled down on the paper to try and make it illegible. he didn’t want to help and he didn’t want me know­ing his name to fol­low up with his super­i­ors. he asked what i wanted and i told them i wanted my money back. that’s all? he said … yes, i answered. then he asked me what i would do if i got my money, refer­ring to the fact that i was stuck at a bus sta­tion on the out­skirts of bukit­tingi, 2 hours drive from where i was sup­posed to be.

the cop was rude, so i told him he didn’t need to care what i did later. he said that was fine and after hey talked in indone­sian, and made some phone calls, i had my money back. the cop tried to shake my hand, which i rejec­ted cause he was an ass, and i walked out. i grabbed my bag and headed towards town.

the cops left and i walked away. half way down the road, the taxi driver stopped and asked if i wanted a lift. i real­ised it was quite far into town. i nego­ti­ated a ride and it was nearly 3am by the time i reached the main street. i walked around a few hotels, man­aged to find one that was open and crashed.

i woke up, had break­fast and checked out. the hotel was too expens­ive for my budget but had few choices at 3am. so i walked down the street and found a cheaper hotel. i put in some laun­dry, checked email, had lunch, read my book and relaxed. for din­ner i wandered around the street mar­kets that set up in the main street. after­wards it star­ted rain­ing, so i headed back to my room to update and backup files on the computer.

day 283 — i had break­fast and caught up on my chess games. then, i walked across town to find the bus stop so that i could get my ticket north. the walk was about 3km, but it felt good to stretch the legs. i walked back, look­ing around the mar­ket on the way.

it star­ted rain­ing, so i headed to a café with wifi and played chess. i lost a game due to a stu­pid mis­take, got angry and stomped off. i ended up at a store where i found some rope for my mos­quito net. i fin­ished my book and went to sleep.

day 284 — bukit­tingi has a zoo, which i decided to check out. it’s not very big, but it’s up the hill with a view over the town. i checked out the anim­als, includ­ing some birds which spoke indone­sian, and walked across the foot­bridge over the main street. it star­ted buck­et­ing down rain and i got drenched walk­ing home.

i made it back to the hotel, packed and checked out, had lunch and played chess (feel­ing like i’m in a bit of a slump). i got a cab to the bus sta­tion and got the overnight bus (which was 2 hours late) to parapat.

day 285 — i arrived in par­apat feel­ing tired from the bumpy ride and the com­plete lack of sleep. i headed to the har­bour and got the ferry across the lake. lake toba is a massive lake in north­ern sumatra. the lake is so big there’s an island in the middle. on the east coast is the tour­ist haven called tuk tuk.

i found a hotel and it didn’t take long for the local touts to start offer­ing me women.

i lazed around all after­noon, updat­ing my blog and drink­ing beer. i walked around the town in the even­ing and real­ised how small tuk tuk really was. i found an under­ground bar which was shit then found another bar (closer to my hotel) which was pretty good. i stayed quite a while, drink­ing local beer and talk­ing with the locals.

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