travel diary — day 290

In computers & internet, travel on 25 December 2009 tagged 85mm, american psycho, atm, banana pancake, beer, book, breakfast, bret eaton elis, bukit lawang, burma, burmese refugee, bus, camera, chinatown, christina, dinner, email, embassy official, f1.8, ferry, flight, food, georgetown, hindu temple, hotel, indian visa, indonesia, labyrinth, lake, lens, linux, lunch, mail, malaysia, mcdonalds, medan, minibus, money, myanmar, myanmar embassy, nikon, orangutan rehabilitation centre, parapat, passport, petronas twin towers, photographs, post office, rain, reggae bar, street cafe, taxi, terminal, the beach, ticket, tourist, travel, tshirt, tuk tu, united nations refugee status, visa, waiter, wifi with no comments

day 286 — being on the lake made me feel lazy (well, lazier than usual) and i decided to stay and do some read­ing. i sold my copy of ‘the beach’ (which was actu­ally very, very good) and snagged a copy of ‘amer­ican psy­cho’ by bret eaton elis. i’ve read it before, but it was actu­ally good to read it again.

after lunch i checked my email and walked around town. i bought a bus ticket to medan, a very cheap tshirt and returned to the hotel for din­ner. i had a few beers with a finnish tour­ist, packed and slept.

day 287 — i had a fant­astic banana pan­cake for break­fast and jumped on the ferry across the other side of the lake to par­apat. i got on a minibus which raced up the high­way to medan.

i reached town and headed to the bus ter­minal. my des­tin­a­tion was bukit lawang, where there’s an oran­gutan rehab­il­it­a­tion centre. when i got to the bus ter­minal i was told that i needed to go to a dif­fer­ent ter­minal. i hadn’t gone to the wrong ter­minal, i just hadn’t real­ised that after 3pm there are no more buses from that par­tic­u­lar ter­minal … stu­pid fuck­ing bus ter­min­als. what bizarre system.

i finally found a minibus but encountered a second prob­lem — i had no money. there was no atm any­where near the bus ter­minal (the nearest one was 5km away, in town). i had barely enough to cover the bus trip but i knew that there were no atms where i was headed — buket lawang was a small town with no banks.

i gave up. i’d had enough of buses and bull­shit trans­port prob­lems in indonesia.i got into a local bus and rode into the city centre. i looked around at the lim­ited hotel options, which were crap, and man­aged to find a nice hotel (which had just opened) not too far away.

my next pri­or­ity was food and an exit strategy. i had decided to leave indone­sia and make for malay­sia. i began look­ing for ferry ticket to get to geor­getown on the malay­sian pen­in­su­lar. i had no luck and dis­covered that the sched­ule had been changed. instead of daily fer­ries, they were only 3 times a week. the next one wasn’t for 2 more days. screw that! i checked my email, set my alarm and went to bed.

day 288 — i got a taxi to the air­port early in the morn­ing and, des­pite checkins being closed, talked my way onto a flight to kuala lum­pur. i had break­fast on the plane and when we reached kl i jumped on the bus into town.

i found myself in chin­atown. i looked around and found a hotel next to a cool reg­gae bar. i had lunch there, checked email and walked around chin­atown. then i got a taxi to a big shop­ping mall (B&B i think) where i got the nikon 85mm f1.8 that i’d been lust­ing for. i didn’t get a good price, but i didn’t care.

i returned to chin­atown keen to put the lens through its paces. i took some pho­tos and found a cool little hindu temple. des­pite being small, the temple was actu­ally the main hindu temple in malaysia.

in the even­ing i went to a street café for din­ner. i dis­covered that all the waiters there were burmese refugees … one of them even showed me his united nations refugee status card. pretty cool. we talked for a while and i told them that i’d been to burma. we had a great con­ver­sa­tion about it.

back in my hotel i figured out that the wifi from the reg­gae bar (next door) worked in my hotel room. sweet! i stayed up all night chat­ting online. i also tried to update my linux, which broke the install­a­tion, mak­ing me curse and swear a lot. i decided to fix it in the morning.

day 289 — i rein­stalled linux and headed to the myan­mar embassy across town. the asshole embassy worker was so dif­fi­cult. he kept say­ing that i’m a cam­era­man (because of my nikon) and that i can’t go to myan­mar because i’d changed my pass­port but didn’t have a copy of the old pass­port. the guy was being such a douche. even­tu­ally he let me sub­mit my pass­port and i paid the extra to get the visa in one day. i also had to get pho­to­graphs, which for­tu­nately, were avail­able in the embassy.

i walked an hour across town back to my hotel. i walked past the fam­ous pet­ro­nas twin towers which used to be the tallest build­ings in the world. i relaxed for a while, avoid­ing the heat of the day, and walked back to the embassy. i left early and i was very glad that i did. it star­ted pour­ing rain about half way there and i was stuck at a mcdon­alds for 30 minutes while i waited for the deluge to sub­side. i actu­ally wasn’t far from the embassy and debated get­ting a taxi the rest of the way … but for­tu­nately the rain stopped and i walked.

when i got to the myan­mar embassy i was told (by the same embassy asshole) that i “maybe” couldn’t get my pass­port back today. it “maybe” will take one week. i was angry, but of course, it’s impossible to get angry at an embassy offi­cial who is hold­ing your pass­port. then he said that he could get my pass­port if i give him some­thing. he wanted money. i’d already paid $45 for the visa, but he wanted a “tip”.

it cost me an extra $20 and i got my pass­port. mother­fucker!! i was pretty angry and stomped for a while back towards town. but my spir­its lif­ted quickly. it was pretty funny in ret­ro­spect and i had my visa to myan­mar. $65 was still less than i’d paid for visas to other coun­tries (india and bangladesh), so i was in good spir­its by the time i got back to chinatown.

i had din­ner at the same res­taur­ant so that i could tell the burmese guys about the black­mail­ing embassy bas­tard. they agreed that he was an ass.

day 290 — in the morn­ing i went to the post office to mail my extra lens to korea. on the way i bought christina a birth­day present and included it in the pack­age. the post office was a freak­ing labyrinth and it took me 15 minutes to find the inter­na­tional par­cel sec­tion. i sent the pack­age off and headed back into town. on the way i found an indian visa office and dis­covered (which i had already sus­pec­ted) that it would take five days to get the visa. i decided that i couldn’t get a visa in malay­sia because i didn’t want to wait that long. i decided to take a risk on get­ting the visa in myanmar.

i returned to the hotel, had a short sleep, and walked to the travel agent. i didn’t get a ticket, real­ising that the sched­ules were really retarded. i had din­ner and went back to the hotel.

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