VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
In the days before the rains and flooding hit, I was invited to go along on a road trip to a special tropical island a couple of hours south of Banda Aceh.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug. I’m aiming my GoPro forward in this car because there’s a little bit of light. The sun is about to come up and you can see the sky getting light up there. It’s just after 6:00 in the morning and if I turn the GoPro around looking at me, yeah, you can barely see me. You probably can’t see me at all. And today is quite a special day because I met… I don’t know, local expat. Can we call you an expat? Yeah, yeah. Martin here tracked me down online. He saw some of my YouTube videos, sent a message my way, and we met up for coffee the other day. And then Martin invited me for a road trip. So that’s pretty exciting. And like I said, 6:00 in the morning and we’re on our way. It’s like a two-hour drive down the coast south of Banda Aceh to a stunning little island called Pulau Keue. Exactly. I was trying to figure out the pronunciation. Pulau Keue. And Martin over here driving the car has been traveling in and out of Aceh province and North Sumatra for years and years and years. So he knows this area a hundred times better than I do. So we’re in the company of an expert today, which is pretty exciting for me. Even some locals ask him where to go on the weekend. Yeah, I believe that. And you’re a surfer. I’m a kind of a lame surfer, let’s say. Okay. If you start too late, a late surfer. Yeah. If you start late, you’re not really progressing at all.
Yeah. Now, I was just talking with Martin that two or three, maybe four years ago, I can’t remember now, I actually rode my bicycle up this coast from Lake Toba to Banda Aceh. So I rode my bicycle down this highway, this coastal road that we’re going to be seeing, but it was so long ago. And at that time I didn’t even know it was a surfing area, but I guess the coast here, like a few places, do have some good waves for surfing and I had no idea at that time. But yeah, so the sky is getting brighter and brighter. One interesting thing for me is the one-hour time difference with Malaysia. So it’s 6:00 a.m. here, but this is the same light condition as First try. First pull. He has a great boat. I love that one there, that orange one. And I could live on that.
And we’re off. How long a trip, Martin, out there? Six minutes. Six minutes and 7:00 a.m. in Malaysia. So it actually gets lighter much earlier in the morning here than it does in Malaysia. So if you want the good light on a good road trip, you gotta start earlier in the morning here than you would in Malaysia.
There’s a mosque off on my right.
And of course, since we’re in Aceh province along the coast, you can’t avoid the story of the tsunami, right? 2004. Yeah, 2004, 26th of December, 8:30 in the morning, right? 250,000 people died in one day, right? And I think a lot of people focus on Banda Aceh. The story centers on that city. But what I learned when I rode my bicycle up this coast is that these coastal cities all down here were also wiped out by the tsunami. Yeah, like Meulaboh. Exactly. They all gone. The whole coast lives around 1–1.5 m, I don’t know exactly, like Simeulue. You can actually see how the whole island flipped on the side, right? But most people spoke actually about Thailand that time because it was developed for tourism and a lot of Westerners died there as well, right? And here was like a kind of military war at that time. That’s the thing. And then people talk about Thailand as well and they forget that here alone was like 170,000 people, right? So which is crazy. Yeah. But they came better, stronger and with peace actually. Yeah. That’s a side of the story you don’t hear very often, that the tsunami played a key role in ending the conflict with the Free Aceh Movement, which is GAM, basically local militia, and yeah, it actually made this place better and accessible to the outside world and they opened for help as well, and then yeah, the killing of civilians stopped as well, right? So yeah.
And getting back to today, we’re picking up two other cool… we’re picking up Jane and Lori. Jane and Lori. Yeah, they’re from Australia. They started to come here also a few years back. I think before COVID they’ve been here first time. Yeah, I came first time 2012. So mostly people who come here once keep going back because they say they don’t find a peaceful place like this anywhere in Asia anymore.
And speaking of which, the name of this town where you’re staying is Lhoknga. Yeah, it’s a special pronunciation, right? It’s really… easy way you say Lhoknga, it’s basically almost the same, Lhoknga, just say it together, so Lhoknga, okay, it’s the same part, yeah. It’s a beach area and I was telling Martin that I actually stayed here years ago on my bike trip, but it was a very different experience. I feel like I was a different person back then. I’m kind of experiencing everything in a new way these days. But I would have been all around here on my bicycle looking for a place to stay or a place to camp. Yeah, there’s the beach over there.
So I did stay here for a few nights, but it didn’t really make an impression on me back in those days as a place for tourism where foreigners might be hanging out, surfing, things like that. I wasn’t aware of that at all. When I came back first time here, nothing from this was here. This was just sandy beach. Oh, the road wasn’t here. Nothing from these houses was here. So now it’s pretty much developed. So it’s like a surviving village now. So you’ve seen a lot of changes in the time you’ve been, especially after COVID, like these places start to pop up really really much. So exciting. Check this out.
Yeah. One day ago, two days ago, before I met Martin, I never would have thought I would have been back here on the coast. Yeah. Why am I aiming a GoPro at me? Let’s look out here. Look at this.
I may have been exactly here. I have to look at the map. The place where I stayed when I was here years ago might have been just on the other side of this hill or tucked over here. I’m not sure. My gosh, look at that. That is stunning. I was just telling Martin that I was hoping that today I was going to keep my filming under control, that I wasn’t going to record as much with my GoPro today, keep it short and sweet, but I’ve already forgotten that idea. I can’t not film this. Look at this area.
That is so beautiful, especially this time in the morning. And I was just talking with Martin yesterday and I sent a message like I hope the weather, you know, weather permitting, we’re going on our trip, our day trip. And he says, “Ah, no matter the weather, we’re going. We don’t care about the weather.” So we’re going whether it’s gonna rain or not. But yeah, the sky is looking pretty promising.
Yeah. So this must be one of the beach places where people come to stay. Yeah, Martin was just saying none of this was here when he first came years ago. Saho Coffee. There it is. Our first evidence of surfers. Again, I must not be a very aware person because, as I said, I rode my bike all through this area. I stayed here for a few nights, but I had no idea it was a surfing area. No, I had no idea it was popular with foreigners, you know, with travelers, backpackers, that kind of thing.
Yeah, and this is something I saw when I met Martin the other day. He came to town on a scooter and on his scooter he had this rig, something like this. It’s not quite as fancy as this one. And I was trying to figure out what the heck is that for? Like you put your backpack in there, you put bamboo in there, and it turns out no, that’s how you carry your surfboard. So they swing out to the side and then you can put your surfboard through here. That’s very very cool.
Just a quick trip update. We’re just leaving from Lhoknga and we stopped here for breakfast. I guess you just help yourself from all these fried goods, rice and breakfast. And yeah, so we have food packed, breakfast to go. And we picked up a surfboard. So now we have a surfboard on the top. You can see it’s gotten quite a bit lighter now. And we’re just about to hit the road again. And we’re going to be driving over those mountains over there. Look at that. Amazing.
I’m learning a whole new lifestyle today, new vocabulary. Surf check. We’re on our way to a small island where there could be surfing, but on the way, of course, you hear rumors there might be good waves here or there. So we’ve driven down this tiny road to the middle of nowhere that brings us to this beach for a surf check, see how the waves are doing and see whether there’s good surfing here. Something like that. Man, what a beautiful spot. That is stunning. And not to jinx myself about the weather for the rest of the day, right now you could not ask for better weather than this.
Look at that. Beautiful.
Yeah, I often end up reflecting on the ocean when I get near an ocean because I grew up in the middle of Canada and we did have the Great Lakes and we would occasionally have waves on the Great Lakes, but it’s nothing like ocean swells. And from time to great lake in Canada.
Yeah. Like one of these waves, if you get in too deep, can just pull you back out when the water recedes, you know?
A gorgeous spot.
So I think from here our destination is on the other side of this ridge. So I’m not sure exactly where the road goes, but we got to get through all of these ridges. It’s going to be very up and down, curving and winding. And I remember there’s a really gorgeous viewpoint up ahead. I remember from my cycling trip. I’m sure we’ll stop there for a minute.
We stopped at one of the most beautiful lookout points along this highway. I remember it so clearly. They have all these little shops here. It’s not the high season now so a lot of them are closed, but we’re getting a cup of coffee here. And I never went up here before. I just want to make a quick climb. See if we get a view from up here.
See what we can see.
Yeah, from here you can see one of the offshore islands. And that is not the island we’re going to, but I guess the island we’re going to is kind of exactly like that.
This would be nice spot to have coffee up here, but they’re not open. Yeah, I remember this so well. I have photographs that I took from my bicycle of this beach over here.
Yeah, I remember that straight beach.
There’s the road down there.
Absolutely stunning along this coast. It’s beautiful.
I keep thinking back to the various bike trips that I’ve gone on. I didn’t get any video of course because I wasn’t shooting video in those days. But a bicycle ride along this coast would have been pretty cool to get video. Yeah, a lot of climbing along the coast though. Of course if you’re a cyclist, that’s what you signed up for, so that’s no big deal. You got to go up and down all the time. It’s pretty steep to get up here to this point.
Gotta watch your footing of course. Very uneven stairs and rocks all through here. I got to tighten up my sandals. For some reason I never really put them on properly this morning. I never tightened the straps so my sandals have been flopping around. Feel like I’ve been about to trip constantly.
Like I said, you got to be careful going down. Watch your footing or your trip comes to an abrupt end.
And down here at road level you also get a pretty nice view.
These places can be much busier on the weekend. There’s nobody here right now. You can see how they’re all built up on stilts. Yeah, you probably don’t even want to look like I’m standing on what I think is a solid veranda. But if I lean my GoPro out here maybe you can see what’s holding this thing is holding this up. I hope what you see down there looks nice and solid. But yeah I can’t see it from here but I guess it would look very similar to what you see over here. I mean yeah that’s crazy. I don’t know how many times a year or a decade somebody goes down there and double-checks to make sure that these things are still load-bearing worthy, you know. But yeah it looks very cool.
Yeah. Get a view from the side for what’s holding this place up.
Yeah. Looking straight down.
Interesting spot.
We’ve arrived at the jumping-off point, getting on the boat, heading out to the island. And it’s a funny thing, when you—like I said I’ve been up and I’ve been up and down the coast of Sumatra quite a bit in various places, and after a while you start thinking you’ve been everywhere. So I’m looking at this beach ahead of me, this bit of coastline here, and it’s like I could swear I’ve been here before. Like it looks familiar. It’s like, have I been on this beach before? But yeah I don’t know. Really how long it takes to get out to this island. It’s a very small one. I suppose I can show it on Google Maps. Could be one of those little ones out there. Beautiful beach here, very wide, nice covered shore with all the trees, lots of shade here. Yeah, beautiful spot.
My new friend Martin, he called ahead. He’s been here before, he knows the people here. So he’s made arrangements for the boat. The captain was here waiting for us to show up. And I guess there’s some sort of arrangement with all the boat owners in the village. Normally they would go out fishing, but when there’s an opportunity to take a group of foreigners or tourists, Indonesian tourists out to an island, they sort of take turns. So they make an arrangement. So this particular captain he was waiting for us. And if we weren’t coming, if we hadn’t chartered his boat, he would go out fishing for the day. But since he has a paying charter, then he doesn’t have to fish for today. So taking a break, and all the other boats went out fishing.
It’s been a long time since I’ve hopped on a small boat to go out to an island. This is—there’s nothing out there as far as I know. It’s just a deserted island. And I’m wondering whether I’m prepared or not because yeah if you do this normally you just know what to bring with you. And I didn’t really bring anything except me, my GoPro and extra batteries, right? But really you should bring like waterproof bags for all your gear, all kinds of stuff I suppose. But I got a bottle of water here and extra batteries for my GoPro but that’s as far as my preparations have gone. So hopefully it all works out.
So here are the boats. Okay, this looks like our boat. This one here, the little green one. Yeah it can’t be going too far. It’s a little boat like this.
Thank you.
One of these sunk not so long ago. Captain died and poor Australian too.
Got yourself a boogie board there Martin? Yeah. Nice.
It’s for people with disabilities.
Okay.
So you don’t mind making a little guest appearance on video? You’re okay.
Let’s see how easy it starts.
Second try my guess. Second try. Third. First try. First pull.
Has a great boat. I love that one there, that orange one. And I could live on that.
And we’re off. How long a trip Martin, out there? Six minutes.
Yeah I don’t think it’s very far. You can see on Google Maps. Just offshore there. Short distance.
Look, they have a breakwater here. We’ve got to scoot out beside the breakwater, get out into open water.
That’s one thing I’ve also learned about oceans. It’s very deceptive when you’re in a little harbour. And you think the water is nice and gentle, it’s calm. And then as soon as you leave the harbour you’re out in open water. Everything changes so fast. The water gets rough.
So right here is a pretty good example where we are, everything is smooth and flat. And as soon as you leave the shelter of this breakwater, then everything changes and you got to be prepared for that change. Like even already you can see how rough the water becomes right away. It’s no joke being out on the ocean if you don’t know what you’re doing. You have no business being out there.
This guy’s riding the waves and he knew how to time it just right.
And I’m certainly not saying that I know. I haven’t got a clue about the ocean. I am a land lover through and through.
Yeah there’s just a little section here where the waves break. We have to get over this and after that it should be nice and smooth.
There we go.
Yeah just look how rough that water is. And we haven’t even left the shore yet.
He’s the expert.
Yeah it’s good.
I mean that could be the island right there for all I know. Probably is.
So here’s our landing spot on the island. Look at that. That is a gorgeous beach. You don’t get a gorgeous tropical island nicer than this. Look at that. That is so beautiful. A little piece of paradise on earth.
Okay. Thank you.
There they go.
Yeah, I don’t know about the snorkeling, scuba diving here, that sort of thing. Just as I was getting off the boat he was pointing to a bag containing some snorkeling gear and he said “Hey don’t forget your snorkeling gear.” And I was like, “No I didn’t bring any, but maybe I should have.” Well I don’t have any to bring. So, look at this.
So when does Lord of the Flies begin?
Coconuts. Coconuts. Just be aware of that. Yeah.
So this is our base camp right here. I’m with very organized people. They’re breaking out hammocks, sunscreen. Three weeks. No people. We haven’t seen anybody for three weeks. When’s the boat come and save us? It’s a boat. We’ve come to rescue you. That boat doesn’t belong to any of us, does it? No.
Yeah, setting up a little camp here. Got a washing line. Washing line.
And then the beach. Going to go for a walk in this direction. See how far the beach goes.
Yeah there’s nothing like the sight of these palm trees that have fallen over on the shore. They’re always so scenic. Just gorgeous.
Martin was saying, “Yeah, keep an eye on the wind when you’re underneath these palm trees because you never know when the coconuts are going to come loose. By the time one hits you on the head though it’s probably too late.”
Yeah the root structures of these things is always fascinating. They don’t go very deep in the ground. And the soil of course is just sand. So doesn’t take much to topple them.
It’s pretty nice for someone like me where I came from the middle of Canada, say if you’re on your trip by yourself and you’re on your bike up the coast, you don’t really know anything. So for me to run into someone like Martin who says, “Hey, a couple of friends and I were driving down the coast, taking a boat over to a small island, do you want to come? It makes everything so easy, right? You don’t have to know anything. You don’t have to make any of the arrangements. And here I am on a paradise beach.
Go in for a swim eventually. Looks like there’s coral here. You can see the dark shadow. That’s probably all coral underneath the water. But I don’t have any snorkeling gear.
So that’s where I came from, walking along the shore.
The beach is getting narrower. Yeah I don’t think you can go all the way around this island.
Whoa, that wave snuck up on me.
Yeah I don’t think you can go all the way around the island along the shore.
Look at all the stones here. All coral, right? Dead coral.
Yeah, it’s one of these things: once you know how to do it, like if you come out to one of these islands once and you know the system, how to connect with the fishermen and the boat drivers, you got a phone number or a WhatsApp contact, and so as Martin and Lori have done before, you know the way, you know the system, you come out here all the time. Anytime they’re in the mood they just come down. Once you figure it gets very rough over here. I think that’s as far as you can go. I’ve reached the end of the beach. Can’t go much farther than this.
See all the crabs scooting along the rocks.
So I’ve turned around and I’m going back to base camp and then out the other side and see how far I can go the other direction. Martin says you can’t go very far. You just hit some jungly hills and yeah you could climb into the jungle if you wanted, but you’d be eaten alive by mosquitoes apparently, which doesn’t surprise me.
Yeah there’s the shore, there’s Sumatra on the other side. Not very far away of course.
Waving hello fisherman.
I shot a whole bunch of 360 video from the island. I shot a whole bunch of 360 video from the boat as we came out here, but as often happens with 360, the file didn’t get saved. The camera is always delivering an error message and it just shuts down and doesn’t save the file. Happens a lot. Could be my memory card. I’m gonna have to try and figure something out. A GoPro is not exactly the camera to capture this sort of thing. But there’s like a fascinating array of rock formations from the coral, right? Pieces of coral. All of this stone comes from coral. Another beautiful piece right here.
I’m sure it’s not in focus. And then you’ve got all the rocks, coral pieces gathered up on the side there.
Some beautiful plant life with the insects.
Yeah, it’s almost like you don’t have to go in the water to see the coral because a lot of it ends up on shore here. Branch coral there.
Approaching base camp.
A gorgeous spot to go looking for explorers on this deserted island. See if we can find Tom Hanks and Wilson out this way and rescue him.
Yeah, I think there’s another little sandy beach right around this corner, but I think that’s almost as far as you can go.
I don’t know anything about the tides here, but it looks like all this rock is often covered with water. So this would be low tide. Seen a lot of little crabs running around, little fish in these tidal pools. They’re always interesting to check out. You never quite know what’s gonna be caught in a tidal pool when the tide recedes. But with this kind of rock though, definitely glad I’m wearing my sandals. I couldn’t walk on this. It’d be too sharp, be too painful.
Oh look at this. Wow. Wow. Oh, hidden beach. Wow. Now that is something else. What a scene. I always say this is so beautiful it doesn’t look real. Like it looks like something you’d build for a movie set. This would be a movie set. But I guess movie sets, they’re imitating nature. But man this looks so beautiful.
Yeah it doesn’t even look real. That’s incredible. Just a little hidden cove back here.
So this is my new secret hideaway. No one will ever find me here. I’m going to build a little hut a short distance from the shore. And as long as I can find an Indomaret or a 7-Eleven to keep feeding me cold cartons of milk, I think I’ll just stay here for the rest of my life. Yeah, very very nice here. Beautiful spot. A hidden gem, a secret lagoon, a secret beach, not too far away from Banda Aceh.
Yeah. Every once in a while I hear this loud thundering sound. And this is where you would go surfing, I guess. Like today is pretty quiet, I guess, as far as swells are concerned, but every once in a while a pretty big wave comes in. And you can imagine somebody catching a pretty good wave here. Like even this one coming in now, you know, you could surf that wave. It’s not a big one, but I think you could get some big waves here from time to time.
A beautiful spot.
Yeah, I don’t know the water here at all in terms of how deep it gets, currents, where the rock begins and ends, coral, all that kind of stuff. And I don’t have any snorkeling gear or fins, but I can go in this far, get on my back, and just sort of paddle around a little bit. I just remembered I have a waterproof GoPro, so here I am out in the water. Oh yeah, cause yeah, here I am already hitting like this razor-sharp rock, you know, this kind of coral rock here. Yeah, I think unless you have snorkeling gear and you can see sort of what’s underneath you, there’s could be all kinds of urchins out there, you know, where you end up stepping on something really sharp.
So yeah, I don’t want to do that. Just even going out a short distance there, I was hitting all kinds of sharp rocks and things. And I think when I looked underwater without a mask on, I could see all kinds of urchins, I think, with sharp spikes. So I’m going to stay in the wading pool for sure. I don’t know. It feels like this is really salty water. I mean, buoyant. I’m just sort of lying here. I feel like I’m bobbing up and down like a cork and my feet are just sticking up out of the water. It’s like taking no effort at all to float. Yeah, very buoyant. Maybe I’m just more buoyant than I normally am.
I haven’t been out in the sun without a shirt for a long time. So I’m being very, very sparing. I went in for a swim without my shirt on, get a little bit of sun, and then walk down here to the end of the beach, back again, and I think that’s about it. Just get a little bit of exposure to the sun, and then put a shirt back on. A couple of times in my life I’ve miscalculated and really lived to regret it. I remember years ago going to Thailand and landing on, I think it was Ko Samui back in those days. Checked into my hotel and I was so excited about the snorkeling. I just stripped down to a pair of shorts, grabbed my mask and snorkel and just went out into the water. And I guess I was out there for a couple hours and my back, you don’t feel it when you’re in the water because it feels cool. You don’t feel the sun burning you. And then when I finished my snorkeling and later on, I burned my back so badly. That was a lesson I never forgot. That when you’re out there snorkeling for a long time, you’re like lying on top of the water with your back exposed to the sun and you can burn really badly very quickly. So I never forgot that lesson. But today, I’m taking advantage of this little island just to get a little bit of sun on this white body and then I’ll cover up again.
I’m back in the water just to cool down. My companions for the day back there. One in a hammock relaxing. He brought the hammock. Very smart guy. Strung it up between two trees. And then the other two brought towels and they’re lying down on the sand. I didn’t bring anything. I don’t have anything like that. No hammock, no towels. So I’m out here in the water relaxing.
Very successful day in paradise. And we called our boat captain or Martin called the boat captain. He’s come back to pick us up. I didn’t get any video of it, but Lori was out here surfing. There’s actually a pretty good wave out there and from a distance, yeah. From a distance you can’t really tell, but when he was out there on the water, that one wave right there, a big one will come in. Did some really nice surfing out there. I did some snorkeling out here. Shot a little bit of GoPro video underwater. Doesn’t look that great, but yeah. And yeah, we’re heading back to shore, back to Banda Aceh.
Yeah, I ended up struggling a little bit with the snorkeling because the water level went way down and the coral came right up to the surface of the water. So I was trying to find a channel to get through the coral and I had trouble. Ended up cutting myself up a little bit. Coral, man. It’s like razor-sharp.
I don’t have my own snorkeling gear, but luckily my companions here, they had a set that they could lend me.
Yeah, we had to come in through that narrow passage back there on this side of the breakwater. Timing it with the waves.
And we’re back on shore.
Let’s see if I can get off the boat this time without tipping the whole thing over.
That goggles.
Yep, that’s it.
As often happens, I jumped ahead in time. This time I jumped way ahead in time where I left off in the video. We were just getting back to our car after returning from the island on the boat and we all piled in the car and it’s about a two-hour drive. If you’re moving fast, you know, a two-hour drive to get back here to Banda Aceh and I didn’t film any of the return ride or saying goodbye to Jane and Lori. And then Martin, he dropped me off back here in my neighborhood. And I was feeling pretty hungry all of a sudden. So to end today’s small adventures, I thought I would come here to my favorite Mie Ayam Bakso place. And there it is. Just arrived. So yeah, going to wind down my day here. That was a really interesting day. Enjoyable day. Something quite unusual for me to do something like that. Head off to an offshore island. I mean, I spent a long time on the coast of Sumatra in various places, but usually the trips offshore to an island, that usually involves getting together a big group of people so you can split the cost and normally I’m by myself. So I usually don’t manage to take these trips to the islands like this. So it was a real pleasure to be able to do it for once, you know, here in Sumatra. Spend a day on one of those tropical island paradises. Yeah, I really enjoyed that a lot. So I’ve got my bakso, got my iced tea, which I’m going to enjoy. So that’s it. Shutting down and I’ll see you in the next video.