Monday July 30, 2018
4:00 a.m. Room 205B, Khana Hotel
Calang, Aceh Jaya, Sumatra

It hardly seems possible, but I woke up to the sound of a heavy rain falling. I’ve lost count of the days that this rain has lasted. It’s strange to think it, but counting the hours doesn’t even make sense. With a normal rain storm, you’d say it lasted twenty minutes. A really bad rain might last for two hours. But when I am in involved, the period of rain must be counted in full 24-hour days. And how many days has it been raining now? I honestly don’t know. It’s been a lot of days. And even the days before the constant rainy days were rainy. It just rained for half of those days.

I’m not entirely sure of the wisdom of leaving today despite the rain or hunkering down for another day. There really isn’t much point to cycling in this rain beyond the bragging rights for being a tough guy. Sure, I could do it. Anyone could do it. But what is the point exactly? The only logical reason for leaving would be if I knew for sure that it was going to rain tomorrow and the next day as well. If the rain continues for another day or two, then I have to cycle in the rain no matter what. Might as well get it over with and cover some kilometers. After all, it’s early, and I’m all packed up, rested, and ready to go. But I would feel rather silly if I cycled all day today in the rain, and then the sun came out the next morning.

An alternative is to completely wuss out and hitch a ride to Banda Aceh. I could leave my bike here in Calang, go for my visa run, and then return here to continue cycling. Surely the constant rain would have ended by then? Surely, it couldn’t last for eight more days straight?

5:45 a.m.

There is a small glimmer of hope. It’s still dark, of course, so I can’t see the sky. And it is still raining, but the rain has turned very light. It’s just a sprinkle. That isn’t much hope, but it’s a little bit.

I spent the last forty-five minutes just dealing with online stuff. I got another phishing email telling me that there is a problem with my PayPal account. I get those all the time. The problem is that some of them are quite good. This last one was in perfect English and was reporting a perfectly reasonable problem. It looked as legitimate as they get, and I felt a momentary sense of panic as I wondered if this was a real email. So I decided to at least check to get some peace of mind. Obviously, I didn’t click on the any links in the email. I logged in to my PayPal account on my own, and that involved using my LastPass password manager and verification steps and all the rest of it. The problem with this (and since we are talking about MY life, there is always a problem) is that even under normal circumstances, I can only log in to my PayPal account once with any password. After one log-in, my password won’t work anymore. Basically, I have to create a new password every time I log in. I’ve tried to contact PayPal to resolve this problem (other people have it, too), but it is impossible to do that without calling them, and they want me to call them from my listed phone number, which is in Sarnia. So, as usual, I can’t fix the problem. I have to create a new password every single time I log in to PayPal. And that is a relatively stressful process, so I don’t enjoy it. My heart ends up pounding the entire time. And I get annoyed. I have to go through several steps to verify my identity including one of those Captcha picture tests. I hate those because they are never clear. This one asked me to click on every picture of a storefront. But it’s impossible to tell which ones are storefronts because the pictures are so small and so pixelated. It’s not really testing whether I’m a robot or not. It’s testing my guessing power. Is that a storefront? Does that count as a storefront? I know what a storefront looks like. Give me four clear pictures of storefronts, and I can pick them out in a fraction of a second. But don’t show me some vague square office building that may or may not have a little coffee shop with a sign in the bottom front window. And as I go through the security process, I worry that they will come up with a new step that I simply can’t complete from overseas. I panic every time I see the message that they have to call me on my listed phone number. But then I see the other options like answering my security questions.

I hate these spammers and scammers and phishers with a passion. I wish I could track them down in their little hovels and punch them in the face. Just leave me alone.

I don’t think I have much else to say this morning. Nothing happened yesterday that was of note. It rained the entire day. For a brief moment, it stopped, and I quickly put together my Survival Kit daypack and went out with my camera. I got about a hundred steps from my hotel and then it started to rain heavily again. I took shelter inside the shell of an old building. And I was quickly reminded why you never take shelter in Indonesia or anywhere else in Asia. Anything with the remains of a roof quickly becomes an outdoor toilet, and the smell of human shit was overpowering. There were piles of it everywhere. I had to leave in a short time, and I just went back to my hotel. I was soaked through by the time I got there.

Later in the day, I realized that I didn’t have enough drinking water to get me through the night let alone the next day. I had noted a water purification depot in town, but it was pretty far away, and since it was a Sunday, I wasn’t sure it was open. I didn’t want to go all the way out there on my bike, get soaking wet again, only to find out that it was closed. So I decided to walk the relatively short distance to a grocery store that I’d seen my first day here. I always make note of these places when I arrive in a new town so that I know where they are later. It wasn’t raining that hard, and with my rain jacket, I arrived at the grocery store fairly dry. I bought an expensive 6-liter bottle of mineral water, but by then, the rain had gone back up to severe. I could have waited at the grocery store, but I was in no mood for that. I just stepped out into the storm and began walking back. The rain jacket only covers the upper half of my body, of course, and my pants and even my underwear were soon soaked through. I was a wet mess by the time I got back to my room, and I had to hang everything up again to begin the drying process.

And that was the only adventure for the day. I imagine that if I stay here for another day, I still won’t have anything to say. Time to check the weather conditions again…

Well, it’s very tempting. There’s just the tiniest bit of rain. And the sky is starting to lighten enough that I can see a bit of variety in the color. There are dark patches and light patches. That’s a good sign because for many days, it has been solid grey. There have been no patches anywhere. But this could be a trick. It could be one of those “fool me once” moments. But I think I’m going to tempt fate and start getting ready to leave. If the rain starts to come down heavily before I’m done, I can just remove the rain covers and have another cup of coffee.

Tuesday July 31, 2018
4:15 a.m., Random Room at the Wisma Lamno Training Center Jaya
Lamno, Aceh Jaya, Sumatra

I’m not sure where I am exactly. I eventually made the decision to leave on my bike yesterday morning. The rain was light enough to tempt me outside. It did rain heavily again on three occasions, but there were dry periods as well, and I think it was a wise decision to leave.

I rode 70 or 80 kilometers and found myself in a somewhat strange town called Lamno. I call it strange because the name is odd, but also because it has an unusual layout. Rather than being a cluster of streets built up around the main highway, it is like a long strip mall on a separate road that runs parallel to the main highway. And there was a companion little town with a different name in the exact same spot but on the opposite side of the highway.

I went to the companion town first because Google Maps listed some kind of accommodation there. It struck me as odd that towns as small as this would have any accommodation at all, but I think this is the largest place between Calang and Banda Aceh, and if anywhere would have accommodation, it would be here.

If there was a place to stay in the companion town, I couldn’t find it. The Google Maps pin had it sitting out in a rice field, so it couldn’t be there. And I rode up and down every street and saw nothing. Asking people got only laughter. It never ceases to amuse me how my actual experiences overseas are quite different from how the local people perceive it. For example, while I was in Meulaboh, I ran into an Indonesian man that spoke passable English. We talked for a while at the side of the street, and I asked him about whether there were any hotels in the next town, Calang. He had the usual extravagant response: “Many! Many!” he said.

This is what people always tell me. I told him that I generally had a poor experience with hotels in Sumatra. They were difficult to find and they were very expensive compared to what they offered. This man disagreed with me. He said that it was easy to find a losmen. All I had to do was ask the local people. They will know where it is and they will tell me. “Just say ‘Losmen'”, he told me, and the people will bring me there. Well, I say the magic word “losmen” to people all the time, and it gets close to zero responses. The most common response is a blank stare followed by laughter. And if people do respond, they say there are no losmen.

This man also told me that losmen were not expensive at all. He said that they cost 100,000 rupiah per night. It’s true that I have found some places that cost this much, but they are the rare exception. The cheapest rate one can usually find is 150,000, and even that is uncommon. The starting point for prices is usually 250,000, and with the rooms at that level filling up quickly, the price I am looking at is usually 350,000 or 500,000 rupiah, which is $32 to $45 Canadian. And even then you’re not going to get anything – no hot water, no towel, no sheets on the bed, certainly no soap or shampoo. Of course, I never pay that price. I keep looking until I find something, anything, cheaper. But those are the prices I generally see.

This man then did what everyone does. He laughed and said that those must be the foreigner prices. I know that this isn’t true because the prices are all listed on an official rate sheet (which is required by law) at the desk. And when I look at reviews online, the Indonesian guests quote these prices. They are constantly saying things like, “Nice hotel, and really cheap! Only 350,000.”

I’ve had conversations like this many times, and I knew that nothing I could say would convince this man otherwise. He believed that everything was perfect, easy and cheap whether we were talking about hotels, getting food in restaurants, taking a bus, whatever. And my personal experience is always the exact opposite: It’s generally flawed, difficult, and expensive.

After I gave up looking for the losmen in the companion town, I heard someone shouting “Hello” with a slightly different tone. Most of the greetings are just tossed out there on instinct, almost the same way that they honk their horns. It’s just something they do all the time no matter what. But sometimes, I will hear a shouted “Hello” that is different. It is more open and inviting and personal. It sounds like it is coming from someone that really means it and wants to talk to me. So when I heard that “hello”, I stopped my bike and looked back. Sure enough, a group of people poured out of the gate of a house to talk to me. Unfortunately, none of them spoke English, but they understood that I was looking for a losmen, and they indicated that there was one in Lamno, and two young girls offered to escort me there on their scooter.

These situations are fraught with peril. It can be a very good thing, and my new helpers could bring me directly to what I need, pose for a selfie, and then be on their way. But it can also be very bad, and I could end up being the hospitality prisoner, following my new guides for kilometers, racing around, trying to keep up with them, going in the wrong direction, and eventually coming to the conclusion that what they were going to show me doesn’t exist after all.

I suppose all in all, this was one of the good experiences. The only problem was that the downtown core of Lamno was actually a fair distance away, and it was a bit of a physical effort to ride my bike there while dividing my attention between the road and my two helpers, who I learned were named Olivia and Tara. They told me their full Indonesian names, but I had zero chance of remembering them or even repeating them once. It was just sound to my ears. I found myself breathing hard, sweating badly, and nearly running into potholes numerous times as these two girls put their scooter directly beside my bike and kept up a non-stop chatter.

It’s difficult to know what to do in those cases. The three of us didn’t know a lot about each other, but if there was one thing we had established it was that I could not understand anything they said in Indonesian. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence that we could not have a conversation, they insisted on having one. The two girls hit me with question after question after question in Indonesian, and I kept having to shrug and apologize with my facial expression and try to say in Indonesian that I didn’t understand. Then they would pepper in the few English words they knew, and I would just take a stab at answering the question. I think I had a pretty good success rate with my guesses because there are a limited number of things that Indonesians would ask me. It’s not like these girls were going to ask me what I thought of Rick leaving “The Walking Dead” or whether I thought the next season of “Game of Thrones” would really be the last season. They wanted to know where I was from, how old I was, whether I was married, and whether I had a girlfriend. At least those are the questions I answered. Whether they asked them or not, only they know.

At long last, we arrived at the Wisma Lamno Training Center Jaya. It looked promising. I believe the sign on the outside even had the word “losmen” somewhere on it. And there were what looked like hotel rooms right on the main floor with easy access from the parking courtyard. The girls had asked me many times during our journey about our taking a selfie together, and the first thing we did was take care of that request. It was an interesting experience because it was predicated on my having a “hand phone”. They kept asking me if I had a hand phone so we could take a selfie. I assured them that I did, but I wondered what good this selfie would be for them. They didn’t appear to have their own phones with them. The selfie would be sitting on my phone, and they wouldn’t have a copy. So why insist on getting one so strongly?

I took a picture of the two of them sitting on their scooter. It’s a great picture. And then I took two selfies of the three of us together. It’s a classic selfie with me holding the phone out at arm’s length and the three of us jamming our heads close together to get into the frame and flashing a peace sign. All three pictures turned out great, and I was very pleased to get them. And then the girls swung into action to get their copies. All quickly became clear. They asked me if I had an Instagram account. I said that I did, and I opened it up on my phone and showed it to them. I assumed they were going to jot down the name of my Instagram account and ask me to post the pictures there so they could see them or get copies. But these girls were much more sophisticated than that. They took my phone from my hand, opened up the search window in Instagram, typed in their own names, somehow linked our accounts, and then selected those three photos from my photo gallery and sent copies to themselves on their Instagram accounts. Their fingers flew over the phone’s keyboard like experts.

After the selfie session, the girls left, and I confidently rolled my bike up to the Wisma Lamno. My confidence didn’t last long because no one was there. Two handymen were banging away with hammers on some kind of unfinished roof project, but that was it. There were no staff, no owners, no managers, nobody. I tried to ask the handymen for help. All they could do was point away somewhere and say a couple of words in Indonesian. Then they pointed at a chair. I had no idea what they said, but the idea seemed to be that the owners had gone out for a bit and would be back shortly. There was certainly no urgency in their words or tone or gestures.

So I settled into a chair and looked at the selfies I had just taken and went over Google Maps and otherwise occupied myself with my phone. I got up and walked around the losmen. I found a big open room that had a large prayer mat on one side and a fully stocked pharmacy or medical center on the other. Perhaps this was the training center side of this place. After my tour, I settled back into my chair to wait some more. Perhaps an hour passed, and no one showed up. I could get nothing that made any sense from the two handymen, and there was no one else around. I decided to take matters into my own hands as much as I could, and I figured I might as well go get something to eat while I was waiting.

I rode into the main section of Lamno, and I found a little restaurant that looked promising and offered mie pancit. The first bowl of mie pancit I ordered was pretty good, and I decided to have a second one. I figured that I might as well make this my full meal for the evening. Who knew what would happen at the Wisma Lamno?

I was a bit nervous about the Wisma Lamno because one review on Google Maps said that it was overpriced at 250,000 per night. I was not interested in paying that much, and I was afraid that that would be the only option. If I have to pay that much, I want to at least get a lot for my money. And I want to show up really early in the day so that I can take full advantage of the room. But with the owners being absent, I was wasting my time – all sweaty and tired – riding around the town waiting for them. It didn’t seem fair that I’d have to pay that much money and then only have the room long enough to collapse into bed and wake up to leave again at dawn. Not great value.

So I decided to ask the man and woman at this mie pancit restaurant about the losmen in this town. Perhaps there was a second losmen. And it turns out that there was, and it was relatively easy to find. I just had to turn left at the intersection and ride for maybe two hundred meters. The losmen was not in the style of a hotel. It looked to be a house, and they rented out a couple of rooms on the second floor. I knew instantly that it would not be suitable for me. I knew I would want to be awake and leaving before dawn, and that would be difficult to do from deep inside a family’s home. And how to deal with my wet and muddy bike and trailer and other gear? I didn’t want to drag all that dirty stuff through their house and up the stairs. And the nail in the coffin of this idea was that the rooms cost 250,000 per night. And that included nothing – no private bathroom, no air conditioning, nothing. The rooms looked like they would be suitable for a monastery or the army – just two or three bare beds in an empty room. How are the prices in Indonesia so out of whack? Sometimes you get a wonderful place for your money and sometimes you get nothing. The prices don’t seem to adjust based on the quality of a place.

I thanked them and left and rode back to the Wisma Lamno. To my dismay, nothing had changed. The two handymen were still hammering, and no one from the losmen had returned. This time, the handymen seemed to be conveying a different message. Earlier, they seemed to be saying that the owners would be back shortly and I should just sit and wait. But their words and body language this time seemed to indicate that the owners were gone and wouldn’t be coming back until the next day. I could feel my annoyance start to rise, and I began to consider my other options. It had started to rain while I was eating my dinner, and I did not relish the idea of hitting the road again to find a place to camp. In any event, I had timed the day’s journey to come to an end right before a very difficult and very long climb up into the coastal mountains. I figured I would ride for the day and then stop right at the base of this climb. Then I could begin the climb the next morning when I was fresh and full of energy. So I did not want to leave this town. I also did not want to go back to the other losmen. I started eyeing an area in the parking lot underneath a roof. I thought I could put up my tent there out of the rain and perhaps there was an outdoor toilet at this losmen I could use.

With this thought in mind, I took a closer look at the doors and rooms of the building. I tested the door handles, and to my surprise, I found that they were all open. That offered new possibilities. Perhaps I could just take possession of a room on my own. Why not? Just make myself at home. If the owners show up, I can surprise them and pay for the room. If they don’t show up, I can just spend the night and leave in the morning.

The main rooms were all the typical Indonesian losmen rooms with two or three beds, a TV, and air conditioning on the wall. Since I would be squatting, I’m not sure I felt comfortable taking one of these rooms. Then I went down a short hallway, and I found a much more basic room – really just plywood walls and bare beds. This was much more to my liking, but when I looked at the bathroom at the back (just an outdoor area with a water tank) I found that there was no water. The water tank was empty and no water came out of the tap. Then I found another room that was a bit less fancy than the first, and the bathroom at the back had a full water tank. This room was still all wrong in that it was a huge room meant for at least three people, and it had a TV and an air conditioner, but it was the best option. Without another moment of delay, I started to bring my gear inside. I figured the worst that could happen would be that the owners would show up and be surprised. Maybe I’d have to move to another room. Who knows? But at least I was taking control of my own destiny, and I could at least take a bucket bath and change into some dry clothes.

12:30 p.m. On a beach somewhere.

I’ve moved on since that last entry in the early morning. I found that time was moving quickly, and I wanted to get up and be on the road before dawn. I wasn’t sure if I would attempt the full distance to Banda Aceh, but I wanted to give myself that chance at least. So I shut off the computer, packed it away, took a quick shower, and hit the road.

It remained unclear to me what was going to happen with the room in terms of paying for it or not paying for it. At one point in the evening, I heard voices outside, and I went out there with wallet and passport in hand intending to settle things. But it didn’t seem to be the owner. The voices belonged to some people at the attached medical clinic. The woman who seemed to be in charge there caught my eye and smiled. She then made a sleeping gesture and pointed at me and the room. I nodded, and she gave me a thumbs-up. So I felt like I had permission to stay there. And at least I had had some contact with someone attached to the place.

When I returned to my room, I pretty much shut down and went to bed. I wasn’t sure if I would be paying anything, so I made sure not to use anything or dirty anything. I used my own sheet and my own pillow. I slept in the small single bed instead of splaying out in the king-sized one. And I didn’t turn on the air conditioner. I just used the bathroom to take cold showers to cool down. I read for a while, and then I went to sleep. It was a bit of a strange night because I had gone to bed pretty early, and I was attuned to sounds. I was alert for anyone showing up and banging on my door or talking loudly outside my door. I imagined the owners coming home and, like the three bears, suddenly realizing that someone had been in their house, was eating their porridge, and was sleeping in their bed.

One good thing about cycling, however, is that you definitely enhance your appetites. I drink water like a crazy person. I eat with gusto. And when it is time to sleep, I sleep. I need the sleep. So despite my nervous state, I managed to sleep in my usual two-hour chunks. I got up even earlier than normal. I think it was between three and four in the morning. I made some coffee and did some pre-packing, took a shower, wrote some of this email, and then when I judged the time to be right, I got ready to leave.

At one point during the night, two large vans had shown up at the losmen and parked right outside my room. I’d heard them the night before honking their horns. I think they were signaling for the owners of the losmen. I don’t know if the owners ever emerged. But now the vans were kind of blocking my exit, and I had to plan my departure carefully so that I didn’t make a ton of noise. In particular, I didn’t want to bump into the vans and set off their alarms. I was feeling a bit annoyed with the losmen owners for putting me in this situation by not being around, and at that point I was thinking that I wouldn’t have minded leaving without paying anything. I would have left a note, but I had no idea where I had packed my one small notebook. With everything being digital these days, I don’t usually have a paper notebook right at hand anymore. It’s usually tucked away somewhere for emergencies. I wasn’t going to fight them if someone popped up and demanded 250,000 rupiah, but nor was I going to go around knocking on doors and waking everyone up at five a.m. to find someone who wanted to take my money. If they can’t be bothered to be present at their own business, then I’m happy to keep my money in my wallet.

One wrinkle with this room was that the doorway was so narrow that my trailer with its wheels attached wouldn’t fit through. The only way I could get my trailer inside was to take the wheels off and pick it up and carry it. That is always a bit of a shock. It feels light and it practically floats when it has wheels attached. But when the wheels come off, it is a dead weight and very awkward. I have to keep reminding myself that even though it feels heavy, it might not be any heavier than the alternative – pannier bags. And it’s the same with size. At times, the trailer looks small and compact. At other times it looks huge. And at those times that it looks huge and feels heavy, I start to wonder if pannier bags might be a better alternative. But then I can do a quick mental exercise. I imagine two fully packed rear pannier bags and put them on the floor beside the trailer. Right there, in just those two pannier bags, you have something almost as big as the whole trailer. And then I add my full tent with tent poles and my sleeping pad, which usually goes into one giant waterproof bag. Finally, I add my sleeping bag, sleeping sheet, and mosquito net. All of that is in the trailer. In fact, those four items combined would be larger than the trailer. And when you think about that, it’s no surprise that the trailer feels so heavy. It IS heavy. But so would be four pannier bags and all my camping gear. It is just stored differently. The real question with the trailer is where you want to carry your gear – strapped to the bike or in a trailer?

In any event, with the narrow doorway, I had to be quite careful as I maneuvered my trailer outside. Once I got it out there, I had to carefully lower it to the ground and then go back inside for the wheels. Once the wheels were attached, I could put on the rain cover. And I had to do all this in the dark while staying as quiet as possible. Once the trailer was ready, I wheeled out my bicycle and carefully threaded it past one of the vans. The most complicated part of this process was attaching the two pannier bags to the rear rack. I rave about the durability of these Arkel pannier bags, but the truth is that the two front pannier bags that I’m using are showing some wear. The compression straps were designed to fit through plastic buckles on the front. These buckles had long since gotten so brittle that they had split into pieces and fallen off. Now the straps just dangled loosely, and it was impossible to find them when I needed them. They keep getting tangled up in the spokes of the wheel and in the gears.

The last steps were putting on the handlebar bag, attaching the trailer to the hitch, and then going over the room to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. It was a bit more difficult this time because I was in sneak-away mode, and I didn’t want to turn on the main light. Instead, I used my phone’s light to look around the room. It wasn’t a real risk though because I’ve got such a standard system for packing. I know where everything goes, where I put it when I’m in a room, and how it all goes back in. I learned long ago that it is impossible to think of all my gear, all my possessions, and make sure that it is in my bags. That’s the wrong approach. The only approach is to go over the room carefully and make sure that nothing was left behind. If the room is empty, then, logically, everything must be in my bags. I have a routine where I check every hook, every outlet, behind every door, in the bathroom, under the pillows, beside the bed, and under the bed. I essentially check every single spot where I might have put something, hung something, plugged in something, or where something might have fallen.

Once I was set, I rolled my bike out of the parking area to the road. The whole place was still dark, so I couldn’t have paid anyone even if I wanted to. There was no security, no guards, nobody. I’d arrived with no one there and left with no one there. A minute later, I was cycling down the road in the dark.

I had psyched myself up for a major climb in this last section before the city of Banda Aceh. I had checked the hills on a website, and though I didn’t have the numbers in my head, I had a memory of a major climb. That is one reason I wanted to leave early while it was still cool. The city of Lamno was convenient because it was located just a few kilometers away from the first climb. I had tons of time to complete the remaining seventy or eighty kilometers, so I was thinking of just doing forty kilometers per day. I’d go up and over the first climb and then camp for the night on a beach somewhere. Then I could do the second half of the trip to Banda Aceh the next day, and that trip would include the second climb.

I started climbing much sooner than I expected, but it was a bit of a false alarm. It was a climb up a ridge and then down the other side quite quickly to reach a wide plain. That plain stretched to the base of the mountain I had to climb, and I was surprised to see that the road did not, as it usually did, go straight up the mountain. In fact, I could see the road cutting a path along the mountain’s side, climbing gradually from the plain to the lookout point and then around the mountain. The first little bit was fairly steep. The road switch-backed five or six times, and it was quite steep. But, I’m glad to say, it was nothing like the road coming out of the volcano. That road had defeated me entirely. It was not a normal road. This was also a mountain road, but it was within acceptable limits in terms of gradient. I dropped my bike down into first gear and powered my way up. I wasn’t even breathing hard. There were fantastic views on the way up, and I stopped often to snap a picture with my phone. It is becoming embarrassing how heavily I rely on my phone for pictures. I’m carrying something like six or eight pounds of camera gear, and lately I never even use it. I just use my phone.

My plan was to stop for coffee up at the top where I knew from Google Maps there was a scenic lookout point and a cluster of restaurants and cafes. What I hadn’t counted on was that this must be the off-season because most of them were clearly shut down. And those that might still have life in them were not open yet. It was far too early. So I was not able to enjoy my cup of coffee while drinking in the scenery. I didn’t really mind, though. I was content to stand there and take it in and then continue pedaling on. An interesting addition to this trip were the monkeys. The trees were filled with them, and I came across troops of them on the road as well. When they saw me coming, they stood their ground for a while, but then they would scatter to the edges. They gave off warning grunts to threaten me and keep me away from them. I soon learned not to keep eye contact with them because they took that as aggression. I didn’t want one of the big males to jump on my back and sink his teeth in my neck.

The scenery changed as I made my way around the outside edge of the mountain and then slowly down the other side. I stopped often to take more pictures. I took out my Olympus from time to time just because I thought I should, but the pictures looked dull and uninteresting to my eyes compared to the shots from my phone. This was getting ridiculous.

When I had come down the mountain and was back at sea level, I found a nice roadside rest area and a cluster of restaurants. A normal person would probably have stopped for breakfast, but I just had a black coffee. To be honest, I haven’t been able to quite figure out these roadside restaurants. They call them rumah makan nasional or something like that, and they’ll have bowls and plates of food on display. But even after all this time, I still don’t know what the system is for ordering. I don’t even know what they serve, to be honest. Three quarters of the plates don’t interest me at all because they are all types of fish. And the other food looks like it has been out there for months. I have stopped at a number of these places because they are so numerous, but I’ve never had a good meal at one of them. I just can’t find any food to eat there.

As I cycled along after my coffee, I pondered the remaining distances and what I should attempt. There was another big climb before Banda Aceh, but it looked like I had miscalculated these climbs, and they weren’t in the one thousand five hundred-meter range as I thought. They seemed to be more like two hundred or three hundred meters, and that was nothing to get in a tizzy about especially when the gradients were within the normal range. In fact, if the gradient was even at the extreme edge of normal, I’d be perfectly content even climbing one thousand five hundred meters or two thousand meters. As long as I can keep pedaling and stay upright, I’m fine. Pedaling is pedaling, and it doesn’t matter if you are going five kilometers per hour uphill or two kilometers per hour on flat land.

With these thoughts in mind, I figured that I could ride all the way to Banda Aceh if I wanted to today. Better, I could ride to the beach resort bungalow area outside of Banda Aceh. I have a plan forming in my mind that I will stay in one of these bungalows instead of in Banda Aceh proper, and I will leave my bicycle there while I go on my visa run. My experience with these sorts of places tells me that it will be much easier to negotiate this kind of deal with them than with a tiny guest house in the city. And they will have much more room to store things. And it shouldn’t be a problem to get from there to the airport and back. At least I think so. As I think I mentioned before, I saw some comments on Google Maps saying that the owner of this or that bungalow or resort had picked up guests at the airport. And if it is difficult getting from this area to the airport, I can always do it in two stages: leave my bike at the bungalow resort, go into Banda Aceh by local transport and stay in a hotel for one night, and then the next day go to the airport. I don’t know what kind of airport transportation exists yet in Banda Aceh.

I still have the plan to stay at a resort outside Banda Aceh, but my thoughts about going there today are gone. I was cycling along and just approaching the beginning of the second big climb when I saw a sign pointing down a side road. I didn’t understand what the sign said, but it was a good guess that it was pointing to a beach. I went right past the sign at first, but then I turned around. I had a lot of time, and I figured I might as well go see what there is to see. And I found a very nice beach. It was better than a beach. It had the sand and the waves and the mountains and palm trees. But it also had a shipbuilding area where three huge fishing boats were under construction. And it had a couple of simple food stalls and coffee shops right on the water. Finally, there were little roofed structures where I could at least relax if not put up my tent. And there were actual toilets with doors that closed, and a well with a bucket on a rope for freshwater bucket baths. It was a perfectly designed beach for someone on a bicycle. I almost instantly made up my mind to stay here for the day and the night. It was still pretty early to be honest, and if it were just a beach, it might have been a bit monotonous to spend the entire day and night there. But this place had the coffee shop, and in addition to walking up and down the beach and taking pictures and swimming, I could pass some time there drinking coffee and doing my best to answer questions from the locals. And best of all, the coffee shop where I first settled down had baked goods, drinking water, and electrical outlets. After a walk up and down the beach and a cup of coffee and some snacks and some chatting, I was shown to a platform – like a picnic platform – out back that had its own private electrical outlet. And that is where I am now. I am sitting here with my computer and my phone both plugged in to the outlet. It’s crazy. I’m on a wild beach on the coast of north Sumatra, but I’ve got my electronics spread out around me like I’m in a coffee shop in Manhattan.

There are tons of great things about this place. There is even a friendly mother cat with kittens. Just as I was typing this, she came out of the bush with a bird in its mouth and calling out to her kittens to come grab a taste. There seem to be three kittens, and they came out in a striking array of colors. One is white and black. One is all black. And the third is brown and white. Practically a Benetton ad.

The local men are very excited to have me here, but I imagine they are a little disappointed, too. They come to the back eagerly when they realize that a foreigner is present. But then they quickly realize that I can’t really talk with them in Indonesian. I’m not even convinced that they are speaking Indonesian. Is there such a thing as a regional Aceh language? It seems likely.

It is a relief that the rain stayed away. It has made this stop possible and far more comfortable. I wouldn’t even be able to sit here if it were raining. I had my rain covers on everything as I rode today even though it wasn’t raining. This allowed them to dry completely. I also had my towel splayed out on my trailer, and it dried completely in the sun. My rain jacket dried last night in my stolen room. (As I rode along, I actually fantasized about the hotel owners calling the police and that the police were now looking for me.) The difference between dry cycling and wet cycling is immense. Just to be able to fold stuff up and put it away makes life so much easier.

 

It should come as no surprise that I rarely stop pondering gear. One funny side of this is that carrying less stuff often happens all by itself. My Canon point-and-shoot camera, for example, broke long ago. It got smashed somehow, and then it would no longer focus when I used the zoom. And it often didn’t focus even when I didn’t zoom. The front cover won’t close. I have to force it closed with my fingers. The power often fails, too. Even with fully charged batteries, the camera will just turn off randomly. This became a big problem because I started using this camera for video. There was little point to using this camera for pictures because both my phones far surpassed it in terms of picture quality and ease of use. The only area where it was useful was in shooting video because even cheap Canon point-and-shoots have very good optical stabilization. But then both my batteries stopped holding much of a charge. The whole camera was just not usable for me, and I thought about getting rid of it. I didn’t get around to it because it seemed wasteful to just throw it, the charger, and two batteries into the garbage. It didn’t work well enough to suit my purposes, but it still took half decent pictures. Someone could probably use it. But it felt strange to think about giving someone the camera. “Do you want this camera? It barely works, and I was going to throw it away, but maybe you could use it.” It might be like an insult – like giving someone garbage. So I kept lugging the thing around in my bags. But in Calang, I’d finally had enough, and I just left it behind in the room. They can assume I forgot it or they can assume I was throwing it away. They can keep it and use it or throw it way themselves. I’m sure hotel owners are used to people leaving things behind in hotel rooms, so it wouldn’t shock them.

The camera didn’t weigh that much, but it was a half a pound or three quarters of a pound that I no longer had to carry. That problem took care of itself. I also have quite a large collection of adapters and cords. I have a varied collection of electronic devices with different plugs, and I face all kinds of different outlets even just jumping back and forth between Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore. I started with an expensive universal adapter that was supposed to cover everything, but it was inadequate because it only allows me to plug in one item at a time. And I often plug in several things at once. And then I ended up with several different USB chargers. I bought this expensive adapter because it has 2 USB ports built into it. But that often doesn’t work because if I plug it into a wall, my phones have to be plugged in right there, and not at the bed or the desk or anywhere else. That’s why I have my long extension cord. But then I needed a second USB charger to plug into my power strip. Then I have the USB charger that came with my Kindle. Anyway, by the time the dust settles on all of this, my electronics bag is very heavy. But, just now, another item was taken out of the mix. One of the USB chargers is a relatively expensive model with 3 ports that I bought in the Philippines. I was just trying to plug it in now, and one of the prongs just snapped off. So that’s that. Another few ounces of weight gone from my bag. My Olympus camera barely works. My two Arkel pannier bags are falling apart. Basically, all I have to do is wait, and soon, I won’t have anything left to carry at all as it all falls apart and stops working. There is really nothing like a week of rain to put your gear through the wringer.

Tags: bike tour, Bike Trip, Indonesia, Lamno, Sumatra