Thursday August 26, 2018
5:00 a.m. Room 102, Khalifah Hotel
Idirayeuk, Aceh, Sumatra

The plan is to ride down the road to the town of Langsa today. It’s not terribly far to Langsa, and there appear to be a variety of hotels there, so I wasn’t anticipating a difficult day. However, I’ve woken up to the sound of rain. If it were heavy rain, I might have just tried to go back to sleep. But the rain doesn’t sound that bad. It might even stop by the time I get on the road. The weather forecasts continue to be quite wrong as far as the rain is concerned. Heavy rain was on the schedule for the day I left from Bireuen, and there were clear skies all day. I checked last night, and the prediction was for sunny skies today, and it is raining. They always have it completely backwards.

 

Friday August 24, 2018
4:30 a.m. Room 10, Pillar Hotel
Langsa, Sumatra

(80,000 rupiah/$5.25 US per night; budget room with shared bath)

This hotel offers a backpacker-style and backpacker-price room for a change. It is a large room with two beds, a fan, a desk, a chair, and even a night stand. It’s interesting that budget rooms are often better appointed for me than luxury rooms. This room lacks air conditioning, but I don’t need or even want air conditioning most of the time. I actually sleep better without it lately. It also lacks a bathroom, but I’m quite happy to pop across the hall into a shared bath. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. And this room offers advantages. For one, being a budget room, it has wooden walls and fixtures instead of solid concrete, and that gives me places to screw in my screws and tie ropes for my mosquito net and laundry lines. Luxury rooms are often solid concrete shells, and it is far more difficult to do that. This room also has a small table beside the bed. That is a tiny detail, but it changes things completely for me. In luxury rooms, there is no night stand or small table or I often have to move things around and take the plastic chair and put it beside the bed or something. I like night stands because I can put stuff on it and have access to it from the bed. Plus, it is a perfect spot to put my cup of coffee while I’m drinking it. This room also has hooks on the door and a towel bar on the wall. Luxury rooms put in air conditioning and a TV, and they think they are done. They neglect the helpful touches like just putting hooks on the door so you can hang up your clothes and your towel and your toiletries kit. Finally, this room has an actual desk and an actual chair. It’s like the desk and chair you would find in an office, and I can sit there with my computer like a normal person instead of having my computer on my knees while I sit in bed. And there are windows and ventilation openings in this room. Luxury rooms are often sealed because of the A/C.

When I showed up at this hotel, they were reluctant to give me this room. They assumed I wouldn’t be happy with it. They told me a number of times that it would be better for me to take the rooms with A/C and a private bathroom for 200,000 rupiah a night. But I insisted this room was fine for me, especially when they showed it to me and I saw that the shared bathrooms were quite nice by Indonesian standards. By “quite nice” I mean that they had large water tanks full of water. That’s really all I need.

Langsa is the large and fairly modern town that I expected. That means, unfortunately, that it is also a bit uninteresting for me. There is no reason to stay here an extra day. There is nothing exotic to explore. No fishing port. No crazy markets. The whole city consists of lots of businesses and busy streets filled with cars. I had made arrangements to meet a local man here, and I might have stayed an extra day to do that, but he hasn’t replied to my message. I arrived in Langsa fairly early. I left from Idirayeuk quite early and I cycled pretty much non-stop. And since the terrain was flat, I covered the seventy-five kilometers to Langsa before noon. And I found this hotel relatively quickly. I checked out only one other hotel before this one, and even that hotel would have been a good option. They had A/C rooms for 150,000 rupiah per night. But I had a suspicion that the Pillar was the true budget hotel in town, and I wanted to check it out first. I sent this local man a message on Instagram as soon as I arrived here. I hoped we could meet up in the afternoon. But he never replied. Instagram is not designed for people to exchange messages. It always confuses me, to be honest. When I meet up with other people through Instagram, we communicate through a comment thread left after a picture, which is not ideal. But Instagram does have a direct messaging system. It’s primitive and hidden, though, and not intuitive. Since my direct message didn’t reach this guy, I could have started leaving comments after pictures to get his attention, but I didn’t want to work that hard.

It was raining when I left from Idirayeuk, and I had to put all the rain covers on my bike and trailer. But it was a light rain, and it soon stopped. And since the sky was overcast, I didn’t have to deal with the usual heat of the sun either. So the only real problems were the two standard ones: a sore butt and sore hands. I spent much of the cycling day pondering ways to fix these problems. Is my bike frame too small? Has it always been too small? Should I switch my handlebars to butterfly bars? What would that involve? Should I simply switch to a new, bigger bike frame?

Not much else happened yesterday that is worth noting. I’m feeling the aftereffects of my long illness and my long fast, and I had an urge to eat some kind of meat. I was hungry at a deep level. I tend to eat a lot of simple rice and simple noodle dishes, and they don’t really leave me feeling full and satisfied. On my way into Langsa, I spotted a local chicken chain. It’s called CFC in a blatant attempt to rip off KFC’s name recognition. It’s not a great place and not a great value. I think I had a meal at a CFC just once before. But the pieces of chicken you get are a bit bigger and meatier than what you would get at a typical Indonesian restaurant. I ordered a set meal with two pieces of chicken, rice, and a drink, and it came to 46,000 rupiah, which is outrageously expensive. But, I have to say, the chicken was glorious. I could have ordered two more complete meals and eaten them easily and happily. I felt better afterwards. I just felt satisfied in a way that I normally don’t on my normal diet of nasi goreng and mie goreng and mie bakso and mie pancit.

Today I am facing either a sixty-kilometer ride to a hotel that is just sitting on the highway in the middle of nowhere. Or I can push on past that hotel and go to the next town, which is about ninety kilometers away. I guess it will depend on my mood or on how expensive that hotel is. The big city of Medan is ninety kilometers past that. So I could be back in Medan in two days. Or in three days if I break up my journey.

Well, it is time to pack up and hit the road.

Saturday, August 25, 2018
4:30 a.m. Room 7, Wisma Danisky
Pangkalan Brandan, Aceh, Sumatra

(175,000 rupiah/ $11.50 US night; typical luxury room with air conditioning, TV, and private bath; on the ground floor; motel style parking courtyard; very loud mosque nearby)

The plan was to wake up and hit the road for the final stretch to Medan. However, now that I am awake, I am changing my mind. I think I will spend another day and a night here. The main problem is that I hardly got any sleep. I tried to sleep in, but I couldn’t do it. And I’m thinking that it is a bad idea to ride into Medan’s heavy traffic when I am this tired and probably very irritable.

The hotel where I’m currently staying feels on the expensive side for me, but it has strong Wi-Fi, and I can use that today. I’m having some serious trouble with my hands on the handlebars. I have zero feeling in two fingers on my right hand now, so I’m getting quite serious about making some changes to my bike. It actually feels weird to type because I can’t feel it when those two fingers hit the keys. I’ve got to find better handlebars or adjust my bike to make both my butt and my hands suffer less. And so I thought I’d spend some time today online doing some research on my options and adjusting my bike. I have enough days to take a rest day. As for money, what’s money?

I don’t have much to say about yesterday. The skies were clear right from the beginning, so I didn’t have any rain to deal with. I did, however, have the sun. It got very hot. To motivate myself for the day, I earmarked the Besitang Hotel, which was on the highway about sixty kilometers from Langsa. I figured if I was struggling, I could stay there and chop the ninety-kilometer distance into two days: one easy day and one very easy day. Everything I read about the Besitang was promising, and I built it up in my mind into some kind of paradise. The reality was extremely disappointing. It was as awful as you can imagine any typical hotel in the middle of nowhere on a highway would be. It was also a karaoke place. And being so far from anywhere, I think it was a known place for all kinds of shadiness. I stopped there for a cold drink, but I quickly moved on. By then, I’d done the lion’s share of the distance to this town, and it didn’t seem too much of a challenge to go all the way.

Since there were a number of hotels in this town, Pangkalan Brandan, I thought it would be a somewhat substantial place, but it isn’t at all. It is a typical small town. But it does have an Indomaret convenience store, and that’s really all I need. I also needed a cell phone store where I could buy credit for my phone, but those are everywhere.

Based on Google Maps research, the Wisma Danisky appeared to be the place for me. I was hoping for a budget room, but the cheapest they could offer me was this room at 175,000 rupiah. I suspect they have cheaper rooms, but I lack the ability to get any hotel owners to show me these cheaper rooms. They just refuse. And then I just give up and decide whether to take the expensive room or not. Checking in at this place was typically nutty. I could not figure out what the woman was talking about. She told me the room cost 175,000 rupiah, but then she kept writing down 200,000 rupiah on a piece of paper. After a lot of confusion, she made herself clear. She wanted me to give her 200,000 rupiah. And then the “big boss” would give me 25,000 rupiah in change later. She was extremely insistent on me giving her 200,000 even though I could have given her 175,000. She wouldn’t take 175,000 in exact change. She kept writing down 200,000 and then 25,000. So I eventually gave in and handed her 200,000 rupiah. An hour later, a man showed up at my door and handed me 25,000 rupiah in change. What had just happened? I’ll never know. It’s like going to a store and buying something for ten dollars but the clerk won’t accept ten dollars. She insists that you give her twenty dollars so that she can give you ten dollars in change. It made no sense at all. But that’s the world for you.

Once I settled into my luxurious (though mosquito-infested) room, I went out into the city to buy credit for my phone. That was an equally frustrating experience for many reasons that I won’t go into. Just normal technology insanity and large companies ripping off the consumer. Then I got a cold drink from the Indomaret and spent the rest of the night in my room fiddling with my bike.

Sunday, August 26, 2018
3:30 a.m. Room 7, Wisma Danisky
Pangkalan Brandan, Aceh, Sumatra

I had this urge to leave for Medan as early as possible, so I went to bed early last night. And I woke up at three a.m. I imagine I will be on the road in an hour or so. I’m just going to have a cup of coffee and then go. I don’t have much to write about either, so there should be few delays.

I spent much of yesterday working on my bike. I adjusted the height and position and tilt of the saddle to see if that will make a difference. I also adjusted the grips on my handlebars. They are fancy ergonomic grips with a kind of palm rest, and I twisted the grips to put those in a different position. I also moved the bar ends. Along the way, I was doing research online about frame measurements and comparing what I read to my bike. I’ve always felt that this bike’s frame was too small for me. I still have strong memories of the disastrous process I had to endure when I bought it and how disappointed I was when it finally arrived at the bike shop in London and it came out of the box. Everything was wrong about it. I still don’t know what exactly happened.

But bikes are confusing these days. There are so many odd angles to the frame tubing that I don’t know how to even measure the frame and whether it even matters. The most common frame measurement is from the center of the bottom bracket to the top of the seat tube. And according to that, my bike is quite small. However, it is a misleading number because my bike’s top tube slants down sharply. If that tube were more horizontal, that measurement would increase by three or four inches. And that would give a much larger figure for frame size. Yet, nothing would have changed on the bike. In any event, who cares about the seat tube height? I can raise and lower the seat by two feet.

So, really, any bike measurement makes sense only when you compare it to the exact same make and model of bike in different sizes. With all the different tube configurations, bike sizes can’t be compared across brands. The numbers have no meaning. At least they don’t to me. Yet, people still refer to them and will offer all kinds of fancy methods for calculating the frame size that is right for you.

Still, there is no arguing with the extreme pain that I have always experienced in my butt and my hands while riding this bike. So something must be wrong.

I continued to have an urge for chicken, and I went out into this town yesterday and caused all kinds of trouble because of it. I did not go out looking for chicken, but I happened to see a typical Indonesian restaurant with a large plate of fried chicken in the window. I went in and tried to get just four pieces of chicken to go. The problem is that no Indonesian in history has ever just wanted pieces of chicken like that. They always get a full meal of rice and side dishes to go with it. For me to get them to understand that I just wanted four pieces of chicken in a bag was nearly impossible. The circus of miscommunication went on for a very long time. Even when I had convinced them that I really did want just the chicken, I still had to work very hard to get them to understand that I did not want any of the sauces, spices, dips, or extras. JUST four pieces of chicken.

The chicken itself cost more than I expected, but they did turn out to be quite large and meaty pieces. I wouldn’t exactly call it tasty or tender. The meat was very tough and it took me a very long time to chew through every bite. My jaws actually feel sore this morning from all the effort it took to eat the chicken yesterday. And that was pretty much all the food I had all day yesterday. I was too lazy to prepare or buy any other food. I assumed that four large pieces of chicken was enough to get me through the day and night anyway. Who needs more protein and calories than that?

Monday August 27, 2018
7:30 a.m. Room A, Marco’s Inn
Medan, Sumatra

(50,000 rupiah/$3.30 US night; BIG discount from the owner; nice room, shared bath; air con; TV; big kitchen; secure; quiet; fan)

Did you see the time? It is seven-thirty. For my schedule lately, that is very late. And that is a sure sign that I am not going anywhere today. I am going to stay in Medan for three nights. I might even stay longer, but I have to think about that.

My ride into Medan went fairly smoothly. I left my hotel in the previous town at 4:45 or something like that. It was so dark that I couldn’t see the face on my watch to check the time, and I just started pedaling. For a horrifying moment, I thought I was locked inside the hotel’s courtyard, but the padlock on the gate was just for show. It wasn’t locked, so I was able to swing it open and leave. And, of course, I carefully closed it behind me. I always do that.

Riding in the dark was more stressful than on other occasions. That’s because I rode in the dark much longer than before. Plus, this was the main highway heading into Medan, and even at that early hour, there was traffic to deal with. I had a flashing light and reflectors on the rear of my bike, so I was visible from that direction. But I still have no light on the front of the bike. That caused some tense moments as I thought a shadow was a deep pothole, and I’d hit the brakes or swerve. I was happy to be leaving this early, but I did not want to pay for that by buckling my front wheel in a deep hole.

Another problem was that Indonesians have a habit of flipping their high beams on and off. When vehicles were coming toward me, they would alternate between high and low beams. I have no idea why they did this, but it was very annoying. The high beams blinded me, of course, and I could see nothing on the road ahead of me. My eyes would fight hard to adjust. Then they’d go to their low beams for a second or two. Then back to the high beams. And so on. They would continue this pattern until they were past me. I imagine they think it is a good idea. They probably have a reason for doing it, but it makes no sense.

The terrain was largely flat, and I rode at a fairly fast pace. I covered the distance into Medan before eleven o’clock in the morning, and I think I was at the Dazhong Backpacker’s Hostel before noon. I had been in touch with the owner about staying there, and after a short wait, he showed up and was very happy to see me. I am one of his few – if not his only – regularly returning guest. So that makes me special. Most people show up for one night and then go to the airport. But I keep coming back, and we’ve developed a friendship.

The owner was overly generous with me, and he gave me one of his best rooms for only 50,000 rupiah a night. It’s unheard of to get a room like this for that little. He’s charging me so little that I’m thinking about staying here longer and using this as my base for a while. But I probably won’t do that.

The one problem with his rooms is that they all share air conditioning units with the neighboring room. To accomplish that, they cut a hole through the wall up near the ceiling. And the air conditioner sits in this hole with half of it in one room and the other half in the other room. The result is that light and sound carry clearly from one room to the next. Plus, if the occupants of the two rooms have different preferences for room temperature, there can be trouble.

I am in Room A, and the occupant of Room B is an Australian man. He was glad to see me because this room had been rented out by an Indonesian couple on the previous nights. And that meant trouble.  The Australian was perfectly happy to use just the fan at night. But the Indonesians took full advantage of the air conditioner and ran it constantly and brought the room temperature down to that of a refrigerator. The poor Australian practically froze to death. And, of course, the Indonesians turned on the TV loudly and left it on almost all the time. Finally, as he told me, this couple had sex all night. What with the television noise, the frigid temperature, and the sex, he got no sleep at all. He didn’t mention it, but I imagine the Indonesians also spoke loudly on their phones, slammed the room to the door, and made lots of other noise.

I was quick to assure my neighbor that he wouldn’t have to deal with any of those behaviors from me. Long ago, I turned on a TV and watched two minutes of Indonesian television. That was enough for a lifetime, and I have no desire to turn on a TV here ever again. I’m also content with a fan instead of air conditioning, especially at night. An air conditioner is nice to take the edge off the room’s heat in the afternoon or evening, but once the room is cooled down, I’m fine to turn it off and leave it off. In fact, I prefer it off. The problem with hotel rooms that have air conditioners is that they usually don’t have a fan. So your only choice is between air con and no air con. This hotel is unique in that the rooms have both. So it’s possible to turn off the air conditioner and still sleep well with the fan keeping you just cool enough. I’ve found that I’ve slept poorly in rooms with air conditioning.

One of the reasons I came to Medan was to meet my old friend and visa sponsor. She got married recently, and I thought it would be nice to see her again before I left Indonesia forever. I contacted her and we arranged to have lunch today. This morning, however, I got a message from her saying that she had to cancel. I wasn’t surprised. Everyone cancels on me all the time.

With those plans falling through, I really don’t have much to do today, if anything. I have zero interest in going out into Medan and exploring, camera in hand. It’s not that kind of city. Perhaps I will go to KFC, as I did yesterday. My trip to KFC was the highlight of yesterday. I wrote before that I have been craving chicken lately, and as I rode my bike to this hostel, I passed a large and modern and real KFC. I decided to go back there for lunch once I was settled into my room.

I was very disappointed at first because the KFC was extremely crowded. It’s interesting that when I go to a place like KFC, it feels like a huge extravagance. The food there is three or four times more expensive than at an Indonesian restaurant. Yet, it was so jammed with customers that it was difficult to find a place to sit. And it was a big place. I almost turned around and left, but I stuck it out. I really wanted that chicken. I wanted that chicken so badly that I ordered two combo meals. I ordered the standard combo meal that comes with rice, a drink, and two pieces of chicken. But that didn’t seem like enough to satisfy my craving, especially since this was going to be my only meal of the day. So I ordered a second combo meal with one piece of chicken, pretending that this meal was for my friend. I ended up with three really big pieces of chicken, two orders of rice, and two Pepsis, and I went through it like a starving man. Words cannot express how happy I was to eat it and how content I felt afterward.

It’s interesting that, just like airline food, KFC is considered bad food among the general population in Canada. It is fast food. It is junk food. It is supposed to be terrible. Yet, for me, it is far and away the best food I can get. It is a luxury item. And that fact is exacerbated by being in Indonesia. The chicken at KFC is far better than any chicken you can get at any other restaurant here, and I don’t care what restaurant you’re talking about. This pattern holds true for all kinds of places, and it isn’t restricted to the quality of the food. It’s the service and the conditions, too. KFC and McDonald’s might be the bottom of the barrel for everything in Canada, but they are the king of the heap here. The service is far better and friendlier than at a typical Indonesian restaurant. The conditions are better in that the tables and chairs are more comfortable. The place is cleaner. There are no flies. It has air conditioning. It has nice bathrooms. There are serviettes available and a place with soap to wash your hands. The cashiers have change. And at this KFC, there was even a large play area for children with a three-story plastic construction with nets, tunnels, and slides. The kids went crazy for this place.

I had such a good meal and felt so good afterward that I might go back there again today. With this cheap room, I have some extra cash in my daily budget to spend.

And that’s about it. I’ve paid for three nights here, which will bring me to the 29th for my departure from Medan. It will take two or three days to ride the rest of the way to Kisaran. And then I have to buy a ticket for the ferry to Malaysia. Since I’m here in Medan, I could book a flight and go through the hassle of boxing up the bike. But I think I don’t want to bother. And I want the ferry experience.

Saturday September 1, 2018
3:15 a.m. Room 109, Hotel Malibou
Tebing Tinggi, Sumatra

I didn’t plan on being awake and drinking coffee at three in the morning, but I happened to wake up, and I felt rested, and I didn’t see any point to trying to go back to sleep. The road I have to follow to get to Kisaran (my next destination) is a very busy one, and getting out there early doesn’t seem like a bad idea. A related problem, however, is that this stretch of highway tends to have no shoulders at all, so my bicycle butt will be hanging out there for every passing truck to smack. And I’m not thrilled about doing that in the dark.

At the moment, however, it remains to be seen just how early I get out there. I could easily be cycling by five or even four-thirty, but it is currently raining heavily. That might slow me down a bit and cool my enthusiasm for hitting the road. I’m pleased to find, though, that the sound of the rain doesn’t really affect me mentally. As long as I know that I can waterproof the trailer and my pannier bags and trust that nothing will get damaged, I’m kind of matter-of-fact about the rain. My earlier rainstorms with the trailer were a disaster but that was because the rain-cover failed and everything got wet. Plus, I had to camp out in difficult circumstances while the rain continued to pour down throughout the evening and night and even into the next day and the following day. That was difficult to deal with. But once I had dealt with that problem by putting the tent ground sheet over the trailer, things went more smoothly. I even embraced the rain to an extent as it at least kept me cool. And I’m returning to a town that I know well with what used to be a good value hotel. Their prices will certainly have gone up, but it should still be a good value. In any event, my idea of an acceptable price has changed considerably during my time in Sumatra. I arrived with the thought that I could get away with paying $5 US a night for a room. Anything above that started to seem expensive. Now, I happily pay $10. And I will even fork over $15 without too much of an internal struggle if the circumstances are unavoidable. The room I’m currently in costs $12 US a night, but it’s good value, especially if I were able to take full advantage of the place and have the included breakfast and use up the supplied drinking water.

Unfortunately, the drinking water may have entered the part of my brain that links illness with what I eat or drink. Every time I get really sick, I associate it with something that I ate or drank. And from that day onward, I am leery of consuming it again. This latest illness dates from the time that I chugged down a big jug of drinking water that was in my room in Sigli. I don’t know for sure that that water was the culprit, but it is a pretty good bet, especially considering that the jug was not a typical blue filtered water container. It was just a random container that the hotel used. I can’t imagine that they filled it in the bathroom from the tap. But I also find it hard to imagine that they carried purified drinking water up all those stairs to all the rooms. This room has a blue filtered water jug with a spigot on the bottom, but it is the kind with a screw-on lid. You are expected to have faith that they filled it with purified water, but they could easily have filled it from the tap, too. In any case, I find myself unable to drink it or pour it into my water bottles. I don’t trust it, especially since I will be changing countries in just a few days. I have used it for coffee. I make sure I boil it for a good length of time, and then I feel safe drinking it. But that’s it.

I appear to be feeling better as my current fast takes hold. It hasn’t been a complete fast, though. I think my body is still reeling from the effects of that last illness and the full five-day fast while cycling, and it rebelled strongly at not being fed anything at all. So I took a chance and ate some Corn Flakes. To my delight, I found a store called Mr. Ben just up the street from my hotel in Medan, and it was one of these bizarre discount grocery stores that appear to get all the damaged goods from the docks. They happened to have some semi-crushed boxes of Corn Flakes, and I picked up two of them. And when my body really started to scream at me to feed it something, I had some small amounts of Corn Flakes. And then I had more. So I haven’t been fasting completely. And I’ve also been recovering. There is something magical about Corn Flakes. Not to be too graphic or sound too much like a senior citizen constantly talking about health, with Corn Flakes, I get a nice, solid bowel movement. And it is the only food I’ve uncovered that has this effect on my body. It’s amazing how that transforms my life. I no longer feel bloated and uncomfortable and I can go out into the world without feeling like I have to rush to a bathroom within minutes. It’s somewhat interesting that this magical food has been my favorite food my entire life. I loved Corn Flakes as a kid and would eat giant bowls of it all the time. It was a joke in my family to refer to me as Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies. That character was known for eating cereal from bowls the size of tureens. And I was the same even as a kid. I never used actual cereal bowls. They were far too small. I would use whatever giant mixing bowls I could find in the kitchen. I could have eaten Corn Flakes for breakfast and dinner every day of the week and been fine with it. And now, many decades later, I still love Corn Flakes and it heals my body.

I made another attempt to stay with a WarmShowers host when I first get to Malaysia, but it didn’t go well. I ended up deciding to just stay in a hotel. I think it’s the right decision. I actually checked Agoda and Booking.com when I woke up this morning, and if things go well, I could find a hotel for as little as $10 a night. There are lots of them in the Klang area. I’ll book a room in advance and then I know for sure that I have a place to stay.

Well, I think I will shut down this computer and have some Corn Flakes and start packing up. The rain is not quite so heavy anymore. So maybe there will be just a light drizzle by the time I’m on the road.

 

Tags: bike tour, Bike Trip, Indonesia, Langsa, Medan, Pangkalan Brandan, Sumatra