Sunday August 5, 2018
7:00 a.m. Room 216, Rain Forest Hotel
Chinatown District, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
45 ringgit per night ($11 US) – shared bath, air con, WiFi, clean, modern, professional staff, great place

I never was able to fully relax in the coffee shop at the airport in Banda Aceh. I kept wondering when immigration would open. I wondered if maybe I was at the wrong part of the airport and immigration for my flight was somewhere else. I worried that after all this, immigration would cause trouble. But the iced coffee was somewhat tasty, and I had a table and a chair and an electrical outlet. The electrical outlet is important because my computer’s battery barely holds a charge anymore. I keep pondering the value of putting the NEO back into rotation. It would sure be nice to have.

At some point, I saw some commotion outside, and I realized that immigration was open. I quickly packed up my computer, and then, being a smart guy, I went to the bathroom before going through immigration. This turned out to be a very smart thing to do because, as often happens, there were no bathrooms in the departure gate area. I don’t know why some airports are designed this way, but it has been somewhat common for me. If I blithely go through immigration and security and go to the gate with a full bladder thinking that I can always hit the bathroom before the flight boards, I could be in trouble. Better to jump into every bathroom I pass by just in case.

When it came time for me to leave from the coffee shop in Banda Aceh and go to the airport, Aan took charge, and for some reason, he had a friend of his use the Go-Jek app on his phone to summon me a car. I think he did this because he uses Grab, and he wondered if Go-Jek was cheaper. It turned out that Go-Jek was 10,000 rupiah cheaper, and they chose to go that route. Aan would have driven me to the airport, but he had to go to a friend’s wedding. Summoning the Go-Jek car was easy because an Indonesian did it, and when the driver called, he was able to answer the phone and explain exactly where we were. This is a disappointing aspect of these transportation apps. The big appeal for me is that you don’t have to communicate. I can click on my hotel as my pick-up point and the airport as my destination. What could be simpler than that? But then the driver feels the need to make a phone call and talk to you and ask where to pick you up. And then, often, when the driver shows up, they ask me where I want to go. I’m always slightly annoyed because all that information is on my order via the app. That’s the whole point of the app. You already know where I want to go. Why are you asking me?

The driver was a very nice man, and he spoke a tiny bit of English. He asked me the usual questions, and the trip to the airport passed pleasantly. I was struck again at how much Banda Aceh felt like a very small town. The road to the airport was not a highway or anything even remotely like that. It was barely even a road. It was a country lane winding between rice fields. And the airport didn’t look like an airport at all.

Just off the coast of Banda Aceh is an island that is popular with foreign tourists. It is known for its good scuba diving and snorkeling. Because of that, there were some other foreigners on my plane. I wasn’t really aware of them during the check-in process and at the departure gate. It wasn’t until I was on the plane and in my seat that I saw them. It was kind of a shock to me. I never see groups of backpackers anymore, and I reacted a little bit like an Indonesian. I gazed at them with fascination mixed with some awe. For one thing, they seemed so big. And I don’t mean just physically. They were certainly physically big. They seemed like giants next to the Indonesians. But they were emotionally bigger. They had more personality. There was more variety to them. They were more expressive. They were more confident. They were busy doing things and going places and experiencing things. They seemed like giants astride the world. They filled the space they occupied in a way that Indonesians don’t. A funny angle to all this is that when the plane landed and we all got up and stood in the aisle, I realized I was a good four inches taller than the tallest of them and nearly a foot taller than most of them. They had struck me as giants, but I towered over them all. So that made me wonder what Indonesians think when they see me. What impression do I make on them? Am I, too, a giant?

This flight was a bit different than my previous recent visa runs. For one thing, I was leaving from an unfamiliar airport and a new city. But I also got a package deal when I booked the flight. And this package came with a meal. I was looking forward to that because I was quite hungry. I was quite excited about this meal, actually, and I wondered what delicacies would be on offer. It’s a staple for comedians and most people to joke about how awful airline food is, but I find it to be fantastic. I love airline food. It is far better than any food I might make for myself and much better than the food I would normally get at a cheap Indonesian eatery. It is a step up for me. The funny thing, though, was that the meal they handed me was spaghetti. Of all the dishes they could have given me, that was the least exciting. Spaghetti is one of my staples because it is so easy to boil up pasta. I was hoping for anything to do with chicken and vegetables. But I got noodles and tomato sauce, something I make for myself all the time.

I read the AirAsia magazine from cover to cover during the flight. I always enjoy that magazine, but by the time I was done, I couldn’t help but reflect on how utterly bland and fake the whole thing was. Out of the thousands of words I read, there wasn’t one honest one, not one that conveyed a true human emotion. There were a lot of travel stories, of course, but they all followed the standard pattern of all travel articles. Everything was “amazing” and “wonderful” and “incredible.” The whole magazine from cover to cover could have been written by a computer that was designed to replicate what an airline magazine was supposed to be like.

My arrival went as smoothly as I could have hoped. I sailed through immigration with my only concern being how the immigration officer turned to a brand new blank page to stamp my 90-day entry stamp. I’m burning through my 36-page passport in record time. It was supposed to last me 10 years. I paid for the 10-year passport. But I’m going to run out of pages long, long before that. It’s very annoying.

Once in the airport, I hit the bathroom, and then I hopped on the airport bus to KL Sentral. That worked out well because the very next bus to leave had just one seat left. They let me on, I sat down, and we left. A young Malaysian man had the seat beside me, and when I learned that he spoke some English and had come from climbing Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, I talked his ear off. He seemed to enjoy my offbeat take on things. He certainly smiled and laughed at a lot at the things I said.

With the late afternoon flight and the one-hour time difference, I was arriving in Kuala Lumpur a bit later than I’d like. I had booked a room in advance, but I was worried that the hotel would give up on me and give away my room if I didn’t show up before eight or nine p.m. My worries were for naught, however, and the professional staff at the Rain Forest Hotel had my Booking.com reservation sheet out along with a bunch of others. For a budget hotel, they are astonishingly professional and courteous. I stayed here once before when I needed a break from the hot and dirty hostel I usually stay in. And at that time, I got an amazing deal (forty percent off a big double room). This time, for the same amount of money, I got a regular single room. But it’s still fantastic. It lacks a lot of things. It has no chair and no table. It has no windows. It has little space. But what it does have, it gets just right. The bed is very comfortable. The sheets, pillows, and comforter are high quality and soft and clean. There is a powerful air conditioner. There is strong WiFi. There is an electronic lock that works great. They supply hot and cold drinking water. There is a glass decanter in the room to get this water, and there is a mug in the room for coffee or tea. The shared bathrooms are small but fully modern and clean. There is even hot water, a sink, hooks, shelves, and a mirror in each one. And there are tons of bathrooms – more than enough for the people staying on this floor. And it is perfectly quiet. I can think of lots of things to add that would make the room better – more space, windows, a balcony, a desk, a chair – but that would quadruple the price. For this type of budget hotel, they got things almost exactly right. That’s very rare. The one cloud is that because they are so official and professional, they have to charge the tourist tax of ten ringgit per night. For those staying in rooms that cost three or four hundred ringgit per night, the extra ten ringgit doesn’t even register on the bill. But when you are paying twenty-five or thirty, thirty-five, or forty-five ringgit, the tourist tax is a hefty increase.

I had hoped to sleep long and hard, but I didn’t. I woke up really early and then I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I guess I will be stumbling through this day a bit fatigued. Luckily, I don’t have much to do. I really only have two goals. I need to buy some chain lubrication for my bike. And I want to try to withdraw money here and then change it to rupiah before I go to Indonesia. I lose a bit on the exchange I think, but I don’t think any of the ATMs in Banda Aceh will work for me. So I have to get my cash here.

 

Tags: bike tour, Bike Trip, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Rain Forest Hotel, Sumatra