Around The World in a 60s Daze...: What's Sumatra With You?

What's Sumatra With You?

"The Wild One" at Lake Maninjau

Dear family and friends,

And so I carry on, from New Zealand, it was on to Malaysia, first Kuala Lumpur, and then Melaka (Malacca). There is little to be said about Kuala Lumpur other than it is just a great big, hot and polluted city. Melaka on the south west coast of Malaysia is much smaller and a lot easier to take. I spent about three days in each city, and as always, the noise, clamour, traffic, heat, and smells of Asian cities are a shock to my senses. Durians are being sold and eaten everywhere, and the pungent, slightly sweet, rotting smell of this popular fruit competes so well with the smell of open sewers. It’s great to back in SE Asia!

But there are also a couple of other notable things. I know I carped about the prices in New Zealand, but while there, I did look at the ‘Big Mac Index’ to see if it bears out my perception, and, to some extent, it does. (The index was developed by the Economist magazine and, according to them, ‘is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries’) The index suggests the Kiwi dollar is overvalued about 5%; the Canadian dollar undervalued some 15%. That is, based on the index, New Zealand is a total of 20% more expensive than Canada. Even more noticeable to me though, was how cheap Malaysia is. By the index it is a full 60% cheaper than New Zealand. But enough of the dismal science; if you are interested in the index, check it out at

http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/index.cfm.

The second interesting thing is how much English is used in Malaysia. I was here just two years ago and it seemed there was a lot in use then. But now it seems like everyone in Kuala Lumpur and Melaka speaks it. It is almost like being in Holland. A recent Newsweek article claims that by the end of this decade there will be 3 billion people in the world who speak English, with native speakers being outnumbered 3 to 1 by those who speak it as a second language. Already more people in Asia speak English than the combined populations of the USA, Canada, and England.

From Melaka I caught the ferry to Dumai in Sumatra. Just before boarding, I exchanged most of my remaining Malaysian Ringits, just under $100Cdn, into Indonesian Rupiahs. As I walked away, counting my new currency, I realized I had been given too much. One million too much. I wasn’t even in the country yet and I was already a millionaire! Of course I gave it back. Anyone raised by my Mom wouldn’t even consider keeping it. And besides, it was only worth about $125.

No place suffered more horribly from the recent tsunami than Sumatra, the final count of dead and missing is apt to be 250,000 people. I have very mixed feelings about coming here, in spite of the fact that the area I will be going to is more than 800 km from the devastated Aceh coast. Even had I wanted to go to Aceh, much of Aceh Province has been basically out of bounds for tourists for a number of years due to an ongoing separatist rebellion. As is well known, the governments of the affected countries are asking tourists to return, and I am sure that is the best thing for those areas. Yet I can’t help feeling somewhat odd coming here.

Dumai is one of only two marine entry points on Sumatra where one can obtain an Indonesian visa upon arrival. The ferry from Melaka, which can only accommodate passengers, some two hundred odd, takes three hours to cross the Melaka Straits and is really quite boring.

The Customs and Immigration office in Dumai is basic, just a couple of unmarked, very small rooms off the main waiting room in a large ramshackle building which is threatening to fall down. As ever at borders in Asia, the place is chaos, people coming, people going, some sitting and waiting, there are hawkers milling around with their wares while ‘taksi’ drivers scramble to pick up fares into town. On the other hand, the Immigration officers were casual as hell and weren’t to be rushed. Some were having their lunch, and moreover, as it was Sunday, we had to wait for a bank representative to come and collect my $25US visa fee (apparently customs and immigration can’t be trusted to do this, hence Indonesian banks are given the task).

Minibus bound for Bukittinggi

But before long I was away in a minibus for the four hour drive to Pekanbaru. This province, Riau, is one of Indonesia’s wealthiest, largely due to oil having been discovered here by Americans just before World War II. The highway was generally grim and the scenery uninspiring. The countryside is quite flat, pumping jacks dotted about, and it appears that all the native jungle was clear-cut years ago, only to be replaced by desperately ugly palm oil plantations. My guidebook describes Pekanbaru as a ‘bustling modern city, and Indonesia’s oil capital’. Whatever. It looked very gritty to me with no evidence that the oil bonanza had trickled down to the locals. But I was only to stay one night before heading out the next morning on another minibus for Bukittinggi in Western Sumatra.

As I keep writing in these letters home, I usually prefer to ride on local bus transportation rather than to fly, but I try to be very selective in choosing my seat on a bus. I try to consider which side might offer the best view, I am mindful of the shady side, and I definitely try to get a window seat, one without the frame right in my view. In a minibus, I absolutely target the window seat beside the driver. Locally it is called “shay shay” (I am not sure of the spelling), and it is certainly the best. I willingly pay extra for it. On the Dumai to Pekanbaru leg I had arranged to have the shay shay seat, paying almost double the normal fare. Minibuses here are usually Mitsubishi vans fitted out to seat 7 passengers, with a possible 8^th between me and the driver. Minibuses are very convenient in that they come right to your home or hotel to pick you up. After making my seating arrangements, I waited while the bus went to pick up other passengers. When it came back, there were four other passengers, one of whom, a local woman, had so much baggage that it fully occupied almost three seats. Accordingly, she decided that she would sit in front. Except I would have to sit in the middle.

Well, getting between me and my preferred seat is as dangerous as getting between my old wine confrere, John Levine, and the food buffet; in both cases you can easily get hurt. When she learned I wasn’t apt to move, she made such a fuss. She went on, and on, and on. And I didn’t even touch her! Oh Waaah! Actually, the truth is, we moved some of her luggage up with me, she had a full seat (almost), and in the end she thought I was just darling.

Then again, every once in awhile I get such a total wacko for a driver it makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have myself checked out (or in). A reasonable time for the drive from Pekanbaru to Bukittinggi would be eight hours. We took five.

On this occasion, my driver was a macho young guy, just over five feet tall and with a strut that would make Dubya jealous. And he just knew he was born to drive. He smoked constantly, jabbered away, and regularly blew his horn, one that sounded a bit like a broken whoopee cushion. He was wearing a t-shirt that read “No Fear”, in large, old English, script. And I confess I saw little. Occasionally, after a particularly harrowing near miss, he might involuntarily lean forward and turn slightly to the left, almost as if to say “phew, we made it”. Yet as far as I could tell, he never saw a situation ahead so obviously perilous that it called for caution or restraint. We scorched along the highway, through villages, around blind curves, passing buses, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, animals, children, everything in sight. Strangely, he was wearing little girly, pastel plastic sandals with a flower between the toes; but whenever he wasn’t double clutching, his feet were shucking and jiving to the beat of the music he had wailing out of his stereo. It was one hell-uva ride.

My "No Fear" Mini-bus Driver

Almost smack dab on the equator, Bukittinggi is a small city quite popular with travelers and locals as, at an elevation of some 930m, it is somewhat cooler than the surrounding area. It is backed by volcanoes, both extinct and active; including smoldering Gunung Merapi, one of Sumatra’s most restless. The weather was certainly quite pleasant while I was there; it was generally in the mid to high twenties with a cooling rainfall on each of the three days I stayed. It is quite laid back, with the locals still using horse drawn carts for transportation.

Coming down the mountains to Bukittinggi

There are over 40 million people who live in Sumatra but less than 10%, 3.5 million live here in Western Sumatra, and almost all of them are Minangkabau people. The Minangkabau are some of the most economically successful people in Indonesia. Although they are Muslim, their society is matriarchal and men have no rights over their wives other than to expect them to be faithful. Every Minangkabau belongs to his or her mother’s clan. Power in the family resides with the oldest living female, she is deferred to in every matter, and all inheritance is through the female line.

One of the more striking aspects of Minangkabau culture is the sweeping roof tops on their houses. The roofs arch up at each end in a manner that resembles the horns of bulls, an animal that plays a large part in their mythology. Bull fights are regularly held by the Minangkabau, but they are not the ones we think of. The local bull fights involve bulls fighting bulls, none of this toreador with a sword business; and no bulls are ever killed in the match. I didn’t see one, but I was told the bulls butt at each other until one is forced off, and that’s the end.

Typical Minangkabau Building

Once a Dutch fort, Bukittinggi now relies heavily on tourism. But the people here are definitely suffering the effects of a string of challenges. In the late 1990’s tourists stopped coming due to the smoke from slash burning (I was told visibility regularly dropped below 5 meters), then it was the Bali bombing in October 2002, the Marriot Hotel bombing in Jakarta in August 2003, then SARS, and now the fallout from the tsunami. During my stay, I only saw about one-half dozen other travelers in this city of 100,000 persons.

Downtown Bukittinggi

I spent my time just visiting around the small touristy center, wandering in the Pasar Atas, the local market, and the Benteng de Kock, the remnants of the original Dutch fort. One day I rented a Honda motorbike and engaged ‘Donal’ (maybe his name was ‘Donald’, I’m not sure), one of the staff at my hotel, to lead me out to nearby Lake Maninjau on his Honda. Maninjau is some 17 km long and 8 km wide. There was considerable mist over the water when we approached the lake, but it was quite beautiful as we crested the rim of the volcano in which it is held and peered down the steep walls of the crater. The lake side is strung with small villages and houses which back up against the sheer walls.

Donal - I am lucky boy!

Donal loved his job at the hotel, telling me several times “I am lucky boy”, and although Donal was a good leader, to rent a motorbike was not one of my better decisions. To consider riding a motorbike in Asia one should be comfortable with Asian traffic and be experienced driving a motorbike, both. At least one is essential. I am neither. The ride was every bit as terrifying as my wacko driver minibus experience. The drive is only about 38 km each way, but the final descent down into Lake Maninjau, consists of 44 numbered hairpin turns. And actually, they were the easy part. It was the traffic, with a minibus forever hanging right on my ass, which was the real tough part for me. In the end, I made it, there and back, and I’m glad I went, as it is quite off the tourist trail.

So having had a short visit to the western end of Indonesia, Sumatra, I headed to nearby steamy hot Padang, the coastal capital of Western Sumatra, to catch a flight to Jakarta to arrange for a visit to the eastern end, Papua, from where I hope to report to you next. I have tried in vain to load some of my pictures of this leg, but internet connections in Indonesia are almost all dial-up, and generally quite hopeless and frustrating. Sorry, because I expect a few pictures do add to these reports. I hope you are all well.

Merv.