Sunday, October 27, 2024
8:30 a.m. Room 19, Hotel Malahayati
Tanjung Balai, Sumatra, Indonesia
(6,877 words)
I don’t know if I can tell the story of yesterday. It was too much. I suppose I will just have to keep it brief and to the point. I’d love to tell the story on video. That might be easier and more interesting. But, once again, I find myself in a hotel with practically no Wi-Fi. There is no possibility of uploading anything to YouTube while I’m here. I was hoping that by leaving Port Dickson and staying in hotels again, I could finally escape the hellish life of no-Wi-Fi. But I’m still in it. The Wi-Fi is so bad here that I can’t even run a speedtest. The speedtest just fails because the connection isn’t strong enough to even test.
I wrote in the morning yesterday that I was quite depressed about this whole trip to Sumatra that I set in motion. Preparing for it had required so much work and so many things went wrong that it went from being a simple visa run to a major expedition. And had I known it would be such a major expedition, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. The experience of a return to Sumatra for me isn’t worth the amount of work I’ve had to invest. If I knew I would have to work this hard and invest so much time and even money, I would have planned to go somewhere new.
However, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. There was no way to change course, so after I finished writing a bit, I set about packing up for the bike ride to the dock. I suppose that went about as well as can be expected. But it was a lot of work. I couldn’t just toss everything into the trailer and go. I had to make sure I had the right camera gear plus all my most valuable items and my passport and money and documents all inside one pannier bag. I had to double check everything and repack everything just to make sure that everything was good to go. I also wanted to divide the weight so that the trailer wasn’t too heavy. My idea was to bring along my big luggage bag and put the second pannier bag plus a lot of other gear in there when I got to the dock. I wanted half the weight in the trailer and half the weight in that second bag to make it easier for the dock workers. If I put everything into the trailer, it would be awkward to move around.
I also had to give the room keys back. Luckily, I spotted the Indonesian housekeeper through a window, and I communicated with her again through Google Translate about how I was leaving. Even though I had spoken to her many times about how I was leaving Port Dickson and giving up the room and going to Indonesia on this day, she still didn’t understand.
Anyway, I don’t think she understood in the slightest what was happening. But I gave her the keys and she saw me ride away on my bicycle. I wasn’t able to get my deposit back because the owners of the house were still in Taiwan on their holiday. But KY said he would contact them the next time he was back in Port Dickson, and he would get the deposit for me. Obviously, it’s not a huge amount of money, but these days, even 50 ringgit feels like a small fortune.
Not surprisingly, my bicycle and bags ended up feeling heavier than I expected. I had weighed everything in advance and knew the numbers. But the final packing seemed to uncover a bunch of items I hadn’t accounted for, and the bags and the trailer got heavier and heavier and more complicated. Of course, all of this was made exponentially more difficult by also shooting video. For the ride to the dock and for the ferry ride, I planned to use just one GoPro, my Hero 12. In fact, I removed the broomstick from my handlebars and put it inside the trailer. I figured that for transporting the bicycle on the ferry, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have that stick mounted on the front. It would make the bike more unwieldy and even a bit dangerous. And since the stick was gone, I couldn’t mount two cameras anyway.
The dock was much busier than I had hoped. And I think that was because they were checking in passengers for two boats at the same time. One desk had a sign on it for a boat going to Dumai. And a second desk was for passengers going to Tanjung Balai. It was also busier and more chaotic and stressful and confusing because the whole operation is horribly organized. This gets back to what I was saying about how I encounter so many unintelligent people. I could not work there for even one hour before I would start making changes. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say that their system was poor. I would say that they have no system at all. And the people who work at the dock and for Indomal Fast Ferry have been showing up for their shifts every day for years and years and years and it hasn’t occurred to anyone to make things better. I see this pattern in the world everywhere.
The biggest problem is that there is no way to approach any of the desks easily. There is so much luggage that the luggage serves as walls and barricades. You can’t move anywhere. And the desks are hidden behind the walls of luggage. And there is not even a hint of a lineup or procedure. People just crowd around the desks from all directions and compete to get the attention of the clerk. It’s like there is no one in charge and no organization at all.
All of this makes my situation even more difficult because I have the bulk of the bicycle and the trailer. Plus, I don’t speak the local languages. And since this boat service largely serves Indonesian workers and their families, I found myself struggling from the moment I arrived. In Port Dickson, I was able to get by with English. But the second I arrived at the dock, English largely disappeared. No one could speak English, and it was very difficult to figure out what to do. I had done this before but it was a long time ago, and I wasn’t sure of the steps. I figured it made sense to go to the check-in desk first. But it was impossible to approach that desk with any luggage. I had to leave my bicycle and trailer behind. And that meant I had to worry about security.
I had a very difficult time even reaching the desk. It was so crowded and there was no organization at all. Indonesians are very nice people, but in my experience, they have little sense of organization, lineups, and waiting your turn. They simply cut in front of you and stick their hand in front of the woman at the desk. And the woman at the desk doesn’t bother looking up. She just grabs whatever passport or ticket is in front of her face. She doesn’t control the line at all. I finally managed to get to the desk, and the woman there was the same woman who sold me my ticket. And she said that I didn’t need to check in. I was already checked in. So I just had to drop off my luggage and pay for it. So I had wasted all that time and effort in my war to just reach this desk.
And now I had to get my luggage taken care of, but I had even less clue how to do that. There simply isn’t enough room there to manage the huge amounts of luggage people had. At first, I thought I was supposed to go to the desk, register, and then a staff member would go with me to put tags on my bags. That made sense to me because somehow getting into this area with your luggage was practically impossible. But after waiting a long time, I realized that this would not work. The process didn’t seem to start with the desk. It started with the roving workers. You had to get the attention of these guys and to do that, your bags had to be right beside you. So I fought another war to bring my bicycle, trailer, and bag into this crazy area. And then I finally managed to get someone to notice me, and they started filling out luggage tags. And someone else grabbed my gear and weighed it. And then someone else shouted at me how much I needed to pay. It was total loud chaos. The final price was 63 ringgit, I think. That included 20 ringgit for the bicycle and 43 ringgit for the weight of the trailer and bag. I learned this via a piece of paper that had been torn out of a small notebook. I paid that amount, about $15 US, and that was the end of the process. I was given no receipts or copies of anything. I had no paperwork to match the tags that were put on the bicycle and bags. They could all have disappeared and I would have had no papers or numbers to show anyone to indicate that they ever existed in the first place. It’s a very strange non-system. I don’t even know why they bother putting the tags on anything. All I could do was go on faith that something logical was happening and that my bicycle would appear on the other side.
After that, it still wasn’t clear what to do next. I tried to go inside the dock building, but I was turned away. I didn’t know if that meant I just couldn’t go into the building through those doors or I couldn’t go in at all and had to wait. No one spoke English and no one had time to deal with me and my Google Translate. All I could do was stand around and wait to see what happens next.
Eventually someone stood on the steps and started shouting. I have no idea who they were or what they were shouting, but I thought I heard them say Tanjung Balai. So I just joined a crowd of people who suddenly started walking up the steps and through the doors. At the door, however, I was stopped again. A woman kept me there for a long time, and it seemed like I was in trouble. She seemed to be waiting for a more senior staff member to show up. But eventually, she used a handheld device to scan my passport, and looking at the screen, I saw that a picture of my passport had appeared along with a scan of my e-visa. That was a relief. So even though I still can’t see my e-visa online anywhere, it did exist on their computers.
I thought that after going through these doors, we could just go into the lineups for immigration. However, when I followed everyone, I found myself in a sealed room with a bunch of chairs. It was just a waiting area with no bathrooms and no exit except for the doors we used to enter. I sat there for a while wondering what was going on, and then a woman came in and started shouting. She was shouting something a LOT and very loudly. Over and over, she shouted, and I had no idea what she was saying. But eventually, a few people got up and went with her. And I figured that perhaps these were the people who paid for a VIP ticket. Perhaps one of the perks was early processing by immigration and early boarding. I had no idea what was happening but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to join this group. But when we went outside this room, we were not really treated like VIPS. In fact, we were treated like people under arrest. This woman kept shouting at us like she was a prison guard, and she lined us up against a wall like we were about to be shot or arrested or searched. There was a yellow line there, and she kept shouting at us until we were all standing there with our backs to the wall and our feet behind this yellow line. It was all very strange. Once we were lined up to her satisfaction, she counted us. I have no idea why. I was wondering what in the world was going on. Had I voluntarily joined a group that was going to do some horrible thing?
We stood there for a while, and then the woman came back and started shouting the same thing. I spoke to a number of people to try to figure out what was going on, but people just shook their head and then ignored me. No English. After what felt like a long, tense time, the woman shouted again and the people in this convict chain gang started shuffling forward. And I found myself in the immigration area. The only thing that made sense was that this group had VIP tickets and had early boarding privileges. But no one had asked to see tickets, and it seemed odd that VIPs needed to be screamed at and harangued quite so much.
Then again, I remembered that every time I’ve taken one of these boats from Malaysia to Indonesia and back again, there was a lot of shouting at the Indonesians. Malaysians generally understand the concept of organization and lineups. But Indonesians don’t have that habit fully absorbed into their culture and daily life. So I noticed that when I took a boat from Sumatra back to Malaysia, the Malaysian authorities would rule with an iron fist. I think they learned over time that left to their own devices and habits, the Indonesians would storm the immigration and luggage areas and just create chaos. And the Malaysian officials would treat the arriving Indonesians almost like convicts being processed for entry into a prison. They had to teach the Indonesians, for example, that you wait behind the yellow line until it is your turn. And they found it so difficult to control the unruly Indonesians that they developed systems of creating small groups and keeping them separate and shouting at them a lot. Otherwise, there would be chaos. It’s friendly chaos, since Indonesians are so kindhearted and nice, but chaos nonetheless.
I didn’t have any problems with immigration in Malaysia, and I was happy about that, particularly since this was my 90th day in the country. I had no leeway at all in case something went wrong. I had to leave Malaysia on this day or end up overstaying my visa. And I was worried that somehow they would count the days differently and come up with 91 days for some odd, bureaucratic reason. Or I thought staying the entire 90 days would trigger some suspicion. But I was stamped out without any problem at all. And then I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. The Port Dickson dock building is far too small and too poorly organized for handling boats of this size. But at least the pier going to the boat is long and empty. There is no chaos or noise out there. Once the formalities are done, you can relax out there. There are no crowds and there is no luggage and no one is shouting at you or bumping into you and there is no risk of an immigration or customs official suddenly putting you under arrest or deporting you or detaining you. I knew that all of this was going to happen again (and be much worse) when I arrived in Tanjung Balai, but at least for the next five or six hours, I was free. I could simply kick back and enjoy the boat ride.
I walked out to the boats and spoke a bit into the GoPro. And then I took some videos and pictures of the ferries. Once I boarded the boat, I went straight up the stairs to the VIP area, and I never went back down until we arrived. I would normally wander around the boat during the journey, get a cup of coffee, and that sort of thing. However, the crossing was much rougher than previous trips, and it was a much better choice to stay in my seat as much as possible. The boat was tossing and rolling so much that it was difficult to even stand up. There was no way I was going to risk going downstairs to try to get a cup of coffee and walk back up again. And with the heavy seas, I got a little seasick. I ended up sitting in my seat most of the time with my eyes closed, fighting off waves of nausea. A few times, I got up and went out onto the outdoor deck. I wanted to take some video, of course, but I also needed to escape the intense air conditioning inside. They kept the AC running the entire time, and it was ice cold. I wasn’t prepared for that and had only shorts and a T-shirt. The Indonesians came prepared with hoodies and blankets. But I never even thought about that. And going outside helped me control the seasickness as well. I was able to recover out in the fresh air while keeping my eyes on the steady horizon.
I really had to be careful out on deck, though. The high winds combined with the speed of the ferry created a lot of wind. I had to be so careful if I took out my phone or something. The wind could snatch anything out of your hands so easily, and it would end up in the ocean in a second. I also had to hold on tightly to the rails with both hands. The boat was going up and down and rolling so much that you could be tossed off your feet easily. When I was standing at the rails at the back of the ferry, there were times when my feet came up off the deck completely. It probably wouldn’t happen, but it felt like you could be flipped head over heels and right over the railings into the water.
I met a friendly Indonesian man on the boat. His name was Reza, and he has been working in Malaysia for about seven years. He’s 27 years old, and he goes back to visit his family in Tanjung Balai twice a year. He spoke a bit of English, and we chatted occasionally. It was nice to feel like I had an ally on the boat and for the upcoming arrival in Sumatra. He even said something at one point about my staying at his house. I was interested in that, but I also knew that considering all my cycling gear and personal habits, it might be more convenient, at least for the first night or two, to have the convenience and comfort of a hotel. We ended up going our separate ways but we might meet up again in the city. His mother came to pick him up at the dock in a becak. And I eventually rode off on my bicycle to find a hotel.
Interestingly, the ferry docked at the new dock building. I had seen this new dock building before. I think it was completed years and years ago, but for some reason, it was never used. Reza told me that it was because of covid. The building was just being finished when covid hit, and then all construction ended. When I left here last time, they were still using the old building. After going through the new building, I have to say that it doesn’t seem like much of an improvement. In fact, I thought it was terribly, terribly designed. The design was simply awful considering how it was being used. I’d make dozens of changes.
I was relieved again that I went through immigration without any issues. I was worried that my visa would not show up on their computers, but apparently it was there. The immigration officer did ask me a lot of questions about who I was and what I intended to do in Indonesia. But he was satisfied with my answers, and he processed my visa. Here in Indonesia, they have moved past the simple ink-stamp stage. They have a system that prints out a little sticker. This sticker has all the visa information, including the expiry date, and it is stuck onto a page. But even though my visa was valid, was processed, and is now in my passport, it still doesn’t exist in my online account. Therefore, I can’t extend it online. I will have to visit an immigration office in person. I hate that. The whole point of the e-VOA for me was to avoid going to the dreaded Indonesian immigration office.
And then this morning, my visa mystery deepened. About ten days ago, when I had my initial visa problems, I sent an email to Indonesian immigration. And this morning, I got a reply. And for some insane reason that I can’t even begin to explain, all they said in their reply was that my “Limited Stay Permit has been issued.” And this permit was included in the email as a downloadable attachment. This is extremely confusing because I hadn’t applied for a Limited Stay Permit. This Limited Stay Permit is the type of visa that requires a sponsor. It is valid for 60 days and can be extended twice for a total of 180 days. I hadn’t applied for one of these. I hadn’t paid for one of these. I certainly didn’t have a sponsor. And it is impossible to get one without a sponsor. So it makes no sense that they would issue me one. They even address me as Mrs. in the email even though the visa clearly states male as my gender. So the whole thing is wrong.
It’s crazy to even think about the steps that got me here: I had applied for a 30-day e-VOA. There was trouble with that visa, so I contacted them by email. And their response is to send me an invalid 60-Day Limited Stay Permit with no sponsor. It’s totally insane. I assume the reply I got was an automated computer thing. This Limited Stay Permit has a QR code on it, and when I scanned the code, I just got an error message saying that it is invalid. The 30-day VOA sticker in my passport has a QR code as well. And when I scan that, I actually get an information screen with info about that visa. So THAT works. I’m happy about that. But even though I can now see that visa online, it isn’t in my account, and there is no button to extend it. Total insanity. But in my world, on Planet Doug, the insane is the norm.
Getting through immigration was relatively easy, and that was partially because I had the VIP ticket. We VIP people, despite getting yelled at a lot, were allowed to get off the ferry first and go through immigration first before the big, chaotic crowd overwhelmed the place. The 20 ringgit for that VIP ticket is the best bargain on the planet.
Getting my bicycle and luggage, however, was not so easy. I had no idea what the system was. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any system. It’s not like an airport where you just go to a luggage carousel and get your bags. In fact, you get your luggage and cargo in the small spaces of the building lobby at the end of a narrow hallway. It’s just more insanity. Whoever designed this building forgot to include a luggage claim area. How do you miss that? I can understand if this was an older building from decades ago and it was never intended to handle such large boats and so many people. But it officially opened on October 24, 2023 to replace the old building. Given that, and given the example of modern airports and docks worldwide, how do you sit down at your architectural program on your computer, start designing this building and then forget to include luggage claim?
There is also considerable confusion surrounding how you get your luggage back. As I already mentioned, I had no luggage tags and no way to identify them except to point at them and say they are mine. And, for some reason, the Indonesian port authorities make you weigh and pay for your luggage a second time. I had already paid 63 ringgit for my luggage in Port Dickson ($14.50 US). But in Tanjung Balai, they weighed my luggage again and charged me 75,000 rupiah. That’s about $5 US, so it isn’t a big deal. It just strikes me as weird, and it vastly over complicates the process and makes getting your luggage so much slower. All the passengers on this ferry had already gone through an epic struggle to check in their bags in Port Dickson and have them weighed and pay for them. That took a long time. And now that we’d arrived in Sumatra, we all had to do it again. And I had no control over the process. There was no procedure whereby you claimed your luggage and somehow manhandled it to the scale and payment desk. You just stood around in the lobby area and waited until the luggage porters eventually got around to getting it for you.
Reza and I hung out together while we waited. He had some of the same problems that I normally face. Despite being an Indonesian, he didn’t have a local SIM card. He needed to contact his family to pick him up, but he couldn’t call them. He only had a Malaysian SIM. That seemed odd to me, but I guess it’s because he is in Malaysia for six months at a time. Luckily, there was a barrier between the dock building and the outside world. There were dozens of becaks and becak drivers out there on the street wanting our business. And they were shouting at us to get our attention. But they were not allowed to come inside, so we could wait in peace. Reza finally got his bags, and then he eventually said goodbye when his mother showed up. Reza had asked a random stranger if he could connect to their mobile hotspot in order to use his phone to call his mother. It was surprising that that was so easy to do and that this stranger was so willing to let him do that. But that’s how Indonesians are. I was a bit confused by the whole scene because I assumed his mother was coming by car to get him. But he said that she was coming by becak. So she was making a long journey from their house to the dock by becak to get him. And she has to pay for that becak. Why wouldn’t Reza just take one of the becak at the dock? It would save his mother a round trip. There was no need for her to come. But, as Reza explained, it saved money. He said the becak at the dock were very expensive. Somehow it was cheaper to get a becak from near his home and make a round trip to the dock and back than to go one-way from the dock. Maybe it was because his home is not in Tanjung Balai proper. As he explained to me, his house was on the other side of the river in a remote area. No becak would want to make the trip all the way out there.
After Reza left, I still had to wait for a long time to get my bicycle and bags. I saw my bicycle on the dock even as I was going through immigration. So it had been rolled off the boat first thing. Yet, I had to wait over two hours to finally get it. And the hallway that the luggage had to go down was extremely narrow. It was Port Dickson all over again with all the luggage creating high walls and barriers that no one could get through. They had to bring all the luggage a second time to a scale to weigh it all even though it had all been weighed in Port Dickson already. But all this luggage was piled up in the hallway and around the scale in such a way that nobody could get through. It was total chaos due to the poor design. I would say a total lack of design and thought.
Things got even worse when you left the building. There was only one narrow door that opened up onto a narrow platform with steps right in front of you. All of this luggage was huge and heavy and had to be carried on carts. Therefore the steps were just a big barrier. There were two ramps going off on each side. But those ramps had clearly been designed for mobility issues. They were standard ramps that all public buildings were required to have for wheelchairs. They weren’t designed for large amounts of luggage and cargo. And all the porters faced endless struggles as they tried to maneuver overloaded carts onto and through the narrow spaces and turns of these ramps. And everyone else just dumped their luggage onto this area, which blocked the ramps. Considering what the porters needed to do, the design of this building could not possibly have been worse.
After what felt like forever, I heard some people shouting at me, and it seemed that my trailer and bag were finally making an appearance. I had to go back into the building and all the way to the customs x-ray machine to get my bags and somehow manhandle them through the crowds and walls of cargo. And I had to get my bicycle as well, while trying to safeguard all my luggage, smartphones, wallets, and camera gear. It was chaos again. And then my stuff had to somehow go over to the tiny scale and desk to be weighed again so that I could pay them. There was even a lot of shouting at me to tell me that I needed to weigh my bicycle. I didn’t care about the fee for this, but I just played dumb for a while. I was annoyed at the nonsense, and I simply said something in English about how I’d already paid for the bicycle, and I ignored them. If they wanted to somehow get my bicycle through all that chaos and walls of luggage and somehow balance it on that tiny scale, they were welcome to try. But I wasn’t going to do it. In the end they forgot about the bike or maybe they just guessed at its weight. A bunch of people started shouting at me, and I was shown a piece of paper with the number 75,000 on it. So I paid the 75,000 rupiah and started to move my luggage outside. I got shouted at a lot during this procedure, too. I often have certain ways I want to do things and I have reasons for that. In this case, I wanted to bring my bicycle and gear down the ramp on the right. That ramp wasn’t often used because it leads away from the front gates. It’s not the most direct route for leaving the dock complex. But I knew that I needed to spend about half an hour putting my bicycle back together. And I wanted to do that in the shade of the building and where there were no crowds. So I wheeled my bicycle down the ramp on the right. But for some reason a porter had decided to help me and he had grabbed one of my other bags, and he was going down the ramp on the left. And he kept shouting at me to follow him. But I wanted to go to the right. Anyway, there was a lot of shouting and gesturing, but I just ignored everyone and did what I wanted to. I assumed the porter would ask for some money for carrying my bag down the ramp, but to my surprise, he didn’t.
I then settled into the task of reattaching the trailer to the bicycle, rearranging the contents, and then attaching the two pannier bags and then attaching the two GoPro cameras and the broomstick mounts. I wasn’t originally planning to put the broomstick back on while at the dock. I figured I could wait until I was at a hotel and do the job at leisure. But it had taken so long to get this far, I figured another thirty minutes wouldn’t hurt, and I got out my tools and put the broomstick mount back on and then methodically went over my two GoPro cameras and attached them and set them up.
The ride away from the docks, through the fish market and then into Tanjung Balai proper was crazy and wild. The traffic was out of control. And I felt the roughness of the road strongly because I was riding with my full touring load for the first time. And everyone was shouting greetings at me and lots of people wanted me to stop so we could chat and they could take pictures with me. It was the friendly chaos of Sumatra that I am so accustomed to.
I had a destination in mind: the Hotel Malahayati. They are not listed online, so I wasn’t able to reserve a room in advance, and that made me a bit nervous. But it seemed like an ideal place for me despite being located a bit on the outskirts. The total distance from the dock to the hotel was about eight kilometers, but it felt a lot longer than that. My arrival at the hotel went smoothly. As I had hoped, they had a convenient parking area right outside, and I was able to ride my bicycle into that area and lock it up. I removed both GoPros. The Hero 12 I attached to my neck mount and I put the Hero 9 away. I took my main pannier bag in with me and left the other one and the trailer on the bicycle. They both had locks on the main zippers, so they were as secure as it was possible to make them.
The young man at the front desk was more than happy to work with me to get through the language barrier. We used Google Translate, and I understood that a single room with air conditioning cost 120,000 rupiah a night. That’s the equivalent of 33 ringgit or about $7.65 US. And that includes a few benefits: a towel, soap, shampoo, a small bottle of water, and even breakfast. I had plans to take advantage of that and have breakfast this morning, but I started writing this account over coffee, and I just didn’t want to take a break.
The young man showed me the room before I took it, and I must say I had reservations. But it also seemed inevitable. I always seem to get the worst possible room at any hotel. And I guess that is inevitable, because I am usually asking for their cheapest single room. And in this case, he took me up to the second floor, down a hall, and then out onto the farthest end of the outdoor balcony facing the street. That means it would have the worst WiFi and be the most noisy. I could have asked for a different room, but I’m pretty sure all the single rooms would be about the same. So I just took it. I was able to put my bicycle in the downstairs courtyard behind the small mosque. And I brought my trailer and other pannier bag up here. Luckily, I had a meal with me. On the boat, we all got a lunch box of rice and chicken. I ate mine before I became seasick. But Reza wasn’t so lucky, and he didn’t eat his because he became seasick. And he gave me his untouched meal to take with me. That was nice because I was able to spend time in my room unpacking and then copying all the video files and making the Relive video and doing other things and then I had the second chicken and rice meal.
Much later in the evening, I decided to take a walk to a nearby AlfaMart just to buy some water for my morning coffee and to get some milk. On the way, I got to enjoy the frantic atmosphere of this neighborhood. There is a big children’s carnival just down the street and lots of restaurants and cafes around. And then it was finally time for bed. Considering that my day had begun at 4 a.m. and it was now past 11 p.m. Malaysia time, I had had a long day. And with the traffic noise, I wasn’t sure I would be able to sleep. But I slept quite well. I don’t even remember noticing the traffic noise. The mattress on this bed is extremely soft. It’s much softer than anything I can remember for a long time. Maybe the change in mattress helped me sleep. But it was probably just how much energy I had expended on this journey. I slept well because I had been so active and busy for so many hours.
It’s now noon, and I’ve been writing for a lot longer than I had planned. But I do enjoy writing about these travel days. So much happens on a travel day. And I didn’t even write about arriving at the river mouth in Sumatra and going upriver to Tanjung Balai. We passed so many fascinating clusters of fishing boats, big and small. It was a long, hard day, but also an interesting one. And despite the difficulties and chaos, nothing terrible happened. Twice in Port Dickson, I dropped my passport. Once, I wasn’t even aware that I had dropped it. Someone had to point it out to me. So I could easily have lost my passport. I could have lost my luggage. It could have been pouring rain all day. The trip could have been delayed due to weather. My bicycle could have been damaged. I could have gotten a flat tire. The hotel might have been full with no rooms available. The hotel might have been super expensive. I could have been sick to my stomach all day. Immigration at either end could have given me problems about my visa. I could have been robbed or pickpocketed or lost a bag. So looking at the bright side, it was a smooth journey. So many things could have gone wrong. But none of them did.
I don’t have any big plans for today. I just need the day to rest and recover and get mentally and physically reorganized. Right across the road from this hotel, there is a water filtration center. I hope to get some water. I need to find something to eat. I have other things I need to do, such as get a SIM card and get my phone activated (hopefully). But I won’t be able to do that until Monday. Time to shut down and start the new day.
