Tuesday, February 7, 2023
6:41 a.m. Room 12, Wisma DU
Pangkalan, Sumatra, Indonesia
This is quite a change from yesterday morning. I’ve woken up inside a hotel room instead of my tent. Oddly enough, being inside this hotel room doesn’t automatically present ALL advantages. It’s mostly more comfortable and easier, of course. However, there was a certain freedom of movement associated with being at that campsite. There was more space around me. Inside this room, I feel a bit cramped.
The day yesterday felt somewhat long and challenging. That’s because I didn’t pack up and get on the road until close to ten in the morning. I spent a long time relaxing at the table and chair that were conveniently located in the same space as my tent. I took advantage of the electrical outlet and table to set up my laptop and copy all the previous day’s video files. And then I wrote a bit about the ride from Bangkinan to there. Finally, the tasks of packing up my tent and camping gear and then using the rough facilities there to shower and get ready took more time. In an odd twist, when I finally did leave, I found that the main gate was closed and locked. I’d had long and fairly detailed discussions with the guys the previous day about this gate. They were happy to let me camp there, but they were worried that I would be locked in. The gate was kept locked at night, and it might not be open when I tried to leave. But they told me that it was unlocked and opened at seven every morning. That seemed okay. And as it turned out, I was leaving much later than that. But even so, when I got to the gate, I found it closed and locked. It wasn’t a big deal. I simply had to take my gear off the bike and then lift it over or under the gate and place it all on the other side and then reassemble it. It was only lifting my heavy and complicated bicycle over the gate that required any kind of effort. And even that wasn’t terribly difficult. I’ve certainly lifted my bike over much more imposing barriers in my life. I only contemplated the fact that information and details like that are not terribly reliable in places like Indonesia. You can never take for granted that what people tell you will happen will actually happen. My new friends had insisted several times that the gate would be unlocked at seven. Yet, that didn’t happen.
Since I had left so late, I was faced with hot conditions from the very start. The skies were more clear than on previous days, and some hot sun was getting through from the start. The day also involved a lot of steady climbing, and this climbing began as soon as I turned onto the main road. I began sweating and breathing heavily from the very start, and that continued for much of the day. I did not cycle very far compared to what a more active cyclist would achieve. The whole trip from the lake to the hotel in Pangkalan was a mere 43 kilometers. However, I felt it. From a physical point of view, it was no walk in the park. I had to apply myself, and I felt the effects of the heat combined with all the steep climbs. And this morning, I still feel the effects.
It was a significant day as well because I completely changed regions. Not only did I cross from Riau Province to the province of West Sumatra, the geography and atmosphere completely changed. Outside of Bangkinan, the geography changed to a certain extent. I entered some hilly areas. However, once I entered West Sumatra, the changes came thick and fast. The hills became much higher. The distant ones could even be called mountains. The terrain became much more wild and jungly. The river I ended up following in the afternoon was gorgeous. And near the town of Pangkalan, I suddenly found myself surrounded by stunning rice fields. The fields were full of growing rice, and they threw off that rich, luminous green that practically burns into your eyeballs. I felt I was in a brand new country.
My arrival in Pangkalan also worked out well. After 43 kilometers of steady climbing, I felt like I had covered enough ground for one day, and I was ready to find a home for the night. In advance, I had hoped to stay at a place called Wisma DU in Pangkalan. I found this guest house simply by zooming in on Google Maps and roaming around. And I was very much counting on this place to not only exist but also have rooms available. If this guest house were a Google Maps mirage, I’d be camping again or cycling a much greater distance to reach the next available guest house.
These days, I make more small mistakes than I am accustomed to, and once again, I initially got my directions wrong. Despite looking at the location of Wisma DU on Google Maps at least a dozen times, I had it in my head that it was located on the left side of the road. In reality, it was on the right side, so I rode right past it and never saw it. I had to ask people for directions, and they pointed me back the way I had come, and I realized my mistake. Luckily, Wisma DU was relatively easy to find once I had an idea of where to look, and it had a promising appearance. It looked like a real hotel, and there was a good chance that they would have a room for me. However, there was no one there when I showed up. I was directed to a small office, but the office door was closed and locked, and the lights inside were off. There was nobody there. Some people from local businesses were around, and I approached a few people. And I guess I eventually reached a critical mass of contacts, and messages started to flow through the local social network until the young man that was in charge of the Wisma DU was told that a potential guest had shown up, and he got on his scooter and came back. He was a friendly and helpful guy, and he spoke English well. He was something of a dedicated student of English, and he showed me all of his textbooks and study material. The hotel was smaller than I expected, but it appeared to be empty, and I had my choice of rooms. The first room he showed me was their cheapest room at 150,000 rupiah per night. That’s about $10 US. The room is smallish, I guess, as far as hotel rooms go. But it has twin beds, a small table, a clothing rack, hooks on the wall, and an air conditioner. However, $10 US does not get you a private bathroom. I have to use the shared bathroom next door. A room with a private bathroom here costs quite a bit more at 350,000 rupiah, or $23 US. Of course, I chose the cheaper option.
I was a bit of a wreck when I arrived. I was hot and sweaty and stinky and sore and tired. And I couldn’t quite summon the energy to unpack and get organized the moment I arrived. Instead, I hung out with the Wisma DU employee and chatted for a while. Then I went to get some mie ayam bakso for dinner. There was a convenient mie ayam bakso stall right next door. There is also a mini-mart type store right in this same complex, and I was able to get some snacks and some bottles of water without any trouble. It was a pretty soft landing as far as these things go.
Once I’d had some food and run all my errands, I set about unpacking and getting organized. And then I took a glorious bucket bath. My body and mind were both sore enough that I instantly considered staying here for two nights. I felt like I needed the extra night to recover physically and get ready for the next day of cycling. On Google Maps, the next day of cycling looks to be even more of an uphill climb. And it was clear that I’d have difficulty doing it right away. I quickly went over my schedule, and even though it was very tight, I made some adjustments to allow me to stay here for two nights.
I had a bit of a restless night despite the comfort of a nice bed with nice bedding and air conditioning. This hotel is a bit unusual in that it supplies a top sheet for the bed, and this top sheet is very long. It’s like a real bedsheet rather than just a small square. They also supplied a very nice, thick cotton towel. Overall, this room is a far better deal than the room I had in Bangkinan. That room cost the same at 150,000 rupiah per night, but they didn’t supply a sheet or a towel. And the room was poorly furnished compared to this one. Finally, the Wisma DU supplies breakfast. This room is a much better deal. Even so, the rigors of the previous night and day meant that I had trouble relaxing and sleeping. My brain was quite active, and I had difficulty falling asleep. But I stuck with it, and I think I got out of bed this morning feeling okay.
Most of my adventures from the bike ride fell into the category of small adventures. But there were enough of them that it was an interesting day. It started, of course, with waking up in my tent. That lent a fun beginning to the day. And using the outdoor toilets at this place was challenging. I had to use the toilet water buckets for bathing. And the bathroom stalls were quite dirty and old. The doors consisted of sheets of black plastic that had been nailed in place. And each toilet stall was filled with thousands of ants. I had ants crawling all over me as I tried to use the toilet and then take a shower. It reminded me of my time in Ethiopia, except in Ethiopia, it was always cockroaches crawling all over me. These ants were easy to deal with by comparison.
I didn’t stop for anything to eat during the entire day of cycling. I kept intending to get a meal, but the timing was never right. And I just didn’t have a good feeling about any of the restaurants I saw. They followed a typical pattern of being like a truck stop or bus stop with a window filled with bowls of local dishes. And the people got rice and some of these dishes plus a fish and sat down and ate with their hands. I was so hot and sweaty that eating that food just didn’t seem appealing. I wanted a simple place that could serve me a bowl of noodles or some nasi goreng. I couldn’t face the effort it would take to eat the fish and all those other dishes. It was all too complicated and challenging for my mood.
In one small town, I stopped to get some sugar cane juice. I had two glasses there. And I chatted with some people. There was a lot of joking and teasing while I was there to do with my being a single male. One woman kept waving a giant banana in my direction with obvious intent. She asked to take a picture with me, and she used the giant banana as a prop for the picture to indicate the probable size of what was going on in my pants. To be honest, it all felt a bit much. The teasing felt a bit harsh and not good natured. But I posed for the pictures and simply ignored the banana and all the shrieks of laughter. I could have had a meal at a small restaurant there, but this scene was getting a bit out of control, and I was no longer in the mood to spend more time there.
From that point, I ran into several places on the road where it was under construction. The construction was such that the traffic was limited to one way, and there was a system in place to hold traffic back on one side to allow traffic from the other side to get through. I assume they used smartphones or radios to communicate back and forth, and traffic passed through these bottlenecks in alternate directions. I had to join this pattern as best I could and somehow cycle fast enough to get to the other side before the traffic from that direction was given the go ahead.
The most interesting encounter of the day took place at a very rough section of road at the bottom of a steep and long hill. A group of five or six young men had taken the initiative to put up warning signs and direct traffic across this rough ground safely. In exchange for this service, they held out buckets to solicit donations from the drivers. From what I could tell, the standard donation was 2,000 rupiah. I think that might be the same amount that is normally given to parking attendants. I stopped and chatted with these guys a little bit and watched them in action. One driver didn’t give them money. Instead, he tossed a package of small cakes into the bucket. The safety guys gave me one of the cakes, which I appreciated. I definitely should have eaten more during the day. I had had little to eat since my lunch of nasi goreng on the previous day. I didn’t have dinner at all. I just had a slice of papaya and some pineapple and cups of instant coffee. And then I didn’t have breakfast, and I rode all day without eating. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel hungry. I had no appetite. I think the heat causes that.
Towards the end of the day, I started stopping at places to get cold drinks. I can always drink even when I can’t eat. I had those two glasses of sugar cane juice. And I found another shop that had a refrigerator, and I bought two bottles of some kind of sugary flavored tea. They were delicious. From that point, I was expecting an extremely difficult final ten kilometers of uphill climbing to arrive at the Wisma DU. But to my utter surprise, the road found a way to snake through the hills through convenient valleys without hardly ever going up and down. The road followed alongside a gorgeous river. It was the first actual beautiful scenery I had encountered on this trip, and I drank it in with my eyes eagerly.
There were other small adventures throughout the day, but I think I will leave the story there for now. It’s after eight in the morning now, and I should see if this breakfast at the Wisma DU actually exists.
9:26 a.m.
Breakfast is done. It was unclear for a while. I was told that my room included breakfast, and I was given a breakfast coupon when I checked in. Check-in was very easy, by the way. I wasn’t even asked to show my passport. I simply paid the 150,000 rupiah and that was it. This hotel is in the same building as a very large restaurant, and the safe assumption was that breakfast would be served there. And this restaurant was open, but there was nothing to indicate that guests from the hotel could eat there. I wandered through the place, and then I wandered out again. I ended up at the local mini-mart, where I got some milk. And while I was sitting outside and enjoying the milk, the employee from the Wisma DU tracked me down. And he escorted me to the breakfast spot. Breakfast wasn’t being served to hotel guests at the big restaurant. Instead, they had struck a deal with a small diner next door. He brought me there and put in an order for nasi goreng and coffee. That was very nice. As always, I felt like I wasn’t hungry when I got there. I had no appetite. But as soon as I took my first bite of the nasi goreng, I felt very hungry, and I gobbled it up.
I had a chance to talk with the hotel clerk over breakfast, and I learned a few things about him and this place. He is the only office employee here, and he works from five p.m. until the morning. And I guess that works because Indonesians generally arrive at their hotel late in the day. There is no need for anyone to be in the office before five. And any Indonesian guests would know the score, and they would be able to call the phone number and make arrangements if they were going to arrive before five. I guess local people would just know all this by osmosis. I think all this information about local systems and procedures is absorbed in the womb.
I also learned that this was his second job. His first job was at a warehouse in Pekanbaru. He got that job through family connections. And this job at Wisma DU is his second job. And, as I already wrote, he basically works the night shift. He says that this job is better. Pekanbaru is more expensive, and he was unable to save any money. His whole salary went toward monthly living costs. But here in his hometown he is able to earn enough to have a bit of extra money in his pocket.
I’m back in my hotel room now, and I plan to spend today simply recovering from the exertions of the last two days. I’ll also spend some time getting organized, working on the bike, and editing some videos. I’m feeling very pleased with myself right now because I just broke out my bike tool kit and I oiled the hinges on my door. I always like doing that. The door to this room is incredibly loud. The hinges have probably never been oiled, and they squeal so loudly that it sounds like a police siren in the middle of the night. With a bit of TLC thanks to my chain lube, they are now silent.
I was just looking at the route ahead on Google Maps, and I noticed there is a cluster of hotels and guest houses on this side of the big city of Payakumbuh. Up till now, I was assuming that I would ride into the city proper and find a place to stay there. That would be a 50-kilometer ride from here to Payumbukuh and then a 30-kilometer ride the next day to Bukittinggi. However, these hotels are about 10 kilometers on the closer side of the city. And they look to be located in a scenic area. Now I’m thinking that I will plan on spending the night in one of these hotels. That will make the next day of riding only 40 kilometers long. And then the second day will have me riding through Payakumbuh in the morning and riding 40 kilometers in total to Bukittinggi. Considering that I will be climbing a lot in the days ahead, I think this is a better plan. Instead of riding 50 kilometers on one day and 30 kilometers the next, I’ll ride 40 kilometers on each day. And why not stay in the scenic countryside rather than in the heart of a larger city?
I also noticed that there is a spot on the highway called Kelok 9. It consists of a complicated and rather interesting set of raised highways forming a kind of cloverleaf arrangement as the highway climbs higher and higher to get through a river valley. This spot is 26 kilometers away after an intense winding and climbing section of highway. It will serve as a very nice goal for the morning, to reach there and take in the views. It’s the kind of place that would look very interesting from a drone’s perspective. I should make an effort to at least have my 360 camera attached to the bike in some way to capture more of the views and perspective.