VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
In this Podcast, I tell the story about my first week or so here in Banda Aceh, right up until the recent heavy rains started and everything kind of shut down for a while. I talk about getting my smartphone unblocked by Customs. That’s usually the first thing I need to do in Sumatra every time I visit. I also learned how to ride on the local buses. I explored a bit more of the streets of this city. And I tell the story of going on a day trip, a road trip, to a tropical island to relax, enjoy the scenery, and do some snorkeling.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to another Planet Doug behind-the-scenes podcast video for Friday, November 21st, 2025. And I decided to record this podcast video because I enjoy doing them, but also because yesterday I went out on a day trip with some new people that I met here in Banda Aceh. I hopped in a car, a van kind of deal, and drove down the coast for two to two and a half hours along the coast of Sumatra to a small tropical offshore island. Basically, a tropical paradise. Spent the day on this island. Did a whole bunch of things there. A whole bunch of things on the way there. Drove back again. And today I’m supposed to be editing the video from yesterday’s adventure. So I was going to wake up in the morning, make my usual cup of instant coffee, and start editing. But to be honest, I just couldn’t face it. The editing is going to take a very long time because on the way there and on the beaches, I shot some video with my 360 camera. So, one of the first things I’m going to have to do is take all the 360 video that I shot and reframe it. And to be honest, that could take an entire day just to do that. And you basically have to take the 360 video and turn it into regular video. That’s the reframing and exporting process. And you have to do all of that before you can even start the normal editing. So, it’s like a full day of 360 reframing. And then you can start the editing, which can take one or two days. Anyway, I just had such a great time yesterday. I really wasn’t in the mood to start editing the video. I wanted to let the experience sit with me for a little bit, just to enjoy it, enjoy the memory of it before I dive into the editing. And one way of doing that, of course, is to tell the story in a behind-the-scenes video. So, that was the inspiration for recording this behind-the-scenes podcast.
But before I tell that story, I want to go back in time all the way back to the beginning. I recorded a podcast about my flight from Malaysia to come here. I’m in the city of Banda Aceh in Aceh province, the far north of Sumatra, the very tip of Sumatra. And I told the whole story about getting my visa to come here, the online 30-day visa on arrival, my trip to the airport, getting through immigration with my two passports, my old Canadian passport and my new Canadian passport, and the flight and the taxi ride to my hotel and going out for a walk in my neighborhood here to get some water on my arrival. And I think that’s where my last behind-the-scenes video ended. So after that, what did I do? I did a lot of different things. One thing I did is I went for another walk around my neighborhood, my new neighborhood in Banda Aceh. And I shot video while I was walking around. I’ve already edited and uploaded that video, so I’ll be posting it pretty soon.
And yeah, it was fascinating to do. My original plan was not to be in this neighborhood at all. In fact, I had selected a hotel that was more downtown, near the famous mosque, near the tsunami museum, like near the rivers. And I wanted to be right in the heart of the busy downtown core. And I picked out a hotel in that neighborhood. And to this day, I swear I clicked on that hotel on Google Maps, which opens up the listings for all the various booking sites. So, you see all the prices for that hotel. If you go to the Agoda link, it shows you the price, the Agoda link, the booking.com link, and I chose Agoda for that hotel because I’m just accustomed to using Agoda. My payment systems work well with Agoda and I’m not sure about the other sites and the price was the best on Agoda. So I clicked on the Agoda link and I booked a room at that hotel and then I paid for it and everything was settled and then there was something odd. I looked at my booking on Agoda and it didn’t look right. I clicked on the map to see the location of the hotel and I was in a completely different neighborhood and at the time I was really disappointed about that. I was like I didn’t want to stay there. That’s not where I wanted to be. So I tried to cancel it and I wasn’t able to cancel the booking. So in the end I ended up staying at this hotel where I didn’t really want to be. But of course everything works out. I mean, even though it wasn’t the hotel I wanted to stay in, the hotel was interesting, low-budget place, this building has character. It’s got old bones. And then the neighborhood rather than being a downtown business district was more in a residential area. I mean, there is a busy road. So, if you want commercial stuff, restaurants, stores, shops, busy traffic, it’s right there. There’s a very busy main street right there. So, I still have access to everything I needed access to. There’s an Indomaret there, an Indomaret there. Everything I need is right in this neighborhood, but it is a residential district and that makes for a very interesting area too as opposed to a downtown business core. So, I went out for a walk, walking around, looking at all the big houses in this area. And one of the interesting things that I came across was a marker, like a monument. It said Tugu number 64. And I had no idea what it was. So, I got out Google Translate and I translated the marker. There was nothing. There was no English. And it turned out it was a tsunami monument. And it said tugu number 64. So that makes me wonder, are there at least 64 of these small tsunami monuments all over the city? I don’t know about that. I mean the tsunami that hit Aceh province and really hit Banda Aceh quite hard, that was back in 2004, December 26, the day after Christmas, like 8:30 in the morning, something like that. And it’s a big part of the history of Banda Aceh and Aceh province. So there’s the tsunami museum. There’s another museum built into a boat, like one of these huge ships. I think this is like a power generating ship. I haven’t been there yet. I haven’t been to the tsunami museum yet. I haven’t been to see the boat. But this boat of course was lifted up by the tsunami carried inland and deposited on the land like kilometers inland. The wave carried it all the way inland and it carried in probably hundreds of ships to be honest, boats and ships. But this one they left it there as a monument. So that’s part of the history of the tsunami that you can go visit. And there’s another boat. I think they left it. It sits on top of a bunch of houses. This big maybe a fishing boat. So there are all these historical sites. You can go on a tour around Banda Aceh and see all these tsunami related attractions if you want to call them attractions, more like tributes or monuments. But I’d never heard about there being as many as 64 of these smaller monuments, like maybe 4 feet, 5 feet tall, with a plaque on them. But anyway, I saw this one in my neighborhood. It was monument number 64, and it basically gave the information about the tsunami at that exact point. And it said that at this point 2.3 kilometers from the shore, the wave that hit was 3.9 meters high, which is an astonishing statistic when you think about it that you’re nearly 2 1/2 kilometers from the ocean and the wave that hit that point was still nearly 4 meters high like what is that 12 to 15 feet high that’s how deep the water was 2.5 kilometers from the shore which is pretty amazing and when I saw that monument I was thinking about the storm surge that I experienced in the Philippines I’ve told this story at length where I happened to be in the city of Tacloban in the Philippines when typhoon Haiyan or the local name for it, Typhoon Yolanda, hit that city and it brought with it essentially a tsunami that hit that city as well. And my hotel was hit by the same depth of water. So my hotel was hit by this storm surge and it reached the second floor of my hotel. So it was about 3 to 4 meters deep, but I was only 300 meters from the shore. So my hotel was 300 meters from the ocean. And when the storm surge hit my hotel, it was about 3 to 4 meters deep. Here we’re 2.5 kilometers from the shore and the water was 3 to 4 meters deep. And that gave me some sense of the scale of this tsunami the depth and power of it. So just seeing that monument was quite an interesting thing for me when I was walking around my neighborhood. And I don’t think it was on this walk, but on a different walk, I ran into a local soy processing center, like a neighborhood place where they make tofu. And that was quite interesting for me as a traveler and as a YouTuber. It was an interesting experience, too, because I’m walking along with my GoPro. I was walking along the river talking about how the tsunami would have come up this river. Very small, not the big river Banda Aceh, but a small local tributary, a small river. And I was walking along and I heard this sound. It was like a roaring sound. And I kind of looked off to the left and I saw this building and it said on the front, Tahu Solo. And I saw some kind of a drum, like a big drum with a fire underneath it. And from a distance I thought, “Oh, I bet that roaring sound is coming from that drum.” And then I just kept walking. But the thing is when you are kind of a traveler and especially a YouTuber, you really should have to follow up on all those instincts, right? I think the human instinct is you see something interesting, but then you’re hesitant to go investigate because you’re a foreigner. You don’t want to bother people. You don’t want to intrude. So, you kind of go, “Huh, I wonder what that is over there.” But you need a little bit of a push to go check it out, right? And in this case, I was very proud of myself, well, not proud of myself. I was lucky in that I walked on. I actually looked I heard this sound and I went, “Huh, I wonder what that is.” But then I kept walking and I went across this bridge and I looked at the river this and that. But then as I was coming back across the bridge, I thought, “Oh, come on. Go look like take that extra step.” So then I decided to actually go check it out and I got my I fired up my GoPro and then I walked into this place where I heard this loud roaring and I went up to one of the workers. A worker was sitting there taking a coffee break and I asked in a way I mean I tried to ask for permission. I said hello we did the my name is Douglas. I’m from Canada. I’m a tourist. I’m a YouTuber. Here’s my card from my YouTube channel. And then I established what I thought of as some kind of a rapport. And then I asked the guy like, “Is it okay if I go inside and take a look around and shoot some video?” And I find you have to be a little bit careful with this kind of thing because you don’t want to get anybody in trouble. The guy is just a worker there and you don’t want to intrude. You don’t want to be a bother. So, but I did ask him, “Is it okay if I come inside to shoot some video?” And he said, “Sure, come on in. Come on in.” Indonesians are very welcoming that way. But before I went inside, I still didn’t know what this place was. I went up to the big drum and there was a big fire underneath it. A wood fire. All these logs and branches were had a big fire underneath. And I asked the guy like, “What’s going on here?” And he says, “Oh, that’s water.” So they were boiling water and then there was a pipe coming out of the top and the pipe went into the building like went through the wall. So I was guessing that they were it was a steam boiler. So they were creating hot steam, boiling steam and then channeling the steam into the building through that pipe. And then when I went into the building, suddenly it all became clear and I was like, “Ah, okay. I know what’s going on here.” They were boiling soybeans, processing the soybeans to make tofu. And for a long time as I was going through this place, I mean, I’d asked the guy, “What do you make here?” And he said, “Tahu. Tahu.” And I typed tahu into Google Translate and it came out as fruit. And I thought, “Fruit? What kind of fruit is tahu?” So, I didn’t even know what they were doing in there. But then later on, the light bulb went off. And I should have known because I knew the word tahu. I’d encountered it multiple times before, but being a dummy, I forgot. And tahu means tofu. And I knew that as soon as I went inside because I recognized what they were doing. They had a large number of cement cylinders on the floor. I think they’re made out of some kind of cement. And then inside each of them, I could see boil like different stages of the tofu production process. And the steam pipe came in through the wall and then little pipes came down from the main pipe into these cement containers and it was pouring steam in there and boiling the soybeans. And then the soybeans, I don’t know the exact process, but they would go from container to container to container as they boil it and process it. And then they eventually end up with a kind of tofu, like soy curd as they break it down. And then they boil away all the water and they’re left with this soy curd. And then they put it into these big frames and put cement blocks on top of it to compress it. And they essentially make big squares of tofu. And then they cut it up into little squares and put those little squares into big tubs of water and then sell them in the market. And while I was there investigating and taking video, I saw a lot of women came up shopping from local homes, right? They’re cooking meals for their family and they were coming to buy tofu and they would come up to the door and they were buying fresh squares of tofu from the workers there. So that was a very very interesting experience.
An interesting angle on this was that not long ago a YouTuber and I think he’s American, an American YouTuber but based in Vietnam, he made kind of an expose video about tofu production near Surabaya. I don’t know if he knew about it in advance. I think he did. And then he went out to investigate because he heard that at these tofu centers they boiled the water and in this place that he showed it was a different kind of operation though. Like the place I saw had a huge boiler outside creating steam and that steam was channeled by pipes and used to boil the soy. But in the places near Surabaya that this guy made a video about, I think they had individual fires inside the building underneath each container. So they were boiling each container separately with fire as opposed to using steam. And the fires were made with recycled plastic. And in his video, I don’t think he talked about it being recycled. He just talked about it being waste plastic that they were burning plastic to boil the soybeans to make tofu and soy milk. And of course, doing that raises a lot of health concerns because you get smoke pouring out of that fire filled with plastic particles that the workers are breathing into their lungs, of course. And of course, some of that smoke and the plastic is going to get into the tofu. And the idea was that people were eating poisoned tofu, poisoned with toxic chemicals from burning plastic and plastic particles themselves. And that made a huge splash on YouTube. This guy I think he made the first video about it. It went viral and lots of news programs picked up on it. And there, if you go on YouTube now, you’ll see lots of videos about this process going on near Surabaya. And when I was researching it, I found out that that plastic, I assume the plastic was Indonesian plastic, like plastic bags, plastic containers gathered up in Indonesia. But the bulk of it was coming from other countries where Indonesia made a deal with countries like Australia who had all this recycled plastic, basically garbage they’re trying to get rid of and they would sell it very very cheaply to countries like Indonesia and it would all be brought by the ton tons and tons of it being shipped into Indonesia and then Indonesia they would do something with it. They would recycle it or make money from it. And someone figured out that they could buy these giant bales, like tons of plastic cheaper than firewood. So they bought tons of this plastic and they were using it for cooking fires, which of course introduces all the health problems. So the place that I saw here in Banda Aceh, people left a few comments on actually I posted some photos of this. That’s right. I haven’t posted the video yet, but I did post photos and a couple of people left comments saying, “Woo, I’m glad to see that they’re not using plastic.” So, this idea of cooking with plastic has gone out into the world. People are aware of the issue now. In this place, they were still cooking with wood. And even if they were cooking like boiling with like making a fire out of plastic, at least they would have been boiling water in a drum, creating steam. They didn’t have a fire underneath each individual container, which is another big difference. But yeah, that that’s one of the bigger experiences that I’ve had here in Banda Aceh in my neighborhood as I’ve been walking around. I went into the local shopping mall. There’s a big Suzuya shopping mall. I was told recently that it originally burned down. They built this brand new fancy shopping mall a few years ago and the whole thing burned down and then they had to close it and rebuild it and it’s open again. It’s very popular. I was there on the weekend and it was jammed with people. They have a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a big fancy supermarket with everything you can imagine. So, it’s like state-of-the-art modern supermarket grocery store. Lots of cell phone stores, car dealership in the lobby you can buy cars. So, a very nice modern shopping mall just around the corner in addition to all the usual local shops. My Bakso restaurant is just up the street. I found one. I go there at least once a day, I think, to get my bakso. And yeah, so I’ve learned to really enjoy this neighborhood. Though, I’m thinking about moving out. I’m booked here through the weekend. So, I think I have Friday night tonight, Saturday night, Sunday night as well. And I think I might book a different hotel. I mentioned I tried to book a room at a different hotel here in Banda Aceh. I think I’m going to book this other place and move there Monday. I think when I first looked at all these hotels, they all had the same price. They all cost about 100,000 rupiah per night. And I was just checking this morning and these two other hotels that I was thinking about that I tried to stay at, they seem more expensive now. The prices on Google Maps were like 200,000. So they were twice as expensive, but when I went to Agoda, they went down to like 140,000. But in my exploring of Banda Aceh so far, I had a chance to go look at these two other hotels. One is called the Collection O Banda Aceh. It’s an OYO hotel. It used to be called the Mulana. So formerly the Mulana. I went to see that one and it’s in terms of value much better value than this hotel. I like this hotel. I like the neighborhood, but it is really rough around the edges and you don’t get anything in the room. Like nothing. There’s nothing in here. So you when you check in, here’s the key to your room. And there’s a bed and a dirty bathroom with a bucket. That’s all. But I went to look at these other places. The Collection O Banda and then the Collection O Peunayong Hotel. Both of them at that time were the same price as this one, but the bathrooms were like nicely appointed. It had a sink and a tap and mirrors on the wall and shelves and hooks and they provided soap and shampoo and towels. There was furniture in the room like a desk and a chair and a table. So, you got a lot more for your money at the other two hotels. So, I think I’m just for the experience. I want to stay in a new neighborhood as well. Not just for the better value, but I get to experience a different type of hotel in a new neighborhood. Things like that. So, yeah, I guess that part of this podcast is the getting to know my new neighborhood in Banda Aceh story.
My next story is kind of a two-parter, I guess. It involves going to Telkomsel, the Telkomsel GraPARI office, because I needed to get my phone unblocked. I already had a SIM card, like a Telkomsel Indonesian SIM card. It was still valid. I actually bought data and credit. So, I had credit in my account and I bought a data package. So, everything was fine. The phone worked perfectly. The SIM card was valid. I had data and credit. Everything was cool. But I still could not connect to mobile internet because, as always, my phone was blocked by customs. So, I needed to get that taken care of. So the way you do that is you go to the Telkomsel GraPARI office and I decided to go there by bus and that has turned into quite an adventure. I didn’t know that Banda Aceh had a bus system. In fact I understood people told me that there was no transportation here at all. They said, “Well, when you go to Banda Aceh, you’re going to have to use Gojek or Grab or Becak or walk everywhere or taxis because there’s no other way to get around.” And I was thinking, “Boy, this is going to be a real uncomfortable change for me because when I was in places like Tanjung Balai in Sumatra, I had my bicycle. So, I could go everywhere. I was free. I had my own bicycle. So I had freedom of movement. And then of course in Kuala Lumpur I’ve got the MRT, the LRT, the Monorail, the buses. It’s very very easy to go everywhere in Kuala Lumpur. And I am the master of KL’s MRT system. The master of touch and go to get in and out of the MRT system. So I thought, boy, when I get to Banda Aceh, it’s going to be a little bit uncomfortable because I don’t like depending on like taxis, Gojek and Grab, like constantly summoning a driver. There’s just that added level of complexity. I just want to be able to go somewhere and somehow now I’ve got to have the app and summon a driver and then this driver is going to call me and we’re going to have trouble communicating and he won’t just all that hassle of dealing with someone and then if you take a becak or a taxi of course you’ve always got the concern about the price that they’re going to overcharge you as a foreigner and there’s language problems all that kind of stuff. I was even thinking about buying a bicycle. I was looking into it seriously enough that I thought, well, if I’m going to be here for a month, maybe two months, I don’t know. Why don’t I just buy a local cheap bike for $20 or $50, whatever it costs, and then I can have the bicycle here and I can ride it around. And I started looking into it. I went on to these used bicycle websites and I thought if there was a bike like right around the corner that was for sale. I could go look at it, buy it, I probably would have done it, but I couldn’t find anything in the used markets and then I’d have to buy a new one and I got to go to the bike shop and I just never quite got around to it. And the issue with that, of course, as well, it’s one thing to buy a bicycle. You can talk yourself into the fact that it makes economic sense. You can convince yourself of almost anything when it comes to economics. Like you justify buying something by telling how much money you’re going to save that if I don’t have a bicycle then I’ll pay for a Gojek and a taxi 15 times and I can figure out how much that’s going to cost me and then oh if I had a bike that pays for the bike right there. You can talk yourself into almost anything, but you got to buy the bike. But in my case now, I need to be able to carry some stuff with me. Cuz I was thinking I could even bring the bike with me if I go to another island. Like if I take the ferry to Pulau Weh, the big tourist island here to check that place out, then I could ride my bike to the dock, right? Just ride my bike to the dock and put my bike on the ferry and then at the other end I can ride my bike off the dock and I don’t have to take a taxi. I don’t have to pay I don’t have to deal with all that. But now of course, how am I going to get my luggage on the bicycle? So now you’re thinking about, well, I better get a rack and I got to get pannier bags and well, what if I have a flat tire? Well, you got to get at least a pump and then you need suddenly you’re putting together an entire touring bicycle and you start you end up buying all the bicycle accessories. And as we all know, that can double the cost of anything. You convince yourself, oh, I’m going to buy a GoPro, it’s only whatever, $300, but or a drone, it’s only $300. But by the time you come out of the store, the extra batteries, the grips, the accessories, the controller, you’ve doubled the base cost almost every time. And a bicycle is the same. Maybe you can get your bike for $50. And you think, “Wow, what a great deal. I got a bicycle, but out the door, you’re probably going to end up spending another $50 on all the accessories for that bike.” And even then, I’ve got a pretty big backpack with me this time. Where would I put the backpack on the bike? You couldn’t really strap. It’s a big one. I can’t imagine strapping it onto the bike. I guess you could wear it. Anyway, things quickly spin out of control. It’s not as simple as just buying a bike and away you go. Anyway, I never did get around to buying a bike, but then I discovered, I don’t know how, maybe I just saw one, that they have buses here. So I thought, huh, I can get around by bus. And then I started learning about the bus system. And that turns into an entire project, of course. And then I started thinking I could even make a Planet Doug video about how to ride the buses of Banda Aceh. It wouldn’t be a huge market for a video like that, like how many foreigners are going to come to Banda Aceh and decide they want to get around the city by bus. But I thought, well, I mean, if I’m going to learn all about the buses anyway, I have the knowledge, why don’t I film it and then I can make a how-to video about the buses of Banda Aceh. So, I took it pretty seriously and I went out to the main street here and at one point I saw a bus stop and the bus stop kind of blew my mind. It was huge because I had just come from Kuala Lumpur and with the last video I posted from KL. I took a local bus to go to the immigration office and I was talking about some of the things that could be improved in the KL bus system and one is quite often there is no bus stop at all. It’s there’s not even a sign. You don’t so you don’t know where to stand to wait for the bus. And even if there is a bus stop, there’s no signs. It doesn’t tell you what buses come there, what the bus schedule is. There’s nothing like that. So, when I saw the bus stop here in Banda Aceh, it blew my mind. It’s huge. It’s like a giant cement platform, maybe 3 feet off the ground, so you actually climb up. It’s got stairs on both sides. It’s like you’re climbing up onto a podium to give a speech to a crowd of thousands of people because these bus stops are at the side of the road and you kind of feel like you’re climbing up onto a platform like for a ceremony or something and then it’s got a big roof over top of it so it’s sheltered from the sun from the rain. It’s got a row of like 10 seats depending on the size of the bus stop. And they’re not benches. I’m talking about individual comfortable curved chairs with a back where you can sit in comfort. It’s got a garbage can. I think there’s even a fire extinguisher if I remember right. And huge maps like a big map of the entire bus system showing every single bus route. They call them corridors in Indonesian. So you would have corridor 3A. We would say in English route I guess bus route 3A 3B 1 route two route 2A things like that. But it has a big map of the entire system color-coded. Every bus route has a different color and you can see exactly where it goes in the city all nicely labeled. And above that is another map of just that bus. Like whatever bus comes to that bus stop, an individual map showing the route that that bus takes. It has the name of the bus. On my street, the bus is 3A. So, it’s bus corridor 3A. And then there’s a sign that gives you a QR code where you can download the app. And it’s called TransKoetaraja. That’s the name of the bus line here. So, transportation Koetaraja and as I found out Koetaraja is the old name for Banda Aceh like going back centuries and centuries way way back in the past this place was called Koetaraja which means like the citadel of the king. Raja meaning king essentially and koeta is like a fort or citadel. So the king’s fort, the citadel of the king and that was the name of Banda Aceh back then. And when the Dutch took over this part of the world, when the Dutch arrived, they kept that name, but they changed the spelling. They made it kind of a Dutch spelling k a r a d j a. So it’s like the Dutch pronunciation and koeta. And then the Indonesian spelling is simpler just like k o e t a r a j a very simplified but you can still see the Dutch spelling all over the place just because it’s part of history koeta so it’s TransKoetaraja and you can scan the QR code download the app and on the app it takes a little while to figure it out maybe but you just roam around a little bit click on all the buttons and you get a complete real-time interactive map of the bus system showing all the routes. And every bus that’s operating that day shows up on the map as a tiny toy bus like a little icon color-coded for each line. And then you can track their movements. So when you go to the bus stop, you can look at the app and you can see where the bus is and track it as it’s coming towards you to pick you up, which is pretty amazing.
On the downside, what I figured, what I learned is you can’t pay with money to get on the bus. They don’t accept cash. The only way to get on the bus is with what they call a money card or a cash card. So, it’s kind of like a debit card. And every bank here has a different card. This is the one from Mandiri. When I did my research, the internet told me that as a foreigner, Mandiri e-money card was the best one to get. So these cards were designed originally for highway tolls. So for these are like driver cards and you just basically beep you put money on the card and then when you use parking and highway tolls you can use this to pay those and I guess it’s supposed to be just one touch beep and it’s deducted just like the touch-and-go card from Malaysia. So that’s how they were developed and now it’s been expanded to the bus system and even a foreigner you have to get one of these cards. So you can get one from Mandiri Bank. There’s a bank, there’s a card called the Brizzi card, the Flazz card, Top Cash card, and each one is associated with a local bank, BCA, BNI, etc., etc. But I learned I could get the e-money card from Indomaret. You can see the logo there for Indomaret. So I went to buy the card. It cost 27,500 rupiah to buy the card and then you have to put money on the card. So the whole bus system here, I was really excited when I discovered it and I thought, “Wow, I’m going to make a video telling foreigners about this amazing bus system and how they should use it in Banda Aceh.” But then when I found out about the card, that kind of dampened my enthusiasm because yeah, now you got to go buy a card and ah that’s a hassle. Then you got to pay 27,500 rupiah to buy the card. You got to put money on the card. And as I found out, at least at Indomaret, putting money on this card is really complicated. It’s like the staff there don’t even know how to do it. It just took forever. There were so many errors. They take out the card, they go to the cash register. For every single transaction, they have to enter the entire serial number. It’s like 15 numbers long and it’s really hard to read on the back of the card. I can’t even read it because it’s covered up by all these graphics. This is a terrible, terrible card. And they can’t just scan the card. They actually have to look at it, type in the entire number like, okay, da da da da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d, and they make a mistake and they got to do it over and over and over again. Then it doesn’t work. They got to retype it. Then they got to walk all the way across the store to the other end of the counter where they have a special machine. They have to scan it on the side of the machine, put in some numbers, wait until it beeps, and then they have to put it on top of the machine, punch a bunch of numbers. Is the most complicated thing I have ever seen. So, by the time they were done, I was like, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, what is this?” I mean, it was so unwieldy. And then even after all of that work, they couldn’t do it. So, I told them, I want to buy the card, 27,500 rupiah, and I want to put 50,000 rupiah on the card. And I gave them a 100,000 rupiah to cover it. And then they tried to do it following that whole procedure I just talked about over and over and over again. The first card they got out of a box, didn’t work. So they thought, “Oh, there must be a defective card.” They put it away. Got out another card, it didn’t work. Got out a third card. And then they tried and tried and tried and it just they couldn’t put money on the card. And they finally said to me, “Well, there appears to be a limit. We can do it, but you can only put 10,000 on the card.” And at that point, I’m like, “Well, fine. I mean, just anything at all. Do whatever you guys need to do. You just go ahead and do that and then just deduct it from the 100,000.” Now we’re doing Google Translate where it was the most complex procedure. And eventually they did it and I guess I ended up with 8,500 because there was a 1,500 administrative fee or something. So anyway, I finally had the card with money on it. And the irony of all of that is right now the buses are free. 100% free. There’s no charge to ride on the TransKoetaraja buses. But even though the buses are free, you still have to tap in to get on the bus. They have a scanner there and you have to scan your card to get on even though it doesn’t deduct anything from the card. So anyway, that was my e-money card adventure. And just to follow up on that to finish this story, I thought there was a bit of a positive side because I learned that I can also use this card inside Indomaret, right? It’s an Indomaret e-money card. So I eventually did put like 100 thou I ended up putting like 300,000 rupiah on the card and I thought this would be great. I can use it at Indomaret every time I go there to buy a carton of milk. Beep. Thank you. Fast, convenient, efficient, just like touch-and-go in Malaysia. And then I went in there the first time to buy a carton of milk. For every purchase, they have to manually enter the entire serial number. All 15 numbers. I think it’s 15. There’s so many I can’t even count them. So, even the tiniest purchase, you want to buy a stick of gum, they have to enter the entire serial number into their cash register. That takes forever. And then they have to go to the machine, scan it on the side of the machine, scan it on the top of the machine. Finally, they got to print out two receipts from that machine. Then they got to take this machine and rip it in half, give you half, get the next. It’s so it takes so long and half the time it doesn’t work and they have to do it over and over again. So I do not recommend the Mandiri e-money card unless you really really want to ride on the bus. Get the card to ride on the bus, but as a financial instrument, it’s just absolutely horrendous. It’s so frustrating to use this card. I don’t understand it. I keep thinking I must be doing something wrong because why would you have an e-money card where you have to manually enter the serial number? The whole point of these cards is to scan, right? Scan, scan, scan. But you can’t scan these. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, that’s the I did get a card. So then I was able to ride on the bus. I was very excited about that. My first time riding on the bus. I figured out which bus I needed to take. I downloaded the TransKoetaraja app, of course. This all happened later. Well, I downloaded the app in my hotel room cuz I have Wi-Fi here. So, I downloaded it. While I was in my room, I looked at the map. I figured out all the schedules and what bus I needed to take. And then I went out to the main street and I climbed up onto that podium. And the first thing I noticed was that the front of the podium had a big gap in it. So there’s a railing and a fence, right? But in the middle of the fence cuz there’s a 3-foot drop off, maybe 4 feet. It’s really high. So there’s a guard rail essentially, but there’s a big gap in the guard rail. And I was wondering, what is that for? It’s like you maybe you step from the podium onto the bus. I thought that does not make any sense at all really. Okay. Well, we’ll see what happens. And I wait I had to wait for bus 3A. To my delight, the bus came. This was actually on a Saturday. I forgot it was a Saturday. So, I got very lucky that buses were running and Telkomsel was open. So, I’m standing there on the podium on the giant platform. And I see a bus coming. They’re all blue, brand new buses, really nice buses. And I didn’t know what to do at first because the bus was coming. And I didn’t know like, do I get on the bus? Do I have to get off the platform down to the street or do I get onto the bus on the platform? So, I’m monitoring the bus coming towards me and I don’t know what to do. I’m waving at the bus, telling the bus, stop, stop, pick me up, pick me up. And then I’m making eye contact with the bus driver and I’m pointing like a madman. I end up doing all these things when I’m overseas. It’s really ridiculous cuz nobody knows what you’re talking about. But I’m trying to get the bus driver to tell me where do I need to go. So, I’m waving at the bus driver and I’m pointing me like, do I go street here or up there? Do I go here or do I? And of course, the bus driver, he’s like, I don’t know what this foreigner, as far as he’s aware, he’s just waving his arms around the air and he’s pointing in different directions. It’s just another crazy foreigner as far as he’s concerned. He has no idea what I’m saying. But eventually the bus pulled up right beside well not right beside but near the platform. So then I went back up the stairs cuz I knew I had to climb from the platform into the bus and there was a gap between the bus and the platform like I don’t know a foot and a half wide, right? And I shot video about all of this and in the video I commented that my entire life riding in subway systems everywhere in the world you hear the same message over and over. Be careful of the gap. Mind the gap. Be careful of the gap. But every train I’ve ever ridden on in my life, there really is no gap. The gap might be an inch. And then who’s going to No one’s going to fall into that gap. I mean, you might trip over it if you got sandals or something, but everybody my entire life has been warning me about the gap. And the gap doesn’t really exist. But I’m telling you, the TransKoetaraja bus system here, when they say be careful of the gap, they are not messing around because I’ve ridden on a few of the buses since then and the bus can sometimes be up to 2 feet away, maybe I don’t know 2 and a half feet away from the platform and you have to step across to get onto the bus. For me, I’m in the peak of health. I have fully functioning legs. I’ve got a good sense of balance. It’s not a big deal for me to step across that gap. But man, if you miss that gap, you’re going down and you are going down hard cuz like I said, you’re at least 3 feet in the air, maybe 4 feet above the cement, the asphalt down below. So, you have to be very careful stepping across that gap. I’ve never seen a bus like this before. It must be a common bus design around the world. I don’t imagine these buses were designed and built in Indonesia. They probably contracted them or bought them from a company from another country. I’m not sure. So, I guess there are other countries in the world where they have this system where you better mind the gap, but I’ve never seen it before in my life. So, I’m looking at that gap like, what in the world? Who would design a bus like this again because most people that take the bus are poor, right? People who can afford to drive, they drive. People who can afford to take taxis, they take taxis. Buses are for people like me who are out for the adventure and poor, and they’re for local poor people. Bus lines are subsidized by the government through taxes to give the poor people of any country a way to get around. Yeah, that’s what most people who ride on buses are poor. Elderly, they often have limited mobility. And so these elderly people who struggle even getting up and down stairs now they have to step across this two-foot gap onto this bus. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. It was really quite something. Anyway, I stepped across, no problem. Got on the bus and the bus had a conductor, which was really interesting. And it might explain why the bus driver kind of ignored me because it’s not the bus driver’s job to deal with passengers. Every bus has a second person on board. And then my bus had this very nice young man in a uniform head to toe with a mask on face mask kind of thing for health reasons. And he’s wearing a uniform and he’s there at the door making sure the door opens cuz some of them are broken and they don’t actually slide open anymore. And he’s helping people get across the gap, making sure nobody falls into the chasm. And I got on proudly waving my cash card like I got a card. I got a card. I’m very happy about that. And I wanted to scan the card. I’m looking for the scanner. But the scanner was at the front of the bus. The door that slides open for the from the platform. It’s in the middle of the bus, but there’s no scanner there. The scanner is at the front of the bus. So everybody who steps over the gap into the bus. Then you have to kind of walk to the front of the bus scan your card and then walk back to your seat which again a very poor design. Very very poor design I think. And then the conductor though he took my card from me and then he went to the front scanned me in and then gave me my card back. So very good service from these conductors. And then I sat down and I rode the bus monitoring our progress on Google Maps. And when we got to where I was supposed to get off, I got off. But oddly enough, where I got off was downtown near the main mosque. Big big wide street, one-way street, but the platform was on the other side of the street. Instead of being on the left, it was on the right side of the street, but the door to the bus is on the left side of the bus. See what I mean? So even though there was this giant platform where all the passengers were waiting, the bus couldn’t use that platform because there’s no door on that side of the bus. Again, that seems like a very, very poor design. So anyway, my bus went past the platform and then just parked at the side of the street. There’s a whole bunch of buses like waiting there. It’s kind of like a main bus stop. And then all the passengers getting off, we had to all walk to the front of the bus to use another door. This was a door down at ground level. But in order to reach the door, you have to climb over the engine hump where the axle, the front wheels, and the engine are located. So you got to climb over this hump and then down the other side and then down these really steep stairs. Because that door I think was only designed for the driver because the driver is right there kind of in a low sunken area. So he climbs in through that front door and then goes into his seat. But because we couldn’t use the platform exit, we all had to climb over the hump, down the hump, and then down these really steep stairs to the street. And all the passengers getting on the bus, they had to use those same stairs and then over the hump into the bus. And yet when you get on that way, that’s when you pass the scanner. So this bus from a design point of view to me makes no sense at all. It was such a silly design. I’ve never seen anything like it. But it works. I got on, I got off, and it delivered me where I needed to go. But yeah, the design and the other design element that I thought was totally inefficient was that every bus had a bus number identifying that bus like a kind of like a serial number. So my bus was bus number 42. So on the side of the bus it said bus 42 in giant numbers. On the other side it said bus 42. On the back of the bus, big numbers, bus 42, but it’s completely useless information. It’s like telling you the serial number of my phone. Like, you don’t need to know the serial number of my phone. What I need to know is the route number cuz this bus was route 3A, right? That is the corridor route. The bus route is route 3A, but instead of putting 3A on the sides of the bus and the back of the bus, they put the bus number, but the only person who needs to know the bus number is the conductor and the driver. I mean, they come to work in the morning and the manager says, “Oh, Bill, Bob, you’re on bus 42 today.” So, they get on bus 42 cuz that’s the bus they drive around all day. They’re the only ones that need to know it’s bus 42. Nobody else needs to know. We need to know the route. And the only place they put the route number is on the front of the bus in smaller letters. It’s and smaller characters and it says route 3A on the front. But so when you come running up to the bus stop looking for your bus, you don’t know which one is your bus because you can’t see the route number. I have no idea how these things come to be in the modern world. From a design perspective, it’s really kind of silly cuz I experienced it later when I was trying to go back. I went back to the same bus area and there were four or five buses waiting and I come, I want to hop on my bus and I come walking up to the bus area. Oh, where’s my bus? Where’s my bus? Oh, there’s bus 42. Well, wasn’t at that time. And there’s bus 41, 56, 29, 38. But none of that makes any sense to me because I don’t care it’s bus 39 or bus 41. I need to know route 3A, route 2A, route one. That’s the information I need. So I had to run all the way to the front of the buses and sort of like scanning the front of the buses. Oh, where’s my bus? Where’s my bus? Anyway, a lot of design problems with TransKoetaraja. Probably the biggest of which is needing one of these cash cards in order to ride on the bus. But I guess that’s not a huge problem. And maybe once you have one of these cash cards, you can figure out other ways to use it. Just not at Indomaret. Just way too inefficient. But yeah, anyway, I had a lot of fun riding around on the buses and I’m still thinking about making a video kind of a how-to I have all this knowledge now packed into my brain. So, I thought I might put together a if you come to Banda Aceh, how to ride on the local city buses that might be helpful to one or two people out there in the world.
The main reason I was riding the bus the first time that day was to go downtown, get dropped off at the main mosque, and then I was going to walk from there to the Telkomsel Grapari office. And I’m very happy to say that that worked out very well. Could have been bad because I totally forgot it was a Saturday, and these offices are often not open on Saturday, and then I’d have to wait until Monday to finally get connected to mobile internet. But this particular Telkomsel Grapari was open on Saturday, though it closed at noon, and I didn’t know that. Otherwise, I would have made more of an effort to get there quicker, but I did get there on time. I walked casually from the bus stop to the Grapari office, and everything worked out really, really well.
The other Grapari offices I’ve visited in cities all across Sumatra, I’ve been to so many of these offices over the years. Normally there’d be someone standing outside Grapari welcoming you, and then they basically do a pre-interview. They find out who you are, get your passport number, your telephone number, and they enter you into their system on a little device and give you a queue number so that when you go inside and your number is announced, they already know. They have a record of who you are and what you’re there to do.
In this case, I didn’t realize it, but they actually had a big electronic screen with a QR code. And what you were supposed to do was go in, scan the QR code, and that will take you to their online registration system. And then you enter all your own information yourself, and then you’re assigned a queue number. But I didn’t realize that. I just kind of walked in, but a very helpful young man came up to me, talked to me like, “Why are you here? What is it you need to do?” I tried to explain as best I could what I was there to do: unblock my phone, basically get an extension. What I wanted was an IMEI registration extension so that I could continue using my phone.
He entered all the information, and then my number was called instantly, and I went up to one of these little tables. I love these Grapari offices. Telkomsel must be making a lot of money though is what I’m also thinking, because their offices are so nice. They’re open and airy. They’re not bureaucratic in any way. They have a lot of people on staff waiting to help you, which is a good thing because most of the things they need to do, because of the way everything works in Indonesia, it’s very regulation-heavy. A lot of government rules and regulations they need to follow. So even going in there to get a SIM card can take a very long time.
You basically sit at one of the tables. They have all these small round tables, very friendly, very intimate. You’re just sitting out in the open with a very pleasant young man or woman sitting across from you. And they greet you in English: “What can I do for you today, sir?” And you explain. And they’ve got a laptop right in front of them with everything they need right there. And they take your phone and your passport, whatever they need, and they just start typing and typing and typing and typing. And occasionally they turn to you and say, “Oh, sir, can you sign this please?” And their laptop is one of those super-thin ones that goes down flat. So now you’re looking at the entire screen facing you, and with your finger you sign your name, and then they lift it back up again and they type and they type and they type, and they’re mousing and they’re clicking.
And they get up occasionally, go to another computer in the back, then they do something back there, then they come back to their computer. Then they go to one of these big machines. Sometimes they take money that you give them, then they insert the money into the machine, and they’re typing on the screen of the machine and they’re getting receipts out of the machine. And then they go back to the computer and they’re typing and typing and typing.
And they didn’t do it this time, but normally then, well, two more times they took the screen down and said, “Oh, can you please sign, sir?” You don’t know what you’re signing, but you trust them. And you sign again with your finger, then you sign again. And then normally what they do is now they need to take your picture with you holding your passport. You hold your passport beside your face, and then they take a picture of you holding your passport, and that’s for security and identity reasons.
And now they go back to their computer and they’re typing and typing. They go into the back office. They talk to the manager, the supervisor. They come back. It takes forever. But they do all the work. You don’t have to do anything. You just sit there and wait, and it’s a very comfortable air-conditioned-Li area. Very quiet. They have water. You can go get cold water, hot water. I think they have coffee there. You can make yourself a cup of coffee. So it’s a very nice experience.
And I did have to jump through a few hoops because I was trying to get this phone working, because this phone had my Telkomsel SIM card in it. But when they checked, I had already gotten the maximum number of extensions for this calendar year, and they couldn’t do it again. And then she told me, “Well, what you need to do is go to the customs office and do it there.” And I said, “No, I’d rather not do that.” And I suggested instead that why don’t we take this phone, my other phone, and let’s register this one. I mean, it’s already registered. It’s already blocked. All my phones are blocked. But maybe this one, the registration can be extended.
So she took this phone, scanned the IMEI number and typing, typing, typing, and she said, “Oh yeah, we can do that, sir. We can extend the registration on this phone, and then we’ll move your…” Well, then she was just about to start doing that. Then I thought, “Oh, actually, I’d rather not do that because this one has my Malaysian SIM card in it.” And what she was going to do was move my SIM card from this phone to that phone and then register this one. And I thought, ah, that might make things confusing for me. I want to leave my Malaysian SIM card in here. I don’t want to touch that.
So then I said, well, I have another phone. Phone number three. Can you check this one? So I guess it’s my fault that she did so much typing. I had her switch so many times because I switched from this phone to this phone. Finally, I ended up on this phone, and then this one also had been registered years ago and blocked years ago. I thought it was blocked forever because that’s what they told me at the time: you can never ever use this phone in Indonesia ever again. They were very clear on that point.
But now I guess the rules have changed or they were incorrect. I don’t know. And she said, “Yeah, this one, the last time you extended it was years ago, so we can extend it in the year 2025 and give you another 90 days to use this phone.” So I said, “Okay, let’s do that.” And then she was in the middle, she was going to transfer the SIM card from my Telkomsel Indonesian SIM card from this phone to this phone. And then as she was about to start doing that again, I stopped her and thought, why don’t I just get a new SIM card?
And to be honest, I don’t know whether that was necessary or not. It’s a very complicated story, but on this phone I have an OVO wallet from Indonesia. I have the train ticketing app. I have a whole bunch of apps from Indonesia on this phone already. I have accounts set up, but they’re all connected to this phone number in this SIM card. And I thought if I move it from this phone to this phone but the apps are all on this phone, now I’ve got the phone number here but the apps here. And I thought if I try to transfer the apps to this phone, it’s going to take a couple hours. But how? They’re going to want to send me security codes. And are the codes going to go to this phone or to this phone? Do they go to the phone number or to the… I didn’t know whether it would cause problems or not.
So again, I thought my Malaysian phone, let’s leave it alone. Don’t touch it. My original Indonesian phone, let’s leave it alone. Don’t touch it. Start brand new and fresh: extend the IMEI registration and then get a brand new SIM card because it only cost 25 or 35… 35 I think. Third, no, 25 I think it was 25,000 rupiah, 25 or 35, to get a brand new SIM card, and I got three gigabytes of data. And she told me I don’t need to do that. She said it would be fine moving this SIM card to this phone, but I thought something would go wrong. And for 25,000 rupiah, I thought, okay, let’s just get a new_SIM card.
So I got a brand new SIM card, brand new phone number, and this one is now my Indonesian number. So what I do is I only use this one for hotspot. So this one I turn on. All my data is on this phone. I turn on Wi-Fi hotspot. I put this in my knapsack, and then I walk around all day using this phone and this phone, and both of them are connected to the hotspot, to mobile Wi-Fi. So that’s how I do things. Wow. So, so, so, so complicated. But they were very helpful at Telkomsel. They did everything for me, and everything worked out absolutely wonderfully. And I was all set up. It kind of took me a day to do that, a whole day to figure out the buses, take the buses to Telkomsel, get them to set up my phone, but when it was finally done, it was done. And I have mobile internet once again.
Final story for this podcast. I finally came all the way back around up until yesterday. And yesterday was the road trip to go to the island. And this came about because I got a message on Instagram from a Slovakian man. Actually, he’s from Slovakia. Said his name was Martin. And he knows about my YouTube channel. In fact, he said he had actually reached out to me on Instagram a long time ago in Kuala Lumpur, and I never replied. And yeah, that’s my fault because I don’t understand Instagram to this day. If I turn on Instagram right now, I don’t know where the messages are. I find them occasionally by roaming around Instagram, and I find a hidden area where they keep your direct messages, but every time I find them, I forget where they are and Instagram messages.
Anyway, so anyway, I never replied to his message in the past. I never saw it, and he saw, I guess, that I was here in Banda Aceh. So he tried again. He sent me a message on Instagram and says, “Hey Doug, are you still in Banda Aceh? I’m here. Do you want to meet up for coffee?” So again, I didn’t know who… his name was Martin as I found out. I didn’t know who he was. I had met him before, and I said, “Yeah, absolutely. Let’s meet for coffee.”
And then he came zooming into town on his scooter because, as I found out in our conversation, he was staying in a coastal town called Lhoknga or something like that. And I have a bit of a history with this town. The whole thing was kind of interesting how it all kind of came together because years ago I rode my bicycle from Lake Toba to Banda Aceh, and I stayed in a bunch of places along the coast, camping out. I slept in my tent a few nights, and I stayed in these cheap hotels, and I eventually got to this place on the coast near Banda Aceh, and I stayed in a bungalow kind of place on the beach. Beautiful beaches, beautiful cliffs, very nice area. And I didn’t know it at the time, but that was near or in Lhoknga. And again, I didn’t know it at the time, but that is known for surfing.
So this coast of Sumatra actually has a lot of good surfing. And Lhoknga is developing a reputation. It’s kind of the secret of Sumatra, like I’m not supposed to tell anyone this because they want to keep it hidden. They don’t want the hordes of people coming from Bali up to Lhoknga, but apparently there are a lot of good surfing spots, and there are a lot of places to stay. So it’s turning into a foreigners’ area and, well, a tourism area for Indonesians and foreigners who love to go surfing, things like that.
So I had been to this town before, but I didn’t know it had a reputation for being a haven for backpackers, foreign surfers, people like that, and Indonesian tourists. But I guess Martin has been coming there for 12… no, ever since 2012. So he went there for the first time in 2012, or he came to Banda Aceh for the first time in 2012, and that is yeah 14, 15 years ago. So for 15 years he’s been flying in and out of Aceh province, North Sumatra province, Lake Toba area, and Banda Aceh. He knows this area like the back of his hand. He knows all the places to go, all the hidden beaches, all the beautiful beaches, all the good surfing, the good restaurants. He’s got this whole place figured out.
So it was really amazing for me to meet him. We met for coffee right here in my neighborhood and talked for a while, and then he said he had plans on Thursday. He had access to a car. It wasn’t his car, but he had access to one. And he was going to drive down the coast to this island, a little piece of paradise, a pearl out there off the coast, which has beautiful tropical beach, good snorkeling, and good surfing. And he said, “Why don’t you come with us?” He was going with an Australian couple, Jane and Lori. And there was a seat open in the car, so hey, why don’t you come with us?
And so we made that arrangement, and yesterday I woke up at 4 in the morning for this adventure. Martin said he would pick me up here at my hotel between 6:00 and 6:15. He’s a real punctual person as I found out. So I appreciate that. He told me one of his pet peeves is similar to mine, where you make arrangements with people that we will meet at 6 or I will pick you up at 6, but what most people hear is okay, I’ll start getting ready at 6:00. And he’s like, I want to be very clear about this. When I say pick you up at 6:00, I mean be ready at 6 to get in the car and we go.
So luckily the night before, I usually have trouble sleeping, but the night before I went to bed early. I set an alarm, and I didn’t even need the alarm. I set the alarm for 5:00 a.m. so that I could get ready, have a cup of coffee, shower, and I would be downstairs waiting for him at 6:00 a.m., and he would be there between 6:00 and 6:15. So I went to bed early, and for whatever reason, magically, I got a great night of sleep. I slept through the night, and then I woke up at 4. I just woke up and I looked at my phone: oh, 4:00 a.m. And I kind of felt my body, like I sat there for a minute like how do I feel? Did I get enough sleep? And to my amazement, I felt great. I felt well-rested. I don’t even need to stay in bed anymore.
So at 4:00 a.m. I got up, took a shower, had coffee, and I thought I had two hours to get ready, relax, and prepare for the day, which I did. And then it was around 10 to 6, I guess. I was still putting on my clothes and zipping up the last items in my knapsack to go downstairs so I would be downstairs at 6:00. And then I looked at my phone and I had a message from Martin. He was already downstairs, so he had shown up at like 10 to 6. And he sent me a message and said, “I’m already here. Don’t stress out. You don’t have to rush, but I’m here now.” So then I, oh, awesome. And then I just grabbed my knapsack and went down. I think I was down there at like 5 to 6 maybe. So I was there early. So I hope I met with Martin’s approval. At the very least I didn’t take 6:00 a.m. as start getting ready at 6:00. I was in the car and we were driving away at 6.
So I did my job, and it was still dark, still pitch black. And one of the reasons you need to do that is because, well, compared to Malaysia, I’m thinking because there’s a one-hour time difference with Malaysia. So in fact here in Sumatra, in Indonesia in general, it gets lighter an hour earlier. So you may get up at a certain hour in Malaysia to go for a hike, but here if you get up at that time, it’s already going to be full daylight by the time you’re on the road. So you have to adjust your timing one hour earlier.
So as it turned out, we had a long ways to go. I knew the island was a good distance away, but it wasn’t until we were on the trip and I was really looking carefully at Google Maps, and then the next day by the time we got back, I really looked at the numbers and was like, yeah, it’s a journey to get there. Let me look up the actual numbers quickly. According to Google Maps, this island—pronunciation who knows—Pulau Aceh perhaps, is 122 km away, and the only way to get there of course is down the coast, which is a very narrow, gorgeous… like it’s a stunning road, beautiful scenery all the way through, even when you’re not looking at beautiful ocean cliffs, island scenery. You’re going through Indonesian rice-growing areas and villages. It’s really stunning. And it’s winding, winding, winding, going up, winding down, winding up.
So 122 km, that’s not like riding on a highway in Canada because that’s an hour, right? In Canada 122 km, that’s less than an hour. You would get there in 50 minutes. But right now it says it would take 2 hours and 20 minutes to get there. So when you’re thinking about a day trip where you’re going out to an island, you’ve got to factor in 2½ hours to get there, 2½ hours to get back. So 5 hours in the car right there. You’re going to stop along the way. I’m sure you’re going to stop here to get a cup of coffee, stop here to get supplies, water, and snacks for the island. Then you get there, you’ve got to arrange the boat. So you’ve got to factor in a lot of hours.
So when you’re heading that far for a day trip, I normally don’t do things like that because traveling anywhere just kills me. So if I’m going to work that hard and take that long to get somewhere, I’m staying for a month because I’m exhausted when I get there. And something like this, if I’m traveling 2½ hours through a mountain road to get somewhere, I’m at least staying overnight. Generally I would stay for two nights so I arrive, stay one night, have a full day to be there, and then stay another night, and the next day you can come back.
But of course I was doing this with company, people who normally do day trips like this. And Martin had the whole thing figured out, so I didn’t have to worry about how to get there. He knew where to go. He was driving the whole way. He arranged for the boat in advance. So when we got there, the captain was already just there waiting for us. And it turned out the island was only like 10 minutes away by boat. It’s very, very near the shore. So everything was figured out, organized, planned. So it kind of worked out very well.
But even so, it was a good thing that we were on the road by 6 because yeah, you wanted to maximize, you wanted to be on the road while it’s still dark. Though it did take us a little bit of extra time to get on the road because the other two people, Jane and Lori, this Australian couple, maybe they didn’t get the lecture about when I say six I mean six, like we’re going. And who knows, maybe there was a little bit of a miscommunication because I think like when we showed up, we had to go to Lhoknga, so that’s where Martin is staying. He’s staying in Lhoknga, and these other people from Australia, Jane and Lori, they were also staying in a bungalow on the beach in Lhoknga, and Martin knew them of course. He knew them quite well, and that’s why they had arranged this trip. And Lori was a surfer, so Lori in particular wanted to go to this island and bring his surfboard.
So anyway, we show up at their bungalow, and then Martin goes up—he had to climb up some stairs, I think, to go to their room—but they weren’t actually ready to go. But it wasn’t really their fault because I guess they were told that he would show up at the latest by 7. So I think they were thinking ah, he’ll probably show up at 7:15, 7:30, something like that. So they were treating it more casually than I had. So whatever had happened, they weren’t packed and ready to go yet. So there was some stuff had to happen. Plus of course Lori wanted to bring his surfboard, and the surfboard had to be tied to the roof of our SUV. So we had to go somewhere else and get rope and figure out how to attach it to the roof because there was no roof rack or anything like that. And then of course we had to stop to get some food. Martin had that figured out in advance. There was this amazing place there where you just pull up at this restaurant at the side of the road, and they’ve got a big stack of takeaway paper bags full of rice and egg, rice and beef, rice and chicken, and you can just pick the one you want and then get all these fried snacks. And so we picked up breakfast to go. But then we also had to get gas, so we stopped to get gas.
So we weren’t on the road like at the crack of dawn the way Martin had planned, even though we were on the road at like 6:00 a.m. from my hotel. There was a little bit of a delay until we were actually zooming down the highway. But I must say Martin made up for that with his driving technique. I won’t even call it driving technique. I would call it Indy 500. And he’s quite upfront about this. He told us when we got in the car, he said, “Listen, I don’t drive like a western person. I drive like a local. Not only that, I drive like I’m winning a race.” He treats every road like it’s a racetrack. And he’s very upfront about it. So maybe Google Maps will say it’s going to take 2½ hours to get there. He will take that as a personal challenge, and he’s going to get there in an hour and a half. And he hit the road like a demon. Like every corner right on the edge of control. And he’s a good driver. Martin is a very good driver, but he is a race-car driver.
So it was quite the experience because that road, like I said, just zooms, like winding, winding, winding, twisting on curves. Our wheels were squealing like rubber, zooming around the corners and passing everything on the road. And I guess it’s a good thing to be a bit aggressive; otherwise you get stuck behind a truck in Indonesia, you’ll be stuck behind a truck, and then if you bow to that as okay there’s nothing I can do because it’s hard to get around a truck on all these blind corners, but since Martin is already doing 180 km an hour, he’s around that truck in no time. And so we never got stuck behind a truck. So that is on the positive side.
And something I didn’t mention is that when I rode my bicycle to Banda Aceh, I rode up all of this road, like the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive for a normal person down the coast. I had ridden that whole area on my bicycle. So the night before I don’t have any video of that because I wasn’t a YouTuber back then. I was just riding my bike, taking pictures with my camera and smartphone. So I went back into my photo archives and I tried to refresh my memory, and I was really surprised to see how far away this island was because when you’re riding a bicycle, it takes a lot longer. So for example, like 50 kilometres in a car is, for me, that’s a full day on a bicycle. So we were… oh, for me it’s even longer than that, especially in the mountains. But if you’re driving say 150 km in a car, that’s 3 days on a bicycle, and I would every time ride my bike in the day and then I’ll just spend a day or two in that town and then I’ll ride my bike for a day another 50 kilometres, spend a whole two or three days in that town.
So like for me this 120 km drive was probably 2 weeks of my life riding my bicycle, and I had to refresh my memory. It’s like oh yeah, I camped here and I camped there. Oh, and I remember this hill and I remember this lookout point. I remember that restaurant. I remember that guesthouse. That’s where I spent the night. Oh, I remember this town. So I kind of refreshed my memory. So it was a little bit like a trip down memory lane for me. Driving all the way down the coast, every time we came around a corner, started climbing up a hill, going underneath a cement factory, like, “Oh, I remember this. Oh, I remember that place. Oh, I remember this view.”
And we stopped at all these places just to take pictures of the view, to grab a cup of coffee, things like that. So it was a really amazing drive. And I took advantage of the drive to shoot some 360 video as I mentioned at the beginning. I extended this out and then I just held it high above the car from time to time when we were going through some windy parts and shot some 360 video, and when we went through some villages and farming areas, I shot some 360 video.
We stopped at one point because Martin wanted to go down to the ocean. He’d either heard about or knew something about or even had been there before, but he wanted to check the wave condition. So we turned off the main highway and then went down this narrow village track, basically like a wagon track. And again, I think in my case I’m not really that adventurous. May seem like I am sometimes, but I’m not. I would never drive my car down one of those roads. I would just be too scared of getting stuck in the mud, but Martin has no such concern. So he was like, “Let’s go down here. Let’s see what’s at the end of this dirt road, right? This wagon track.” And we went as far as we could, and we got to a gate that blocked the way, and then we couldn’t go any further. We could see beyond the gate where all rice fields were.
And then Martin, he was just gonna throw it into reverse, Mario Andretti and just zooming in reverse all the way down this wagon track. But then Lori said, “Oh, I’ll go open the gate.” And then he opened the gate thinking that Martin could just drive through the gate and then do kind of a three-point turn and they could drive back up the wagon track front first. But when we went through there, we’re right on the muddy edge of a drop-off down to the farmer’s fields. And then Martin is doing this three-point turn, and I was thinking, man, I’m glad I’m not outside the car because I’m pretty sure our rear wheels were just about going over the edge of that cliff. And it’s not like we were going to fall and die or anything, but if our wheels dropped off, we would be stuck there for the rest of the day or something. But no, Martin got us out of there. And then we went zooming back up.
And then we found another road that actually brought us down to the ocean. And we’re going down that road, and again me being much more cautious, I would have parked a kilometre away from the ocean. Okay, let’s park here. We can walk the rest of the way, but Martin is a driver at heart, and he’s going to drive as far as he possibly can. So we even left the road. Like we got to the end of the road and then there was a field, and he just kept driving. So he just drove right out into the field and got as close to the ocean as possible and then parked there.
And this beach we went to look at to check the wave condition was stunning. Wide, wide, wide beach with white sand hills on one side. The sun was just coming up above. This was sunrise basically. I took a couple of pictures of the sunrise. Absolutely gorgeous. And we walked quite a long ways along the beach because they wanted to get to a corner, and then around the corner was kind of a place where the waves break. That was where the good surfing was. And Martin and Lori being hardcore surfers, they wanted to go check out the waves. And so yeah, we spent some time there as well checking this place out. I took some pictures, took some 360 video.
I actually brought along—I’m very glad I did it—at the last minute I took my second Insta360 stick. I normally don’t bring it with me because carrying two of these makes your bag heavier and heavier, but I originally bought… I wanted to get an extension, and I ended up getting, I think I just ended up with it from a kit. I got a second extension so I can screw the second one into the bottom of this one, and I get double the length. So I was holding this thing like way up above my head, almost like an artificial drone. So I was marching up and down the beach holding this thing with my 360 camera, I don’t know, 20 feet above my head. That was kind of cool. Now I have all that 360 video that I have to reframe now.
But yeah, we stayed there for a little while. Then we all piled back in the car, and then we finally got to the village where you have a jumping-off point to the island. I thought I found all of this quite interesting because I spent a lot of time on the coast of Sumatra in this area and then down around Padang, Bukittinggi, that West Sumatra basically. And a big thing you always do is take boats to the islands. If you watch YouTubers like the Lost Boys, some of their more popular videos are always when they hop in a boat and take the boat out to the island. And they could do that because a) they made a lot of money from their videos because they’re very popular, so they had money to spend, and there were like two or three of them, so they could hire a boat and split the cost amongst the three of them.
And I would see Indonesian tour groups. There would be like 10 people to a boat, and then they would take the boat out to the island, spend the day picnicking and snorkeling and hanging out on the island. But I would never ever do that because a) I can’t afford it, and I’m just one person. And sure, I can take this boat out to an island, but what am I going to do all by myself out on that island? And I argued to myself, like I didn’t even need to because I’m on the coast on my bicycle, and every single time I turned to the shore, it was a spectacular tropical beach. I mean it was gorgeous, stunning coastline all along the coastline. So I thought, well, I don’t need to hop in a boat for an hour to go to an island because whatever is going to be on the island—beautiful tropical water, palm trees, gorgeous beaches, cliffs—all of that is right here on the coast. And on the coast you’ve got villages and bullocks and chickens and children and fishermen. So for me it was more interesting to stay on the coast.
So basically I’m just saying I never jump into these boats. The local men, like I park my bike or my scooter, whatever I’m on, and I grab my GoPro, and then I go walking up and down the beach, and there’s always these fishermen hanging out underneath these sun shelters, drinking local tea and coffee, and they would all offer me, “Oh, boat, boat, you want to go out to the island?” They’re offering me their services. And I would always just say, “No, no, thank you. I mean I’m just one person. I don’t want to go out to the island all by myself.”
The one reason you would do that, I guess, is if that island is known for a particularly beautiful coral reef or particularly beautiful snorkeling or really, really good surfing. And since I didn’t have the gear to do any of those three things, going out to the islands I never ever did it. I just stayed on the coast. To me it was actually more interesting as I said because there I’ve got all the village life as well as the beautiful sandy beaches and stuff.
But anyway, on this particular day I had Martin for company, and I had Lori and Jane, and there were four of us to split the cost of the boat, and then the captain was waiting for us, and we hopped in the boat and went out to the island. Very, very short trip. It was very cool. The village is very tiny. The island is tiny. It’s not a big thing, and they had this breakwater between the river that goes through the village and the ocean, and then the water is very, very calm. But then as soon as you leave the breakwater, now you’re in open water, and the waves really get big, and then of course the boat captain has to know how to navigate that. You hit those waves broadside, you’re flipping over, right? So he’s aiming and he’s timing it for the waves, gunning the engine, throttling back, gunning just to time it perfectly so you get over the breakwater basically. Then you’re out in open water, and then we go to the island.
I had some negative experiences with my 360 camera. It keeps malfunctioning on me. I don’t know why, but I hit record, I confirm it’s recording, the red light is flashing, okay it’s recording, and then I lift it high into the air with my two extensions, my two selfie sticks, and I’m filming for like 5 minutes. I’m really excited because the scenery was spectacular. The sun was out. It was gorgeous. It was sunny. It was like a rare really sunny day for this time of year. It was so amazing. I felt so lucky to be out there. And then I finally pull in the 360 camera, and then I see it’s not recording anymore, and I got a big error message. It just says stopped recording, and then there was no video. It didn’t save anything. And I did it a few times, and I kept getting the message stopped recording, and I don’t know why. So I didn’t get any video at all on the boat ride out.
But after that I became much more careful where I would hit record, but I see the red light flashing, and then as I lift the camera up I kind of keep my eyes on the camera because I can just see the red recording light, and I lift it up and up and up and up, and when I get it way up there then I watch: red light, okay it’s still flashing, and then I let it film for a while. Then from time to time I check: okay, red light, red light. I keep looking to see whether the red light is still on. And then I managed to get some video on the beach.
And then when the boat came to pick us up at the end of the day, I really wanted to get the shots of the boat. So I was very deliberate. You have to be that way I guess with the X3. I guess it’s more glitchy. Could have been my memory card. Don’t really want to blame the camera, but I don’t know. I have a whole bunch of memory cards, high speed. So I know someone is going to leave a comment saying it’s because your memory card is too slow, but trust me, I have the highest-speed, highest-quality memory cards money can buy. So there’s no issue with my memory cards, but maybe they’re defective or something. I don’t know. But anyway, I learned I have to be very, very careful when I shoot with this camera.
So we got out to this island, and the captain dropped us off, and we just spent I don’t know four or five hours out there on the island. We were there quite a while. I had some adventures where I went up and down the beach. I went exploring. I shot video, and Jane and Lori, they went snorkeling. I didn’t have any of my own snorkel gear, so I thought well I guess I can’t snorkel. I don’t have any snorkel gear, and I just didn’t know about… I mean I could have asked, can I borrow your snorkel gear? But I didn’t want to presume because people, I know I would be quite particular about my mask and my snorkel if I were traveling with that. I would have a mask that fits my face perfectly, and it would be high quality, and you know you put the thing in your mouth, you don’t really want to give it to strangers just at random. Here, oh yeah anybody, anybody, because it’s going to get stretched to fit their face or their… you know, put your snorkel in their mouth, you know, who knows? People could be sensitive about that. So I didn’t ask if I could borrow theirs.
So for most of the day I went into the water, but I just paddled around. And you couldn’t really go far out in the water because the coral reef was so close to shore, and coral is very, very sharp, and you don’t want to get stuck, and if you can’t put your face underwater you don’t know what’s down there. There could be sea urchins. There could be all kinds of poisonous things down there, jellyfish. So yeah, oceans are not lakes. They’re dangerous places. There’s currents, there’s rocks, there’s dangerous sea marine creatures.
So yeah, anyway I just paddled around near shore and enjoyed the water. I tried to go swimming, but I quickly ran into rocks and coral reef, so I gave up. But then way towards the end of the day, the day was kind of winding down, and then Lori did look at me and he pointed at the snorkel that was on his… he was lying down on the bag that his surfboard was in. He was using that as kind of a blanket to lie on to get some sun. And he pointed at his snorkeling gear: “Oh hey, you want to go out, check out the coral reef? Go.”
So he offered me the snorkel, but I think it turned out it wasn’t even his. It wasn’t even a special one. It might have belonged to Martin, or it may even have belonged to the lodge where he was staying, kind of a rental or something. So it would have been no big deal for me to use it. So anyway, he offered. So I got it. I figured out how to put it on. It was a different type than I’m used to. I’m always used to the snorkels that go out to the side, and I kept trying to put this one in my mouth off to the side, and I don’t know, it was weird, but it turned out this is the kind that goes directly in front of you and then up above your head, which works out kind of well because it doesn’t block your vision. The snorkel is like right in front of your nose, and then your two eyes go around it, and it doesn’t really block your vision. So it worked out pretty well.
But by then the water level had gone way down. I guess the tide had gone out. So I was out there snorkeling, and many times I found myself in trouble because there were strong currents, and I’d be out kind of in an open channel on the edge of the coral reef, and I’m looking at the reef and all the fish, things like that, and then the current would push me towards the coral. And I’d find myself floating on top of the coral, but it was like inches away from my nose because the water level was so low. And I find myself beached, like scraping across the coral. I ended up cutting my toe and my foot a little bit.
And yeah, once in particular I got stuck because the water kind of picked me up and then dropped me on top of the reef. And you’re not really supposed to be touching the reef. That’s like one of the rules of snorkeling and scuba diving. But I got slammed into it, and I was like ah stuck, and I’m trying to wiggle my way off the top of the reef to get back into deeper water. So it was a bit of a struggle.
And one thing I talked about this on my video during the day is that if you don’t know the ocean that well, you really have to be careful because I think of myself as a good swimmer. I’m comfortable in the water. But I’m a lake person. I grew up swimming in rivers and lakes and swimming pools. It wasn’t until I became a backpacker in Southeast Asia that was the very first time in my life I’d ever been near an ocean. And an ocean in terms of the marine life, like I mentioned, the tides, the currents, and even like riptides.
I remember cycling down the west coast of the United States. I did a bike ride down the coast of the US one time, and I was going to go down to the ocean, gorgeous beautiful California coastline, going to go swimming, and I went down there, and then there were signs saying no swimming, too dangerous. And my instinct was that’s for other people. I’m a strong swimmer. Sure, the waves were kind of big and kind of rough. So if you don’t know how to swim, yeah this might not be for you. But I’m thinking I’m a good swimmer. I was young at the time. I had lots of energy.
But then local people told me, “No, no, no, no, no.” If it says no swimming, you trust that sign because what they’re talking about is these waves come in, huge volumes of water going up the shore, and then they go back out to sea, and you get sucked out with it, and out you go, and you get sucked out to sea—riptides basically—and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no swimmer strong enough really to fight it. If one of these riptides is pulling you out to sea, you’re going out to sea. And if you panic and you start fighting the current, you’re going to drown. And I guess what you’re supposed to do is start swimming parallel. You don’t try swimming towards shore. If you’re being pulled out, you start swimming parallel, and then you can get out of the riptide, and then you can finally get out of the water going out to sea.
But anyway, I’m just saying oceans you’ve got to take them seriously. And on this little island even I was feeling it because I guess I hate to say it, but I guess I’m getting older. I’m not as strong as I used to be. I don’t have as much energy as I used to. And I’ve been doing a lot of video editing, which means sitting a lot more than normal. So I guess I’m not in as good physical shape as I think I am.
And then when I went out snorkeling off this island and then I’m like swimming and I’m snorkeling, and now the current is starting to pull me this direction. I’m fighting the current to stay in one place. And then the current was like pulling me, pushing me this way, then left, right, up. And I’m fighting the current the whole time. And now I’m being pulled right on in. I’m being threatened to be dragged over the coral, and I’m fighting this. It didn’t take long before my arms were getting like noodles. Like I didn’t have any strength in my arms left. And then the water starts coming into your snorkel, and then if you’re not careful you breathe it in and you start choking.
And then I think in the ocean you’re just seconds away from drowning at all times. That’s why you have to think that way because oceans are dangerous places. So that was what I was thinking about the whole day. And when I was out there snorkeling, I could feel it. I could feel my arms getting weak. I could feel water filling my snorkel. I was aware of the danger of the coral, the sharp edges of the coral. And I could sense that if something went wrong, I could end up panicking and getting in trouble.
So I really tried to mentally just calm down. I popped my head out of the water, and I suddenly saw I was much farther from shore than I thought I was because I’d been drifting and pulled by the current. I thought, oh crap, okay you’ve got to keep track of these things. And I just sort of calmed down, and I took a deep breath slowly, like a slow deep breath, because if you breathe in too fast you suck in the water. But if you breathe in slowly you can get the air past the water. And I filled my lungs and blew the water out of the snorkel, which is what you’re supposed to do, clear the snorkel. And if your mask starts to fill up with water and people start to panic and things like that.
So I have a healthy respect for the ocean developed over years of backpacking now in this part of the world, but I didn’t grow up in ocean. So I have to remind myself, and on this day yesterday I had a lot of opportunities to just okay remember where you are.
And at that time when Lori and Jane went out, the water was much, much deeper for them. And I saw that they went out beyond the coral into deeper water, and then they drifted down the full length of the beach and then came back to shore. And then when Lori offered me to use his snorkeling gear, he did say to me, he gave me advice and said, “Okay, what you can do,” I asked him as well, and he says, “What you do is go in here, go all… and then the current will take you, let the current take you along the beach, and then you can come back in.” He was giving me advice about what to do.
So that was what my plan was. But then when I found I was trying to go out, the water had gone down so low somehow I couldn’t get over the coral. I couldn’t get out into the deeper water where at the same place that they did and then have the current pull me along. And I very quickly realized, well I don’t want to do that anyway because I could feel that I was getting tired, and it was later in the day. This was like way at the end of the day. We were probably getting ready to go back. So I didn’t want to be out there for two hours or anything.
So I made the wise decision: okay, let’s not do that. Let’s just stay right here. There’s more than enough coral, more than enough fish to look at right here. Let’s stay here in the safe area, in the kiddie pool basically. And then when I was done, I’d had enough, I made my way back in. But it was really hard to get back in too because I had to find a channel, a deep channel through the coral. And I kept running into coral and I had to turn around and go back out again and try to find another channel. And like I said, oceans, man, healthy respect. You’ve got to… you don’t go into the ocean without pausing for a minute and realizing what you’re doing and make sure you can handle it.
To be honest, I probably shouldn’t even have been out there by myself. Again, I thought I was a strong swimmer. I’ve been out snorkeling for hours at a time in previous lifetimes, so I felt okay. But technically yeah, you probably should have a buddy out there. Even snorkeling in an unfamiliar ocean, unfamiliar island, unfamiliar coral reef. Maybe you don’t absolutely have to have a buddy, but it’s probably a good idea.
Anyway, I made it back to shore and just bleeding a little bit from a cut on one foot. Actually I got… I set up to make, to record this video, and I looked at the bed and there was like blood stains all over the sheet, and I thought where the heck did that… yeah, my toe kind of came open again this morning. So I was still bleeding from my toe. But yeah, coral reef, man, it’s sharp knife edges. So you’ve got to be careful.
Yeah. So yeah, what else to say about the trip out there? Gorgeous. Gorgeous island, spectacular weather. Got so lucky with the weather. Like today gloomy, nothing but dark rain clouds. So had we arranged to go today it would have been a very different experience. We were very lucky with that. Amazing for me to see the same coastal highway that I rode my bike on. It was so much fun. It’s like oh I remember this place, oh I remember here, I like this place. That was very cool. Good company. Enjoyed hanging out with Martin and Jane and Lori. Yeah, really, really good day.
And then the rain did move in when we drove back, but Martin was still in race-car mode. He had an appointment here in Banda Aceh, and as I said he’s a very punctual fellow, and if he tells somebody he’s going to be somewhere at a certain time he really hates it if he’s late. He’s like me, he hates being late. So as we were getting back to Banda Aceh he could tell we were running a bit late, and he just put the pedal down, faster and faster and faster. So that was quite a ride back into town.
On a somewhat personal note, I do find experiences like this interesting because I don’t know exactly how old Martin is, but I’m probably twice his age. I’m certainly significantly older. And yet in all of our interactions it’s like he’s the adult and I’m the child in the relationship. Because despite living a very long time, I never made that jump from sort of youth into adulthood like a lot of people just naturally happens. There they are high-school student, university student, and then they move into adulthood. They start buying cars, they buy homes, they have money, they get married, they have children. There’s all these rites of passage that you become an adult. And for whatever reason I’ve never done any of those things.
So when someone like Martin contacts me, he’s the one who knows everything because he drives a car, he has a driver’s license, things like that. And then money I guess is a big part of it as well, like with him or with Jane and Lori. They were also older but retired, and they’ve been working their whole lives. They’ve had businesses and real jobs. They’ve been homeowners. They have money. So they can just do the things that they want to do, and money really isn’t an option.
But like in my case, I’ve lived overseas the majority of my adult life. I’ve never driven a car in another country, not once. So like when Martin shows up and he just drives up in his car: Hong Kong, yeah let’s go. I hop in the car and he just drives away. It feels like such an adult thing to do that I’ve never done, not even once. The best I’ve done is drive a scooter. I mean I’ve never even driven a motorcycle overseas, scooters and bicycles. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.
So yeah, I always find that to be kind of interesting. And I find adults, I don’t know, they have preferences. And maybe that comes from my… I have a lifetime of experiences as an observer. I guess I feel very much like an observer of life. I’m not really an active participant in life. So I just generally go with whatever is going on. Like even if someone contacts me and says, “Oh, do you want to meet for coffee or lunch or dinner or breakfast?” I always say, “Well, whatever you want because I don’t really care.” And then they’ll say, “Oh, okay.” Or then they’ll say, “Well, what do you want, what kind of food do you want?” Again, I don’t have any preferences. And it’s not because I don’t like certain types of food, but it’s just not part of my personality to have preferences and to make those preferences known. And I spend most of my time alone, so it generally doesn’t matter. It’s not something that needs to be discussed.
But then when I suddenly out of the blue spend the day with three adults who are real adults with real lives, who have children and grandchildren and they have families and they’re getting married and they have drivers and they own property and this and that, I feel very much out of that group, and they all have preferences. So when things come up, oh what do you want to do? Do you want to go here, go here? Do that? Do that? Drink this? Eat that? How long do you want to do this? How long… they have really strong interests and preferences that they make known to the group. And then I’m usually in the middle of that, and I’m like whatever you guys want, I’m cool. And I don’t think of that as a strength. It’s actually kind of a weakness in a way, like I said a weakness of character that I don’t really have preferences and I don’t really have an adult life that makes choices. Like I don’t need to make a certain choice one way or another because of all of my adult responsibilities. I’m not responsible for anyone or anything. So I can just go with the flow.
And I really felt that when I spent the day with my three companions yesterday down at the island. But yeah, very interesting day, very fun day, very enjoyable.
Also though, I’ve got to say final point I guess to this story: it was a tiring day, an exhausting day. And I tried to be careful with the sun because I knew my face, shoulders, chest, and back aren’t generally exposed to the sun that much. And I know that when you go out to a tropical island beach, you go swimming, you go snorkeling, you hang out for the entire day, you’re exposed to a lot more sun than you think. Like even if it’s cloudy you’re still being burned by the sun. So you’ve got to really take things in moderation.
And I tried to be careful. I kept my shirt on for most of the first part of the day when we took the boat out to the island. Me walking up and down the beach, I kept my shirt on. I didn’t take it off. It was only like halfway through our time at the beach when I went in for a swim. I was even going to keep my shirt on when I went in for a swim, but I thought ah, let’s get a little bit of sun just to get my body adjusted a little bit. So I took off my shirt and I went into the water, and then I left my shirt off for the rest of the day on the beach. When I went snorkeling, walking up and down the beach again all the way up until the boat came back to pick us up, I was shirtless.
And then at the end of the day it was like, oh yeah, ah yeah I burned a little bit, little bit, not much. My face, my shoulders, and my companions kind of pointed that out. At the end of the day they looked at me and went, “Oo, you got some sun.” I said, “Yeah, I imagine I did.” But it wasn’t until I got back here and then I was unpacking all my camera gear, unpacking all of my wet clothing and wet towel and scraps of food, like plugging in all of my batteries to recharge them, downloading video files, and I looked in the mirror and it’s like I was a wreck. The burned face, the burned… bleeding from my feet. And I was so tired because it isn’t the kind of day that I would ever choose for myself.
Like left to my own devices, in a million years I would never drive a car for two and a half hours through the mountains, take a boat out to an island, spend the whole day on the island, take the boat back, drive 2½ hours back. Never in a million years would I ever do that. It’s just not… if I’m going to go somewhere for 2½ hours, I’m going to stay there for a week before I come back because I’m going to be so tired. Yeah, I was a wreck yesterday. My brain was spinning. My body was spinning. I even found it hard to sleep last night because my brain was just thinking and ticking over, replaying things, and just I could not stop thinking.
And even for the cost, to be honest, because we had to pay for gas. So we all split the cost of the gas. We all split the cost of the car for the day and had to pay for the boat out to the island and back. And in the real world that’s not a lot of money. I think for me it came to 270,000 rupiah for the day: 100,000 for the car, 50,000 for the gas, and then 120,000 for the boat. It was 120,000 each. So that comes to 270,000 for the day. And of course I had to pay for… I bought my food and water and drinks throughout the day. So you’re looking at 300,000 rupiah for a day.
And I’m pretty sure I can rent a scooter for like 100,000 rupiah a day. So normally on my own what I would do is I would rent the scooter for a week and then drive the scooter down the highway and then I would spend the night partway and then spend another night, and I wouldn’t even go out to the island, but I could go out to the island and then come back. So rather than spending 300,000 rupiah on a single day trip in a car, I would spend the 300,000 on renting a scooter for 3 days and then being able to drive slower, more casually. That would be my kind of a day.
By the time the day was over last night, it was a great day, enjoyable day, but man it kicked my butt physically and mentally I guess. I was a wreck by the end of the day. I was wiped out, and I wouldn’t normally work that hard to have an enjoyable day on my own. I would go much, much slower and much more… yeah, just take my time. I wouldn’t be in such a rush to get there and get back and things like that.
But yeah, again, thank you Martin for the invitation, and it was a great, great day though. Really enjoyable and a real new experience for me, and I value that quite a bit.
Winding up this podcast to get back to the Planet Doug YouTube channel. I guess now my job is to edit all the video from yesterday, turn that into a Planet Doug video, reframe all the 360 video of course, but over the last few days I’ve also been thinking about and working on a couple of like how-to videos. I shot some videos about my daily life, just the things I do as I walk around running errands. But I want to make a video about how to use Touch ‘n Go here in Indonesia because I made a video about using Touch ‘n Go in Malaysia. But I was very curious because everybody told me, everybody says, “Yeah, you can now use Touch ‘n Go in all these other countries including Indonesia.” So while I’m here I want to test that and use it as much… use Touch ‘n Go. Can I like try it out? How many places can I go to? How does it work? How does the system work in Indonesia? So I want to make a video like how to use Touch ‘n Go in Indonesia. That’s one video I want to make.
And I think I’m going to make a video about riding the buses in Banda Aceh. I think that would be interesting. And I still haven’t gotten around to investigating the whole history of the tsunami. So I think what you end up doing here if you have a strong interest, you go to all the different historic sites. So you could go on a tour: the tsunami museums—I think there are three or four of them—go look at the big boat, the boats that have been beached from the tsunami, the main tsunami museum, things like that. So I could make a video about the tsunami museum and the other attractions related to the tsunami.
So yeah, right now I’m sort of thinking about that type of video for my time here in Banda Aceh. And one thing when I met Martin, he gave me the idea that I could move to Lhoknga, the backpacker town, basically the expat town. I could move there, be on the beach, and the advantage to that would be it’s easier to do things like rent a scooter. So if I wanted to, I was thinking about renting a scooter to go up to Takengon. I was thinking about hitchhiking to Takengon, taking a bus there, and then I thought about, you know, I could actually rent a scooter. But I think here in Banda Aceh it wouldn’t be that common and it might be more difficult, but if I go to a backpacker town, to an expat town, Martin said yeah he can hook me up. He knows a guy. He knows everybody in town, and if I go there for a couple of nights Martin can help me rent a scooter for a month, and he said he knows a garage where they’ll go over the scooter carefully, make sure the brakes are in good order, that everything, the tires are in good condition, and once it’s roadworthy, yeah I could use that scooter to explore this whole area. I could even put it on the ferry to go out to Pulau Weh and then I could ride up to Takengon and then back here, and that could be the end of my time.
So I’m still thinking about that, but to be honest I don’t really have the money to do that. Like the money that I set aside for this trip and the budget that I have, it would cost I don’t know how much it would cost, but it’s going to cost let’s say 100,000 per day to rent the scooter, maybe 80,000. So you’re looking at 3 million rupiah for renting a scooter for a month. And how much is that? Let me look it up. That is about $180 US. Maybe you could get it cheaper than that. You make a deal for a month. Maybe you can get it for 150 US for the month, like 2.5 million for the month. If you get it for 30 days it’s like $200 Canadian. Considering the experiences you would have and the freedom you would have, yeah I think $200 Canadian is reasonable for a month if that can take me to Pulau Weh, Takengon, down the coast.
So anyway, I’m thinking about doing that, and that would change the nature of my experience here considerably, but I think it’s worth looking into. But I do want to spend another week here in Banda Aceh because I want to shoot the Touch ‘n Go video, the bus video, tsunami video, and then when I’m finished with those maybe I can go, or in the meantime I can make arrangements with Martin to rent a scooter. Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about doing.
All right, once again, oh I talked so much longer than I planned. I was going to zoom through these stories, but I didn’t. So this is quite a long behind-the-scenes podcast video, but I hope some of that was enjoyable for you. As I always say, you can have the video playing in the background and you can just listen to me babbling away. And I kind of wanted to tell the story of the trip to the island, kind of the story of the last week here in Banda Aceh, just to sort of relive all these experiences before I dive head-first into all the… I don’t know why I’m holding up my phone to talk about video editing, but I guess my laptop is way over there. You know, picture a laptop. By the time I start video editing. And I wanted to just relive all these experiences, tell the story like this before I dive into more video editing.
So that is it. I’m shutting down. See you in the next video.