VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
In the last few days of November, Banda Aceh, Sumatra, and many other places around southeast Asia experienced heavy rains leading to flooding, landslides, and power blackouts. My hotel, along with the rest of Banda Aceh, went dark. And with the power went the Internet. So at the time, I had no idea how severe the situation was in many areas. All I knew was that it was still raining, the power was gone, the Internet was gone, running water was gone, and I had no idea when any of it was going to return. So when I went outside to look for something to eat, I was heading out into a dark and wet world. I brought along my umbrella and a GoPro to capture a little bit of what it was like.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Planet Doug. And you might be wondering, why is it almost entirely black? You might see two little blue lights here. Maybe those are the lights from my microphone. And you might see a little bit of a shadow behind me, but that’s because the GoPro has a couple of battery indicator lights, recording lights that’s sending light onto my face. But that’s all you see. And you might be thinking, well, that’s because you’re using a GoPro and GoPros are terrible in low light. And I guess that’s part of the reason, but the main reason is that here in Banda Aceh, we are living through a series of blackouts. Heavy heavy rain. There’s heavy rains all over Southeast Asia. There’s flooding all over Southeast Asia. There’s probably flooding here in Sumatra, but I’m not really sure what’s going on because the power is out. And when the power goes out, it goes dark like this. This is inside my hotel room, by the way. And there’s no internet either. I can’t really get on the internet, so I can’t check the news. I don’t know what’s going on. But anyway, this is the window of my room looking out the window. There’s a little bit of light out there still from the sun. I guess there’s still a bit of light in the sky, but that’s the city and the city essentially is black. And I thought I’d go outside just as an experiment just to see what the world looks like here in Banda Aceh when the power goes out.
All right, first we have to navigate our way out of my room. Luckily, I have a flashlight. So, let me turn that on to its brightest setting and then maybe we can find a way out. There’s my key. Get outside.
Yeah. Without a flashlight, you would definitely be stuck. Let me turn off my light. Yeah, it’s pitch black in here. And a building like this is quite a dangerous one in the dark. The stairs and the steps are quite steep and kind of strange. And just for fun. Yeah, let’s go up onto the roof. I’m curious what the city looks like. But yeah, you can see these stairs are tile. There’s a lot of leaks here in the roof and in the windows. So, all of this tile is flooded. It’s really, really slippery. It’s why they put these towels down to keep people from slipping and hurting themselves. But yeah, you can see here there’s water everywhere. So, yeah, the towels keep people from slipping and hurting themselves. But yeah, let’s see what’s going on.
Finding my way with my flashlight.
And there’s the city. And I guess everywhere where you do see a bit of light, it’s because they have a generator of some kind. So, wonder what that is over there. Do you see the lights, search lights going up in the sky? Could that be the airport? I don’t think the airport is that close. It’s probably a stadium. Maybe there’s a big sporting event going on. I don’t know. But yeah, off in this direction, the city, it’s almost completely dark. One or two patches of light, which means I guess they have a generator. But hear that rain coming down. It feels like it’s been raining for days nonstop. And this latest power outage, I think it’s been about 24 hours. The power went out last night and it’s now the following night and there’s still no electricity. So I think it’s been about 24 hours. So anyway, let’s head out into the streets.
Trying to be super careful as I walk around, reminding myself just how slippery everything is right now ’cause it’s so wet.
Oh yeah, right here. Yeah, you can hear the water. It’s completely flooded here. And the roof leaks down there as well in front of my room. Even on non-rainy days, I’ve nearly gone for a tumble over here because it’s slippery and I’m often not ready for it.
It’s just here’s a room I hadn’t seen before. The door was never open. Just curious what it looked like.
All right, let’s try to make it down the next few steps without going for a tumble.
Let me turn off my flashlight. Oh, look at that. They have a candle down here in the common room. Wow.
I honestly can’t believe it’s still raining. The rain has just been relentless. It’s crazy how much rain and it only seems to be getting stronger as time goes by. But I don’t know if there’s flooding in Banda Aceh or not. Let me get out my handy dandy umbrella.
Comes a car down the road. I remember seeing earlier the road is flooded in that direction. I saw a car going through there during the day today and there’s kind of a small flood here. Some kids were playing around in this puddle. Oh, it’s actually gone down. I wonder what happened. They must have come up with some more drainage or something. This whole area was flooded during the day today. Well, they’re going pretty fast. And the people that live here, there’s a house here. You can’t see it. There’s no lights at all, but it’s very low-lying. Like it’s a couple of feet lower than the road. And the whole house and the yard are flooded. Makes me feel sorry for them. Man, this is a real shortcut. It’s a small local neighborhood road, but it actually has a lot of traffic. People use it as a shortcut to get from one busy road to the next. As a pedestrian in the dark, in the rain, you got to watch it. Come on, cars. Let’s go.
Yeah, it’s a whole different feeling when the electricity goes out, you know, your life changes so dramatically. But yeah, there is a house there.
Oh, look at that. It’s actually gotten better. When I was out today, this whole yard was flooded. It’s still flooded, but not nearly as bad. But you can see they put their mattresses outside. I think the whole house was flooded. Just poor people. Oh, that’s interesting. I was expecting to come out into a world more flooded, but in this neighborhood anyway, the flood has receded.
It’s still wet out here. That dome up ahead here. Let me turn off my headlamp.
So, that dome up ahead, that’s the shopping mall. I had lunch there today because I figured it was the only place that would have electricity because I assumed the shopping mall would have a big generator. All the other places where I’d normally go to eat and to get coffee were closed ’cause they don’t have any way to boil water, grind coffee beans. So, I went to Suzuya to have a coffee. But then I couldn’t even have a coffee there because everybody had the same idea and the one or two coffee shops in there were jammed. All the tables were taken. Everybody who needed to work on their laptop, they had gone to the shopping mall so that they could plug in their laptop and sit there and work over coffee. Yeah, more cars coming down here. Of course, I didn’t bring my laptop with me, but I was hoping to join them and sit at a table and drink coffee and relax, maybe connect to the internet there, but there was just nowhere to sit. All the tables were taken, but there was like a Japanese noodle place there. So, I had a very expensive lunch of Japanese udon noodles, but I wasn’t in filming mode during the day today. So, I don’t have video of those experiences, but really, it was nothing special. I was just inside a shopping mall, a modern fancy shopping mall having Japanese udon noodles. So, you can just picture what that was like. And whatever you’re picturing from a local shopping mall, it would have looked exactly the same. There’s no need to film it, but huh. I was expecting to step out into ankle-deep floods, but so far it’s actually drier than it was during the day today. And I just need to get to the main street. And on the main street, I can look for light. And if I find light, got a car coming up behind me. So, I’m going to cross over. If I find light in a building, a restaurant, means they have a generator. So, they might be able to cook me up something to eat for dinner. Let’s see what’s going on up there.
Yeah, it really is something that happens.
Yeah, it’s really something. When the power goes out, your life changes so dramatically. You don’t realize how much you depend on electricity until it’s suddenly taken away from you and you’re living in the dark. I had two power banks and I’ve already blown through both of them. They’re both empty. Charging up my phone and my laptop and my tablet. So, I have no personal electricity anymore either. So, yeah.
Good grief. Feels like I’m on a highway or something.
I feel like I have to stop and get off the road when I feel headlights ’cause I don’t think people can see me that well.
Hello. Hello. How are you? Hello. How are you? I’m okay. Okay. Go this side. All right. Okay. Okay. Bye-bye.
All right. We’re approaching the main road. Let’s see what happens when we get there. Main road. So, we’re seeing a little bit more light. Hello. Hello. A lot more traffic.
Okay, now we see the people who have a generator dental health center.
I don’t know what that shot. I better keep my eye on the ground.
A lot darker than it normally is. So, got to be careful where I’m stepping. There’s a lot of holes here. Big ones you don’t want to fall in. There’s one of the fancy hotels in town. They’ve got power. So, they’d have their own generator.
Who knows? I may end up right back at the shopping mall. There’s a Bakso place over there. Their sign is actually lit up. Maybe they have gas and they cook their meals with gas. Yeah. Yeah, I can get a bakso maybe. Oh, I don’t see that. There’s a bus stop. I can climb up here and get out of the rain for a minute.
Oh, no. They’re open. Yeah, I ate there the other day. Bakso Kotaraja. So, I think I’m going to go there and get a snack. Just something to tide me over the blackout. Get me some food until tomorrow morning. Hopefully, the power comes back sometime during the night.
It always feels like my hotel is in a very quiet residential neighborhood, but that’s until I come out here on the main road.
You realize Banda Aceh is a much more bustling place than you would imagine. Lot of traffic out here. It’s not easy getting across. I think that’s why I often end up eating on the right side of the road. I just can’t be bothered trying to cross to the other side. Oh, here’s an opening. All right.
And now we face the other side. Just like a game of Frogger, which I’ve never played, but I know about it from a Seinfeld episode.
All right, I think I can do this. Here we go.
And we’re here. Bakso Kotaraja.
Yeah. Me. I am Bel here. Yeah. Yeah.
Place is empty but comfortable place to sit. And there they are. That’s where they make the mie bakso.
Mie bakso looks good as always. I’m curious whether I have mobile internet because I do have my phone has power and I’ve got data and credit but I think my hotel is in a dead zone. I get almost no connection through mobile internet, but I’m wondering whether that’s because mobile internet is down for everybody or my hotel just can’t access it. So now out here, let me take a look. See what happens. Little bit, just a tiny tiny bit. Like I’m on YouTube right now, but all I get is a blank page. Like it won’t even reload videos. So, it does say I’m connected 4G, but I can’t get online.
Nothing’s happening.
I’m cut off from the outside world. I guess everybody in Banda Aceh is. So strange.
But here they cook with gas and I hear a generator so they have electricity as well.
And the other issue when there’s no power for a long time that means of course the air conditioner doesn’t work and you can live without air conditioning of course but over time what happens is everything gets damp because the air conditioner acts like a dehumidifier. So all your clothing that gets hot and sweaty will dry out, your knapsack gets soaked in the rain, but then if the air conditioner is running, it will dry out overnight. But since there’s no air conditioning, everything just becomes instantly covered in mold and mildew. Everything starts to smell. Yeah, rain, you know, it makes life so much more difficult. And then when you have a blackout, yeah, it’s even more. But going to dive into my dinner.
Back out into the rainy world. Yeah, it’s expensive. Bakso there, oddly enough. I mean in local terms, it was very basic. Mie bakso 25,000 rupiah. It was pretty good. But my normal place is more up the road there. They charge 15,000. I’m kind of used to that as being the regular price. So, not sure.
I’m holding the GoPro close to my face just to keep it out of the rain. GoPro is waterproof more or less, but the microphone is not, so I have to keep it covered. Yeah, as I thought, the Suzuya mall is all lit up, so it has power from a generator. Across the street there, everything is still dark. So, yeah, I’m pretty sure the power hasn’t come back yet.
Yeah. Here they’re using a flashlight to get around. It’s interesting to see who has power and who doesn’t. Wow, that’s a very popular spot. Sate Dwi Padang. Yeah, a lot of people there. Coconut drinks. Yeah, I haven’t been to that place in this neighborhood.
So busy. Feels oddly busy for this time of night. Not sure what’s going on.
It’s interesting when you spend time in one part of a country, you get used to certain lifestyle opportunities and then you’re in the same country like I’m even on the same island here in Sumatra and it’s quite different. So what I mean is that when I was staying in Tanjung Balai and in Padang and Bukittinggi area, I don’t know, I got accustomed to really inexpensive fruit smoothies being all over the place. I mean, it was like a daily thing for me to grab a mango or banana smoothie at the side of the road. It’s like 5,000 or 10,000 rupiah. Really delicious. And the oh sate padang over here they’re busy. And so far I haven’t seen anything like that here in Banda Aceh at all. I haven’t seen any smoothie stands, fruit stands. I don’t know why that would be.
There’s my normal bakso place right over there. Bakso Baronak.
The local Indomaret is keeping the lights on, but they’re doing it with one of these generators. It’s like right outside their front door powering the place. Very, very loud as you can imagine.
I wonder if their electronic cash registers are working. In the past, I find in these places, they end up taking out a notebook and they write down all of the purchases in a notebook. It’s pretty busy in there. But I’m going to pop in for a snack. And off we go. Grab some cold milk. I don’t know how long it’ll stay cold, though. It may not be cold at all because with a generator like that, they basically run the cash registers and the lights. They can’t run the refrigerators and things like that. Takes too much power for that little generator. I don’t know what they do with the freezers full of ice cream and stuff like that. I noticed that they had them all covered with cardboard to try and keep the cold in as long as possible. But like I said, it’s been over 24 hours with no power at all. So, I don’t know how successful they’re going to be.
Yeah, the rain is really still coming down hard.
Well, I mean hard. It’s I guess it’s not really a severe downpour, but when it just goes on like this nonstop for day after day, it starts to add up, I guess. And I assume, like I said at the beginning, I think the rain has something to do with the power going out, flooding, and the grid is overloaded, and somehow the computers can’t handle the complexity of what’s going on, and they just shut down the system.
It does remind me a little bit of the story I’ve mentioned quite a few times where I got caught in the Philippines in the city of Tacloban after a typhoon hit and a kind of a storm surge or essentially a tsunami kind of wiped out the town. But I still stayed there even after the typhoon and the storm surge. And I stayed there for 2 months living without electricity, without water. And yeah, this feels a little bit like that except of course in Tacloban there were no cars running ’cause the streets were completely jammed with debris and there were no Indomarets either. Nothing like that. No restaurants open. Not for a long long time.
Hello.
Yeah, seating is always an issue for me. I just walked by that sate padang place. I came back up this way ’cause I thought I’d get some sate, but there’s no room. All the tables are jammed, so I run into that all the time. So,
oh, I really have I’m really being slow and careful when I’m walking here. There’s a lot of death traps here, especially in the dark.
Got to watch where you’re walking.
But when you live through as many power shortages and things like that as I have, you do develop a few habits over time that stand you in good stead. One thing I’ve learned is to take advantage of things when you have it. So, for example, water. My bathroom here has a big garbage can. You fill it with water and then you use a ladle to take a bucket bath. And I’ve learned that every chance you get, you fill that bucket to the top. Like you never ever let it go empty thinking that when you come back there’s going to be water coming out of the tap ’cause you never know when the water is going to disappear. And today the water vanished. There was no water in my bathroom either. But luckily the night before and all the time I had filled it to the top when water was running. You never go to bed leaving your garbage can empty. That’s a rule in Sumatra anyway. It’s a rule anywhere in the world. It’d be sort of like living in Canada and hello. Like just filling your bathtub with water every day just in case the water runs out, right? And then yeah, you’ve got a bathtub full of water. But yeah, and normally if I’m riding my bicycle, I would have like a 10 liter water bag and a whole bunch of water bottles. And I would keep those full all the time just in case the water disappears.
One thing I’m really missing right now is the stuff I normally bring with me. Like I just have a limited amount of stuff that I normally carry. So I don’t have any kind of a stove like an alcohol burner or gas burner. I don’t have anything. All I have is my kettle, electric kettle. Normally I’m okay. If the electricity goes out and I can’t use my kettle, I just fire up one of my stoves and I can still boil water for noodles, coffee, soup, things like that. But I don’t have any kind of a stove with me. So actually the only coffee I got today was my own like instant coffee, but I drank it cold. So I couldn’t boil any water, but I still made instant coffee and I just stirred it into cold water. Took a lot longer for the coffee to dissolve. You had to just keep stirring it and stirring it until it finally dissolved. But yeah, I had a cup of coffee this morning, but cold coffee. I couldn’t heat it up. Cold instant coffee.
I just spotted something over here I’d never seen before. Just a lot of lights coming through these trees. A lot of cars parked around here. I wonder if it’s some sort of an outdoor market, like food market or something. What is back here I wonder? Never seen it before. And here’s the river. I’m sure the river the levels water level went up a lot in this heavy rain. Anyway, I should head back to shelter. I’m just getting soaked out here even with my umbrella. But I just want to see what’s down here. Why this place is so popular. Yeah. I’ve got a hello. Durian place. Durian. Durian. Yeah, durian.
Yeah, you could really smell it. The durian. So, what’s back here? Wong Solo. No idea. Maybe it only opens at night. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen it before. Never saw the lights before. What is back here?
Wong Solo Halal Thai. So yeah, just a big popular very popular restaurant apparently.
Huh? Chicken, I assume. Yeah. Yeah. Very popular. Look at all the people trying to get in here. I always feel sorry for drivers in this part of the world. Parking is so tough. Always trying to find a place to park your car. Look at this jam in here. Nobody’s moving. I’m glad to be on foot even though I am getting wet.
That’s where maybe these parking guys come. They earn their keep. These guys that kind of volunteer to direct traffic like this guy here.
He yells at people to sort them out. But yeah, he’s earning his money tonight.
Now I’ve got to get across the road again.
There we go. Here’s a break.
In the dark. I walked right by the road to my hotel. I went too far. Just walked right by it. Oh, everybody’s getting backed up here ’cause somebody’s trying to turn probably to get into that popular restaurant.
Right here is my local coffee shop, Baltic. I wanted to go there for coffee today, but they were shut down all day. Hello. And night. No electricity. They can’t operate. Whoa. There’s a major hole in the sidewalk right there. I fell in there. You never hear from me again. Yeah. It’s time to get off this busy road.
I think my knapsack on my back is getting soaked. It’s not really covered by my umbrella. It’s got some electronics in there. I better head for shelter as soon as I can. Head off here into the dark.
Yeah. And you learn to judge the shadows on these roads. Like you see a dark shadow. You could be stepping into a deep puddle. You have no idea. Uh-oh. Yeah, it’s getting very dark here. All right, there we go. The car headlights lit it up for me. I’ve still got my headlamp with me, but maybe I don’t need it.
I might have to do this in stages. Like right there. Now I’m just I’m completely in the dark. I can’t see anything. But wait until the next car comes. There’s civilization back there. Yeah, it’s interesting that it’s actually the cars that are lighting up the world when electricity disappears. Here comes a scooter. So, I can make it I can get ahead a few feet.
Yeah, I could see quite a ways ahead from that scooter light. So, I could see that there were no potholes ahead of me, no ditches.
But yeah, when they go by, you lose your night vision, too. Okay, my night vision’s slowly coming back.
Okay, here comes some more lights. Looks like somebody has a flashlight.
Yeah, it’ll be welcome when the electricity eventually comes back. I tried to go online to find out any news stories about what caused I mean I know exactly what caused this power outage. It’s basically the flooding and the rains, but exactly what they would say about it, any projections for when it will come back, the area that it’s covering, like just how much of this part of Aceh is without power right now. I don’t know any of those details ’cause yeah I couldn’t go online can’t get any of the stories dark again thinking back to my two months in Tacloban after the typhoon and the storm surge when there was no electricity. One of the fascinating aspects of that experience was watching the city rebuild and watching all the local people adapt to their new way of life. And one thing that happened was that anybody like in a house, a wealthier family that happened to have their own generator, like a small Honda, you know, like a lawn mower engine generator kind of thing. They would fire it up and then they would charge other people a certain amount to plug in their phones and recharge them, things like that.
And all around the neighborhoods, you saw clusters of up to 20 people gathered around a little generator with a big octopus of extension cords, power bars, all these things. And you would have, I don’t know, as many as a hundred different devices all plugged into this one generator. And they’re paying that person who owns the generator. And it became almost like social networks like how people used to gather in coffee clubs or coffee shops and chat with their friends. Now it’d be like, “Hey, do you want to go hang out at the generator?” And then you’d meet your friends at your local generator and then you both plug in your phones and then while you’re waiting for them to recharge, you just hang out with your friends. It was like a whole new way of social life. It was very cool. Anyway, I’m sure you can’t see it, but there’s my hotel in the dark. And I’ve got to turn on my headlamp so I can get inside.
I think there’s a roof over here. Let me get out of the rain so I can put my umbrella away and get out my headlamp.
There’s the entrance to my hotel. Let’s see if headlamp helps light it up a little bit. Well, helps me. Now I can see where I need to go at least.
I still have the candle down here.
Hello.
All right, slowly navigate these steps.
Yeah, got the towel here, like I said, so you don’t slip in all the puddles. It’s necessary.
Oh, yeah. There’s a dorky Doug with his headlamp. There’s nothing dorkier in the world than a headlamp. When you’re wearing them, you think you’re so cool. You know, you’re like a cool guy and a survivalist with your headlamp, but then when you see pictures of you wearing them, you really look like the truest dork that ever walked the earth. But hey, they’re very handy. They allow you to have your hands free, except of course when you’re trying to shoot video, ’cause then you end up using one hand for shooting video. Anyway, yeah. Another rule of thumb that you develop over the years part in like staying in these kinds of low-budget hotels, you don’t put anything on the floor. I’ve learned that lesson. You might, you know, without thinking about it, you leave a backpack on the floor or something like that. But you’ll live to regret it because when you come back, the floor could be flooded. It happens a lot. Something else I also learned in the past is that what happens in these hotels if there is a water shortage. So for example, I’m not sure whether there’s still no water, but there you can see I filled up the garbage can. So I keep it full. And I don’t know what’s going on with the toilet. It just the water in the toilet just became black, brown, red. I have no idea. It came surging up from underneath all this black water. But let’s see if there is any water. There might be. It might have come back. Okay. But you see no water. But I turned the tap on to check. Right. On. Oh, no water. But now you forget which is on and which is off. So, people check for water, but then they don’t close the tap. I’ve done that myself in the past. I flooded a hotel in the Philippines because I turned on the tap, no water, and then I just left the room and I forgot to close it. And then while I was gone for the day, the water turned on. And because I left it open, it flooded the hotel. I flooded my room. And that caused a lot of problems. Also at that time I had my bicycle. I had just arrived and then I had my bicycle box like a cardboard box against the wall that I wanted to keep. But because the box was on the floor, the water flooded my room and it destroyed my cardboard box. And yeah, anything you leave on the floor, you better be prepared to lose it because the room could flood in any number of ways. Anyway,
let me shine this at my face. I can’t see anything now. The light is blinding me, but maybe you can see me a little bit. But yeah, I’m a bit of a wreck now. I’m going to have to use some of my precious water. That’s kind of weird. You get soaking wet from the rain, but then you’re still really hot and sweaty. So even though you’re soaking wet, you take a shower and pour more water over your body, but somehow it makes you feel better adding water to water. So that’s what I’m going to do. Get out of this wet clothing, take a shower, and then yeah, just wait for the power to come back on. So that’s it. Little glimpse of life in Banda Aceh without water, without electricity, without the internet. But I had a GoPro so I could record a little bit. So that’s it. Shutting down. See you in the next video.