VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
New hotel, new neighborhood, new adventures in Dumai, Sumatra.
In this one, I move from the Wisma Cemara (fully booked, so no choice really) to the Ohana Hotel, a place I found tucked down a dark alleyway. I wasn’t actually moving yet when I filmed the first part — just scoping things out, making sure I wasn’t walking into something weird.
Spoiler: it’s a little weird. But also kind of great in its own way.
Along the way, I talk about:
– Why running feels impossible when you’re carrying a backpack full of camera gear
– The fine art of checking out of a hotel without leaving anything behind
– Sandals that fall apart way too fast (I’m looking at you, Bata)
– Bird nest soup buildings and the non-stop sound of swiftlets
– Roosters. So many roosters.
– Whether a Canadian can actually fit in an Indonesian bathroom (turns out: barely)
Also, a proper Touch ‘n Go update. In Banda Aceh, QR payments were hit or miss. Here in Dumai? Everywhere. Works like a charm. Even the Alfamart eventually came around.
The new room has mattresses on the floor, exactly one usable power outlet, and a doorway that has hit me in the head more times than I’d like to admit. But the Wi-Fi is shockingly fast, the front desk people are friendly, and I’m starting to figure out this neighborhood.
I also talk about Una Moto, a Canadian motorcyclist who is actually doing the whole world (including Africa), which makes my hour-long video about changing hotels in one city feel appropriately modest.
If you made it to the end of this one, you’re in the Crunch Club. You know who you are.
Next up: finishing the Touch ‘n Go video, testing the Visa card at an ATM, and booking that ferry back to Malaysia.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
It’s time to change hotels here in Dumai. I’m changing hotels by choice because I wanted to stay in a new neighborhood, a little bit more just try a new neighborhood out, a little bit more downtown. But the hotel where I’ve been staying, the Wisma Cemara, it’s fully booked for this week. I after tonight is my last reserved night. I did try to extend my booking, but there’s nothing available, so I had to move. Right around the corner here is the Luna Cafe where I discovered super fast Wi-Fi. And then I was originally looking at this hotel, the Hotel K77, an OYO hotel. But I couldn’t get a room there either. They were fully booked. And from the outside it didn’t look that welcoming for a bicycle. Like it didn’t look like anywhere to put my bike. So I didn’t mind. And it’s an OYO hotel. I’m very nervous about OYO hotels. But then I discovered another one in an alleyway right behind K77, Ohana Hotel. So it’s over here somewhere.
And I think I have to go here, turn inward, and then go this way to get to the Ohana.
I’m not actually moving today. I have one more night at the Cemara, but I happen to be in this neighborhood. I was recording another e-wallet video, kind of a refresher course in how to use Touch ‘n Go in Indonesia. And I came down here because yeah, I wanted to go to Luna and the nearby Hyper Mart just to demonstrate a couple of different ways of using Touch ‘n Go. And I just so happen to be in the neighborhood of the Ohana Hotel. So I thought I would take a walk and take a look at it, see what I’ve gotten myself into. It’s got really good reviews all over the place. But I did see one photograph that was it had like a gate, a locked gate, and you had to use a code to get in and out or something. And I’m not a big fan of that. I just want a regular hotel with a front desk and a lobby and a human being. But we’ll see how it turns out.
Yeah. I don’t really know this neighborhood at all. Yeah. I don’t know what this big building is on my left. There was a lot of noise coming from inside, a lot of voices. So I thought it was a school, but now yeah, I’m not sure about it. Looks more like a community center.
Hello.
Yeah, looks like a little bit of a rough neighborhood. This, look at this building over here. Completely abandoned. Everything’s closed. I thought it was a dead end leading to the Ohana, but apparently not.
All right, Ohana, where are you? This doesn’t look this neighborhood. It doesn’t look at all the way I thought it would look.
The reason this doesn’t look right, it isn’t right. I’m on the wrong street. I guess the hotel is like not even on a street. It’s like a tiny alleyway. I guess I walked right past it. So I’ve got to backtrack now. Yeah. Look at this place. A community center, I guess. Sports center. A lot of scooters. I don’t know what’s going on in there. My name is Douglas. My son. Hello. How are you today? I’m fine, thank you.
Good morning.
Okay. Yeah. Some sort of a sports center.
Okay. Indoor indoor soccer, whatever. Football maybe. Football. Yes. Okay.
Hello.
From a different city.
From India. India. Very cool. Huh.
Everybody’s teasing their friends when a foreigner like me shows up. I was trying to embarrass their friends. Hello. So there’s another football team getting some snacks. Man, it must be hot in there running around playing football. I was thinking about that recently. Not enough to do anything about it. But I’ve noticed there’s been a few times when I’ve been out doing this, walking around with my GoPro, shooting video on Planet Doug, and I’ve got a heavy knapsack on full of camera gear and power banks and smartphones and tablets and batteries. And I’ve got sandals on and long pants. My sandals are falling apart again. And then I’ll be sort of on a road with a lot of heavy traffic and I need to run across the road. So I start running, but I feel like I’m a hundred years old, you know? I really feel like a grandpa because I just don’t feel light on my feet. It feels like I couldn’t run 20 yards without collapsing. And the thing is, when you’re an adult, you know, I’m kind of an adult, you never run anymore, right? As a kid. Aha, here’s the little alleyway. There’s Ohana. That’s what I was looking for. That looks more familiar. But yeah, when you’re a kid, you just run all the time. You’re constantly running, climbing, jumping, running, running, running. And then when you get older, you just don’t run anymore. You don’t need to. And I keep wondering that’s probably not a good thing. And I’m not talking about jogging. I would never take up jogging as a hobby. That’s not kind of my thing. But it feels like you should run from time to time. Hello.
And then maybe run unencumbered, like actually have running shoes on and shorts and not a heavy backpack and like do can I even run anymore? I don’t even know if I’m capable of running, you know? And I keep thinking I watch a lot of movies. I watch a lot of TV shows and of course in movies and TV shows there’s always something where our hero has to run. You know, our hero is running away. Tom Cruise running from an explosion, chasing the bad guys, running away from a monster. And I keep thinking right now, if I were being chased by a lion or evil men with guns, could I even run 50 feet? Like, am I even capable of that right now? So I keep thinking, you know, I should in my life just build in a little bit of running just to remember what it feels like. Hey, cos Ohana. Here it is. Oh, I’m happy to see that there’s a lobby and a regular door. Oh, look at that. Okay, this is what I was hoping to see.
Park my bicycle in here. Maybe a room down here or up on the balcony there. Okay. I love this open plan. Cool.
Hello. How are you?
I have a reservation starting tomorrow night.
Yeah. Tomorrow.
Douglas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’ve got it. Yeah. Okay. Seven.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That’s me. Okay. So tomorrow okay.
Beautiful. I love it when I walk in and I get a smile. So I walked in, the man the front desk guy there. Very casual place obviously another sort of low-budget operation, very high reviews so that’s cool. But I love walking in and then even if it’s kind of rough around the edges, low budget, you’re not going into, you know, five-star luxury. But if the guy looks at me and smiles, I found my home. You know, that’s all I need. I just need a warm welcome. And I just used Google Translate as you saw maybe and just told him, “Yeah, tomorrow I have a reservation.” He looked and said, “Oh, Douglas, yes.” Okay, so they know about me, they know about my reservation, everything’s cool. So, yeah, everything’s all set for the big move for tomorrow. And of course, I’m still working my way around to returning to Malaysia, of course. And I’ll be going back by ferry, Indomal Fast Ferry back to Melaka. And then I’ll pick up my cycling journey in Malaysia from Melaka. Spend a couple of days there. Still exploring that city. I’m not done with Melaka, I don’t think. And then ride down to Johor Bahru along the coast. Check out the small towns along the coast. I’m walking carefully ’cause I’m going through big puddles. And yeah, it looks like there’s a lot of flooding in this neighborhood. Like these homes here must be in a very low-lying area. A lot of flooding here. Hello. Hey, how are you?
And then yeah, more flooding here. I don’t Yeah, I guess you’d call that flooding. The water’s not supposed to be there.
Yeah, I’ll be taking the yeah, the ferry back to Malaysia, cycling Melaka, Johor Bahru, then up the east coast through Kuantan all the way up to Terengganu and Kota Bharu. That’s the plan. And I was just looking online at the Indomal Fast Ferry website and for whatever reason their scheduling and ticket booking it doesn’t work out of Indonesia. It works on the Malaysian side but their website doesn’t seem to work here. So at least I’m hoping that’s what’s going on because I was looking for a ticket on a boat like in the next 2 weeks and it just came back. No. No tickets available. No tickets. No tickets. And I thought, ah, maybe I waited too long and all the boats are fully booked. Maybe. Yeah, I waited too long. So I thought maybe I’m going to get in trouble here. But I think what’s going on is the website in Indonesia just doesn’t work. So I have to go to the Indomal Fast Ferry office in person to buy a ticket. So once I move tomorrow into this neighborhood, then I can start preparing for my return to Malaysia by ferry. It’s now the next day. It’s actually 10 to 12. Pro tip on this kind of life. If you’re ever checking out of a hotel just to go on to the next city or you’re just moving to a new hotel, which is what I’m doing today. I’m still in Dumai in Sumatra. And as I mentioned in the previous video clip, I’m changing hotels because this hotel is full. Basically, there’s no rooms available for the next week. So I’m changing to a new hotel. But, pro tip, when you need to check out at a certain time, like by 12:00, start packing up and getting ready earlier than you think you should. You always end up needing more time. At least I do. Maybe because I’m just such a hyper-organizer. It’s when I’m packing up, it’s like time to take stock and then look into things and investigate things and reorganize. So I always need more time than I think. But yeah, I’m all set to go. Like I said, it’s 10:12. I heard the staff going up and down the hallway knocking on doors saying something. And I assume it was something like, you know, check out. Are you checking out or what’s going on? You know, just reminding people that it’s almost checkout time, but they don’t knock on my door partially because I already told them, you know, Mr. Organized here. I went out and made sure they knew I was checking out and I’ll be checking out at noon exactly. So don’t worry about it. I’m aware. So I already told them, which is what I tend to do, but they also don’t want to knock on the door of the foreigner. So I can hear them go knock on this door, this door, or this door, and they skip mine completely. But yeah, here’s my room. I’m really fond of this place. Fond of this room. Fond of the neighborhood. I’m really going to miss the neighborhood. I really started to enjoy myself out here on the edges of Dumai. And traveling a little bit light for me. So I just have my two pannier bags and my knapsack. And I did some special packing this morning because I can’t check in early. I probably could check in early, but I think what I’m going to do is just ride to a coffee shop and do some work there, upload a video to YouTube, stuff like that, and then wait until 2:00 and then go to my new hotel. So I made sure to pack these bags so there’s nothing really valuable in them. My laptop, GoPro gear, smartphones, everything valuable in my knapsack. So I can just take that into the cafe.
Well, I’ll probably take all my bags in. Why not? I’ll go into the cafe, get settled at a booth, I hope, and then I can go back out to my bike, take in my two pannier bags, just to make sure everything’s okay. A funny thing is here, I keep hearing my voice because they know I have a YouTube channel, all the people here at the hotel, and I can hear my voice up and down the hallway. Every time I go out, people are watching my videos. And then, oddly enough, I always feel a little bit embarrassed because I think back over like, what video could they be watching? And chances are, whatever video they’ve clicked on, I’m not actually doing anything exciting, right? I’m not a typical travel vlog where I’m ziplining and woohooing and backflipping into waterfalls, the pools at the I’m not doing those things as a rule. So, you know, there’s a very good chance whatever video you click on, you’re going to see this me looking at the GoPro talking and for them not being able to speak English for the most part, you know, here in this hotel. Yeah, not that interesting. I was like, does this guy ever stop talking? And then if they are understanding what I’m talking about, chances are I was thinking about a video I shot in Melaka recently where I think I spent 30 minutes talking about doing my laundry at a laundromat and all the little quirks and details of that laundromat. You know, people probably scratching their head, I thought this guy was traveling. Why is he talking about a laundromat for 30 minutes? But hey, Planet Doug, it’s what I think about and that’s what I end up talking about. So, yeah, goodbye room. I’m going to miss this place. Time to load up the bike. One thing I noticed while I was getting ready is that it is new sandals time. I guess this one isn’t that bad. But you can see I’ve worn out the back heel completely. But I think it’s this one in particular. Yeah, you can see how badly the sole is worn. The strap I didn’t even I didn’t even know this one of the straps ripped off. And then this one is about to tear off. So maybe while I’m here in Dumai, I can find some new sandals. These are from Bata. And the first pair that I bought seemed to be pretty high quality and they lasted a long time. So I kept buying the same type, but I think they cheapened the construction. So now they wear out almost instantly, these Bata sandals. But they are comfortable.
All right, I’ve got four minutes to check out legally.
And everything is clean, nicely organized. I’ve left nothing behind. I’ve already checked, you know, here. Normally, I get down on hands and knees and I look under the bed, but this is like sitting on the floor, so nothing could have gone under the bed. But you check all the outlets. No, he left nothing plugged in. Nothing here. Nothing. Nothing that I need. Nothing plugged in. Nothing hanging up. No hooks anywhere. Yeah, it’s time to go. And then right before you head out the door, you do a mental pat down. Wallet. Well, this is a physical pat down. Wallet, smartphone, other smartphones. Oh, in my knapsack. And then you remember, okay, do I have my passport? Like sometimes you may have left it somewhere as a deposit or something, but no, I have my passport. Did I leave a deposit at the front desk? Do I have to collect money? No. Just go down a mental checklist. Have you done everything? Yes, I’m good to go. So, holding out the key.
I like to turn everything off that’s in the room. Turn off the air conditioner just to leave everything at a neutral state for the hotel. And I always like to open the curtain to let as much light in so that when they come into the room, they instantly go, “Oh, it looks so nice. That Canadian, he left our room in good condition.” I want to make a good impression because sometimes when I check out of a hotel, I look in the door of an empty room after other people have been in the room and it looks like a war zone. Like the whole room has been torn apart and there’s garbage everywhere. And I like to do well by Canada and Canadian reputations and just leave it nice. All right.
And I found out why the hotel is fully booked, why there are no rooms. There’s a big group of young workers for the local Pertamina petrochemical company. There’s a big group of them here probably for the whole week. And I think they’re all waiting to check into their rooms, including mine. Yeah, you’ll see some of the guys out here. Some of their luggage, I think. Hello.
Check out 116.
Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.
There’s my bike waiting patiently for me. Yeah, I didn’t have it parked out here. I had it parked at the back of the hotel where I could keep it in the shade and under a bigger roof and more sheltered from the sun and rain. Man, is it hot out here. Oh man, I can feel it just beating down.
If you had some bread you wanted to bake, just leave it outside.
Incredible.
And there’s my new dual kickstand setup. I didn’t plan to do that. I planned on just replacing that kickstand with a new one, but the guy at the bike store who installed the new one, he just says, “Well, I might as well just leave the old one on there.” And then we reinforced it. As you may have seen in a previous video, I put in double layers of steel there. So this one on the back is working a lot better than when it was new.
Turning off the nine.
We’re trying to. The nine is frozen.
Oh, there it goes. Just took a long time. Turning off the 12. And if you see red light, then it’s recorded. Mr. Dog. So you’re one of the staff here at the hotel, right? Yeah. You work here, of course. So yeah, goodbye. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Yeah, you too. Turn on two GoPros. Number one and to Malaysia. Not today. No, I’m just moving to a different hotel in Dumai. In Dumai? Yeah. Yeah. Here. Your rooms are all full. Oh, yes. I tried to make a reservation, but there’s no available room. Labor. Yeah. Labor. Yeah. So I’m changing. I booked a different room. All right. Hello. Hello.
All right, I think we’re all lined up with that GoPro.
Yeah, it’s been a while since I had any weight on the Oh, there’s a van coming to either pick up the laborers, the Pertamina laborers, or drop more off. Right over here is one of the places I’ll miss. Right beside my hotel, Warung Babwis. Very convenient to have this restaurant right here. I had quite a few meals here in my time. There’s the hotel right beside it. And as you walk up the street, there’s so many like bakso restaurants, local Padang restaurants, nasi goreng, all the local dishes.
So there’s a lot more availability of food and drinks out here than I originally thought.
Yeah, I’ll miss this neighborhood. Just feels so local, if you know what I mean.
So far I haven’t been doing a whole lot of cycling in Dumai. I started shooting another Touch ‘n Go e-wallet video.
And in order to do that,
I needed lots of times
when I was using e-wallets. So I started taking GoJek cars around the city just so I could record paying for it with an e-wallet.
So I really haven’t been cycling very much.
So I really should pay attention here to what I’m doing. Dumai is no joke. Check out these trucks coming up. This is where I have to do a U-turn, but you don’t want to do a U-turn in front of this.
Yeah, we got ourselves a convoy. Scooters have a lot more acceleration than I do, so they can zip out there into traffic. I got to time things a little bit more conservatively.
Same thing with cars and trucks. A car will just go out into traffic into scooters expecting all the scooters to make way for them ’cause they’re bigger. So on a bicycle you’re at the bottom of the totem pole. So you got to wait. Hello, sir. Hello.
You got to wait your turn.
I’ve also been surprisingly busy. I couldn’t exactly tell you why, but I don’t know. I just seem to have been very busy from dawn till midnight every day. So I do feel a bit bad. I didn’t quite take advantage of the environment at that hotel. I think I mentioned in other videos that a lot of people are residents at that hotel. They live there. They’re laborers because of all the oil industry here. Petrochemical, palm oil. There’s a lot of laborers from out of town come here to get a job and then they live here month to month in cheap hotels like that one.
So one thing I noticed over the years is when you’re staying at more of a residential hotel when you see underwear in all the windows, it’s like when you’re walking around the outside and in every window frame you see all the underwear hung up to dry. It’s like ah, people live here. If they were just visitors staying for one night they’re not hanging their underwear in the window. So I noticed that this morning, every window had underwear hanging on the bars.
But because of that, if you’re feeling social, you could hang out with all these guys. I think they would have been very happy if I were, you know, out in the hallways, out in the lobby at night smoking and hanging out with the boys, having a good laugh. And I guess I would have done that more except for, you know, it’s a pretty major language barrier after they ask me what country I’m from and have expressed their amazement that I’m alone, that I have no friends, no family. Once we have that conversation, there’s really not a whole lot else to talk about how old I am and then we’re pretty much done. Unless I grill them about their lives, which I wouldn’t mind doing, but that involves Google Translate, slow and methodical sort of communication. You have to really be prepared for that. And it’s so hot out in the lobby. It’s just brutally hot. So if they don’t have the air conditioner running out there, sometimes they do,
but I’m also usually pretty tired by the end of the day. I don’t have a lot of energy for casual socializing.
I always feel like I’m at the beginning of a drag race. All the cars and scooters start creeping up when they can feel the green light coming.
They usually get a jump on it, but this time they didn’t. They didn’t seem to know when it was coming, so everybody waited.
This trip that I’m doing on my bike right now, basically from my hotel to Luna Cafe, I did it a couple of times
on a GoJek. Like I paid for a car to take me there. It’s about 4 kilometers and I think it was around a basic fare 22,000 rupiah, the upper fare like 24, 25,000 rupiah. So once you figure out how to do that, once you figure out the system and how to pay for it, it’s kind of a no-brainer to be honest to take a car or a motorcycle a Grab ride. No, a GoJek motorcycle. Grab is here too, but hello. I’ve been using GoJek. But yeah, once you figure that out and how economical it is, in some ways it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be walking or riding a bike. No need even for a low-budget fellow like myself.
Yeah. And I didn’t go out exploring all of this residential area. Well, it’s not really residential, but the outskirts of Dumai.
Just the I think I turn right up here.
Wow.
Oh, I think we’ve got our right-hand turn green light.
Just enough time for me to get through.
I’ve booked seven nights at this other hotel. By the way,
I don’t actually need to stay here in Dumai for another seven nights. The whole reason for even coming to Dumai was basically to return to Malaysia.
But I enjoy the lifestyle here. It’s a very exciting place for someone like me. Rough around the edges. I like that.
And I really enjoy the lower prices compared to Malaysia. So when I was looking at this hotel, I think it came out to the equivalent of 31 ringgit per night. So I was looking at that 31 ringgit. And I thought, well, no reason to just stay there for one night, then go back to Malaysia. Why not book it for a week and then I can get to know this new neighborhood, get on my bike and explore more of Dumai, have some small adventures here, have a lot more good Indonesian food at good prices and then I can still return to Malaysia. So I haven’t booked my ferry ticket yet. I’ll be doing that. I’ll check as soon as I can to see whether I can buy a ticket. I have to go to the Indomal Fast Ferry office here in Indonesia. You can’t even check the schedule online. The Indonesian side just doesn’t work on their website. So I have to go to the office, confirm in advance that the boats are still running and that I can get a seat and then decide what day I want to go.
I’ve got to start looking around at everything. And I’m still not quite in my new neighborhood yet, but I’m getting close. So I have to see what’s here. I just passed the little burger stall.
Alfamart, but I know there’s an Alfamart very near my new hotel, so that’s good. Hello.
The main reason I chose this hotel was the price relative to the reviews. It’s got very, very strong, positive reviews. Looks like a comfortable place at a really good price. So that’s the main reason. But it’s also located right beside the Luna Cafe, which has all the Wi-Fi that a YouTuber needs. So,
Being right beside Luna is a big advantage for me. And that’s where I’m heading right now, I think. Yeah, I’ll just go straight to Luna, relax, have a milk coffee, maybe have lunch. Hello. And then after 2:00, after I have a video to upload after it finishes uploading. Oh, there’s the hypermart. I took a GoJek to this hypermart on my left.
Bouncy.
All right. There’s a busy street here with traffic lights. And right on the other side of these traffic lights, I turn left to get to Luna.
Might be a bit busy right now because it’s closer to lunchtime, but let’s find out. I’m hoping I can get one of the booths on the inside.
And up ahead on the right, in previous video clips, I pointed out this other hotel I was considering, K77. Yeah, K77. But they didn’t have any rooms available either. They were fully booked.
All right, that wasn’t so bad in terms of the heat and the traffic. I’m kind of accustomed to Indonesian traffic flow. Not so much the heat, but nothing you can do about that.
All right, Luna, have you got a booth for me
on the inside?
My corner booth is occupied, but I’ll survive. Yeah. And I think I’ll bring my pannier bags in. I think they’d be fine out here. I have a little padlock. Oh, I didn’t even lock. Didn’t lock properly. I usually have a padlock on the zippers and there’s nothing in the exterior pockets. Right now they’re all empty so nobody could steal anything, but they could take the whole bag of course if they knew how to take it off. So just so I don’t have to think about it or worry about them in any way, I’ll take them inside.
I lead a complicated life. I take the valuable bags off and I completely forgot I still had my GoPro mounted. I left this GoPro outside mounted on my bicycle along with my grip.
Yeah. Hm. Five. This one GoPro 12, 12 and nine. Yeah.
Sure. Okay.
Watch out for the camera.
You’re welcome. Nice. Yeah. I’ll see you again. Good luck. Okay, thank you. Okay, so my time at Luna all done. Yeah, I had one video I wanted to upload to Planet Doug. 17 or 18 gigabytes done in like 30 minutes just like zoom. I mean, what a relief. I was trying to upload with a mobile phone because my other hotel had such terrible Wi-Fi, but then you run into so many problems with mobile uploading. It would do like 50% of the video. You have to wait 6 hours for that to finish and then it just cancels and starts all over again from zero. So I did that one time and then I just gave up. I thought ah, it’s just a waste of time, waste of data. So much nicer when you find a place with really fast uploading.
Hello. So that’s one of the reasons, as I said, that I chose my new hotel.
Little bit of a traffic snarl here.
As you may have seen in this video earlier, I think it was yesterday. Yeah, yesterday I came here on foot. I just wanted to see the hotel, figure out exactly where it was and make sure they had my reservation and everything seemed okay. So now I just have to
head across the road here.
See, there’s a lot of motorcycle shops here with used scooters for sale. I keep looking at those going, “That’s probably the better way to travel around Sumatra. Grab yourself a used scooter or something like that.” But I think my hotel is down this alleyway here.
There it is. Oh, Ohana, something like that. Looks pretty ideal for me. Good price. They have parking outside
and then they have a courtyard. Oh.
I didn’t tighten down my GoPro enough.
Yeah, that often happens. People here are so friendly. Every time I’m loading up my bicycle to go, people come up to talk to me and then I get distracted and I forget to do things.
Hi, cute kids over there. And I don’t know about the rooms, though. Hello.
I’m hoping to get one of these rooms out on the outer balcony here in the courtyard, but they might also have rooms on the inside.
Yeah, I was just saying they might have rooms inside. Those might be their cheapest rooms.
And that might be the kind of room that I booked. So I may not have one of these. I don’t know. I could have one of these. Who knows? We’ll find out. The room lottery. You never know what you’re going to get. If you wanted to quote Forrest Gump.
All right. Looks like a good spot for my bike. It’s always nice to have something physical. It’s just a plastic tube. Anybody could cut it. But if a thief is serious enough about my bicycle to cut that tube, nothing is going to protect it, right? They could cut through any lock. So it’s just that having something like this to tie your bike to, lock your bike to, prevents impulse like someone sees a bicycle and just on impulse they want to pick it up and run away with it. Well, they can’t because the cable lock is going around that pipe.
Smoking room. No, no smoke. I don’t smoke. No. So, all checked in and he’s showing me the room 206. It’s up here. It’s kind of where I wanted to be, I think. You never know what’s a good room, what isn’t.
Oh, that’s different. All right.
Okay. Looks great. Yeah, no problem. Oh, that’s the key. Is there Wi-Fi here? Nice. Yeah, the password.
Oh, Wi-Fi password. Ohana Coast 123. Perfect. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Yeah.
Look at that. Those are big. Like they’re twin beds, right? Two separate beds, but each one is much bigger than a normal twin. I don’t know what that is. That is a lot. And yeah, different style. Feels very bachelor pad-esque like a studio pad or something. I remember reading in reviews of one of these hotels that I was looking at. People said, “Yeah, good hotel. Love the room, etc., etc.” But they were driven crazy by the sound of what they called the swiftlets, the birds. You know, there’s so many businesses here where they take a big building and they make it attractive for a type of bird to build a nest and then they make, you know, bird’s nest soup from these nests. And they attract the birds with this sound. You can hear it outside, right? I close the door, but if we step outside, you’ll hear that sound.
So that’s one of the buildings where they’re trying to attract the birds. And everybody keeps telling me that that sound is actually a recording. It’s not the birds themselves, but they broadcast their song to attract the birds, but I never see the speakers anywhere. Yeah. So here’s the courtyard. I love hotels where you just kind of come into a courtyard like this, especially when you’re on a bicycle.
All the rooms along here. Yeah. Couldn’t so far couldn’t ask for better. And I’m not too worried about what the bathroom is going to look like. I’m sure it’s fine. Yeah, just your, you know, it’s got some hooks and we’ll give it the Planet Doug treatment. We’ll put hooks in if it doesn’t have hooks. And here’s the, you know, shower head behind the door. Little cramped, a little small, but that’s not going to bother me. In terms of electricity, got one outlet that’s near the bed.
Air conditioner up here.
Look at that. Brand new, brand new air conditioner. And he did ask me, do I want a smoking or non-smoking room? And of course, I said non-smoking. And apparently it’s real. It’s even labeled as such. So I’ve already got water. I have like bottles of water that I took from my old hotel mounted on my bicycle. So I’m going to have to go down and get my water. I’ll come right back up.
Not the most efficient unpacking I’ve ever done. It’s sort of like this is kind of like a bachelor pad, which is designed maybe to look cool having your mattress on the floor and things like that, but the layout is not exactly efficient for the modern traveler with tons of electronics. So I’m still, to be honest, I’m only half organized because all of my electronics over here is just a bit of a mess. I’ve only got one plug. That’s it over there. And I still haven’t sorted out what set of adapters and extension cords and power supplies for my kettle and my laptop and recharging batteries. Yeah, that’s the only usable outlet. There is another one up here, but of course you can’t divert the power going to the air con. That has to stay the way it is. And of course there’s an outlet behind the TV, but it’s impossible to get at. So I can’t use that one either unless you dismantle the whole TV. And yeah, there’s no power here, no power anywhere else. So it all comes down to that one there. The one cool thing, again feels very bachelor pad-esque. It’s got this little button here. Lights up a little bedside light, which is nice. Just sort of gives you enough light to navigate the room in the middle of the night. And then you can turn off the main light ’cause the main light switch is over here. So now, of course, you have to find your way back to your bed, but you can have this on. And that just sort of you can’t see it on the GoPro. This is not the new GoPro. This is not the HERO13 Black which is supposed to deliver all kinds of low light capability. This is an older Hero 12. So yeah, you can’t see much, but my eyes can see a lot more. So anyway, that’s kind of cool. There we are. Back to normal light. And then having mattresses on the floor, I don’t know, it kind of feels cool, but you end up bending over all the time. Like everything you do, you’re like bending over, bending over, and it’s just gets exhausting after a while. I like everything to be up nice and high, and there’s no bedside table and very little desk space. I’ve got a little bit here, but there’s no chair. So yeah, the room could be a lot more efficient, could be modernized quite a bit. But hey, with all of my adapters and all of my dads, I can make it work.
I just stepped out of my new hotel, my new home in Dumai, just for a few minutes. Just wanted to walk down to the neighborhood Alfamart, get some cold milk. Yeah, very different vibe in this neighborhood. I don’t know anything about it yet. So there doesn’t seem to be much so far in the way of places to eat. Not a lot of activity. There’s a little Chinese restaurant right there still open. It’s only 8:00 at night, but it feels like it’s 2 in the morning or something. And the Alfamart for me is always a step down from Indomaret. I always prefer an Indomaret neighborhood. Like even this Alfamart doesn’t accept QR code payments of any kind, so it’s cash only. And yeah, when I walked out of my hotel, you step out into this very dark alleyway. It’s so dark you can’t even see the puddles anymore. I can’t tell if there’s water in the puddles or not. During the day there the street was quite flooded and you could step or cycle around the puddles, but in the dark I couldn’t really see.
So this is me in the dark neighborhood. Yeah, it feels very remote here, kind of empty and desolate. Hello. I kind of missed my old neighborhood, but hey, you get used to where you are and then a new place. Maybe when you first get there, it’s sort of like, yeah, no, you haven’t learned what’s good about your new neighborhood yet. There is this restaurant, but I haven’t gone in to check it out. Of course, I just got here today. I have no idea what this place is. It’s called JMEX. So it could be a fancy sort of on to the next episode. The night moves forward. I better look this up on I don’t know. That might not be my kind of place. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a dance hall. Anyway, we’ll look it up on Google Maps. Figure out what’s going on.
And I don’t have a microphone on this phone at all, so I don’t know how well you’re hearing my voice, if at all. But at least it’s quiet here. But yeah, so here’s the access to my hotel. And if you’re not accustomed to this sort of environment, you’re sort of like, okay, I guess this is where I get mugged and see how dark it’s getting. Like even my phone is really good in low light. Much better than a GoPro, but there’s very little light here to draw from. So I don’t really know where my feet are going. Yeah, these hotels here, these houses here are kind of interesting. People are actually living here. I pointed out earlier, they’re like flooded. They don’t seem that livable, but there are lights and people living in there. Yeah, it’s getting darker and darker. Yeah, it’s flooded here, but I think on the left there’s a dry patch. I can find my way. These bird nest soup places are all around. I can hear the, you know, whether it’s recorded bird call or actual bird call. I don’t know. I think my phone is having trouble even focusing. It’s just yeah, it’s too dark even for my phone.
Little motorcycle repair place right here. There’s some water to avoid. Yeah. And it feels kind of industrial back here, too. I don’t know what this place is. And there’s quite a large building right here. I have no idea what it is, but it’s got a ton of air conditioners, big units, and they’re all running. So maybe on the other side it’s like an apartment building or something or businesses. I don’t know. But there is my home, my sanctuary in this dark neighborhood. Ohana. I thought it was Ohona. From a distance, the little house symbol looked like an O, so I thought it was Oha, but it is supposed to be an A. So it is Ohana. And yeah, so over here’s in the daytime. You saw it. And this is how it looks at night. Man, this bird sound is coming from all directions. There’s another hulking building up there in the dark. You can’t really see.
So I have my cold milk to get me through the evening.
Yeah. First reaction. Yeah, it’s kind of a spooky neighborhood.
Will feel much different in the morning. One big surprise is right up there. The Wi-Fi here is incredible for a low-budget hotel. It has an upload speed of like 90 megabits per second, which is incredible. So it’s even faster than the Luna Cafe.
You have to be a little bit of a locksmith sometimes to get this figured out. So here’s home away from home. There we are. Yeah, I separated the two beds. Makes it easier ’cause all my gear’s over there. And with the beds pushed together, you have to walk on the bed to get to anything. But now I have a little bit of an alley in and out.
Better close this door to keep out the mosquitoes. There we go. But yeah, my new home. I figured out all the electronics. So I’ve got a nice set with all my adapters. I turned one power outlet into one, two, at least six different power outlets. So for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out how the light in the bathroom worked at all. But then I found the switch. It’s hidden way back here behind the TV. So there’s the light in the bathroom fan. So at least I got that figured out.
All right. See you in the morning.
I’m now seeing my hotel and my neighborhood in the daytime. The sun isn’t really out. It’s pretty cloudy up there, but there’s the building that’s towering over my hotel. And you hear the bird song coming from there. And all night long, all day, all morning, there have been roosters crowing, like tons and tons of roosters. And I stepped outside. I had no idea this was out here. Check this out. It’s like an entire farmyard, chicken yard. How many roosters do we need? Come on.
That’s crazy. I heard so many roosters crowing. I was like, how many roosters are out there? And I guess here’s the answer. All of them. That’s pretty crazy. Whoops. Yeah, you got to watch where you’re walking around here. I’m just tripping over things.
Yeah, I didn’t bring my umbrella with me either, so hopefully I don’t get rained on.
Yeah, everything looks so different in the daytime. This was the street that looked pitch black last night when I was walking back to my hotel.
Yeah, there’s no street lights or anything like that here. And this is the building I mentioned with all of the air conditioners. I said I was going to look it up on Google Maps and try to figure out what might be in there, but there’s really no information. Yeah, I have no clue.
Looks like it rained last night again. Filled up the puddles here. But yeah, I never noticed the rain. Didn’t hear it. Yeah, in the dark it’s harder to stay out of these puddles. At least in the daytime.
I can walk around them.
And I spotted a restaurant around the corner. And I’m just heading there for a snack.
And last night in the dark, or maybe it was earlier in the day. I think it was in the dark. I was speculating about this place, JMEX, what it was. And I did look this place up on Google Maps. Didn’t figure it out exactly, but I guessed it was a dance hall, like a nightclub and a bar and a dance space. And based on what I saw on the internet, oh, there’s a sign up there. Sing, dance, repeat. JMEX Pub and KTV. So it’s like a karaoke and dance hall and bar. Very unusual for Indonesia in general, but there it is.
Hope the rain stays away. I’ve been doing an e-wallet video, like another using Touch ‘n Go in Indonesia video because the reason I wanted to do another one was that Banda Aceh where I shot the first one, it felt like a little bit less developed in terms of modern systems. Like Banda Aceh felt older, more traditional and e-wallets were not didn’t seem to be that common there. So here in Dumai, I wanted to try out Touch ‘n Go again and see how the experiment goes. And so far, it seems to me that my instincts were correct that e-wallets, the Indonesian QRIS e-wallet network is far more widespread here. So most places that I go to have QR payment set up, and I’ve been able to pay for almost everything with Touch ‘n Go. Here’s the main street outside my hotel.
The sky is looking pretty dire out there. And while I’ve been investigating Touch ‘n Go, I noticed I have a voucher. I’ve never even I didn’t know that this existed, but I know Touch ‘n Go is running a kind of a campaign to promote using Touch ‘n Go overseas. And I guess as part of that campaign, they’re offering people a voucher. So it looks like I can cash in a 50 ringgit voucher, which pays off when I use it overseas. So I’m going to try and do that. Today I’m going to click on that voucher. It says it’s like 50 ringgit cash back, and I’m very curious how that works out. So I’m going to accept the voucher or turn it on or do whatever it is you’re supposed to do, and then see what happens as I continue to use Touch ‘n Go here in Indonesia. Oh, there’s another kopi place. Kedai kopi panas. That would be good for me. Like noodles panas. But the place I’m tracking down is around the corner here. Much bigger place, big menu, probably very similar to Luna.
But this is pretty wild. I just had the experience recently in Melaka and I posted a video or two videos about it where I fell into one of these drainage ditches. But the one in Melaka was much smaller than this. I mean, look at this thing. It is huge and like there is some wood covering it up. Do not step on that unless you really want to go for a dip in toxic sludge. Here are some cement coverings. And again, based on my experience in Melaka, don’t step on those either unless you have no choice. And I stopped to take this little video clip because I walked around here and look at this. It’s like a death trap. Can you imagine falling in there?
I can just walk along the edge. Yeah. I guess one point this whole thing was covered. They covered it up with wood themselves, but it all collapsed. So the little hole that I fell into in Melaka into that little drainage ditch, nothing compared to the holes here. Yeah, you don’t want to be stumbling around in the dark, fall into this. You’ll be struggling to get out.
Okay. Huh. I didn’t realize it was so close. So this is the place that I found on Google Maps. Kopi Arabica. So it looks much older, more traditional than Luna, not air conditioned. I was hoping it would be like a really comfortable sealed place with air conditioning, but it isn’t. But let’s see what I can get here for a snack. Look at that. Very cool place. Very traditional older style.
Some tables and booths. I guess I’ll take a booth. Why not?
No air con, but giant industrial fans.
Yeah. I don’t know if they have a menu that they’ll bring to my table. We’ll find out. They did bring over a menu. I didn’t go out with my GoPro, so I don’t have all of my gear with me, so I’m not really thinking about filming. So, yeah, I totally forgot to show the menu. Huge menu. They probably don’t have everything in the menu as I was going over the menu with the woman and I would mention, “Oh, you have satay.” And she says, “No, not right now.” I was like, “Oh, you have bakso.” And she’s like, “No, not right now.” So the menu is very expansive, but they may or may not have certain items on the menu. I just ended up getting a couple of chicken burgers. Seemed like the easiest thing to do. And my favorite well, my second favorite avocado shake. So right now, I am going to look for this Touch ‘n Go voucher. See how that works. I don’t know if I can pay with Touch ‘n Go here or not. I’ll find out after I have my chicken burgers. Lunch all done. Yeah, that was really nice. First day in my new neighborhood. Already feel so much better about it. That restaurant was really nice. There’s another two or three of them right across the street. I guess they closed pretty early, so when I went out late last night in the dark, the neighborhood didn’t feel like it had quite as many places to grab something to eat. But yeah, there’s more than enough restaurants around and the alleyway back to my hotel. I did look into the Touch ‘n Go voucher for 50 ringgit, but of course there was a ton of fine print and all the fine print meant I’m not eligible. You actually have to scan an Alipay Plus QR code. So it has to be Alipay Plus pay in order to cash in the voucher for 50 ringgit and you have to spend 200 ringgit all at one time. So if you have a bill over 200 ringgit, and you pay using an Alipay Plus code, then you get the 50 ringgit cash back. But none of that will apply to my life here in Dumai. So no 50 ringgit voucher for me.
But even with discovering all these restaurants out on the main street and other places, it’s still a pretty rough neighborhood. I think overall you have to be comfortable in this environment. I think to stay at the Ohana and Dumai as a whole, the city in general, it’s probably rougher than most. Yeah, it’s a pretty rough kind of town. You can feel it as you walk around on the streets. The way it looks, the condition of everything, even the people and behavior. Yeah, there’s a certain high level of energy here. Yeah, it’s quite the interesting city, Dumai. But yeah, back at my hotel. And so the next morning, it is time to wind down this video all about basically all about just changing to a new hotel here in Dumai. The move has taken place. I’ve settled fully into this room. I’ve gotten to know the hotel much better. Got to know my neighborhood a little bit better. Not fully, but you know, I’m learning how to live here. Yeah, it’s definitely a mixed bag. I’ve discovered more good things about this place and I’ve discovered more negative things, you know, so it’s really a mixed bag. So for example, down at the front desk, they actually have a pretty good menu. As I pointed out, getting in and out of this hotel, particularly at night, is not easy. It’s a rough walk in the dark through the mud and it’s really kind of spooky. If you’re worried about security, well, it’s probably not that secure to be out there in the dark by yourself. I’m fine with that kind of environment, but I can imagine a lot of people would not be. So that’s a downside. But at the front desk, they actually have a menu there. You can order meals. So late at night, if you’re feeling hungry, you can actually just order something from the front desk. And they accept QR code payments for everything you order at the front desk. They have a snack bar. They have a refrigerator. So you can buy soy milk and orange juice and little bottles of iced coffee. And then you can order some nasi goreng, some basic Indonesian dishes and have all of that, have the meals brought directly to the hotel. So that’s kind of a good thing. Not many hotels make it that easy for you to do. And as I said, everything in this room is relatively new and everything works. Everything is basically clean. But I have to say, I’m getting a little bit kind of worn out physically. I talked about that when I first moved in, the constant bending over and I end up hunching over my whole body because even where the door is, the door sits inside a dropped section of the floor that’s curved and it’s right at the edge of the bed and I’m constantly nearly falling into that hole and you’re walking in the dark or you’re shuffling to the bathroom and there’s not many lights on and there’s this gaping hole that you could fall into. And then you have to step down into the bathroom as well. So that lowers the whole doorway lower as well. And I have slammed my head on the door frame a couple of times. And that hurts, let me tell you. I keep reminding myself, be careful moving around the room and going in and out of the bathroom, but you just forget. And yeah, I really slam my head against that door. That really really hurts. And the worst thing is the bathroom turns out. It is so small. The way the toilet bowl, the toilet seat is arranged, the wall facing it is right here, just inches away. And I cannot sit on it. I cannot sit on the toilet because the wall is too close. I’m used to bathrooms being a tight fit for someone like me. I’m larger than the average Indonesian, taller with longer legs. So I’m used to having kind of a tight fit in the bathroom. But this one is an impossible fit. I cannot sit on it. So I’ve been reduced to using the bathroom when I need it outside. I actually have to leave my hotel room and go and use the bathroom at a local restaurant or something ’cause I don’t fit in this one. It’s meant for tiny people. I don’t know how anybody fits in there. And even taking a shower, you kind of got to go in there and pull in your shoulders and close the door behind you and then the shower head is right here, right? It’s just way too small. But I did look on their website, not the website, the Google Maps listing. And if you look at the photos, they do have other types of rooms, I guess. And these rooms are different style where the mattress is raised up a little bit and there’s actually a chair. There’s some furniture. Maybe this room is one of their least outfitted rooms, you know, with the mattress on the floor. No furniture, very small, very tight. So anyway, I’m not really settling into this room very well. I wouldn’t come back here, put it that way. I would definitely try to go back to the Wisma Cemara. I just like the bigger space. The room is older and dirtier and things are broken, but just having that elbow room makes a world of difference. You know, this tiny studio apartment life, I guess, is not for me.
I can also see people being bothered by the sound of the birds. The roosters at night or in the morning, they are loud and there are so many roosters. I have earplugs. The only way I can sleep is to use the earplugs. And then the I don’t know what are they called? The birds where they make the bird’s nest soup. That noise of those birds is non-stop day and night. Then again, for me, it fades into the background. And then at night, I just put in earplugs. But if you don’t have earplugs and you’re a light sleeper, I think those birds would eventually start to get to you. So not a strong recommendation from Planet Doug, but it’s in the lower price range. And if you’re just looking for a place to stay for a night or two, it’ll work out fine. But it’s not a very comfortable place to live a little bit more long-term. I don’t think the neighborhood is that great, and this room is not really that comfortable. So didn’t really work out for me from that end. But I double checked with the Wisma Cemara where I was before and the main reason I moved is I had no choice. The rooms are all fully booked and I just checked again and they remain fully booked, at least online. There’s nothing available there for the next couple of weeks. So maybe they’re completely filled now with workers staying there long-term. Yeah. And with the move to a new hotel fully over, I’m now switching into making plans for returning to Malaysia. I’m going to go down to the Indomal Fast Ferry office this afternoon, check on the schedule, figure out what’s going on because the online schedule doesn’t work. And I’m hoping to be told, “Oh yeah, we have a boat going every day and there’s lots of tickets available. Just tell us what day you want to go.” So I’m hoping everything will be cool. And I’m finishing up my new e-wallet video. I have one thing left that I want to test, and that is using the Touch ‘n Go Visa card to withdraw money from an ATM. I want to test that here in Dumai. And then that will be the last sequence for my new Touch ‘n Go e-wallet video using Touch ‘n Go overseas. I’ve tested it everywhere else that I’ve been able to pretty much everywhere. I did mention that the Alfamart in my neighborhood when I first went there the first time at night they told me no you can’t use any QR code. Like normally you can’t use Touch ‘n Go at an Alfamart or an Indomaret because they have to scan your QR code and they can’t scan a Touch ‘n Go code. They’re not compatible with Touch ‘n Go. So then you have to use GoPay. But even when I went to my neighborhood’s Alfamart, they said, “No, we don’t even accept GoPay. It’s cash only here.” But it turned out that was just a one night thing. I’ve gone back there since then and I’ve been able to use my GoPay e-wallet in the Alfamart and every coffee shop, every restaurant, every store, everywhere I’ve gone in Dumai so far I believe has accepted Touch ‘n Go. They have a QRIS code on the counter. I scan it with Touch ‘n Go. Boom. Works. It’s everywhere. It has never failed. And that’s very different from my experience in Banda Aceh where I struggled to find places that would accept QR code payments. And then quite often it wouldn’t work with Touch ‘n Go. They had some sort of a limited account that could only use Indonesian e-wallets. But here in Dumai, much more widespread. I can use it everywhere and it always works. So if you’re a Malaysian coming to Sumatra and you’re passing through Dumai or staying in Dumai to take advantage of the lower prices here for a holiday of some kind, yeah, you can use your Touch ‘n Go e-wallet here without any issues at all, even to pay for your hotel rooms, things like that. So that has worked out very well. So that will be my conclusion to the new Touch ‘n Go e-wallet video about using Touch ‘n Go in Indonesia. Works great. Works absolutely great. So yeah, I’ve had a lot of fun doing that. I just have the last test to do as I said withdrawing money from an ATM and that will be the last sequence and I can finish up the editing of that video. Book my ferry back to Malaysia and then I’ll be pretty much all set to leave Dumai, head back to Malaysia. So that is it for this video. A longer video than one might expect for a video about moving to a new hotel. I was just watching a video from a Canadian YouTuber. His channel is called Una Moto and he set off from his home in Vancouver on a motorcycle and his goal was to ride around the entire world landing in the southern tip of New Zealand. And unlike a lot of people who do this journey, he’s really fully committed. So like a lot of people that do this, they’ll probably skip North America ’cause they’re not they quite often starting in Europe and then they’ll go through Europe, Asia, and then they say, “Oh, I went around the world.” But the inconvenient parts like all of Africa, they’ll kind of skip that because it’s down south. But Una Moto, he’s doing all of Africa right now. He crossed all of Canada and the United States. Then he shipped his motorcycle to Europe, rode his motorcycle all around parts of Europe, and then instead of heading east into Asia, he went south into Morocco and then now, according to his videos, he’s riding his motorcycle through Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, and then Senegal, and then he’s going to cut to the west. No, east. Cutting to the east, going through the rest of like all the tiny countries along the coast, West Africa, Ghana and Togo, places like that. And then he’s going to go all the way down to the southern tip of Africa, then all the way up East Africa to Egypt, and then start heading east through Asia. So he’s doing the whole world. He’s not messing around at all. He’s not skipping Africa. So someone like Una Moto will make like a 30 minute video about something huge, you know, like crossing the border from Mauritania into Senegal, big adventure, drone shots, all that kind of stuff. Here on Planet Doug, you get an hour-long video, an hour plus video all about me changing hotels in one city. So yeah, that is the Planet Doug experience. I guess that’s the way it has turned out historically. Anyway, hopefully when I get back to Malaysia on my bicycle, there’ll be a lot more movement in my videos, like moving up the East Coast, and we’ll see if Planet Doug picks up some momentum in terms of covering ground and going to new places. I’m looking forward to that. But this is a typical Planet Doug video. Quite a long one. And shout out to the Crunch Club. You know who you are. You watch the video all the way to the end. Those are my some of my favorite people in the world. The Crunch Club members. Put CC in the comments to let me know. And of course, as always, big shout out, big thank you to everyone out there that has hung in there with me on Patreon, supporting the Planet Doug journey on Patreon. And of course, a shout out to my coffee posse, my coffee posse over there on Buy Me a Coffee. I get some support from people through Buy Me a Coffee and I appreciate that much. Also through the Planet Doug PayPal. People have been supporting me and my journey on PayPal. Links. All the links for that are at the end of the video, QR codes you can scan, and links in the video description. Trying to make it as easy and convenient for people as possible who want to help out with the Planet Doug experience. Thank you very much to everybody. So that’s it. Shutting down and I’ll see you in the next video.