VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Welcome back to Dumai, Sumatra!
In this episode, I’m exploring the outskirts of a city that I’ve visited before but don’t know that well — Dumai, a coastal industrial hub on the island of Sumatra. I came here by ferry from Malaysia when my tourist visa ran out, and I’ve been staying at a very low-budget hotel called the Wisma Cemara (think $8 a night, cold water only, and a bathroom that’s… well-loved).
But here’s the thing about Sumatra: even when things look rough around the edges, the people and the surprises make it memorable.
After a Planet Doug subscriber reached out and offered to buy me a surprise snack, I went on a short walk from my hotel — along smelly ditches, past long pipelines, and alongside friendly locals on scooters — to find a place called Monochrome Cafe and Roastery. What I found inside was air conditioning, live music vibes, QR code payments, and a hazelnut iced coffee that hit the spot.
Along the way, I ran into:
– Indomaret clerks who tracked me down for a group photo (and a video shoot)
– A random man on a scooter who handed me a bag of spicy bakso
– And a growing appreciation for a city that doesn’t try to be pretty — it just tries to be real
I also tested the Wi-Fi (spoiler: uploading YouTube videos here takes days), hunted for milk (it’s surprisingly rare), and discovered that even on the outskirts of town, you’re never far from a warm smile or a cold drink.
If you love travel that’s unpolished, curious, and full of unexpected human moments, you’ll feel right at home in Dumai.
☕ A huge thank you to the Planet Doug subscriber who sent me to Monochrome — you made my day.
🛵 And thank you to everyone in Dumai who said hello, asked for a photo, or just waved at the foreigner with the GoPro.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good early afternoon and welcome back to Dumai, Sumatra. Just to get you caught up, I’m in the city of Dumai, which is a coastal city here in Sumatra. And I came here by ferry from Malacca in Malaysia. And that all happened mainly because my visa, my tourist visa for Malaysia was expiring. So I had to leave the country. And one of the easiest, most pleasant, most familiar ways for me to do that was to hop on an Indomal Fast Ferry, cross the Malacca Strait and come to Sumatra, either to Tanjung Balai, which is further north towards Medan or here Dumai. And I chose to come to Dumai this time. And this is my hotel, by the way. The Wisma Cemara, if you haven’t seen it yet in my videos. So, there here there’s the back side of the hotel. I just came here to the back to check up on my bicycle because to keep it out of the rain and keep it out of sight and out of the sun, this was the most convenient spot to put it here at the back. Yeah, bicycles are always a little bit of a challenge when it comes to parking them. The world is not made for bicycles. Most of the world anyway. I could put it here, but there’s nothing to lock my cable lock to. So, I could put my bike underneath this shelter along with the scooters, but it’s very, very visible. People have a habit of messing with bicycles when they see them out in the open. Pull on the cables and the brakes and the gear shifters and then someone could just pick it up and run away with it because there’s nowhere to, you know, loop a lock and secure it to anything. And the sun actually comes in here and roasts the bike. And if you leave it out here for a couple of days, the sun can do quite a large amount of damage in a short amount of time. It’s amazing. But yeah, here’s the front of the Wisma Cemara. It’s a low-budget sort of place. I think when I booked it, the room was 36 ringgit, 31, 36, something like that per night. And for that, you get a private room, air conditioning, cold water. There’s no hot water or anything like that. It’s an older hotel. The rooms are pretty dilapidated. The bathroom is covered in mold. And you get a lot of people live here permanently like local workers who migrated from other cities in Sumatra or from all across Indonesia for all I know. And they need a cheap place to live. So they get like four or five young men packed into each room. When you look through the door, you see all these mattresses on the floor. So they put many, many people in each room and they pay a cheap rate monthly. And of course if you’re staying at a place where people live here permanently, that changes the character, you know, you get a lot of people just sort of hanging out having a good time. Everybody’s friendly. It’s more like a home than an impersonal hotel. So yeah, advantages, disadvantages. And this hotel is out on the outskirts of the city. It’s not downtown. And for me, that’s a little bit of a negative because you’re far away from the shops and the restaurants, things like that. Or you think you are. But then, what I’ve discovered about this hotel, despite being on the outskirts, there’s a huge park right there, and at night alongside the edges of the park, there’s 20 or 30 food and drinks and snack stalls all lined up. You have to go there at night though. Midday there’s nothing going on. And right beside my hotel is this place Babuual Bewall. You can see how close it is to the hotel. And it’s open I think starting at 4:00. A rarity in Indonesia, they actually have kind of a sign out here that says buka jam 4:00 in the afternoon. Sore. So, it’s open at 4:00 in the afternoon. Very rare to have anybody post hours. And I don’t believe this for the life of me. Nobody sticks to regular hours here, but it does tend to be open in the evening. So, this is a place where you can get something to eat. And there’s another little restaurant right there. And then if you start walking in this direction, you pass a few more restaurants. And hello, how are you? Friendly, the friendly atmosphere of Sumatra on display.
And right now, by the way, I’m heading to what could be a fancy coffee shop. There’s a coffee shop just up the road here. Again, we’re not talking about pedestrian friendly. Well, there is a sidewalk on the other side. Let’s head over there. Might as well take advantage of a sidewalk when one exists. So, let’s get over here. Yeah, this is very rare. Got a ditch. Very, very smelly.
Some pretty potent odors are coming up out of that ditch, let me tell you. But there is a sidewalk over here. And a Planet Doug subscriber just reached out wanted to know where I was staying and said, “Hey, there’s this fancy looking coffee shop just up the road from your hotel. Would you like a surprise, a snack?” And you, they can order things even from other countries using like Grab pickup. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’ve never been to this coffee shop right now. I can’t even remember the name of it. Oh, boy. What a bunch of sludge. I see a lot of movement down there. There’s a lot of insects, a lot of ripples on the water. A lot of living creatures down there. But yesh. Yeah, it’s a very industrial city, by the way. You see those trucks over there? They can be carrying oil like petroleum products or they can be carrying palm oil. So either petroleum or palm oil. There’s a lot of that industry here. So what was I talking about? Can’t remember. But there’s another little local family-run restaurant right there. Kopitam Chilang Kopm looks like they even rent out little apartments in there or rooms. Here’s another place, Stoam. So, a store restaurant basically.
And right up here there’s one of my favorite places, a bakso restaurant. I haven’t managed to eat at the bakso place yet. They’re closed every time I try to go there, which happens a lot in Indonesia. You never quite know when places will be open. Closed. It’s a guessing game for the most part. And look at that. There’s even an Indomaret right there.
This is kind of cool. We got a little pedestrian bridge going across the creek. You see a lot of these pipes. You see that pipe there? And there’s a whole bunch of black ones over there. That’s all part of the industry here. So, you have to be a little bit careful when you go around this town because yeah, security, right? They don’t want people messing around with those pipes. They cost a lot of money and they don’t want people doing anything. I remember following a cyclist who rode around here and he would try to set up his tent at the side of the road out in the countryside, but if he was anywhere near one of these pipes, they would eventually come around and tell him, “No, no, no. You can’t stay here. Security for the gas pipes.” Basically,
I think what I was talking about was going to this fancy coffee shop. And one of the reasons I want to go, yeah, I’d love to have a good cup of coffee. It’s a tasty snack thanks to a Planet Doug subscriber. And maybe use their Wi-Fi. And even if I don’t use their Wi-Fi, I can use mobile internet because I have mobile internet on my phone. But from inside my hotel, it’s a very, very weak connection. So maybe this coffee shop can be a workstation for me, particularly for uploading videos. I don’t know. This is really quite the oasis in the middle of the city. Look at all those birds.
Yeah, I said the ditch was pretty stinky, but there’s a lot of greenery here, too. Look at that. All along these pipes created like a long green oasis. Look at all these birds. But yeah, there’s the Indomaret. Right beside it on the other side is the Bako place, but I walked by it. Here’s another Hello. There’s another store restaurant right there. I had lunch there yesterday. Just had Nasi Goreng. And here’s another Miso and Bakso place. So, even though we’re out in the middle of nowhere, feels like it. It’s still pretty bustling. I was looking up information about Dumai online and I was surprised to learn that it might have a population approaching 400,000 people. 350,000 somewhere in there. So, it’s a much bigger city than you might think. It’s kind of a gateway city. It’s here because of the oil industry and the palm oil. There are huge processing centers like oil refineries and storage tanks for petroleum and palm oil all down along the coast near the harbor, the terminals for all the ships. But it’s also a jumping off point to head inland to the rest of Sumatra and the rest of Indonesia. So, it’s kind of a gateway city. Now, I don’t remember how far away this coffee shop is. I don’t remember the name either. Let me look it up. One of my favorite things about Sumatra. I have many, many favorite things about Sumatra. Really like it here. It suits me. Very rough around the edges. It’s all just out there in the open. It’s all in your face. Everybody here is living, like really living. But part of that is so many drinks stalls. Like if you go, especially in the downtown area, every block has like jumbo iced tea for sale, avocado shakes, mango shakes just right at the side of the road for like 5,000 rupiah. So that’s pretty amazing. If I could live just on fluids, I probably would. I just love cold drinks. And that, I suppose, is the downside to a place like Sumatra and maybe Dumai in particular, the heat. Oh my goodness, hot. Ever since I got here, I’m like just roasting. And the sun isn’t out right now, which is a bit of a relief because when that sun comes out, man, it just feels like it doubles or triples what I’m feeling right now. And what I’m feeling right now is like I’m inside a furnace. I’m like a loaf of bread being baked. But anyway, coffee shop. It’s called Monochrome. Monochrome Cafe and Roastery. I’m looking at it right now. That’s it right there. I don’t know how. Oh, it could be closed, which would not surprise me. Let’s head over there and find out. Oh, hello. How are you, Apa kabar?
Looks like Hello. And there’s some more people. Hello. How are you doing? I’m doing fine, thank you. I’m doing fine.
The boys over there have a they’re catching lizards. I think they each had a lizard in their hand. They wanted to show me, but yeah, I don’t know if this place is open or not.
Let us see. We got a big barber shop up there. The interior over here. This looks to be definitely closed.
But maybe there’s another section interior over here. Okay, so it looks like they’ve got an Oh, this looks like an actual This is where they process the beans perhaps. Looks like a roasting grinding operation. This is not the cafe. I thought this would be like where you where they make the coffee, but no, it’s like a high-tech bean roastery. I guess they roast their own beans. And then this is the outdoor seating, which I’m definitely going to try to avoid ’cause it is hot. Very, very hot. This would be for the smokers. Only the smokers would put up with this heat. And yeah, there’s the name. Monochrome Cafe and Roastery. I like the name. Push.
Aha.
And here we are on the inside. Yeah, busy. Yeah, a lot of people with laptops. I expected to see that. I brought my own laptop just in case. And yeah, some seating available. Little back room here. Maybe I’ll take over the back room. And there’s power up there if I need it. Yeah, it’s very nice. And here’s the inside. Really nice. All settled in again. My dog DNA takes over where I have to do a full walk around, investigate every corner, every room, every doorway, look at everything, go in a circle a few times, and then when I finally settle down, then I guess I’m more like a cat. I’ve got cat DNA ’cause then I always pick a table that’s tucked away in the back. So, here in this little room in the back corner is where I’ve settled down. And I’m looking out on the main room. So, you can see I’ve got a door. This is my own private little room, but out here is Yeah, I’ve already You’ve already seen it, I think, when I walked in. But this is the main room here. Yeah, a lot of tables. One, two, three, four, five, six tables. Couple of sofas, air conditioned. Nice music playing in the background. They even have a mixing board up there. I think they have live music here from time to time. Kitchen in the back. So, they actually have food as well. Not just a drinks menu, but they also have a food menu. That’s very cool.
Pisang goreng, fried bananas. It’s one thing I haven’t found in this neighborhood. I haven’t found a fried banana stall. And look at that. They accept QRIS payment. So, I can use Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go e-wallet here, no problem. And yeah, nice window looking out the outdoor seating. And that other room there, that’s where they grind and roast their own coffee beans. So, that’s cool. Yeah, it looks like they’re cultivating a family-friendly place here. Like, you know people are posting photos of themselves with their friends. Maybe they had a machine here that did that. Children’s high chairs. Yeah, there’s the mixing board that I mentioned. Music playing, but it’s not intrusive. It’s just like lightly in the background, which I like.
And then they have Oh, that’s kind of cool. They have power at every table ’cause they know their audience. People come here with all their devices to charge them up and to be on their laptops and things like that. So yeah,
and my order has already arrived from a Planet Doug sponsor, supporter, subscriber, iced coffee of some variety, and not one but two chocolate brownies. The place is air conditioned, but even in this back room, they have a fan. So, like in terms of picking a low-budget hotel at random in a distant kind of neighborhood that feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere to have this place as almost my next door neighbor. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Love this cup. It’s much more elaborate than I was expecting. Nice little pop off lid there. You want to get it nice and mixed up.
It’s like a chocolatey coffee. A chocolate coffee. I haven’t asked my mystery benefactor what the order actually was. And it’s not marked on there, but yeah, I think it’s got a little bit of a cocoa chocolate combo. And then these are the brownies already pre-divided into four pieces. I suspect this brownie is not going to live up to our mental image of brownie from the West. Like dense, heavy, thick, and moist. It doesn’t feel it feels more cookie weight than brownie weight. And it may be dry. Yeah, it’s very, very, very dry. So, it’s not like fresh out of the oven brownie.
Yeah, it’s not very good. Does not get the Planet Doug stamp of approval. If all you want is something like a cookie, chocolate cookie, this is what you get here. It’s not really a brownie. Not the way I think of a brownie anyway. Yeah, it’ll probably make a clanking sound. It’s so hard. It’s hard as a rock.
I think you’d be hard-pressed anywhere to get fresh like a place like this. They’d have to do a high turnover in order to produce fresh brownies right out of the oven. Who knows how long these have been sitting inside the package. You know, could be a long, long time.
Now, it’s not a good brownie, but if you call it a chocolate cookie, then it’s very, very good. Right. You just have to redefine what you think you’re eating. My chocolate cookie is very tasty.
Next stage in the Planet Doug analysis. Got to do a Wi-Fi check. I’m just curious how fast it is because at my hotel, we might as well call it zero Wi-Fi speed. It’s like there’s no Wi-Fi at all that reaches my room. So, downloading 8.82 megabits per second. Uploading about the same around nine or 10. So uploading is faster than downloading. Yeah. Nine megabits per second for down and nine and a half for uploading. When you’re a high-tech whiz like me, you know, things get complicated. So this is my mobile phone. This has my local SIM card in it. And I’m connected only to mobile data. Let’s see how fast mobile is here. ‘Cause even in my hotel room, the mobile has trouble reaching my room because of all the cement walls, I’m assuming.
Yeah, way, way, way faster.
So more than 10 times faster than the Wi-Fi for downloading and then uploading. Uploading is always throttled everywhere you go. It’s like the one thing I really need is uploading. So even though I’ve got 116 megabits per second downloading, I’ve only got four megabits per second uploading. Yeah, I’ve had a YouTube video uploading for the last more than 24 hours now. And last time I checked it, it reached 22% in 24 hours. So, you’re talking about four days, like nonstop, 24 hours a day for four days to upload one Planet Doug video. Yeah, that’s one downside, I guess, to Sumatra. The Wi-Fi here and mobile is generally at least the hotels I stay in. It’s not very good. But let’s break out the laptop and pretend I’m like some sort of a modern digital nomad.
Of course, if I were a true digital nomad, I wouldn’t bring a beast like this out. It would be like a super sleek, I don’t know, MacBook, the latest $8 million ultra portable or something like that. But so far, this beast is doing well for me. So,
and if I were a true digital nomad, I probably would know how to use trackpads. I saw someone the other day that blew my mind. He was editing a video on an ultra portable ultrabook and he was editing with a trackpad and he was doing it super, super fast. I have no idea how. I don’t know how to use trackpads efficiently. I prefer mouse technology. I’m old school. So, while I’m sitting here, let’s restart the upload and I’m using my mobile connection to do the uploading still. How far along are we? Yeah, 22%. So, yeah, I’ll stay here for an hour, enjoy my second brownie and coffee, and then see how far we get with the uploading.
Yeah, just leaving from Monochrome. May have found my second home here in Dumai for the time that I’m here. I found out that the coffee that my Planet Doug supporter ordered for me was hazelnut. It wasn’t chocolate. It was a hazelnut flavored coffee. I knew chocolate wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And it wasn’t actually on their menu. It’s on their online menu, but not on their printed one. But anyway, hazelnut. And I noticed that. Yeah, this is the photo booth. Yeah, inside they have all those photos on the bulletin board. And yeah, they have their own photo booth set up here with some costume elements.
Okay. And you pay by scanning the QR code, man. QR codes. That’s the way you pay for things these days. The whole world runs on QR codes. Very popular place. It got very, very busy in there. Every table covered in laptops, tablets, smartphones, everybody’s charging everything. And then I ordered a second coffee. Just a standard iced cafe latte. A latte. Really good. For my money, I kind of want them to be a bit bigger, you know, a bit more volume. The small little plastic cups that they use are quite nice, but I don’t know. I want a little bit more fluid. Shall I cross? Yeah, I might as well walk along the sidewalk. I just want to get to Indomaret. I’m still on the hunt for milk. I talked about in my other videos, assuming I’ve shot other videos that I posted to Planet Doug here, that I’ve been looking for milk and I can’t find any. I can find chocolate flavored drink, milk drink, blueberry milk drink, and strawberry milk drink, but I can’t find any milk, just milk. But here I discovered that in some of these Indomarets they have these tiny cartons like for children you put in their lunchbox and you can buy them like in a big crate like a whole bunch all at once and so like you can’t buy a liter of it but I did find these little collections of tiny, tiny cartons. So I just want to pick up as many of them as they have for sale. Milk is like a rare substance here in Dumai. Sun is out now, man. Just coming down hard. But yeah, we got to keep an eye open for what else is in my neighborhood.
Mainly fried bananas. We’ve got Martabak back here. Looks like they’re just setting up shop for the night. Sate and Martabak. Martabak would be nice, but even better would be some pisang goreng, some fried bananas. But so far, that’s one thing that’s absent from my new neighborhood here. No fried bananas as yet.
That road on the other side of the pipelines, that really gives a sense of what this town is all about. Constant flow of large trucks, cargo trucks, palm oil trucks, petroleum trucks, then the local gangs, the teenagers, the groups of friends racing around on their three to a motorcycle groups saying hello, shouting hello to the foreigner. That is Sumatra in a nutshell.
I was zooming around on Google Maps and satellite view the other day, another group of three young boys over there. And I discovered that about 26 kilometers outside of town along the coast, there’s a large industrial complex run by this big company. I forget the name of it. I’ll put it on the video. Where they process, store, and ship palm oil. And when I arrived here and I saw all of these giant containers and industrial setups, I just assumed it was all petrochemical, but apparently a lot of it is palm oil. It looks very similar. Petrochemical storage tanks, palm oil storage tanks are very, very similar. And this place 26 km away, I guess, is all about palm oil. Be nice to take a look at it, but that’s far away on a bicycle in this temperature, let me tell you. So, here’s the Indomaret. I’m going to go in and get some milk if they have any. And right here, yeah, you can get some iced teh hijau. I think I’m going to do that.
But even way out here on the outskirts of town, the traffic is pretty heavy. That’s Sumatra as well.
Traffic. All right, there’s a break.
I have to come back out and see what we can get. To.
So, I got original castor lemon and suzu. And you can pay with a QR code. So, I’ll do that when I come back out. Yeah, I’m so happy. They didn’t have any like one liter cartons of milk, but they did get a milk delivery of normal-sized like adult cartons, not the tiny kids ones. So, I got a whole bunch of those, filled my knapsack, and I got a Teh Hijau Suzu for 8,000. And I paid for it using Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. Could scan the QRIS code right there. So, that’s all very exciting. And this is where
Oh, so there’s the drink and the ice. Ooh, that looks so good. Yeah, they have a mixer there. Mixes it all up.
Very exciting. There it is. Can you ask for anything better than that? Looks so good. Living a pretty good life over here in Dumai, I must say. Despite the heat. You just have to compensate for the heat with the many, many, many cold drinks that they provide. Oh yeah, here’s the Mie Ayam Bakso place. So, it is open today. Maybe that will be on my
What did I do? H.
Someone’s telling me that I dropped something.
Ah, okay.
Huh?
So, me. Oh, you want me to hold it like that? Oh, okay. Is it video or picture? Picture. Picture. Yes. Counting down. Yes.
Look like video. Yes.
Video. Oh, still video. Hello everyone. In Dumai, Sumatra and I’m shopping here at Indomaret with very friendly helpers here and yeah. Hello everyone.
Hair.
So, this one is a photo. Yes. Three, two, one. It’s already Yes.
There we go. Hello. Hello everyone. Hello. How are you? How are you? These are my new friends at Indomaret. They sold me my All right. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Okay. Well, there’s a little story to go along with all that. I got the my milk and my drink here, my teh hijau. And then I was walking back to my hotel and a man, an older man on a scooter pulled up beside me very urgently. He was like, he had something very, very important to tell me and he kept pointing back in this direction. So, you’re instantly trying to figure out, well, what could he be talking about? I assumed I dropped something. Hello. There’s some more people. What’s that? This is for YouTube. Hi. Hello. How are you? I’m fine. Good. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
So, yeah, you have to have a lot of time when you go out in Sumatra for casual meetings like this. But yeah, I thought the man was telling me, “Hello, what your sauce, man? I’m from Canada. What your smell?
I don’t know what you mean. No, I don’t know what your name. Susman? Yeah. I don’t know what that is. Sman. All right. Bye-bye.
I’m not sure what she’s asking me, but I assumed the man was telling me that I dropped something. The most obvious thing, right? So, I’m going back looking at the ground. Oh, my GoPro, my phone, my wallet. Everything’s okay. Thank you very much. And nothing. So, I just kept walking. I went all the way back to the tea place thinking maybe I didn’t pay properly. I have to do something. But then there were the two women who worked at Indomaret who were calling out to me like come back, come back, come back. So I thought oh I must not have paid properly or the payment didn’t go through. I paid with GoPay, the Indonesian e-wallet, but they called me in because they wanted to take a picture.
What’s that? Oh, with coke bakso tusuk in Indonesia. Ah, bakso. Bakso tusuk. Oh, it’s for me. It’s like flour and something like that. Oh, okay. Thank you. You can taste it. Ah, can I put you on YouTube? Yeah. Yeah, I’m a YouTuber. Nice. Yeah. So, to Indonesia. So, you live here in Dumai? Yeah, I’m live. Okay. Yeah. He just pulled over. He saw me here and he He doesn’t know what my favorite food is. Bakso. He didn’t know that, but he gave me some bakso to take. Kind of spicy. Kind of spicy. That’s okay. No, that’s great. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Where are you from? I’m from Canada. Canada. Yeah. Just around Toronto. Toronto. Yeah. I see. Yeah. Dominic Toretto. What’s that? Dominic Toretto. Is that a Who is that? A Canadian. Famous Canadian. Oh, I don’t know. Fast and Furious. Okay. Maybe. Is he from Canada? What is he from Canada? I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. Enjoy your day in Dumai. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. What’s your name? Douglas. Douglas. Let me move this over. G L D O U G L A S. Douglas. Okay. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Okay. Welcome to the Thank you very much. Okay. Careful, man. Yeah. I’m trying to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So, now I have a box and iced tea of some kind.
Yeah. I was just telling the story about the two clerks, the two young women at Indomaret. They wanted to take a picture with me. But if you’ve been to Sumatra, you know that may or may not be as simple as you imagine it’s going to be. They can be like film directors, like professional photographers where other women will get involved, look at the photo, disapprove of something, the way someone is standing, their hand position, their head tilt, whatever they’ve done, and then they start making suggestions like, “No, no, no. You move closer. You move farther. You stand like this. You stand like that.”
So, we had this photo shoot that went on for a very long time and I was very confused because it was supposed to be a photo I thought, but then it seemed to be video and then I’m not sure what they wanted me to do on the video. So, I start talking. It’s like, “Hello, I’m from Canada. We are here in Dumai and I’m in, you know,” so I’m filling up the time with English because I think that’s what they want for their friends. It’s like, oh, we met this foreigner and he speaks English. But then right in the middle of my sentence, they cut me off and say, “Oh, no, no, no, no. Let’s do it again.” So they shot video after video after video after video. And I didn’t know what it was they wanted me to do or what I was doing wrong. But anyway, and then we started taking photos. We took a whole bunch of photos as well. So, that was quite the yeah, quite the experience. Never a dull moment in Sumatra. I’ll tell you that right now. Yeah, I’m back at my hotel behind me there at the Wisma Cemara. And yeah, sun is on its way down, but you can tell by my face maybe the sweat pouring down. So, still pretty hot. So, I’m going to duck into my air conditioned sanctuary back here.
And if you haven’t seen it yet, this is what 36 ringgit gets you in Sumatra. Kind of a low-budget, well, not kind of, a low-budget hotel here in Dumai. This one is a, you know, queen bed. I actually have a window, air conditioning, little bit of furniture, outlets, and a pretty standard typical bathroom. Nothing particularly clean or particularly new, but so far everything kind of works. And in the spirit of perhaps keeping Planet Doug video a Planet Doug video from time to time a little bit shorter, perhaps I’ll wind this one up ’cause I don’t think I’m going to have any more adventures today. I may go out tonight. We’ll see. If I do, I’ll put that in this video as well. But yeah, that’s how life goes here in Sumatra, in these small towns in particular, very friendly people, very energetic, very warm. Like I think a young woman in Canada wouldn’t even dream of doing something like that. Like these two women at Indomaret, they had this idea after I left. Oh, you know, we should have taken a picture with him. And then I was already half a block down the street. But they spoke to another customer, an older man, and said to him, “Oh, if you see that foreigner, can you tell him to come back?” You know, that takes a lot of bravery to do that and then to speak with a foreigner like me in English. So then the man tried to explain to me, “Oh, you should go back.” But I didn’t know why he told me, but then I went back and it’s because they wanted to take a picture with me. So, but yeah, they’re very warm here, very energetic, very outgoing, very courageous when it comes to interacting with someone like me. It’s very, very interesting. You don’t see that in a lot of countries, almost nowhere really. So, yeah, that’s it. Shutting down. And if you made it to the very end of the video, you’re some of my favorite people in the world. You’re members of the Planet Doug Crunch Club. Put CC in the comments to let me know you watched the video all the way to the end. And again, a shout out to everyone out there like my mystery benefactor today who gave me the idea of going to this coffee shop and put in an order for me. Hazelnut coffee and brownies. That was amazing. Thank you very much to my mystery benefactor and all the other Planet Doug supporters out there on Patreon, of course, through Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go e-wallet and Buy Me a Coffee. And I have those QR codes at the end of the video if you want to track those down. So that’s it. Thank you very much for sticking with me all the way to the end of the video and I’ll see you next time. I almost forgot that I have drinks and food that I haven’t even tried yet. So, yeah, let’s dive into this. Lots and lots of ice. So, this is still ice cold. I was going to I know what he is. It’s a type of bean, I believe, but I had to remind myself to look it up just to make sure that I know what’s going on here. Let’s put teh hijau, which I’ve done so many times in the past into Google Translate. Green. So, well, okay, it’s green tea.
Teh hijau green tea, which in fact it is. So, I guess that’s what it means. I had it in my head it was like a green bean or something, but I guess it just means green tea in this case. So, let’s I took a quick shower.
It’s so hectic out there. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Trying to catch my breath from the social whirlwind of Sumatra. I’m not used to having so many people interested in me as a person. I’m not really that interesting. So, it’s quite something to come to Sumatra and find out you are an object of such interest. So, let’s try my green tea.
Oh man, you can see how deep a pull I just took. I could probably have two or three of these right now.
Still very sweet. Like I said, I always get it normal. If you’re coming to Dumai, you might want to somehow figure out how to say in Indonesian, you know, less sweet. Manis is like sugar or sweet. So, you can just say, you know, manis? No, no, no, no, no. If you don’t want all the sugar that they normally put in. And I guess yeah, I have some bakso. Let’s try that.
This could be dangerous eating out of a plastic bag. But yeah, I don’t know how Indonesians actually do it. Like if they bought something like this to take home, do they then get out a whole bunch of plates and bowls and pour everything out? Probably. That’s what I would normally do. I just want to give a sample or try a sample of this. Got a spoon all ready to go. And let’s get some of this bakso. And he did say he gave me a warning. The foreigner warnings like, “Oh, it’s spicy. It’s spicy.” So, let’s see what he means by spicy.
Mhm.
That is very, very good. I guess spicy is a relative term for me. No, it’s not spicy. So, if you’re worried about, oh, it’s so hot. No, it isn’t like that. But it is flavorful. It’s got a really strong flavor. The sauce is very, very potent. Lot of flavor in there. I’d like to know where he got this from ’cause that is really good. That’s some of the best bakso I’ve had in quite a long time. Mhm.
I was only going to sample one or two of them on camera, but I’m definitely going to devour this whole bag right now. So, I will have another drink of tea.
Oh, that is so good. Oh, and with that, I’m going to shut down the GoPro and enjoy street snack. Yeah, a random young man just pulled over to the side of the road and handed this over to me. He wanted me to sample some good Indonesian food. So, yeah, thank you very much to the people of Dumai.