Sunday, February 12, 2023
7:03 a.m. Reddoorz
Bukittinggi, Sumatra, Indonesia
Well, I am here. I arrived in Bukittinggi yesterday afternoon after a relatively short ride from Payakumbuh. And, to be honest, it feels a bit anticlimactic. I haven’t seen much of the town, to be honest, so I can’t really say much about it, but so far it hasn’t lived up to the image I had in my head. I had built the place up in my mind into a gorgeous mountain town. I was expecting somewhere quite special. Yet, it feels like an ordinary large Indonesian city with tons of traffic. In fact, Payakumbuh felt like a much nicer and more attractive and pleasant place to stay than Bukittinggi does right now. Now that I’m here, I wish I had chosen Payakumbuh as my base for my short trip to Malaysia and back. I’m wondering why I made such a big deal out of getting here.
In a way, it makes sense. I spent a few minutes yesterday looking at tourism websites for Bukittinggi, and it appears that Bukittinggi’s reputation as a great place for tourists isn’t based on any natural beauty or interest in the town itself. It’s based on the region. Therefore, when people talk about how wonderful Bukittinggi is, they are including the attractions of Payakumbuh and other areas. When they say Bukittinggi, they are really referring to this whole region. They might stay in a hotel in Bukittinggi, but they are visiting tourist attractions around Payakumbuh, around Lake Maninjau, around Mount Marapi, and all the other places. From that perspective, you don’t really need to stay in Bukittinggi. You could stay in one of the other nearby towns and get the exact same experience. Perhaps you’d get a better experience.
However, I must admit it’s really too early to make a judgement call. I didn’t have a great day yesterday, and my arrival in Bukittinggi was fairly rough. I’m not sure what happened, but the day just never came together. Every other day started with a great feeling of going somewhere new and enjoying new places and having new experiences. Yet, when I rode out of Payakumbuh, that didn’t happen. I was fully expecting to spend the day riding leisurely to Bukittinggi through gorgeous mountain scenery and stopping in lots of places to interact with people along the way and sample some food and capture all of this on video. Yet, none of that happened. And I guess I should have expected it. In my mind, I had gotten accustomed to the road and the scenery from Bangkinang to Payakumbuh. I assumed the atmosphere and the scenery would continue in the same fashion. What I neglected to consider is that Payakumbuh kind of marks the end of that scenery and atmosphere. I came out of the mountains to reach Payakumbuh, and the road AFTER Payakumbuh was now connecting three of the largest cities in West Sumatra: Payakumbuh, Bukittinggi, and Padang. And because this road was going directly between these cities, the traffic came back with a vengeance. I spent the day back in the Indonesian world of heavy non-stop overwhelming traffic. It was no fun at all.
The scenery didn’t really emerge either. I thought I would be able to take in all the nearby volcanoes and mountains and rice fields as I rode along. But it was cloudy and overcast all day long, and I didn’t get any views at all. Finally, it started to rain. This happened when I was about eleven or twelve kilometers from downtown Bukittinggi. I had stopped for lunch at a nice mie ayam bakso place, and the minute I got back on the bike to complete the ride, it started to rain. Had it been a torrential downpour, I would have just turned around and stayed in the restaurant till it was over. But it wasn’t that kind of rain. It started as a kind of misty rain that came in sheets with a strong wind. It felt like this rain was going to continue for a long time, perhaps for hours for the rest of the day. I didn’t think I could wait for it to stop. So I simply kept riding.
Eventually, the rain got heavy enough that I had to stop and adjust my bike and gear. I had to put away my GoPro and microphone and smartphone and wallet and cycle computer and everything else I didn’t want to get soaked. And I had to put the rain covers on the pannier bags. Finally, I tried to adjust how I packed the trailer to minimize the amount of water that was going to pool on the top. All of this was a big job at the side of the road in the mud and the rain and the wind. I got a bit lucky here because I once again lost track of some gear. These days, my brain can’t seem to handle too many tasks at the same time. Several times, I’ve stopped to change the GoPro battery or memory card or something like that, and then I cycle away and forget to zip up the pockets. I’ve even left camera gear just sitting on top of the pannier bags and on top of the trailer. I forget to put it away.
And yesterday, I got everything put away and was getting organized. And I rolled my bike a few feet away to put it underneath a roof to keep the rain from hitting it. And a few minutes later, a man came up to me and handed me a GoPro thumbscrew – a special and important one – that he had found on the ground. He assumed it belonged to me. It had fallen to the ground and I hadn’t noticed. I do stuff like that all the time these days.
The rest of the ride into Bukittinggi and to my hotel was challenging. It continued to rain fairly heavily and the traffic continued to be heavy. And inside Bukittinggi, the roads were nearly flooded. Apparently, the rain had been extremely heavy inside the city itself, and there were large pools of water extending over large parts of the road, and I had to ride right through them. I had picked out a route to take me to my hotel, and it turned out I chose that unwisely as well. The road was not a road so much as a narrow path through the local produce market. It was really hard to make it through there, but I persevered.
I found the hotel without much trouble, but I arrived there a complete mess. I was soaked. The bike and gear were soaked. And my reception at the hotel wasn’t the greatest. I’d gotten used to very warm and friendly arrivals at hotels. At the Wisma Flamboyant in Payakumbuh, there were four or five very eager and friendly young guys to help me check in. I felt welcome. But at this Reddoorz place, there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Finally, a young man popped his head around the corner and he checked me in. But he did so with all the enthusiasm of a robot. He was more interested in getting back to whatever he was doing on his smartphone. The whole arrival just felt flat and cold. I took a chance and sounded him out on the possibility of my leaving my bicycle at this hotel while I go to Malaysia. I’d selected this hotel in particular because in pictures it looked somewhat spacious and I hoped there was lots of space to leave a bike. However, the hotel clerk was not excited at this idea. He clearly didn’t have a strong interest in customer service let alone a special request like that. He just stared at me with a blank face. I don’t think he had that kind of authority anyway. And when I looked around the hotel, I didn’t really see any convenient space anywhere. It was not the type of place I expected.
As usual, I was hoping for a room on the ground floor. That just makes life easier. But my room turned out to be on the second floor. And I think it is their most special room, so I didn’t insist on a ground floor room. This room has large windows to the outside world and even has double doors leading onto a nice balcony. Surrounding buildings block most of the view of the surrounding mountains, but there is a bit of a view here and there. And the balcony seemed a perfect place to store my bicycle. In this case, I didn’t ask for permission to bring my wet trailer and muddy bicycle into my hotel room. I just started carrying things in and hoped that no one would stop me.
Bringing up my gear and unpacking was not a simple nor easy process. I had to invest a fair amount of time in cleaning the bike and unpacking and drying a bunch of things. The rain covers for my pannier bags were covered in both mud and water, and I had to rinse them off in the bathroom before hanging them up to dry. The whole day, to be honest, just didn’t unfold in the manner that I expected. Nothing about it felt right. It consisted largely of a few hours of uphill cycling and then an hour of cycling in the rain with heavy traffic coming at me from all directions. And it ended with a somewhat flat arrival and non-welcome at the hotel.
The hotel room itself also felt a bit off. When I first saw the room at the Wisma Flamboyant, I was a bit disappointed. But I quickly learned to really like that room. It just worked. And it had great WiFi. This room at Reddoorz doesn’t work in the same way. I was surprised to see that there was no air conditioner. But I guess at this altitude, they feel that air conditioning is not necessary. I hoped I could open the windows and get a bit of a breeze and fresh air blowing through. And I COULD do that, but the windows have no screens. And I saw that mosquitoes were getting in. I had to keep them closed after that. And the room is extremely noisy. Large family groups moved into the other rooms around me, and there was endless shouting and laughing and children crying and doors slamming all night long. The small parking lot is right underneath my room, and there was a constant roar of engines as scooters and motorcycles came and went. The bathroom is rather dirty and old with very little water pressure. And what water there is is ice cold. I’d seen a lot of online chatter about how important hot water is in Bukittinggi. It’s too cold for the typical cold-water shower. I was half-expecting to have an actual water heater in this room, but there isn’t one. The water is quite cold. I don’t mind that, but it was one more thing about this room that was different from my expectations.
Once I’d moved in, I did a bit of searching around on Google Maps, and I was pleased to find that there was a large supermarket not far away. I thought I could finally pick up some instant coffee and other such luxuries. I set out on foot, and it started to rain again as soon as I stepped outside. But I soldiered on, and I walked out of the supermarket with a large bag filled with instant coffee, coffee creamer, milk powder, and even a bag of instant oatmeal and a box of corn flakes. For dinner, I just had corn flakes and then oatmeal later on. I just was not in the mood to go into the city to eat at a restaurant. I was done for the day.
In the evening, I spent some time chatting with the husband of a woman that I’d met from the Travel Gulamo tour. And we are making arrangements for me to leave my bicycle and trailer at a house that belongs to their family. It’s about ten kilometers from here, but the plan is that I can ride my bike and trailer there tomorrow and leave it in storage. And then they might give me a lift back into town to my hotel. It was very nice of them to offer this solution. And I like this idea better than leaving my bike at a hotel. It will be a more interesting experience, and I won’t have to worry so much about how much time I stay away. At this hotel, I think I’d feel under pressure to return as soon as possible. But leaving my bicycle with this family, I think I can leave my return a bit more open-ended.
Today, I will be working on videos while also organizing my gear and arranging more of the details of my trip to Kuala Lumpur. Just a few minutes ago, I had a great experience. I was standing out on my balcony, and I saw a food cart go by. The man pushing the cart was banging a spoon against a bowl to get attention. And when he turned around and came back, I could read the lettering on his cart, and it said Bubur Ayam. I quickly called down to him to order one, and then I raced down the stairs to get it and pay. It was such a great breakfast. I hope he comes by every morning.