VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
I set off on a typical housekeeping day here on Planet Doug, and then it spun out of control as they always do, and I did a ton of different things. My main goal for the day was to visit the local Telkomsel GraPARI office to get at least one of my phones unblocked by Indonesian Customs. That’s an unending quest here in Indonesia.
To accomplish that, I had to learn how to take a local bus. That was a whole other adventure, and a fun one. And then I dove into my first attempts at using Touch ‘n Go and a local cash card at the Indomaret convenience store and other places. Finally, I visited some other low budget hotels where I might like to stay, bought some martabak (which I shared with everyone back at my hotel) and walked around new parts of the city.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. Welcome back to Planet Doug here in Banda Aceh in Sumatra, Indonesia. And today is going to be a beautiful day, I think. Well, I don’t know. The sun was out really clear. I saw nothing but blue skies, but now some clouds are moving in. We’ll see. It is the rainy season, I’m told, here in Sumatra, and it did rain all night long. So, there is that. But it’s not raining right now, so that’s pretty cool. And I’m still in the middle of like all the arrival activity.
The modern digital age with smartphones and computers has given us a lot of power, a lot of information. I really love it. But at the same time, there does seem to be a bit more work involved. And here in Indonesia, one of those things you need to do, which is more difficult than in other places, is get your smartphone up and running. Because in my case, I got sucked into this IMEI registration. I ended up with, I guess, what they think of as the tourist IMEI registration. My phone was registered with customs by Telkomsel rather than at the border. And I guess if you do it at the border, it’s permanent, but when you do it through Telkomsel, it has a 90-day time limit. And mine has expired again. So, I’m still not connected to the internet, like mobile internet, and I can’t do anything in my life until I’m connected to mobile internet. I’m just stuck, like in no man’s land. So I’m on my way to Telkomsel, I hope, to see if they can extend the customs registration for my main phone. That’s what I’m doing right now. But I’m hoping to combine this errand. First of all, I’m a little bit worried that it might be the wrong day. I lost track of the days and today is actually Saturday, though. According to Google Maps, the main Telkomsel Grapari office is open on Saturday. So, I’m heading in that direction. And you got to get there before lunch because they close early for lunch and then they’re closed for an hour or two. And I’m leaving a little bit late for that because I’m hoping to combine this errand with learning a bit about the bus system here in Banda Aceh. I don’t have a bicycle. They don’t have a subway system obviously, but it turns out they do have a small city bus system. And I don’t want to constantly have to rely on Grab or the local becak, things like that. So, I want to learn how the buses work. I find it to be an interesting project, like a challenge to figure out how to use the local buses. So, it’s kind of interesting. In the old days, of course, taking the local buses was all about asking people, “Oh, I’ve got music here. I better shut down. There’s a kind of religious school or a mosque there or some sort of community center. I think they’re having a wedding or something there today. So, a lot of loud music playing, but I think I’m far enough away now. I was just saying that in the old days using the local buses meant basically just figuring it out on your own. You had to hop on the bus and just hold up paper maps to people like ask them like, “Do you know where this bus is going?” Talk to the driver. Where does this bus go? How much do I pay? And hello. Hello. You have to basically talk to the bus driver and talk to other people. Today, even the bus lines are all digital. So, the bus system here in Banda Aceh is called Trans Koetaradja and it has a very well-developed digital footprint. So, they have a website. There’s an app. I’ve downloaded the app, and you can go to the app and figure out where all the buses go, where all the different lines go, and they have bus stops here that are highly developed. I’ll show one to you in a minute. Really nice bus stop, very well marked, a lot of maps, signs, things like that, QR codes that you can scan to download the app. And the trick seems to be that you need a special card. You can’t pay in cash. So I was trying to figure this all my information is just coming from online research. I don’t have any personal knowledge or experience yet. But here we are the main road getting very very busy. And according to the information I have so far, bus 3A will come rolling up this road at some point and it is going to stop at a bus stop just up ahead. But from what I found out online, you cannot pay with money. So the bus system is cashless. So, you have to get what they call a money card, which it’s like a debit card. And there’s my money card from Indomaret. Every bank has their own money card, I guess. And Mandiri is the name of the bank. So, I got a Mandiri money card from Indomaret. And I put money on this card. But for the buses, I don’t think you even have to pay yet. The bus system is free. Like there’s no charge because it’s a kind of a new service, but you still have to use your card to tap in and tap out. So I have my card and we’re doing all of this for the first time. So believe it or not, this is the bus stop. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them. They’re huge. Hi there. You look at the size of this thing. Has the name of the bus stop on it. Pasar Seutui H69. Even has a number label. And then when you get up here, look at that garbage can, comfortable chairs, and it even has a map of the entire bus system, and then a map of the bus line, the one that comes here. So I think the bus that comes here is corridor 3A and it goes along here and then this is the downtown core. So there’s the tsunami museum, the main market, the main mosque, other museum. So this is the bus I want to take. I’m down here right here I think. Pasar Seutui Dua H69. Okay. So, I’m right here and I’m just going to take the bus around here, get off here. And then I have to walk across the river to get to Telkomsel. So, if I wanted to, I could transfer like Telkomsel is over here. So, I could transfer to another bus, the yellow line, but I’m just going to walk from here. But yeah, so this is the bus stop. Beautiful signage. Here’s the app so you can scan the QR code, download the Trans Koetaradja app. And here are the schedules.
Yeah. So, I just sit here and wait for bus 3A to show up. And I’ve never done this before, so this is all brand new happening in real time. I’m going to see whether my card works or not. Tap onto the bus, tap off. And I’ve never had one of these cards before either. This is brand new. I only got it yesterday. So, yeah, figuring it out. You probably can’t see this very well, but there is the app. And the app is a little bit confusing the first time you see it. Takes time to figure it out, but I’m slowly doing that. And you can actually see all the bus routes. And technically, you should be able to see where the buses are. Like when I was looking at the map, they had little icons, like little pictures of a bus, and each bus had a different color, and they were like moving around the map like little toy buses, and you could see where they were exactly and track their location in real time. But right now, of course, I don’t have mobile internet, so I can’t use the app right now. So that’s basically all I can do. But if I click maybe if I click on all bus. No, it won’t work. I can’t get any information from the app at all. You need mobile internet to do that. So I just have to wait for the bus.
So I’m still reading all of the signs to try to figure this out. So I think this is a typo. This is supposed to be tap like tap on bus TOB and it says that the current fare is zero rupiah and then these are the cards that you can use. This is the one I have like it doesn’t say Mandiri or like it doesn’t say the name of the bank like every bank’s card has a different name. So, this is the Mandiri E-Money card. This one could be BNI. This one could be BCA. Like, each one of these comes from a different bank, but you need one of these cards in order to tap on the bus and then tap off when you get off.
Well, this isn’t looking very promising. I believe this is like the schedule. Monday to Thursday, Friday, and then Saturday to Sunday. But I don’t know what this means. Like bus 59, departure time 7:44, bus 58, departure time 9:44, 11:44. So does that mean that’s the time the bus comes here? So that’s like two hours in between the buses. Well, more than two hours here. There’s I don’t know. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Yeah, I don’t know what this schedule means. So, there’s some promising indications across the street. There’s the bus stop on the other side and a bus just stopped there. Bus number 41.
So, the buses are running and I think I see a bus coming my way. So, now we’ve got cars blocking the bus stop. Like there’s a platform here.
I don’t know if I can step off the platform. Oh, it’s bus 3A. So, this is my bus, but I think I have to go down on the street.
I’m not sure whether I have to whether I can step from the platform up here.
Oh, yeah. Look at that. There’s a platform here.
Man, that is a major step across. Okay, this go. Okay, he’s going to tap it for me. Perfect. Indonesia. Selamat pagi.
Indonesia. Just a tourist. Yeah. Thank you.
Okay.
Sir to Telkomsel Grapari. So this is the inside of the bus to take want to take a picture of the scanner here. So this is the machine that scans your card.
And yeah, to my surprise, you actually step onto the bus from the platform. Wow.
So, inside the bus, they have a road map.
Oh, okay.
Museum Tsunami and then the roundabout and then the MMRB.
Wow, that’s quite something. So, they have an attendant on the bus in a uniform and he actually took the card and tapped in for me and it’s pretty clear there’s no way to pay with cash. You have to have some kind of a card in order to ride the bus. And I think there’s still no charge. Yeah. Comfortable seats. I assume that’s the logo for Trans Koetaradja. Koetaradja. Trans Koetaradja. Yeah.
There we are. So, we’re slowly making our way. That’s me, of course, the blue dot. And we should be going around this square. This is the downtown busy area. There’s the main mosque, Masjid Raya Baiturrahman.
MMRB. And that’s where I’m going to get off at the MMRB. And then there’s Telkomsel over here. So, I have to take either bus number one or just walk to get there.
I can’t believe how well this turned out. I thought I would be standing there for an hour or two and no bus would ever come and there would be some confusion about the schedule or they don’t run on Saturdays or something like that. But here I am taking the bus in Banda Aceh. Very exciting.
We’re making progress. Yeah, very cool. I saw the outside of the Tsunami Museum, Porto Grand Arabia Hotel. And this is the stop near the market, Pasar Aceh. I assume that’s the main market right around here. And we’re turning right right now. And we should see the MMRB, a main mosque on the right. And that’s where I’ll be getting off the bus. I think somewhere around here. If I had the app, then I could see the exact bus stop.
And here we had to stop on the other side of the road. It’s like the bus stop is over here. So, it doesn’t match the platform. So, now the passengers climb over the front hump and then go down to street level. They go out the front door. Interesting.
And two red seats. I assume the red ones are like priority seating.
Oh, there’s the market as a market building. Have to check that out at some point.
There’s the mosque. Yeah, the main mosque here.
There’s another bus stop, but again, I think we have to go out the front door again. There’s the machine that you scan. Hello.
Thank you. Sorry. Video. Yeah. Video for Okay. Thank you. YouTube YouTube channel. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. We’re just going to walk. Telkomsel. Yeah. Yeah. Bus bus one. Number one, number two, number three. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah, there it is. The one odd thing maybe for me is that every bus has an identifier. Like this is actually bus 42, but it gets confusing because you think, well, it must be bus route 42, but it’s not. This is bus 42 on route 3A, right? So, for my money, it should say 3A on the side. It says it on the front. Like in the mirror there, you can see it says 3A, but it gets confusing to have large bus 42 numbers. Bus 46. But I guess you figure that out over time. And my plan Oh, here’s a feeder three bus 58. Interesting. Brand new buses. Look at that.
I’m not sure what I think of the overall design of the system. It’s pretty crazy in a way having the platform. Like my entire life, every time a subway comes to a stop, an announcer says, “Mind the gap.” But there’s never really a gap to worry about. But for these buses, the gap is like 2 ft across. And yeah, you could really hurt yourself if you fall in between the bus and the platform. So here they have another full map system. And I guess these are all the buses that stop here. 3A, 3B, feeder 8. I thought he said I needed to take bus number one from here, like corridor one. Okay, so there’s more over here. So, okay, corridor 1 comes here, corridor 2A, corridor 5, and I assume 3A, 3B. So, basically all of them come here. Like what I was saying about the gap, this is normally where you get onto the bus. You step off this platform and it can be 2 ft depending on where the bus comes to a stop. So that’s the biggest gap I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I would have designed a bus system like that. And yeah, but anyway, it’s what they have. Never seen anything like it before. And of course, coming up here is not easy either. You got to be able to manage these steps to get up onto the platform. So obviously very difficult access if you have problems with mobility and they have a big sign here but a digital sign doesn’t seem to be operating though public transport information system but yeah there’s no access obviously for wheelchair or even if you sort of have difficulty with mobility.
So from here I walk in this direction and then Telkomsel once I get my phone connected I hope. Ah okay. A lot of buses stopped over here as well. When I was looking at the app back in my hotel room I still had Wi-Fi there. So, I could see on the app a cluster of buses, like all these each one of these buses had a little tiny bus moving around like a toy. Look almost like an ant. And I can see there’s a whole group of them crowded around here like a herd of cows on the app. Quite interesting.
I don’t know if I captured any video of it or not, but from here you can see a little bit of the mosque right there. Beautiful tower.
There’s an interesting history to the name of this bus the city bus system here. By the way, I mentioned that it’s called Trans Koetaradja, but you often see it with two different spellings. Like a very simple spelling like Indonesian style and then there’s another spelling Koetaradja that is more of a Dutch spelling and this goes all the way back into history when this city Banda Aceh was actually called Kuta Raja and kuta means fort raja means king so this was the king’s fort or the citadel of the king. And then when the Dutch took over this part of the world and they heard the local name Kutaraja, they adopted Kutaraja as the name of this city, but they spelled it with Dutch spelling koe for example for oe. So you’ll see and here in Banda Aceh you’ll often see the name Koetaradja with the Dutch spelling. You’ll see it spread around, but that’s part of the kind of a nod to history, but they’ve also modernized it where it’s like kut the Indonesian more simplified spelling Koetaradja makes more sense, but then they named the bus system here Trans Koetaradja. So, it’s the transportation system of Koetaradja. So here’s the main river Banda Aceh. I was here once before I rode my bicycle all around the north of Sumatra into Aceh province. I was here in Banda Aceh before on my bicycle. So I’ve been all around this city on my bike, but to be honest, now that I’m walking around, I don’t recognize anything. It feels completely brand new.
I don’t even remember where I stayed when I was here last time. What part of the city and when this city was called Kutaraja, it was the seat of the Sultanate of Aceh. So, and it was a powerful kingdom in this area. And when the Dutch came, of course, they went to war against the Aceh Sultanate and eventually took over the place. But yeah, Trans Koetaradja, that worked out very very well. Much better than I expected. My first time taking a local bus.
There goes another one. No. Okay, that’s number one. The guy was saying I could take number one to go to where I’m going.
This is interesting. Yesterday I saw a very ornate building. I assumed it was a mosque, but it had the same bell with the same graphic on it. I just assumed it was a mosque. But this music sounds Christian to me. Sounds like a Christian hymn. It doesn’t sound or maybe it’s the national anthem. Let me look this place up. Okay, things are making sense. I got confused. Okay, here is a Catholic church and that’s where the hymn was coming from. So the music was coming from here. This, as it turns out, the sign translate as military command. So that’s a government military installation. Better get out of here with my GoPro. Don’t want to be standing around too long with a camera in front of the military. But here’s a Yeah, the Catholic Church.
I imagine that’s a little bit of an unusual sight here in Aceh Province.
I don’t have the numbers at the top of my head, but I think for Banda Aceh or maybe the province in general, I think that it’s like 98% Muslim population. So if there is a non-Muslim population, a Christian population, it would be very small.
I could be wrong about that 98% figure, but it’s what’s sticking in my head. All right, taking the bus. That was a success. Now, the real challenge is coming up next. Are they going to be nice to me? I did a little bit of research into this and according to the internet, Telkomsel, they have the power to extend my customs registration through them, but it’s at their discretion. They ask you questions. They decide whether you deserve it or not or they can do it or not do it according to what I read online. So, it depends on who I encounter that day. They might be a stickler for the rules and say, “No, you can’t extend the registration. It’s expired.” Or maybe they’ll do it for me. We’ll find out. Is that a big roundabout?
I always go the wrong way when I encounter a roundabout. This time I’m going to check very carefully before I go very far. Make sure that I’m heading in the right direction. I either have to go this way or that way. I think this way. And looks like it’s controlled by lights. I don’t see the light system anywhere. I don’t know what’s going on. I think I’ll just take my chances, I guess. Start going across.
The cars have lights, but I don’t see any kind of a pedestrian crossing. Well, I’m going to try and make it part way. See what happens.
It’s quite the symbol if that statue represents something special to Banda Aceh. Okay, now let’s check Google Maps. Make sure I’m heading in the right direction. No. According to Google Maps and my blue dot this way. But we’ll see. I’ll head in this direction a short distance and if my blue dot goes with me, I’ll know I’m on the right track.
Just happened to be passing another bus stop on the way. So, this would probably be bus number one, right? But yeah, you can see how high it is. You climb up on the platform. Oh, this one doesn’t have all the maps. Okay, this is corridor 2A and corridor 1, Baiturrahman to Darussalam. And this one is Baiturrahman Lambaro Bandara. Oh, this one actually has a wheelchair access. Look at that. But man, that would be tough. Imagine getting up this on a wheelchair. I guess you need your arm strength. It’s going to be slippery, too. And then getting through this barrier. But yeah, I mean, even if you got up here on a wheelchair, you’ve got this giant gap to get across. They’d have to pick you up and carry you across in your wheelchair. Wow. Very interesting. So, there’s Telkom Indonesia. We’re getting closer.
Yeah.
Yeah. There’s a Gojek. Once I have the power of mobile internet, I can start summoning Gojek and things like that. Can’t do it yet, though. I don’t know how it works. It’s like if he’s just riding around. He beeped his horn. Scared me because I thought it was somebody about to hit me. But he maybe even without the app, maybe he can just stop, pick me up, and make a deal in cash. I don’t have to book it through the app in that case. I don’t really know. It always feels like there’s a lot of banks in Indonesia. I don’t know if I’m imagining things, but every street just seems to be bank after bank after bank, bank buildings. Here’s another one. I passed a couple already. This is the KB Bank Syariah. Oh, look at that. It’s a bright friendly paint job of Telkomsel. And if you go to the Telkomsel Grapari, that’s their big office. That’s the main headquarters. It’s where you kind of need to go as a foreigner. But now we’re going to find out whether Google Maps had the correct information about them being open on a Saturday. If they aren’t, I’m going to be a little bit disappointed because it’s been a fun thing getting here by bus, but it wasn’t easy. It’s a bit of an effort. There’s a bunch of cars in the parking lot. That’s a good sign.
That’s what you look for if you have a Telkomsel SIM anyway. They have other ones in the country. Telkomsel Grapari Banda Aceh. And they’ll probably ask for my passport at the front and ask me why I’m here and then they make an appointment for you at the door. They kind of pre-screen you. It’s very very efficient.
Yeah, I hope so. I have a Telkomsel SIM and I was in Indonesia before, so I registered it through Telkomsel customs, email, but I think now it is blocked. So, I was hoping I can get and I’m here for 60 days, a new trip. So, I’m hoping Telkomsel can continue your registration. Yeah, the IMEI registration. I’m glad you’re open today. I wasn’t sure. I want your queue number here. Okay.
I see.
That’s kind of like making an appointment. You can submit and then this is usually this is queue number. Please wait a minute. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Number 0, please proceed. Counter one. I couldn’t see one. Good morning. Good morning. You’re hiding back here behind the pillar. I couldn’t see you. Yeah. Let me sit down here. Get organized.
Thank you. My name is My name is Nida. Can I help you? I hope so. I have a Telkomsel SIM card. Yes. And I used it in Indonesia before before. And you registered the IMEI. The IMEI actually. But now since it’s been more than 90 days, it’s I can’t access. It’s blocked, I think. Okay. So, I’m hoping you can extend it. Okay. You want to extend? Yeah. We have to regen. Okay. You have a passport. I have. Can I see? Passport. Yep. Yes. Phone.
How long you stay? 60 days. 60 days. Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Those last few seconds of video. That’s the interior of the Telkomsel Grapari. Wow. Amazing service. I mean, I don’t have the words to say how much I enjoyed that experience and appreciated their professionalism, kindness, efficiency, on and on. Five stars isn’t enough. 10 stars, honestly, they’re so good at these places. The young woman who was helping me out, I assume all of them, there were three or four sitting at these little tables, perfect English. They’re trained in customer service to an extent that you rarely see. It feels almost old school, like you’ve gone back to the 18th century because what I like the open plan like they’re not sitting behind a counter with bulletproof glass. It doesn’t have that bureaucratic feeling to it. They’re just sitting at little tables out in the open with a little number on it. One. So, when I went in the other places I’ve gone to, there was always someone at the front door and then they would take your passport, ask you what you’re there to do. Oh, check this out. By the way, I love these open holes in the sidewalks. You don’t want to fall in there. Watch your step. When you’re YouTubing, watch your step. But they Yeah, they would normally then give you a number like a queue number at the door. But in this place, they have a QR code. I didn’t realize that. But you go up to the QR code, you scan it, and then you fill in your name and your phone number, and then you’re assigned a queue number. But a man helped me do that. He did it for me. And then my number was called and said, and I was very proud of myself. I recognized the number in Indonesian. I know a little bit about the numbers. And it said, go to table number one. At first, I couldn’t see table number one because it was hidden behind a pillar. But then I came around the pillar and there was this lovely young woman standing up like she was I think they’re trained to be standing when the customer comes and they remain standing until you sit down. So once you sit down on your side of the table, she sits down on hers and then you begin the process. She spoke to me in perfect English. What can I do for you today, sir? That kind of thing. And then we went from there. It was just amazing. Of course, she has to deal with IMEI or IMEI. I always say IMEI, but she was saying IMEI. IMEI registration. That’s got nothing to do with Telkomsel. That’s a government policy, not a Telkomsel policy. So, if there’s any trouble with IMEI, it’s not their fault. They have nothing to do with that. But I did say to I told her what I was there to do that my phone has my IMEI registration has expired. So, customs is blocking my phone. I would like to get an extension. So, she took my phone and said, “Oh, yeah, that’s no problem at all. Well, I can do that for you. But then when she went to the back room to do this, she discovered that I’d done it already once this year. Whatever the number of times, you can extend it. I had reached the limit this year. I guess I could do it again in 2026, but not in 2025. So then she was telling me, well, what you need to do, sir, you need to go to, and she named the customs office. Go to the customs office, register with them, and then you’re going to have to pay import duties and taxes based on the value of this phone. And she was telling me all these things I needed to do. And then I just smiled at her and said, “No, there’s not a chance I’m doing any of that. I’m not going anywhere near the customs office.” Can you imagine what that would involve trying to go there in Banda Aceh? Like nobody will speak English there. Nobody will know what I’m talking about. It will end up taking days. So I says, “No, I no, I’m not going anywhere near a customs office.” So then I suggested an alternative because I have other phones. I have three of them. So I said, “Well, I have another phone. Can we register that one?” I mean, I thought it had been blocked because I’d been told in the past that these phones when they reached their limit, they were blocked forever. Like, you could never ever use it ever again. But apparently, it’s an annual thing. If you extend your IMEI registration this year, then maybe you can’t do it again until the next year begins, something like that. So, anyway, I gave her another phone. She called up the IMEI barcode, scanned it with her little scanner, and said, “Oh, yeah, this one’s fine. You did use it in Indonesia, but it was years and years ago.” So, she says, “Yeah, I can give you this phone all has also been registered in the past, but I can extend it and give you another 3 months, another 90 days.” So, that’s what we did. All we did was a switch over to a new phone. Then I ran into a little bit of an issue. This is where I’m walking, by the way. I don’t know what that building is. Oh, Muraya Hotel. Ah, fancy hotel. Pizza Hut. Walking away from Telkomsel back to this intersection. But the one issue there was my current SIM card, my Indonesian SIM card was in the other phone that is now blocked until next year. And then she was saying, “Well, that’s no problem. We can just transfer that SIM card over to your second phone.” And then we were going to do that, but then I started thinking that maybe that would cause problems because I have my OVO wallet. I have my Gojek access. I have all these Indonesian apps on that phone and they’re all registered to that phone number. And I was worried that if I move the SIM card to a different phone, it’s going to break the whole system. None of these apps will work anymore. She reassured me and said, “No, no, no, no, no. Everything will be fine. Your OVO e-wallet will still work even though the phone, the SIM card isn’t in that phone anymore.” And that on and on and on. And I almost believed her. I was going to let her do it. And then at the last minute, I thought, “No, my instinct is telling me, keep it simple.” That if I’m going to be using a brand new, fresh phone, then let’s be completely fresh. New phone, new SIM card, new phone number, new everything. And then she said, “Well, that you’re going to have to pay for a new SIM card is 35,000.” So, 35,000 rupiah for a SIM card and that gets you 3 GB of data. And I said, “Well, yeah, let’s do that.” So I ended up getting a brand new SIM card in my new phone and, we’re all set. So now basically I keep that phone in my knapsack and I have it set to Wi-Fi hotspot and then I use this is my main phone. It does not have the SIM card in it but this is the phone I walk around. I do everything on this phone but now I have it connected to my Indonesian phone via hotspot in my knapsack. So that’s Anyway, that’s all way too complicated. But the good news is it’s done. I’m connected to mobile internet again. Everything’s finished. The lovely young woman at Telkomsel, she did kind of encourage me to go to customs, kind of saying, “Oh, it’ll be fine. Go there. Do this.” And I just smiled again and it says, “No.” That would be such a last resort. I would never even attempt to do that. And I said, if all of my phones are blocked by customs and I have absolutely no choice, I still won’t go I’ll just buy a new phone. I mean, I would dread going to this giant customs government office so much. I would just go out and buy a local Indonesian phone for $40, $50, the cheapest phone you can get. And then I would use that one, put a SIM card in it, and use it as a Wi-Fi hotspot for my other phones. Yeah, I would rather spend $50 than go to a government office like that. Anyway, right now I’m walking towards a new neighborhood because I wanted to check out a couple of local hotels. When I was looking for a hotel here, there were three of them in particular that I was looking at. They all had very similar names. The hotel O Banda Aceh, the Collection O Banda Aceh, and then there’s a second Collection O Banda Aceh. And they’re all within the same kind of price range. Maybe a 100,000 rupiah per night depending on when you book it. Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s the same name as where I’m staying now. It’s a Cendana Homestay. So, this would be a cost, more of a long-term place, but doesn’t look open. Anyway, I don’t know why I turned down this street. I just thought it looked interesting. But yeah, my the two hotels, the other two hotels I was considering are both kind of in this neighborhood. So, I just thought I would go look at them while I’m here. So rather than extending my stay at my current hotel, if I want to, I can move to one of these hotels here, but I’m not sure. I kind of like where I am. The only two issues with that hotel are it’s a little bit far away from the downtown core. But in a way, that’s kind of a good thing. You get your own neighborhood. Feels kind of special being out there rather than being right in the heart with all the other people. But also at that hotel there’s a lot of smoking. So in the room right beside mine right now yesterday there were three or four men all crowded in they might may have been in a couple of different rooms. They seem to be businessmen traveling businessmen and they’re all two or three of them in each of the rooms and they were smoking up a storm and all the cigarette smoke just poured into my room. So wasn’t very comfortable again. So, if I do move out of that hotel, it’ll only be because of the cigarette smoke. But, yeah, want to go take a look at these new places, see what they’re like. This is one of the places. Yeah, it’s just it’s sort of similar to where I’m staying in that the names are all confused. So, it’s actually you can see at the very top there, it says Collection O Hotel, Siwa Hotel in the main sign there. Hello. How are you? I’m fine, thank you. How are you? Fine. Where are you from? Canada. Canada. Yeah, from Canada. Yesterday I bring guy from France. From France today. Okay. Today to traveling here. Yeah. Where where did you bring him? I drove to location tsunami. I see. And then I went to the beach. The beach. The beach is very nice. It’s named Lampuuk Beach. Lampuuk beach. Yeah. And I was going to the airport. Oh. And then he left. Just one guy from France by himself. One guy. And then I met someone from Turkey. Oh, Turkey. Oh, okay. Cool. And then from Yeah. Many customer from Spain, from England, from Germany. So you’re becak driver and tour guide. Yeah. Combination. When you take them on a one day tour, how much do you charge them? Maybe he gives me 150 150,000 for and then maybe 200 like that. Up to you. Maybe today. Yeah, it’s good for because here is have four location tsunami, right? Tsunami museum, right? The museum and big ship. Oh yeah, the big ship and then boat on the roof and then one again is the like the Kubah mosque. Oh okay. It’s very big. Right. Okay. This time tsunami we bring the with the water tsunami. Right. Right. Before tsunami I have coffee shop. You have a coffee shop. Yeah. Because of the tsunami and then time tsunami. Oh it was destroyed by the tsunami. Oh. So, okay. So, you had a coffee shop before before before the tsunami. Yeah. Now, it was gone after the Okay. And then I have his family died. Oh, yeah. My uncle. Yeah. It was a big tragedy here. Yeah. 160,000 people died, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. And then time tsunami is many government come here. Yeah. And then time tsunami. I don’t have job again. And then I met in the street. Yeah. Same with you. Is from Australia. Okay. And then I work follow him is from Australia. Ah, one year. Oh. His name Patrick. He have skill architect. Architect. I’m working for Patrick. One year. Okay. Yeah. I just came here to look at the hotel. Maybe I will stay here. You stay there. No, I’m a different place. In my home. My home or Portala? Portala.
Okay. But maybe you want tomorrow. I number for you. Okay. If I have your phone number, how can I get your phone number? Just had an interesting chat. Becak driver or tuk tuk driver. I’m not sure what they call them here in Banda Aceh. I’m calling them becak, but he was telling me he often brings foreigners around. Kind of a tsunami tour. There are four or five historic like sites related to the destruction of the tsunami and he takes foreigners to all those different sites. And he said he would charge like 150,000 for the day, or 200,000. He didn’t really want to limit his price. He was like, “Hey, whatever you want to pay. If you want to pay more, that’s cool with me, too.” But okay, so here’s the Collection O, formerly Siwa Hotel. Yeah, looks like a very bare bones kind of basic place, which makes sense given that it’s a low-budget operation.
Thank you.
Hello. Hello.
It’s not check in. Can I see a room? Okay, let’s go then. Thank you.
Hello people. My friend
Oh, okay.
So, this is one of the rooms here. Yeah, looks fine. Bed, of course, no window or anything like that. Air conditioner. That’s nice. Nice work station. And yeah, bathroom is much nicer. Mirror sink. Yeah, it’s definitely a step up from where I’m staying in terms of the facilities.
Oh, there’s even a kind of a window out under the hallway. Yes. Okay. One bed. This two bed. Oh, okay. One bed. Two bed.
The room is tiny. Oh, that’s okay. Ah, I see. I see. Too bad. And then it’s a connection. Okay.
Thank you. Terima kasih.
Thank you very much. It was very nice. Yeah. If I wish to come, I can book on Agoda or that’s no problem. Okay. Yeah. So, they have a lobby here with cold drinks in a cooler. So, I took advantage of their cooler in the lobby.
Nice Indo Cafe cold latte. Sepuluh rupiah. 10,000 rupiah.
I have to be honest, the other hotel would be similar to this one. I don’t really need to go look at it, I don’t think. Maybe I will, but if I wanted to make a move to a different place, I’d be perfectly happy here. Yeah, it doesn’t have the same character, that funky building that I’m in. But I’ll be there for five nights and then I can move here. Whole different experience.
I decided to go check out the other hotel. Why not? It’s right in this neighborhood. And I get to walk through more of the city. Cross a bridge over the river again. Yeah. This is the same This is the street that the Collection Siwa is on. This one right here, but it’s all car like mechanic shops all the way down. Yeah. So, this particular street is not that interesting in terms of like places to eat and things. There’s no food here, but that’s just this one street. It’s all mechanic shops, but I’m sure once you get on to the next street over, you’ll find restaurants. Because I do like where I am now for that reason. There seem to be a lot of places to eat there. Convenience shops and things, but I’m sure you can find them here, too. There’s a little restaurant right on the corner.
But this is much more downtown.
There’s the bridge up ahead to get across the river.
If I needed to buy a kettle, a light bulb, a fan, a stove, cooker, this is where you come. All lined up along here.
Luckily, my current kettle is still working, so I don’t need to go kettle shopping just yet.
I love this place. Love the people here in Sumatra in general. Just such lovely people. It’s a great atmosphere. Bustling. You feel like you’re on an adventure.
Oh, hello. How are you?
The bread bakery and cake shop over there.
Ah, okay. There’s a market street right here.
So, I never do any shopping in markets because I’m not buying an eggplant and cooking it. I just need to see it already prepared in a restaurant.
Oh, look at that. Yesterday I went to a tofu place in my neighborhood. There was a big place, well, small place I should say, where they made tofu exactly like that, and here it is for sale in the market. Tahu, they call it tahu. But the only thing I would ever buy in a market would be bananas.
Oh, mushroom, huh, in Bahasa Indonesia. Jamur, jamur, jamur mushroom. Cool. Oh, more tahu there. Yeah. Corn, carrots, cauliflower, potatoes, cucumbers. I guess.
Here in Banda Aceh, you can’t help but always think about the tsunami, even though it was back in 2004, 20 years ago, but you can’t help it. Like there’s that building over there that is destroyed and you have to think, okay, was that damaged by the tsunami? So, every time you see anything, a ruined building, you instantly think, is that a tsunami remnant or not?
Bridge across the river. And this is nice. Looks like there’s a walkway beside the river.
Yeah, I’ll bet the tsunami hit here pretty hard. The tsunami would have come right up this river, would have hit this bridge. All these boats and all the houses that were washed away would have jammed into this bridge from the other side. I saw a lot of video of that happening.
Something I noticed is when I was on my computer at the exact hour that the tsunami hit in Japan. So I watched all of the news coverage pretty carefully. One thing I often think about is the comparison between all the national huge disasters around the world in terms of how much of them were caught on video because the 2004 tsunami here in Banda Aceh, there was some video taken but not a huge amount. But then just 10 or 15 years later, whenever it was that the tsunami hit Japan, there was tons of video from there because in the meantime smartphones had flooded the market. I mean everybody had a smartphone. So every regular person on the coast of Japan was filming the tsunami as it happened.So you got hundreds and hundreds of hours of tsunami footage from Japan. But there isn’t nearly as much documentation of the tsunami here in Banda Aceh.
Other side of the bridge, other side of the river. Look at all those boats.
Got a whole set of them right underneath me here. Very colorful.
Yeah. When the tsunami would have come racing up this river, it probably would have been all these boats docked there just like it is now. They all would have been ripped out of their moorings and then slammed up against this bridge. You would have had a huge debris pile here as everything just piled up.
I bet if you did a search, you’d find video right here from the tsunami.
The other hotel is off in this direction somewhere. And there it is right there. Hotel Mulana. But when you find it on Google Maps, it will say something else entirely. It’s like Collection O something something, formerly Hotel Mulana. But of course they keep the old sign, though it’s still one point in favor of Hotel Mulana is that there’s an Indomaret right here pretty much right beside it. I think I’m on the right street to get into the Mulana. So there it is. Hotel Mulana. I don’t like the OYO branding. OYO for me spells nothing but trouble. OYO hotels. I stay as far away from them as I can, especially in Sumatra. You never quite know what’s going on with an OYO hotel. Friendlier street though in a way. See, it’s got a little shop right there. It’s got an Indomaret right there. Padang restaurant right there. So, it’s a little bit more of a friendly neighborhood.
Though even here the traffic never really stops.
Hello. Hello.
This is interesting. It feels like it has more of a hostel vibe with sort of a communal area here where tables, people having snacks.
Is there a room available that I could just see? I’m staying at a different hotel, but I’m gonna change to a different one. And can I see a room?
Our room still cleaning. Still cleaning. But I can see, I just look in the door just… Well, I mean, if it’s still cleaning, it’s okay.
Wow.
This is nice too.
Ah, and like that. Okay, I see.
Very nice. Looks good. Looks very, very nice. Thank you, Tony Massie.
And another seating area up here. And yeah, water.
Has a very casual like family-friendly vibe to it.
And a scale to measure the weight of your bags. Got a couple of wild bikes kicking around, too. Look at this one here.
There you have it. Yeah, I’m definitely moving. I think five nights where I am now, that’s enough to get the sense of the character, the neighborhood, and time to move up in the world a little bit. See what this one is like staying either here or at the other one. I’m not sure. They both have advantages, disadvantages, but I think if I had to choose right now, I would probably choose this one. The room conditions, the atmosphere, the street itself, having Indomaret right across the road instead of being surrounded by nothing but mechanics shops and garages.
Nice street. Looks like there’s just some sort of a park right over there. That could be the beach already. I don’t know how close we are to the shore. Might have to walk to the shore if it’s right over there.
So, this is going to be a big moment in the life of Planet Doug. Now that I have mobile internet, I can try to use the Malaysian Touch ‘n Go e-wallet to buy something in Indomaret. Like, I don’t know whether it’s going to work or not. This will be the very first time I’ve tried to use it because here they have a system they call QRIS. It’s their version of DuitNow, but from everything I’ve read, Touch ‘n Go works in Indonesia because DuitNow is connected now to the QRIS system. So, it should work. Let’s give it a try.
So, in theory, it should work exactly the same as inMalaysia. Just open your Touch ‘n Go app, sign in. And this is interesting. When I first arrived in Sumatra, it still listed Malaysian ringgit and it said Malaysia, but after 24 hours, it automatically switched to Indonesia settings. So, my balance is now in Indonesian rupiah and the country is set to Indonesia. And all of this information is all related to Indonesia. So, the layout of the app is completely different, but you still have a scan button. So, I can scan a code or I can get my QR code that they scan and then it still has my Visa debit card. So, it looks different, but it’s still the same thing. So, let’s see if it works.
Come on baby.
Biasa QRIS.
To scan QRIS.
No, like a… Okay. Okay, that’s okay. Certain bank unless there is a card. Really card? Yes. Card. No. Okay.
Yeah. See if it works.
Strange. Okay.
Well, there you have it. A real-world experience. At least attempt number one. When I asked them about using QRIS, they seemed shocked like what are you talking about? What is this? And they said I needed a bank card in order to use QRIS. And yet as far as I know, QRIS the system is nationwide. A major chain like Indomaret should be fully wired with QRIS. But then the next question is, can I use my Touch ‘n Go app here? And they basically said no. But I kind of hung in there a little bit. And then they said, well, we’ll try. So they tried to scan my QR code. I didn’t see what it said on their side. I still think it will work. I think they just don’t know how to do it, but we’ll see. It wouldn’t be a very common thing to do, especially here in Banda Aceh. But anyway, here total failure. My Touch ‘n Go e-wallet did not work in Indomaret. So, yeah, I’ll have to try other places. That’d be really… Well, I’m going to try and get a local e-wallet so I could still use e-wallets, but I was hoping to be able to use Touch ‘n Go just for the fun of it. Anyway, no, didn’t work at all. Total failure.
Hey, can you do top up? Yeah. Or lima puluh. Top up. Oh, top up. Yeah. Top up. Top up.
We top up on the cell phone. Okay.
This. Oh, I see.
Like NFC. NFC. Yes.
Okay.
Oh, yeah. That’s mine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lima. Okay.
Where are you from?
Oh.
Oh, got something over here, too. Check.
Is okay. Okay. QRIS payments can only be made at Indomaret only for local banks. For international banks, you can only use cards. Okay.
So, for the first time, I’m going to buy something in an Indomaret using this e-money card from Mandiri. Let’s see how you do it.
Just set and use my card. Yeah. Okay.
Okay.
See what he does over here.
Yeah. Okay.
Okay.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. I’ll take those.
So, that was really confusing. I guess these are early days. I’m trying to understand how all of these digital payments work in Indonesia. And it could be that here in Banda Aceh it isn’t as fully developed. I mean my understanding was QRIS was completely international. I know it covers the entire country. There’s a foreigner vlogger here called Kate Gypsy. If you go to her channel Kate Gypsy, she has two videos where she’s talking about QRIS in Indonesia. She doesn’t give the mechanics, it’s not like a how-to video, but she talks at length about how amazing QRIS is, about how it’s so smooth and easy and efficient and perfect and works everywhere and across like 17,000 islands of Indonesia. All you have to do is scan, scan. It’s so easy and fast. And that may be true for local e-wallets, but my experience here so far is that it’s not the same for Touch ‘n Go. You’re supposed to be able to use Touch ‘n Go anywhere in Indonesia through the QRIS system, but my first attempt failed. And the guy explained it to me again saying that for international Touch ‘n Go, it only works if you have a bank account and a bank card and it’s a minimum purchase of 75,000 rupiah. None of that makes sense to me, but that’s what he told me.
So then I thought, oh well, I have my Mandiri e-money card. Let’s try to do that. And he said, “Yeah, you can do that. No problem. That you can use. Easy.” So, then I told him, “Okay, I want to put 50,000 rupiah on the card.” And I gave him 50,000 rupiah and the card. I just expected him to go to the cash register, scan the card, and it’s done. But he had to connect my card to a smartphone using NFC, do something there. Then he had to go to a terminal, do it there. It was like a two-stage process and it was really long and complicated. So that was kind of taken aback. But by when he finished though, I had 50,000 rupiah on this card.
So I wanted to do an experiment. Okay, now I want to buy something. Can I buy this coconut milk? So delicious. And he said, “Yeah, yeah, I can do that. No problem.” So, I brought this to the cash register and I thought he was just going to scan it. Zip, you’re done. Like just like Touch ‘n Go in Malaysia. Super fast. But he actually turned my card over and he had to type in the entire serial number. And the serial number is almost impossible to read on this card. It’s covered up with a bunch of other graphics. It’s really hard to read. It’s a very long serial number. He typed in the entire serial number into the cash register. Did a bunch of things there. Scanned the purchase and then we had to walk all the way across the counter to the far end and then he put it on a scanner and then he processed the payment there. So, it was like ridiculously inefficient and slow. So, total failure on the e-money card as well.
So far, I probably don’t know what I’m doing yet. Or it could be that here they don’t know what they’re doing. But anyway, I will keep fighting until I get this figured out.
Now, my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to get back to my part of the city by bus. I know now from experience that my e-money card… Oh, I see. All these cars have to go across this intersection to get onto the bridge.
Yeah, you think it’s challenging walking in Kuala Lumpur, try Banda Aceh. Trying to get across this intersection as a pedestrian. That’s challenging.
Anyway, so I do know that my Mandiri e-money card works on the buses. I did that this morning and it worked. So that was a major success in my life. So the world of Banda Aceh buses has opened up to me. So that’s cool. This might even be a bus stop right here. I wonder if it will tell me if any buses stop here. And it doesn’t look like it’s in use. Looks kind of overgrown.
But I’m walking all the way back to the main mosque. That’s sort of like the central bus stop. Yeah, this one doesn’t have any signs at all. Maybe it’s not even being used anymore.
But what a day of technology. I got my smartphone up and running connected to mobile internet. That’s good. I’ve got money on my Mandiri e-money card. And I learned that e-money is not really the name for the technology. Mandiri calls their cards e-money cards, but other banks probably have a different name for their cards.
So, what I’m going to do now is take the bus back to my neighborhood and I’m going to get off near a bakso restaurant. I went there yesterday and I noticed that they have a QR code beside their cash register. So, I’m going to have lunch there again, really good mie bakso, and then I’m going to try to pay using Touch ‘n Go. We’ll see how that works because at Indomaret my understanding would be they have to scan your code because that’s how it works in Malaysia with 7-Eleven places like that. But that failed at Indomaret, even at Indomaret they couldn’t do it, but maybe…
Oh, there goes a bus. Yeah, see there the system breaks down. I don’t know what bus route that is. It says bus number 38, but I don’t need to know the bus number. That’s only for the bus driver. He’s the only one that needs to know that. I need to know the bus route. That should be the sign on the bus. So, there’s a failure of design, I think.
Yeah. Beautiful river. Look at that. Running right through the city.
Interesting town. I love this town. I really do. It’s just such a bit crazy and chaotic at times, intersections, for example. But it just has a laid-back, informal, friendly feeling to it despite being a big city.
Check out the riverside right here. Lot of interesting buildings like that one. Bank Indonesia.
The funny thing is that in the back of my mind, I was thinking that I could make a how-to video, how to use Touch ‘n Go in Indonesia. I made a video about how to use Touch ‘n Go, basically how I use Touch ‘n Go in Malaysia and I thought since I’m here and everyone tells me you can use Touch ‘n Go here with the QRIS system, I was going to make kind of a companion video to show my experiences using it here. But so far it’s looking like you can’t use it here. So it may be a kind of a pointless video. It’ll be 20 seconds long like how to use Touch ‘n Go in Indonesia. You can’t. It doesn’t work. So, don’t even bother. That’s my experience so far. But we’ll see. Maybe I’ll figure it out. Or maybe this one Indomaret, they’re just not connected to the QRIS network or the clerks aren’t trained in it because they never have to do it. They’re just not aware of it. Could be any number of things.
So, some benches overlooking the river there. Yeah, right here, too. Couple of benches. I’m not sure how far I can go along here. This would be the easiest way to get to the bus stop is down that road, but the road kind of splits here. And maybe I can follow the river, get to that bridge, and then near that bridge is where all the major bus stop is. We shall see.
Hello.
Back road down by the river.
Everywhere I go now, I kind of look at the world through my eyes, but I also look at the world through the eyes of American Hobo, the other YouTuber who’s here in Sumatra right now cycling. And I’m thinking, now where would he camp? Right there. Maybe you could put up a tent right there if you don’t mind being in the middle of the city, I suppose. Anywhere along a river is prime camping territory if you don’t mind being like this. Like here’s all the businesses over here like some tailor shops. There’s four of them, five of them in a row. And you can put your tent right down there if you don’t mind being that close to other people.
A lot of trees here. String up his hammock.
Reach the bridge. There’s the bridge right there. That’s the bridge I crossed over originally to go to Telkomsel. Yeah. And there’s the military installation right there. I think I took video of that. And the Catholic church. There’s the Catholic church where I started from. And I just happened to look down this road and there they are. The buses. My buses. It’s free of charge.
Hello. How are you? Yeah. Okay. And all I have to do is tap with my Mandiri e-money card. Hello. Hello.
Yeah, this whole neighborhood looks to be dedicated to small tailor shops. One after the other after the other. I always find it fascinating how businesses clump together like that. I remember there was a podcast by Planet Money that examined that from an academic point of view because economically you’d think it’d be bad, like if you have a tailor shop, you don’t want to be surrounded by other tailor shops because they’re your competition. But it turns out the logic is it makes more economic sense for them to be grouped together because every customer looking for a tailor shop knows that this is the tailor neighborhood. So all the people come here and they actually get more customers by grouping together with other tailors. It’s very interesting.
So yeah, here we are again. I disagree with the way the buses are set up because it says bus 47, bus 38, bus 42, but I don’t need to know that. I need to know what is this 3A or 2B or… Right. So, you have to walk all the way around to the front of the bus in order to see what the actual bus is. So, that makes no sense to me at all. So, for all I know, that could be my bus leaving, but I don’t know because I can’t see the bus line. You have to get all the way to the front.
And there’s… Okay, there’s… It’s route five. See what I mean? That’s the important number. Route five. There’s feeder number two. But you can’t see that until you get to the very front. There’s 3B. I think I want 3A.
So, I think 3A stops up here. Maybe. This motorcycle was here when I came by a few hours ago. It’s still here.
So, I think a 3A stops right over here.
Hello. Hello. And…
Yeah, but somehow the bus stop is on the wrong side of the bus because the big door is on the opposite side. So, they can’t actually use this platform system because the bus stop is on the wrong side of the street. Also kind of a poor design that way.
This is kind of interesting. I’ve been trying to figure out how the app works and it looks like on the map, like I said, you can see a little image of the bus, like a little toy bus zooming around on the streets. I didn’t realize this, but if you click on that little toy image, the icon, it opens up a little window that tells you what bus it is. And I clicked on a green bus at random located right where I’m waiting and it said, “Oh, 3A. That’s the bus that I want.” But I think it’s supposed to be red, not green. But anyway, so I came walking up here and it says bus 42. And this is bus 42. You come around to the front and it says 3A. So, this is my bus, but I don’t know if you can get on it because like I said, all the doors are on the other side. These buses aren’t designed for this space.
So, there’s the big door. That one you use with the raised platform, but it’s on the wrong side of the bus. So, you have to go in this door. I can see the driver of the bus. I made eye contact with him and I made all kinds of hand gestures like I showed him my powerful e-money card and I pointed at the bus. So I can take this bus.
Hello. And he says, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” Thumbs up. So I kind of pointed in that direction. We’re going that way. Yep. Yep. Yep. And so I pointed at the door. Can I get on? And he says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” So I go stand by the door, but he just looks at me. So, I don’t know. I guess you wait until he opens the door.
You got to learn all the systems, but I’m hoping he doesn’t just start driving because I’ve made it pretty clear I want to get on his bus. But we’ll see whether he lets me on or not. I’ll have to keep monitoring the app and see if another 3A shows up in the meantime.
So the bus conductor, he came out and he was calling out to people ready to go, ready to go. So he’s sort of announcing departure.
Yeah, this is quite the climb to get up. A little bit like mountain climbing. Maybe I scan.
Payment system.
So, I scanned my e-money card, but I was going to say so far I’m the only person to do it. I haven’t seen anybody else. So, I just saw one other woman scan her card, but maybe in this period when everything is free, they kind of want you to scan, but you don’t absolutely have to. So, maybe once they start charging, then everybody has to scan. But yeah, it’s kind of interesting the whole system.
Oh, somebody else just scanned. I didn’t get like a beep sound though. Like I wanted a loud acknowledging beep to tell me that it registered, but it didn’t make any sound at all. I had to really look at the screen to see whether it registered or not. But yeah, mine did. I am the master of the e-money card. I’m very excited.
Yeah. So, all the women that are on the bus now, I guess they knew the system in advance, they were just sitting in the shade waiting and they knew that the bus conductor, not the driver, but the conductor was going to come out and announce when the bus was going to be departing. I’m a dumb foreigner. I’m standing at the front of the bus kind of panicking thinking they’re going to leave without me. I was ready to fling myself in front of the bus to stop them, but it turned out there is a system. You just wait in the shade and then a nice man will come and tell you that the bus is leaving.
So, we’re moving along. I’ve got the app open here and you can see the green bus. So, the green bus is moving. And sometimes there’s a blue circle near it. And that’s me. So that blue circle is me right there. I’m on the bus and there’s the green bus. And the green squares, those are bus stops. I thought bus 3A was red line, but I guess red line and green line follow the same road. So 3A color-coded green, I guess. And I’m going down here to this bus stop here. And every bus stop has a name that you can click on it. You can see the name of the bus stop. Oh, view bus arrivals. And I guess that’s me right there. I’ll get there in 9 and 1/2 minutes. Oh, no. It says bus 41. I’m on 42. I guess that’s a different bus maybe. Who knows?
Next stop, my stop.
Try this door. Yeah, I think this door might be broken. We’ll see. Oh, no. It worked. But yeah, here’s the gap that you have to step across. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. Look at that. Thank you. Have a good day.
Yeah. Isn’t that something else? It’s like stepping over the Grand Canyon. You have to be comfortable with heights.
There it goes. Bus 42, Route 3A. Amazing. It’s very old school. Like it’s a new bus system, but they designed it to have an onboard conductor just like in Vietnam. I really like that system in Vietnam where they have a driver and they have a full-time employee just helping everybody on the bus, helping them on, helping them off, guiding everyone. And yeah, they do that here as well.
So just down in this direction is my bakso place. So let’s head over there and we can try out Touch ‘n Go one more time with the QRIS system. I haven’t given up yet. Obviously I’ve only tried it one time. Got to try it many, many more times to figure it out.
So, here’s my new favorite bakso place, Bakso Barokah. I don’t know if that’s just a name or a type of bakso, but that’s where they prepare them. And they have this huge menu up on the wall. It’s kind of cool. Mie bakso. Mie pangit. I really like that, too. All the different types.
And then around they have these giant photos. There’s Bakso Barokah Cab. And this is what I’m here to experiment with. There is their code. Interestingly, I thought it would say QRIS somewhere, but it doesn’t say anything like that. But I’m going to try to scan that when I go to pay with Touch ‘n Go, and we’ll see what happens. Maybe that red arrow. Is that the logo of QRIS? I’m going to have to look that up. I see that around town. This red arrow.
There’s my teh botol over ice.
And when you sit at this table, they have some snacks. These are like potato-filled something or other. I had a couple of those last time I was here. And then you can also have these snacks. And you just tell them how many you took and then they will add it to your bill.
And there’s the view from my new favorite bakso place.
My bakso has arrived. So mie bakso right there. And I’ve got American Hobo up on YouTube. Going to watch his latest video as I enjoy my late lunch. And then of course we’re going to try to pay for it with Touch ‘n Go in Sumatra. Not only in Sumatra, but in Banda Aceh. I think the chances of success are very, very low, but we’ll see what happens.
All right, here we go. Touch ‘n Go in Indonesia. Logging in. Now we’re going to go up there and try to… We’re going to ask Bisa QRIS, can I pay with QRIS? And I’m going to scan their code. And man, I really hope it works. I don’t think it will, but let’s give it a try. Bisa QRIS a try.
So, there’s the code. And I’m going to just scan the code. Drum roll. Does it work?
Wow. Look at that. It works. Amazing. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
So, 25. So, it’s 25,000. So, now you got to make sure you’re in the right currency. Don’t type in the wrong one because if you type in 25,000 ringgit that’s very very different from 25,000 Indonesian rupiah. So there.
Okay. So see it tells you here at the top 25,000 rupiah and then it tells you the equivalent in ringgit 6.31. Confirm. Paying. So you have looks like you have 5 seconds to cancel if you made a mistake. Authenticate with my fingerprint. And they’re sending my money to Bakso Barokah. Successfully sent.
Yeah. Oh, okay. So now he is going to take a picture of the screen. How cool is that? I mean, honestly, I’m still confused about Indomaret, though. Like, why didn’t it work at Indomaret? Maybe they’re just not experienced. But I’ve got a little tiny bakso place. They’ve got the QRIS code right here. Worked flawlessly. Nothing to complain about. And then you’ve got right across the road, Indomaret, the big probably the biggest convenience store chain in the entire country, massive company. And yet when I tried to do it there, it wouldn’t work.
So maybe we should go across the road and try a different Indomaret. What do you think? Give Touch ‘n Go QRIS one more opportunity here.
Bisa. QRIS. Bisa. Yeah. Bisa.
Ah, so I have the code here and we’ll see if it works.
Come here.
No.
Okay. Not working. Huh?
So, that was a mixed bag. I asked them, “Can I pay with QRIS?” And they said, “Sure, no problem.” But when they tried to scan my Touch ‘n Go QR code, they didn’t see that it was Touch ‘n Go. Like, I didn’t tell them it was an international like Malaysian e-wallet app. I didn’t show them Touch ‘n Go. I just said QRIS because it should work with all e-wallets. And then they scan the QR code, it wouldn’t work. And again, they thought maybe they should only scan the barcode. So, they tried to cover up the QR code and scan the barcode that goes with it, but that didn’t work. They tried several times, many times, I would say. No, couldn’t do it. I offered to scan their code, like maybe you guys just have it backwards and I’m supposed to scan the code on your machine, but they said no, no, no.
So, so far Touch ‘n Go is a bust. But then I decided, well, I asked them if I could pay with my Mandiri e-money card and they said, “Oh, yeah, absolutely.” And that worked. But, oddly enough, I still don’t understand this. They had to type in the whole serial number and the serial number on the back of the card is almost impossible to read because it’s all covered up in graphics. So, they really fumble and they’re fumbling and fumbling. And I mean, if it’s supposed to be the convenience of tap and pay, it makes no sense at all that you got to type in the entire serial number. Where’s the advantage now? You might as well just pay in cash.
Anyway, I’m going to do one more experiment. I saw this when I was walking along the street, a martabak place. And I noticed, you see that signal there, the symbol? That is the QRIS symbol with the red arrow. And I’m going to… I don’t really want it to be honest, but I’m going to get a martabak and just so I can pay with the QR code. See if it works.
What have we got here?
They may not really be operational.
Hello.
I only wanted to get a little piece. So, okay. It turns out that these ones are more expensive because they’re a special kind of pizza style. And here I finally found what I was looking for. It’s the Martabak classic. And then the prices are a bit lower. So I went for the chocolate nut combination for 55,000 rupiah regular. So, oh, the regular. Yeah, regular.
Oh, what’s that? Oh, okay. Sure.
Ah, we go. Yep. So, he invited me to the back to see the magic how it is made. So, there’s the dough out of the back. Very thick. I love a good dough. I used to make pancakes myself all the time back in a previous lifetime.
So, back in Canada when I had a kitchen. And then some of the other ingredients over here.
There’s a big tub of the batter. Yeah. Not dough, batter. I was using the wrong word.
It’s cooking very, very fast. Oh, and here he’s got the chocolate. The coat or chocolate? Chocolate. Chocolate. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Chocolate and nuts. Nice. I wonder how much of that is going on mine, because that’s a lot.
There it is. Freshly made. Yeah. Oh, it’s interesting the way he put the batter around the edges because it makes it like almost like a frying pan. Gives it a kind of a ledge all the way around. That is a lot of butter.
That is a lot. This is like for a family of five people.
So, let that simmer a minute and then add the chocolate and peanuts.
Cutting it up. And then some peanuts.
Okay, that is a lot of peanuts and chocolate.
Not messing around with the chocolate either. And it’s got something else on the go here. But the bottle is empty. And I’m running out of GoPro battery, so I don’t know if I’m going to make it to the end. I don’t think so. We’ll see what happens. Ah, some kind of cheese and cheese sauce liquid. It’s a special bottle with three nozzles on the end, I say. Or maybe some sort of a sweet sauce.
I had no idea it was going to be such a big deal. Look at the size of this thing. It’s huge. And goes… Yeah. Look at the scale of this thing. Nice. Looks good.
I think I ended up getting the extra large family size. Oh boy.
And then it all goes inside this box I guess.
So there’s a part of it.
There we have it.
So there is the QRIS QR code. Now we are going to scan it.
Ah, beautiful. And okay, lima. All right, my GoPro battery died at the most important moment as it always does just as I was completing the Touch ‘n Go transaction and it worked. So, man, I’m so happy about that. So many successes today.
So I’ve got my martabak here. Weighs like 15 lbs. It’s way more food than I thought it was going to be. I don’t need this much martabak. That is for sure. But yeah, that’s what I got. And yeah, it worked like a charm. It is no different from using Touch ‘n Go in Malaysia. You like scanning the QR code here. Pretty much the exact same screen shows up. The only difference is it shows you the amount in rupiah and then it gives you the amount in your home currency at the bottom of the screen. So, it also tells you how many ringgit, which that is really useful because, as I said, you might get mixed up in your currency and you pay like 2,000 rupiah, which isn’t very much money, but you accidentally paid 2,000 ringgit, which is a lot of money, right? There, that one there. So, you got to make sure you’re looking at the right currency. It should be automatic. I don’t think you really have to worry about it yourself, but it’s nice to see that they tell you rupiah and ringgit, so you know exactly what you’re doing. And then you enter the amount. You can see the name of the business. Confirm that it’s correct. And then you can approve the purchase by either facial recognition, your thumb print or a security code, your PIN, whichever way you want to do it. And then you’re all done.
So there you have it. Very successful. Indomaret is still a mystery. A local independently-owned martabak shop, they’re tied into the QRIS network and yet a national chain like Indomaret isn’t. Very confusing, but we’ll see. But I’m happy with the results so far.
And with the purchase of the martabak using Touch ‘n Go, I think that is bringing today’s video to a close. Really hasn’t been that long a day. And yet at the same time, I’m exhausted. I did a lot today in a Planet Doug kind of way. Mastered the bus system, mastered the IM3 registration at Telkomsel, mastered Touch ‘n Go everywhere except at Indomaret. That’s a lot for one day.
So, I think it’s time to shut down. I’ve run out of batteries completely. I don’t even have a little bit of battery power left for my GoPro. Recording this on my smartphone now. So, hey. Hello.
I’m not sure what they were shouting about something, but I don’t know what. Yeah, I’m just about back at my hotel.
And as always, little plug for the Planet Doug Patreon. I post little video clips there, photos, updates. You can see what’s going on in my life in more real time than the videos. Takes a few days to finish editing a video and post it. You can see real-time updates on Patreon, on the YouTube community post page, on Planet Doug Substack, Planet Doug Buy Me a Coffee. I’m all over the place these days trying to keep all of those places updated with the same information. So, yeah, go check those out.
So, that’s it. Shutting down from here in Banda Aceh just as the call to prayer is ringing out from all the neighborhood mosques here. And we’re just coming up on my hotel and I guess I’ll end the video with a last shot of the hotel Olanda Syahida Residence.
There it is right there. Hello.
Just swing around. Yeah, the two hotels that I saw today, they’re both in the same price range, low-budget places, but they offer a lot more in their rooms. The rooms are a lot better appointed than the rooms here. But this place definitely has a lot of character, a lot of history, and it’s in a really nice residential neighborhood with a lot of like the river right over there and restaurants and things like that.
So, with this view of my hotel, I’ll shut down and see you in the next video.