Saturday July 28, 2018
5:00 a.m. Room 103, Losmen Mustika Sari
Meulaboh, Sumatra
I seem to have finally gotten caught up with events, and I am writing this in real time as opposed to summarizing days from the past. It’s early in the morning, and, assuming there is not a massive rain storm brewing and assuming my stomach doesn’t suddenly start causing big problems, I’ll be leaving Meulaboh. I haven’t done anything in this city. I didn’t even go down to the waterfront area. I certainly should have, but the circumstances and my mood just did not align. When I was in the mood to perhaps get on my bike and explore the city, it was raining non-stop. And by the time the afternoons rolled around and the rain stopped, the mood had passed. I wanted nothing to do with getting on my bike and going anywhere. Meulaboh is not like the pleasant Tapak Tuan with its quiet streets and beautiful surroundings. It feels like a busy city and nothing more. An interesting aspect of the city for me is that it was badly damaged by the tsunami in 2004. The pictures I’ve seen online remind me very much of how Tacloban looked after the typhoon. The tsunami had a big effect on everything here. It is even in the local psyche. There are memorials to the tsunami. And in Banda Aceh, there is a tsunami museum. It appears to be the biggest tourist attraction there.
Speaking of Banda Aceh, I think I have come up with a good way to avoid the high costs of the hotels in the city. I considered contacting Warm Showers hosts, but that seemed like too much trouble. I’d contacted the local Warm Showers members the last time I planned to ride to Banda Aceh, and things got very complicated. One member would be out of town at that time. Another member didn’t have enough space because he had relatives staying with him, but he could be put in touch with other people through Facebook, etc etc. I stuck with the arrangements for a while because I also needed a place to store my bicycle. But then I injured my knee and I postponed the trip. I didn’t want to contact these same people and bother them again and then get lost in the revolving circus of arrangements.
Then I realized that there was a coastal area not far from Banda Aceh. You could almost call it a beach suburb of Banda Aceh. And there were a lot of hotels and what they call bungalows there. From what I’ve read about them and heard about them, they can be much cheaper than anything in the city, and the people running them are friendly. For example, when you read the comments on Google Maps listings, the foreigners often say that this or that owner actually picked them up at the airport. This gave me the idea of skipping the city of Banda Aceh altogether. I could cycle just as far as this resort area, stay there, arrange to leave my bicycle there, and then go directly to the airport somehow. It shouldn’t be a big problem especially since the flight isn’t until the afternoon and the airport is only twenty-five kilometers away. For all I know, it is easier to go from the beach to the airport than from downtown Banda Aceh. Considering the only affordable option in Banda Aceh looks pretty terrible and small and cramped, the beach bungalows look very good by comparison. If I got there early enough in terms of the days, I could even leave my bike in storage there, pack up everything I needed for the visa run and head into Banda Aceh just for one night. There are lots of options. Though they all depend on getting there first, and that is what starts today.
I’m not sure how far I will get today. The next town with indoor accommodation is a place called Calang, but it is about one hundred kilometers away. That is doable, but it would mean a pretty long day. Why struggle through that distance if I don’t really have to?
Sunday July 29, 2018
6:00 a.m. Room 205B, Khan Hotel
Calang, Aceh Jaya, Sumatra
Well, the curse of Meulaboh continued, and the minute I started to bring my bike and trailer out of my room at the losmen there, it started to rain. Roughly eight hours later when I arrived in Calang, it was still raining, and it never stopped that entire time.
There’s no question that the rain made life a bit more difficult. It was impossible to stay dry, even with my high-tech rain jacket. The jacket kept rain from hitting my body directly and it kept rain largely off my head and out of my face, and it kept me warm, but it did nothing towards keeping me dry. When you’re riding a bike in a downpour, you are going to get wet, and you might as well just accept it.
However, the rain also meant that it was somewhat cool. The brutal tropical sun was still out there, but trapped behind heavy clouds, so I was able to maintain a fast pace for longer and with more relative comfort. With that faster pace and with no incentive to stop and go exploring along the way, I covered the one hundred kilometers to Calang in one day. In fact, since I’d had such an early start, I arrived in Calang by 3:00 p.m., which gave me lots of time to look around the town, find a place to stay, unpack and set everything out to dry, and then even go out exploring and have a small dinner – all before it got dark.
It wasn’t until later that I realized how much of a toll the day had taken on me. I wasn’t quite as happy and relaxed and energized as that previous paragraph may have implied. I was a bit of a wreck mentally and a little irritable and stressed out. The main problem, though, was that since my clothing was wet the entire day (and on previous days), there was a lot more friction going on in the nether regions. I scraped the inside my thighs raw, and once I was off the bike, I found I could barely walk. I don’t know this for sure, but I imagine that actual cycling clothing would alleviate that. Till now, I’ve just always cycled in regular shorts and underwear – the exact same clothes I would wear when I’m not cycling. Obviously, I would never be caught dead in skin-tight Lycra cycling shorts with bulging crotch, but I know that there are some cycling shorts out there that mimic real clothing. They have the insides of cycling shorts and the outsides of regular shorts. I tried on a couple of these in Kuala Lumpur long ago, but the problem was that they were far too small. No one carried anything in my hairy foreigner size.
The irritability came into play when I started looking for a place to stay. That is always a struggle in Indonesia. This is no Thailand or even a Cambodia with suitable places for backpackers almost everywhere. I stopped first at a hotel on the main road into Calang. This was the Hotel Pantai Barat, and it was the only hotel that anyone ever mentioned to me. I figured it had to be the most expensive place in town, and I was right about that. It also got horrendous reviews on Google Maps, and from what I saw, it deserved those bad reviews. It was a total dump. Most buildings in Indonesia look like they were built twenty years ago and then left to rot with zero maintenance and upkeep, but the Pantai Barat took that to a whole new level. I noticed, however, on their listing at the front desk that they had some kind of studio room for the somewhat reasonable sum of 150,000 rupiah. This studio room came with air conditioning and WiFi and a bunch of other stuff (at least according to the paper). So if someone at this hotel greeted me with any friendliness, showed me one of these rooms, and it turned out to be acceptable, I might have taken it. But, as is often the case, I could see no one that worked there. There were about thirty motorcycles parked outside, so there were guests. But I saw no staff at all, and no matter how long I waited and what rooms I wandered into and out of, not a single person was visible. So I left.
While scouring Google Maps, I stumbled across a listing for a losmen called the Wisma Fendi. There were pictures included in their listing, and it looked like a cheap and cheerful sort of dive. I set my sights on this place next. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find. I rode around and around and around. I asked a bunch of people, and they had no idea what I was talking about. I was getting more and more annoyed. And when I finally found it, a woman just waved her hand at me rudely and said “Full” and walked away.
The only other option I knew about was the Khana Hotel. These three – the Wisma Fendi, the Pantai Barat, and the Khana – were the only game in town as far as I could tell. I had an equal amount of trouble locating the Khana, but I finally found it. And it looked promising at first. All things being equal it was a perfect type of place for me. All I needed was for the person greeting me to be a tiny bit accommodating when it came to the language barrier. All I needed was a smile and a bit of logic and a bit of accurate information. But I didn’t get any of those things. The first people I met were terrified of me, and they just ran away and would not do anything. I eventually coaxed them back to the front desk of the hotel, and they tracked down a short, rather stout woman who appeared to be the manager. She also spoke a bit of English. On the negative side, she was a bit nuts and could not complete a single thought. Nor would she pay attention. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions. She kept babbling about the rooms in a way that made no sense at all. There was a list of room types on an old, ragged piece of paper, and this list had prices beside each one. Stout Woman referred to this list and babbled about all kinds of things and prices while pointing at the wrong ones and none of it made any sense. I tried to get her to focus, but she wasn’t capable of it.
It was a fairly typical situation, to be honest. I’m often in a position where it is not possible to figure things out verbally. It just can’t happen. And then you have to fall back on the physical. It’s like being at a restaurant and being unable to communicate what you want, so you just point at what another guest is eating or you just point at the ingredients you like and see what happens. In the case of a hotel, when the verbal path fails, you simply go to see the room or rooms in question and then get the price. Then you can see things for yourself and apply the logic that was sorely missing from their verbal account. You can ask for the price while you are standing in the room and you can physically see what is in the room and what isn’t in the room. When the verbal fails (which is most of the time), the physical is the only remaining option.
We eventually reached that point, and I asked to see a room. I had no idea which room they were going to show me. One thing that bugs me constantly in Indonesia is that they always do this one room at a time. They will grab one key for one room and off we go. And for reasons that elude me, the room they show me is always as far away from the lobby as possible. It’s a hike. We will pass sometimes dozens of what look like perfectly suitable rooms, but they won’t stop at any of those. We pass them, go up some stairs, down a hall, up some more stairs, down another hall, and then down a long balcony to the remotest corner of the hotel, and my room is always located there. I always end up wondering what the significance of this is. Did they give me their worst room (which is what I always suspect) or is this their best room? Or, most logically, are they just putting the foreigner as far away from everyone and everything else as possible?
The problem with this is that to truly apply the physical method, I need to comparison shop. It’s great to see that one distant room where they keep the freaks and foreigners, but what about the other rooms? Why not grab three or four keys and show me a range of options? Why not show me the expensive Family Room and then show me a Standard Ekonomi and then show me a Sales Ekonomi, which was the cheapest option? I had asked Stout Woman at least ten times what “sales” meant and what was the difference between a Standard room and a Sales room. And she never answered. Google Translate didn’t help me, either. I could see that one cost 150,00 per night and the other 100,000 per night, but what did you get for your extra 50,000? I think I could have tied her to a chair and tortured her for a day, and she still wouldn’t have answered that question – or any other question. She was like a superhero wearing a super suit that was designed to repel any questions.
With the physical method, I could bypass all these communication problems and see the rooms for myself and link them with prices. But that would involve taking three keys, showing me my three options, and letting me decide. But they always take just one key, bring me to a room that is half a kilometer away, and then expect an answer. Do I want this particular room or not? I hem and haw because I want to know about the other rooms that we passed or even the neighboring rooms. Can I see those? But since the clerk doesn’t have the keys to any of those other rooms, we are back in the verbal arena, and they have no idea what I’m talking about. And if by some miracle, they do understand that I want to see another room, they have to leave and get a second key for the other room. And then they leave the original first key behind at the desk. So now I can’t go back and look at the first room they showed me and refresh my memory and compare them.
The situation with Stout Woman was further complicated by some problems with the room and with her giving off a rather uncaring air. It was weird from the beginning because I had clearly been asking for their cheapest room. We had been talking about their cheapest room – the Sales Ekonomi – from the beginning. Yet, the room they showed me was a huge triple with two beds, a TV, a fan, an air conditioner, a desk, a bathroom, and even a hot water heater. This confused me. And it got more confusing when I twisted the faucet in the bathroom and no water came out. I don’t care how big the room is or how soft the bed is or anything else as long as there is water – and lots of it. But there was none. A lack of water is the one deal breaker, so I had to clear this up.
I turned to the clerk showing me the room and asked her about the water. She just giggled and turned away. And when we went back to the hotel lobby, I first tried to figure out what was going on with the class of room. Stout Woman went into some long and complex pitch. It felt like I was being hustled by a used-car salesman, to be honest. The details are far too complex to break down, but she was basically saying that she was giving me the deluxe Family room for the price of a Standard Economy room, which was 150,000. That was a 50% discount according to her. I didn’t like the way she was parading this 50% discount in front of me. It didn’t feel genuine. It felt like a hustle, a way to trick me. Part of my problem was that I was still curious about the cheapest option on the list – the mysterious Sales Ekonomi room. THAT was the room I wanted to see. But I still had no idea what Sales meant. I asked Stout Woman a couple more times what Sales meant and what was the difference between Sales Ekonomi and Standard Ekonomi. But she simply would not answer. And she went back to her hustle.
Then came the real problem. She had beaten me down. She had won. I was willing to pay the 150,000 rupiah for any room. Just let’s stop this craziness so I can unpack and settle in. BUT I was worried about the lack of water. There was a water tank in the bathroom, and it was full, but I didn’t know how long it would last. So I wanted to ask about the lack of water in the tap. Was there no water at all? Would the water come back on later? What was up with the water? And Stout Woman simply wouldn’t answer me. She said something about how if there was a problem with the water, I could just come to her. And I told her there was a problem NOW. There was no water. Will there be water later? Is there no water in just that room? Then could I change to a new room? Or was there no water in the entire hotel? What was going on with the water? But I could get no answers from her. In fact, when I really put my foot down verbally and got upset and made it clear that THERE WAS NO!!!!!! WATER!!!!!!. She simply waved her hand and scoffed and shrugged her shoulders and said that it not her problem. I was getting very pissed off, but if I wanted a home, this was it. I had to take it, so I took it. I figured that we had reached an impasse as far as the verbal goes. I’d just deal with the water thing physically as time progressed. Maybe water would suddenly flow through the tap. Maybe not. Maybe the tank of water would be enough. And if not, maybe I could do what I’ve done in other hotels and just go from room to room and steal water from their bathroom tanks by the bucket and bring it back to my room. Adding insult to injury, when I paid for the room and registered and then walked across the parking area to my room, I passed by a man washing his truck with a long garden hose. The hose was attached to an outlet underneath the hotel’s giant water tank high above me on a platform. So there was water. And there was water pressure. There was a dude spraying his soapy Toyota truck with a hose. I even borrowed that hose later to clean off my trailer and bike before moving them into my room. So why was there no water in my bathroom? I will never know. And I will probably die an early death from the stress of these confusing encounters around the world.
Things got a bit worse as I moved into my room. I had been concerned mainly about the water and I had ignored the other elements of the room, such as the fan, air conditioner, and the TV. I had not tested any of these. But as I moved into the room and started to spread out my gear to dry, it occurred to me that an air conditioner would be very helpful in terms of drying everything. The air conditioner on the wall looked to be in good shape. There was an electrical cord and a socket that it reached. However, the little plastic holder on the wall that would normally contain the remote control was empty. I searched the entire room and all the drawers, but there was no remote control to be had. Normally, I would let this go, but Stout Woman had annoyed me so much that I decided it wouldn’t hurt to assert myself a little bit and find out what was going on.
So I went down to the front desk to ask them about the air conditioner and the missing remote control. (There was no remote for the TV either, but I didn’t care about that. I’d seen a few minutes of Indonesian television once, and that was more than enough for a lifetime.) Unfortunately, only the terrified clerks were in the hotel lobby, and it was difficult to communicate with them. The female clerk eventually called over a young man who also appeared to be an employee. His English was no better, but the words A/C and air conditioner are pretty universal. Plus, I could use sign language to indicate pushing buttons on a remote control. They understood after a while that I wanted a remote control for the air conditioner. It seemed reasonable to me. The room had an air conditioner. I was told I was getting a deluxe Family room for the price of a Standard Ekonomi, and the deluxe room came with air conditioning, didn’t it?
The young man and the woman just laughed and waved their hands around and said “No, no, no A/C.” I really didn’t care that much about the air conditioner, to be honest. It would be nice to have, but I’ve lived happily for many, many years without it. I’m perfectly fine with a fan, especially on a cool rainy day. However, their laughter and their complete dismissal got under my skin. I felt like I was being played for a fool. They had convinced me to stay at their hotel and take a room for 150,000 by dangling the promise of a deluxe room in front of my eyes. Stout Woman told me about this amazing 50% discount several times with wide eyes and waited for me to thank her for this amazing generosity. But she never said anything about how this deluxe room would be stripped of all the features that make it deluxe.
So I got a little annoyed, and I said in an “Okay, let’s get this straight tone.” You have a hotel with no water AND no air conditioning. And you don’t care at all. Is that right?
I don’t think the clerks understood me at all, but they seemed to pick up on my annoyance, and the woman went to the room where Stout Woman apparently lived. It was her lair where she could watch TV all day and sucker people into her web of lies. The clerk was in there for a long time talking to her. I had enough time to wander all over the hotel lobby and read all the signs on the wall, look out the window, and even pick up books and flip through them. And then Stout Woman came out and walked up to me and kind of stood there waiting for me to speak. She was clearly playing a mind game – a power struggle. She obviously knew what was going on. The hotel clerk had been in her room for nearly ten minutes explaining my issue. And it was a simple question, after all. Was there a working air conditioner in my room? If so, could I have a remote to turn it on? It wasn’t complicated. I didn’t care if there was an air conditioner or not. Just tell me yes or no. But Stout Woman wanted to play games, and she stared at me and waited for me to speak first. I refused to speak, and I just raised my eyebrows at her in a questioning way. She knew my problem. The clerk had clearly told her. The ball was in her court. What was her answer? AC, yes or no?
Stout Woman did break first, but she was clever. Instead of talking about the air conditioner, she pretended she knew nothing about it, and asked, “What is the problem?” So I had no choice but to explain again that I was wondering about the remote for the air conditioner. The weird thing is that I had honestly approached this without a confrontational state of mind. I really didn’t care. I just figured I might as well ask. Who knows? Maybe air con is standard, and they just forgot to give me the remote. But by playing these games, Stout Woman and the hotel clerks were turning it into a confrontation. They were annoying me, and I gave Stout Woman the same treatment I gave the clerks, and I told her that it seemed strange for a hotel to have no water. That continued to be my main concern. In a way, the lack of water was a real insult considering the tons of it falling from the sky all day long.
It’s times like this when the language barrier is a real problem because I often reach for some subtlety and nuance, and fail miserably. I tried to explain to Stout Woman that I wasn’t really upset about the lack of water and lack of air conditioning. I take that kind of thing in stride. In Indonesia, anything you get is a miracle. The default position is that nothing will work and nothing will happen. I’ve adapted to that. I was upset because of her attitude – the way she wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t answer questions, and totally dismissed the lack of water with a scoff – as if I was being stupid. But I’m sure that the only thing Stout Woman gleaned from my performance was that I was a stupid foreigner and I was expecting 5-star luxury in a cheap Indonesian hotel. That bothered me because that was far from the truth. And I felt bad that I was getting upset. I didn’t want to make things worse for other foreigners in the future. I can imagine Stout Woman concluding that foreigners were more trouble than they are worth and turning them away when they show up at her hotel.
I don’t understand this at all, but Stout Woman’s only response to my diatribe was to say that she could take me to her friend’s hotel. I have no idea who this friend could be. As far as I was aware, the Wisma Fendi and the Pantai Barat were the only other places in Calang. I’d certainly seen nothing else that would qualify as a hotel, and I had been everywhere in this small town. And, obviously, I had zero interest in changing hotels now that I had moved into my room and unpacked. And I was annoyed that she completely misunderstood my question. She just assumed I was unhappy with the lack of air conditioning, and that I couldn’t handle the rugged, unpredictable life of Indonesia. And that wasn’t true. I was just asking a simple question. Just tell me what’s up.
And here, Stout Woman continued to not impress me. She told me that there were no remote controls. She couldn’t give me one because they were all broken or stolen. Then she told me that it didn’t matter anyway because the air conditioner in my room didn’t work. Finally, she told me that I had insisted on paying the Standard Ekonomi price, and that price did not include air conditioning. She wound up her little speech by falling back on how she had done me a huge favor by giving me the deluxe room for that price. 50% off, she said with wide eyes. She just conveniently ignored the fact that this discount didn’t include the actual features of a deluxe room. How this made sense, I couldn’t begin to fathom, but people like Stout Woman are not famous around the world for their logic. No Spocks here.
In the end, I got some small revenge. I left Stout Woman with no answer to my question about the water. She continued to laugh that issue off as having nothing to do with her. She made things worse by then pointing to a room with a bunch of tools inside and saying that the hotel was being renovated. I’m embarrassed to say that that set me off a little. Don’t give me excuses about the hotel being renovated, I said. That’s not my problem, I told her. I told her that every hotel in Indonesia has a hundred excuses for everything that is broken or not working. Those excuses are not my problem. I don’t even want water to come out of my tap. I just want an answer to my question about the water. Tell me there is no water. That would be fine. I’ll deal with it. Just answer the question instead of laughing at me, and we’ll be good.
And then I left. But, on my way back to my room, I passed an open door to a neighboring room, and I popped in to see if there was water in the bathroom tank that I could steal should the need arise. And when I went into the room, the first thing I saw was an air conditioner remote control sitting in its little holder screwed to the wall. I saw that the water tank was full, and then on my way out, I snagged the remote control. I was delighted to find out that the remote had good batteries installed, seemed to be in working order, and when I pointed it at my air conditioner, it came to life.
It’s possible, however, that Stout Woman was telling some version of the truth when she said that the air conditioner didn’t work. It did turn on, and the fan blew out a strong stream of air that felt like it was cool. But considering the number of hours I kept it on, the room really didn’t feel much colder, if at all. But it’s hard to say. It’s certainly nice and dry and comfy in the room, and that is unusual. I’m usually sweating to death all the time. So the air conditioner might be working at least as a dehumidifier. And that’s good enough. But whether it is working or not, I’m glad to be able to run it all night and run up their electricity bill.
Just now it occurs to me that when I snagged the air con remote, I never saw an air conditioner on the wall in that room. At the time, I actually assumed there was none. But that makes no sense. Why would there be a remote with no air conditioner? It was probably on a different wall. So maybe I’ll end up causing trouble by stealing the remote from a room that is supposed to have air conditioning. Maybe Indonesian guests get air conditioning because they know the drill and they fight hard and bargain hard. Maybe only dumb foreigners end up in the deluxe room at the far end of the furthest balcony – the deluxe room that has no deluxe features. And Stout Woman sits in her lair and rubs her hands together and laughs. People don’t get rich and have successful businesses by giving things away…
After I had fully unpacked and settled in, I went out on my bike to see a bit more of Calang. I didn’t have a particularly thrilling time. I guess I was not in the best shape physically or mentally, so a town would have to be quite special to break through my bad mood. I found it hard to just sit on the saddle and pedal. It was really painful. And I hadn’t even bothered to shower or change clothes, so I was still wearing the wet and sticky clothes from the day.
I learned that this is a weekend holiday town for Indonesians. There is a scenic waterfront with a small road leading along it with a lot of cafes and restaurants. People come to take selfies down by the water. It isn’t a swimming place, though. There are large signs dotted around saying that swimming was prohibited. It was too dangerous because of the waves and the riptides and undertow. I imagine that in good weather there are some boats to take people out to some small islands a short distance away. On this day, of course, it was far too rough for any of that too happen. No boat could safely have made it over that surf with its passengers still on board.
I chatted with a couple of individuals and a couple of groups of people, but it wasn’t very interesting. There is almost zero English ability in this part of Sumatra. I’m completely cut off except as far as my limited Indonesian takes me. And that isn’t very far. It continues to surprise me how bad I am at languages. I’ve actually invested a fair amount of time in learning Indonesian. I’ve got notebook pages jammed with all the words and phrases I’ve learned. I listen to Indonesian language-learning podcasts. And yet, when people speak, I don’t understand anything. I know Indonesian numbers, and yet when they are spoken to me – even the simplest of numbers – I don’t hear them. Perhaps my ineptitude with language is just a small part of the larger picture of how dumb I’ve become in general. I just don’t seem able to do anything or learn anything anymore. I think my brain has gone into hibernation.
I decided to have a meal out, and I pulled into a place that looked promising. The only dish they could make was Mie Goreng (fried noodles). I actually would have preferred rice, but this place was convenient, and they had a big display of fresh produce. It just looked like a good place to have a meal. The dish itself turned out to be quite small, and I was still hungry afterwards. But I was fine with that. I’m still dealing with a roll of fat around my middle from my many weeks of leisure, and I like to imagine that all this recent activity is burning away that fat. I don’t mind going hungry if it means that my body will start cannibalizing itself and eat away that embarrassing fat. It’s a slow process though, and it looks like I will still be fat by the time I reach Banda Aceh. I will likely need four more weeks of cycling before any realistic fat loss begins.
After I finished my meal, I pedaled back to the hotel. I had left the air conditioner running, and I was hoping to be greeted by a blast of Arctic air. I didn’t get that blast, but the room felt dry and comfortable, so I imagined the illicit air conditioner was doing something. That made me happy to get some small revenge on Stout Woman.
I decided fairly early that I would take another rest day in Calang, especially if it was raining in the morning – which it was. I only have one hundred and forty kilometers between here and Banda Aceh, and I have as many as five days to cover it. Granted, there are a lot of coastal mountains and some attendant climbing in those one hundred and forty kilometers, so I have no illusion that it will fly by. I certainly won’t be riding one hundred kilometers before three in the afternoon again.
11:00 a.m.
I spent the morning relaxing in my room and drinking coffee while it rained. Then came a break in the onslaught of heavenly water. I took advantage of it to go downstairs and pay for another night at this hotel. Stout Woman was all smiles and friendliness. I imagine that was because I didn’t bring up the issues of water and air conditioning. In fact, just as I took a bucket bath before going down, I twisted the faucet for the hundredth time, and this time, water emerged. It was a hallelujah moment, so I left the tap open and I lay down and read a book for the amount of time it took for the tank to fill right to the top. Water is a precious resource, and I have to hoard it and collect it while I can.
Then I switched out the 75mm lens on my Olympus for the 45mm, and I got ready to go for a photo walkabout around Calang. It took a depressingly long time to get organized because this involved switching over from my handlebar bag to my daypack. It also involved taking all my valuables and tucking them away inside the trailer, which I can then zip up and lock. It’s the best I can do in terms of security. It’s not perfect, but it’s a thousand times better than just leaving stuff lying around in the open.
Despite all my efforts, I’ve never been able to fully work out a system that involves the handlebar bag and the trailer. During the day, it is okay because I am just riding my bike, and I keep my camera and Kindle and sunglasses and phone and passport in my handlebar bag. I have easy access to everything I need. And when I go into a little coffee shop or restaurant, I just pop off the handlebar bag and take it in with me. I don’t need anything else.
But when I am out exploring a town, it is a different matter altogether. I usually want to take a couple of extra lenses for my camera plus all the filters and extra batteries. And I will probably want to go shopping for food and water while I’m out. So I need a place to put this stuff. The handlebar bag is inadequate for all that. So I need something bigger, like my daypack. And then I get confused because I’m transferring all the valuables over from one bag to the other and then adding things. It’s a whole operation. I don’t like it. I miss the old days when I had one pannier bag as my Survival Kit, and that was the one bag that went with me everywhere as both pannier bag and daypack. I might have to revert to that system.
