I don’t even know what time I crawled into my tent or what time I finally fell asleep, but it must have been early because I felt quite refreshed when my eyes popped open and I emerged from my tent at around 4 a.m. I had settled into my tent the night before with a clear intention of getting up this early. I knew that the population of the fishing village around me was poised to return the second the sun came up over the horizon, and I had a lot I needed to do. I wanted as much time as possible to myself. For one thing, I wanted to take another bucket shower from the urine-soaked well. More importantly, I had to deal with the calls of nature. I’d spent the night feeling bloated and uncomfortable, and I knew I would need some time to deal with that. There was no toilet anywhere around, of course, no comfortable seat with a Reader’s Digest for company. I had no choice but to crouch down naked in the dark and hope for the best. I did not need fifty people standing around in a circle offering commentary. This process went fairly well all things considered. My legs certainly got a workout.
Once my body was relatively happy, I turned to what was sure to be the long and complicated process of packing up. To my surprise and delight, a lot of the objects that I had spread around my tent had dried to a large extent. To help this process, I had left one side of the tent fly completely open. With the large mesh areas of the tent body, I got a powerful breeze flowing through all night with the storms, and this flow of air had done much to dry everything. I wouldn’t have called anything actually dry, but it was dry enough that I could start packing with a somewhat light heart. Unfortunately, despite the absurdly early hour and the fact that it was still pitch black, Red Shorts decided to make a return visit. I assume he spotted my flashlight darting around at my camping site, and he came to see what I was up to. He startled me when he first emerged out of the darkness. Then he settled into a comfortable spot to watch me pack up my gear. I took a few deep breaths to try to relax and take this in stride. I had been counting on some privacy for the packing process because I knew it was going to be a circus, but my privacy was gone and I had an audience once more as I stumbled around and dropped things and rearranged things and lost things and otherwise screwed up. I guess Red Shorts wouldn’t have known that I was screwing up and that this was taking ten times longer than it normally would, but I was intensely aware of his presence and this made me make even more mistakes.
As I worked, the earth finally spun around enough that the sun began to emerge over the horizon and light returned to my world. To my surprise, other than a young woman with a baby on her hip, no one else returned to watch me pack up. I thought dozens of people would show up right away, but I only had Red Shorts and this woman for an audience. At long last, everything was packed up and my bike was loaded up and the trailer was attached to my bike. The sky was still looking grim, so I wrapped my rain jacket around the trailer as I did before, and then I put the ineffective rain cover around that. I had also reinforced the waterproofing on everything inside the trailer. I happened to be carrying around a cheap plasticized bag that was folded up and lay at the bottom of the trailer. I had used this bag to hold all my pannier bags when I flew from the Philippines to Malaysia, and I had kept it. Now I opened it up inside my trailer and put all my bags inside that bag hoping it would offer another layer of water protection. I now had bags inside bags inside bags inside this big bag inside the trailer which was covered in a waterproof jacket and then the rain cover. I’m sure it still wouldn’t be enough. Water, as I said, will find a way. But it was the best I could do.
I never did manage to get a picture of my tent in this special camping site, but I took a picture of the fish market, said goodbye to Red Shorts and pushed my bike along the muddy, soggy paths away from the beach, through the village, and back to the main road. What a memorable detour that had been.
It began to rain heavily about forty minutes after I left, and I decided to be a bit smarter and a bit less tough this time around. As soon as I saw a house and business with an open sheltering roof, I turned my bike and trailer in that direction to put a roof between me and that downpour. A woman was sitting there, and she waved me in from the road.
My other reason for taking shelter was to fix a mistake I had made. I was really kicking myself over this one, and I kind of blame Red Shorts for it. He threw me off my game when he showed up in the dark to watch me pack. The night before, as I lay in my tent and thought about the day, I had this sudden realization that I was an idiot. When I first realized that the rain cover was a joke and water had soaked my trailer, my first thought was to put my rain jacket over the trailer. But I completely, totally, and stupidly forgot that I had a perfectly good tarp in my gear. This was the tent ground sheet that I bought when I first bought my MSR Hubba Hubba NX tent. This ground sheet was roughly rectangular in shape. It was 100% waterproof guaranteed. It was lightweight and it had grommets and attachment ropes on every corner and every side. It is the perfect rain-protection tool you can imagine. Yet, instead of whipping that out and putting it over my trailer, I tried to use my rain jacket. I completely forgot that I had this ground sheet. This was doubly annoying because as I packed up for this trip, I had made the deliberate effort to put the rain cover in a pocket of one pannier bag and the ground sheet in a pocket of the other pannier bag. I did this so that I would have easy access to both when the need arose. And then an extreme need arose, and I totally forgot it even existed.
I realized this during the night, and I fully intended to put the ground sheet over the trailer in the morning. But I was so self-conscious with Red Shorts watching me that I forgot about it, and I put my rain jacket on the trailer instead. This was doubly dumb. For one thing, the rain jacket is an awkward beast with sleeves and a hood that hang down. It’s difficult to wrap it around the trailer and keep it in place and keep the sleeves from getting caught in the wheels, etc. It was the wrong tool for this job. In addition, by using my expensive rain jacket as a tarp for my trailer, I couldn’t use it as a rain jacket. I couldn’t wear the thing because it was serving as a stupid tarp. And I did this when I had a perfectly good tarp just sitting there waiting to be used! I was so dumb.
So when I pulled off the road and into the shelter, I intended to get out of the rain. But I also wanted to rectify this mistake. It was a bit of a challenge doing this now that the bike and trailer were soaking wet again and the wind was blowing hard, but I removed the rain cover, removed the rain jacket, and put the ground sheet tarp over the trailer. It felt so good to do this. And now I was able to actually wear my rain jacket and get back out on the road. To be honest, I didn’t really mind getting wet in the rain. My clothing is all made from quick-dry material and even if I was soaked through, I’d eventually dry. It’s not like cotton. But it was actually quite cold and the wind was blowing strongly, and I felt much more comfortable with the jacket on. Live and learn. If you have a perfectly good tarp, use it. Don’t use your rain jacket as a tarp.
I felt good as I rode along in my jacket. I can’t say I was thrilled about the rain. It was starting to look like it was going to rain every single day for my entire ride to Banda Aceh, and that would not make my life very easy. But my jacket was doing its job and keeping me warm and dry (at least my top half). It had a very technical design with zippered flaps under the arms that I could open for ventilation, Velcro straps at the wrists that can close up the wrist or open it, and draw strings around the face and the rear of the hood. These draw strings are important because it allows you to tighten the hood to your head but also pull it backwards so it doesn’t impede your vision. I’ve had cheap jackets in the past that lacked this feature, and it was maddening. The hood kept rain off your head, but the hood would also stick way out on the sides and act as a sail. The hood would also sit out away from your head, so when you turned your head, the hood wouldn’t turn with you. You’d just end up swiveling your head inside the hood and staring at the inside of the hood. I’d end up physically pulling on the back of the hood when I wanted to look to the side or do anything. But this rain jacket, which I bought in Taiwan long ago, was well designed from that point of view. It’s one of the few pieces of gear that I bought in Taiwan that has lasted and served me well. Everything else was junk and fell apart despite being billed as durable and technical.
In the first few kilometers, I kept my eyes open for a place to stop and have a morning cup of coffee and to get my bearings. I would have had a coffee at my camping site, but once Red Shorts showed up, I skipped that luxury and just hit the road as soon as I could. Picking a place to stop on the road is an art form, and I get it wrong much of the time. Unlike many places, Indonesia has not developed a level of cafe or restaurant aimed at tourists or the well-heeled. In the Philippines, you could often choose between stopping at a local and rather rustic establishment, or you could hold out longer and keep riding until you stumbled across a fairly nice place designed for tourists whether local or foreign. Indonesia is all rustic, so it is difficult to judge the quality of a place or how I will be received. The vast majority of little restaurants are empty to begin with, so I often end up stopping at a place only to find out that it is closed or has long since been abandoned. A functioning restaurant and one that is closed don’t look much different. They both consist of rickety tables made of scrap wood and perhaps some creaky plastic chairs. And that’s it. It’s not like you’re going to push open a glass door, hear the tinkling of a little bell, and be greeted by a hostess.
So one key factor in making a decision is whether other people are present. If there are some other customers, you at least know it is open. And if there are a lot of customers, it’s a sign that their food and drinks are being turned over quickly and might be fresh and might even be good. But that isn’t always the case. Unfortunately, if there are a lot of people, there is almost zero chance of having much privacy. Someone will always invite me to sit with them or they will come over to my table and sit with me. I generally don’t mind but sometimes I’d like to have a few minutes to myself to get some logistics taken care of.
I also look for shelter for my bike. Whether it’s raining or the sun is beating down, it’s nice to be able to roll the bike underneath something to catch a bit of shelter or shade. Beyond that and a bunch of other physical factors, I just get a feeling about a place. And this morning, I got a half-decent feeling from a place, and I pulled in. There was a long roof on the side, and I could park my bike there and get it out of the rain. Then I popped off my handlebar bag and took a seat. Instantly, I thought I had made a mistake because there wasn’t much activity. Two or three children came out of a door in the back, and a woman was bustling around them and getting them ready for school. And that was about it. I sat at a table and nothing happened. I started to think that this restaurant or cafe wasn’t even functioning anymore. Perhaps I had taken a seat in someone’s outdoor living room.
However, I know to be patient, and I sat there and checked Google Maps on my phone and did some other things to plan my day. And eventually, a very friendly man sat down with me and lit up a cigarette. He also had a cup of coffee and a newspaper. It suddenly started to feel like a real cafe and not just a patch of dirt with some plastic chairs. It turns out that he was the owner, and his shout to the woman quickly got me my own hot cup of coffee plus a plate of freshly baked goods. A plate of snacks placed on the table is a common system in Indonesia. These aren’t snacks that you ordered but something that they put on the table that you can have or not have. Then when you settle your bill, they look at the plate to see what you ate and charge you accordingly. It’s a good system. As a customer, I often might not even know that I want a snack until it is right in front of me. I might not bother to get up, walk to the display, look at the food, and then pick something. But if it is sitting right in front of me on the table, I am more likely to try one, and then two, and then three, and then four. The problematic side is that as a customer, you know that the same snacks might be put out on a table for other customers. And if those customers don’t eat them, they go back in the display. Then they come out for the next customers. And this could go on all day. So the food you are eating might have been sitting out in the open and covered in flies multiple times before you eat it. And who knows what the other people did while the snacks were on their table. Did they sneeze on it or cough on it or drop something on it or pick it up with their hands and put it back? You don’t know. So sometimes I get leery and don’t have it – especially if it is fried. But these baked goods looked fresh, and it was early in the morning, so I tucked in with gusto.
Eventually the rain stopped, and I was back on the road in very high spirits. There is nothing like cycling alongside the ocean, especially when the road is literally right beside the beach and you can watch and hear the waves crashing on shore all day long. I pulled over multiple times to just stand or sit and take in the scenery and take pictures. My goal for the day was a town called Tapak Tuan. I had been looking forward to seeing this place. From Google Maps, it looked to have a scenic location. Plus, I planned to stay there for a rest day or two. I had been cycling for five days straight, and my body was showing the strain. I needed a break to allow my body to recover. And despite the success of my drying operation the night before, everything was still wet or damp to a certain extent. I needed a hotel room where I could spread out all my gear and really deal with it.
The biggest problem I was facing was that I was suffering from a strange, heavy bruising on the palms of my hands. This bruising dates back years now. It started out of the blue while I was in Taiwan. It got so bad that I went to the hospital and had it checked out. The doctor ordered a biopsy of the affected flesh, and the tests came back conclusive for some kind of bizarre auto-immune disorder. I forget the name of it. It’s a weird thing because the bruising just shows up for no reason. It’s deep and painful and causes a lot of swelling. It gets so bad that just touching something with my fingers causes me to yelp in pain sometimes. It also appears on the soles of my feet, and it becomes difficult to walk.
I have no idea what triggers these bouts of bruising, but riding my bike certainly triggers it. And it’s a real problem because it makes it almost unbearable to put my hands on the handlebars. And it makes it very difficult to do all the constant packing and unpacking and bike maintenance that is required. There doesn’t appear to be any treatment for this condition. It just comes and goes as it pleases, and the only cure is time. I have a suspicion that the trigger is related to stress. Anything to do with skin seems connected to mood. I’ve noticed that the times this bruising appears coincides with big changes or stressful events. And cycling through the Sumatran mountains in the rain certainly qualifies.
The weather remained clear for the rest of my ride to Tapak Tuan, and even though I had to undertake a few long and difficult climbs, it was nothing like I had experienced in the mountains proper. These coastal climbs felt more normal, and I was able to stay in the saddle and continue to ride my bike as I made my way. A couple of times, I got off my bike and walked but that was more because I was sweating so hard that I couldn’t see properly. The sweat poured into my eyes and stung them so harshly that I couldn’t open them. And once I was walking the bike, I enjoyed the slow pace. I was able to look out over the ocean and take in the scenery much better than when I was hunched over the handlebars and pedaling hard.
On most of these cycling days, I started out feeling rather optimistic about the distance I had to cover. I had planned the trip such that I could ride as small a distance as fifty kilometers a day, have a couple of rest days, and still get to Banda Aceh on time. Even when I stretched the daily distance covered to eighty kilometers or more, I still felt good in the morning. The kilometers flew by, and I felt good enough that I didn’t think I would have any trouble arriving at my destination in good spirits. But that mood would begin to change, particularly in the last twenty kilometers. Suddenly, the twenty kilometers remaining that seemed so easy to ride began to look much more challenging. By the time I got to ten kilometers left, I was aching to arrive and every kilometer was hard.
I think I can trace this feeling back to one simple fact: my butt really hurts. This has been a constant theme of my cycling trips as long as I can remember. I remember that my butt was so badly bruised and sore in Ethiopia that I could barely touch the seat. The bruising appeared to go right into my bones. My legs would still feel fine and I would have plenty of pedaling power left in them, but my butt was in so much pain that I had to stop. I experimented with a variety of saddles, but none of them seemed to do very much except one. I wish I had a better memory of that saddle – how it was designed and who made it. But I really don’t have any details in my brain, and that saddle was stolen off my bike while I was in Sarnia one time.
I began this trip with a big granny saddle on the bike. It was super wide and soft and had big springs underneath. All that softness didn’t seem to do very much, and my butt hurt just as much as always. And when I did my research, I was told by everyone that a soft saddle is actually much worse than a hard one. The accepted theory is that we have two sit bones in our pelvis, and the proper position is for the body weight to go on those sit bones, which touch the surface of the saddle. The theory goes on to say that if you have a soft saddle, all the flesh in your butt gets compressed and blood flow is restricted and that is where the pain comes from. However, I followed their advice in the past and bought a super-expensive Brooks saddle. It was supposed to be the ultimate touring saddle – just a hard sheet of tough leather that is supposed to shape to your body. But that saddle was, by far, the worst and most painful thing I’ve ever had on my bike.
That’s how I ended up with the wide granny saddle with all the cushioning. But when I was riding even back in Taiwan and then in the Philippines, my butt hurt badly, and I had the added problem of carrying all the extra weight of such a big saddle. Therefore, when I was overhauling my gear in Kuala Lumpur, I switched over to another performance-style saddle. It had the cutout in the middle to allow blood flow in your groin. And it seemed to have fairly soft padding. And it was narrower. I found that my thighs rubbed against the wide surface of the granny saddle, so I thought a narrower profile would actually be better.
When I made this change and changed the tires and a couple of other things, I noticed that the bike felt considerably lighter when I picked it up and carried it up stairs. That was an improvement at least. But the pain in my butt did not go away. In some ways, it got worse because the padding was less and I could feel that I was resting on my sit bones. I really don’t get the theory about these sit bones. It felt to me like those sit bones were coming to a sharp point against my own flesh and threatening to rip through my skin. If we had two knives embedded in our bodies, we certainly wouldn’t want to sit on them. They’d just slice through our flesh and poke out. Why are these sit bones any different? It might be true that less of my butt flesh was being compressed against a big wide surface. But is that any better than a pinpoint area of flesh being absolutely crushed by sharp sit bones?
To my eternal shame and feeling of stupidity, I ended up buying one of those big, heavy gel-filled covers that you put over the saddles of bikes. You see them all the time in the bike sections of department stores. Combining this gel cover with my new saddle probably ended up being heavier than my old granny saddle. So, as usual, I’d spent a ton of money and ended up worse off than before.
The gel-filled cover seemed to help quite a bit. Perhaps it goes against cycling wisdom, but for me, it seems that having the biggest, softest, cushiest saddle possible is the best approach. But it was not all roses, though. My butt still hurts a lot, and, as I said, the final twenty kilometers of any particular day becomes unbearable, and I end up having to stop every third kilometer to rest and get my butt off the saddle. The pain is just too much. On one of the recent days, I decided to do another experiment. This started with thoughts of trying (once again) to lighten my load. I had this heavy gel-filled seat cover on my saddle, and yet my butt still hurt. So perhaps it doesn’t do any good. Then I can get rid of it and save some weight.
I waited one morning until my butt was in full agony, and then I pulled to the side of the road and removed the cover. The idea was to get a comparison. I wanted to see if the pain was reduced or even disappeared when I switched back to the exposed saddle. At first, I felt encouraged. The pain was actually much reduced, and I felt better. I could feel my sit bones grinding against my flesh, but the pain was largely gone. And I started to think that maybe this was the way to go. That happy feeling didn’t last long, however. Before the day was over, the pain had returned and with a vengeance. The pain in the flesh right around the sit bones was more intense than the pain I had started with. So I put the cover back on and felt much relief. Pain eventually returned with the cover, too, but it was nowhere near as bad as the pain without the cover. So it appears that softer is better. At least for me.
The heat has also been a real challenge, and its effect becomes much greater toward the end of the day during the last twenty kilometers. That makes sense because I start riding as early as possible – before dawn – and that is when it is coolest. By the time I’m within twenty kilometers of my destination, it is the middle of the day, and the sun is beating straight down. Not to be too precious about it, but I’m constantly in awe of the fact that something that is ninety-three million kilometers away from me can feel so powerful. Just how hot is that darn sun?
A fun side to this is that you soon stop caring about a lot of things, such as your appearance or behavior. You really start to live outside. For example, when I passed any kind of water source, be it a hose or a waterfall beside the road, I’d pull over and douse my body. I’d dump water over my head until I was soaked through. You certainly don’t care if your hair gets mussed up or you get funny looks from people driving past. One technique I love is to simply peel off my shirt and soak it in the water and then put it back on dripping wet. Having that water evaporating against your skin is marvelous. One time, I pulled into a local car wash. I had been having trouble finding a water source, and I saw this guy washing cars with a hose. I pulled in, peeled off my shirt, and I asked the guy in sign language to spray my shirt. He didn’t understand at first and he ignored me, but then the manager came by and told the guy what to do. But what I didn’t notice or understand was that this guy wasn’t using a regular hose. He was using a pressure washer, and when he turned it on the shirt in my hands, it felt like he ripped the skin off. I had to look down to make sure that my thumbs were still attached. My hands were tingling for an hour or two after that experience. I learned never to do that again.
At long last, I arrived in the town of Tapak Tuan. I did not have any insider information about a place to stay. Indonesia is just a weird place as far as that goes. There is next to no backpacker activity in most of Sumatra, so no basic places with single rooms have popped up to service that group. And the truck drivers all seem to sleep in the cabs of their trucks, so no simple hotels for truck drivers have sprung up either (as there were many of in Ethiopia). That leaves hotels catering to richer Indonesian tourists and Indonesians traveling on business in their nice company cars. Those types of hotels are the baseline, unfortunately, and all the customers are clamoring for air conditioning, an included breakfast, cable TV, and nice beds, etc. And that drives the prices up. All of that means that I am usually left out in the cold. My concept of an acceptable amount to pay has been creeping up and up and up simply because I haven’t had a choice. Certainly compared to the Philippines or Vietnam or Thailand, the hotels in Indonesia are a very bad value, particularly as backpackers and foreign cyclists are concerned.
I stopped at the first hotel I came across in Tapak Tuan, and I was told that their cheapest rooms were about $30 a night. The clerk was helpful, however, and he told me about the various hotels in Tapak Tuan and which ones were expensive and which might have cheaper rooms. His advice was helpful because it led me to the old and rundown but cheap Panorama hotel. But he was also way off in terms of his prices. He said that the Panorama might have cheap rooms starting at around 150,000 rupiah ($10 US). But their official listing indicated that they had rooms for nearly one third of that: 55,000 rupiah ($4 US). When I saw that price, I doubted that it could be real, and I asked the hotel clerk to show me the room. I was very happy with what I saw. It was a dive, certainly. Everything in the room was old and worn or even broken. The beds consisted of a kind of hard padding on a wooden frame. You had to pay more if you wanted an actual box spring bed. But beyond that, the room was perfect. It had everything I needed: It was quite large. It had a working fan. And it had a window or two for some ventilation. The bathroom was a shared bathroom down the hall, and it was a bit dirty and that sort of thing, but it had a strong water supply. I confirmed that the room cost 55,000 rupiah, and I took it.
All-in-all, Tapak Tuan was looking like a great place for me. The town was as attractive as advertised with a very long and very beautiful waterfront. I passed some pleasant time there walking along the stone walls of the breakwaters and watching the ocean waves crash against them. It was a quiet town, too, and I could walk up and down the streets without any problem. I found a place to get my filtered water, and I quickly filled up my ten-liter water bag and all my bottles. There was even a very nice restaurant – one with doors, actual chairs and tables, menus with prices, and even a logical system for taking your order. It even had WiFi. On top of that, the food was good and the portions relatively large. I ended up staying in Tapak Tuan for two days and three nights and I ate my lunch at this restaurant on both days while cooking a meal in my room for dinner. I slept well in that room, and I took advantage of all that space to unpack all my gear and really spread it around to get it dry. There was enough room to string laundry lines and get all my clothing hung up to dry. I even unpacked my tent and was able to lay it out over the second bed to allow it to dry completely. Tapak Tuan and the Panorama hotel were exactly what I needed to recover after my five days of hard riding from Lake Toba.
Apparently, the coastal region around Tapak Tuan is good for surfing. I did not see anyone actually surfing or even a single surf board, but I did see a lot of potentially surfable waves, and one or two beachside businesses with the word “surf” in their names. Whether it is a surfing paradise or not, it was certainly a visual paradise, and I drank it all in eagerly when I set off on my bike after my two-day rest. I felt great as I hit the road. I had cleaned up all the damage done by the pathetic rain cover on my trailer. I had reorganized a lot of my gear to provide more protection from the elements. And a lot of the damage done to my body had been reduced. The bruising on my hands was still there, but it was far less severe and I was able to ride without too much pain. My butt had recovered to an extent. And my skin was adjusting more and more each day to the brutal sun. On top of that, there was no rain, and I could enjoy endless views of giant waves crashing against the shore. It was a glorious morning.
I was not feeling under a great deal of time pressure, and I had my eyes on a small city called Blang Pidie as my next destination. I did not know where I would be staying there, but when I zoomed in on Google Maps, a few losmen popped up, so it looked promising. It was a reasonable distance away at seventy-five kilometers. Once I factored in side trips, I’d probably end up covering eighty to eighty-five kilometers, and that was doable, especially as I was coming off two days of non-cycling. The first forty-four kilometers followed the coast exactly, and that was a very pleasurable part of the day. After that, the road cut inland and stayed somewhat inland until it reached Blang Pidie.
I found a very nice place to stay as soon as I arrived at the outskirts of the town. It had a large sign listing it as a guest house, and it wasn’t on Google Maps at all. The room they showed me was very nice, but the price was not in keeping with the tone. They wanted 250,000 rupiah a night. I’d noticed that a lot of these hotels actually have cheaper rooms, but they aren’t listed and they don’t tell me about them. I will often end up with a room with a private bath, but then as I wander around the hotel, I’ll see smaller, simpler rooms with a shared bath. Had I known about those rooms, I’d have taken one, but they never mention them. Even when I ask about cheaper rooms, they don’t bring them up. Anyway, 250,000 seemed particularly high after my happy dive, the Panorama, with rooms for 55,000. I got back on my bicycle and cycled away.
I can’t remember who told me about it now, but I had the name of a losmen that was supposed to be quite cheap. It was called the Fawwaz, and I liked the name. It had sass. I liked almost everything about the Fawwaz. It was conveniently located and I found it right away. It had an internal courtyard where I could park my bike easily. And the rooms were all on the ground floor, and I could roll my Cyclone trailer right into my room with ease. The room had a bathroom with good water pressure, and the room was a good size. In fact, the room was far more than I needed. It was larger than I needed. It had two beds, and I needed only one. And I didn’t really need my own bathroom. I was content with a shared bathroom. It would have been nicer to take this room, cut it in half and remove the bathroom and then cut the price in half, but that’s not how it works in Indonesia.
Despite all of the good qualities of this place, I looked a bit askance at it. It was quite worn down. The room had a nasty smell. And the woman who seemed to be the owner/manager was not exactly bursting with friendliness. I didn’t feel welcome. And I forget the price, but I remember feeling that it was too high. I eventually took the room and paid the inflated price because I realized that the Fawwaz had one big advantage over every other losmen in the city: I was standing in it. It’s possible, I could have found a losmen that was better for a cheaper price, but it would likely mean an hour of cycling around the city and searching – an hour that I would much rather spend unpacking, showering, getting water, and enjoying my hotel room. A great hotel room is not much use if you show up so late that you have no time to enjoy it.
Once I was settled in (a quite involved process considering all my electronics, mosquito net, and other gear), I set off on my bike to find water. I made a bit of an expedition out of it, and I rode around the city to take it all in. I liked the place overall. It didn’t have the oceanside beauty of Tapak Tuan, but there was a pleasant feeling to it with a large central mosque and expansive eating areas in parks. It looked to be a place I could enjoy if I stayed for while. Unfortunately, this was to be just a one-night stay for me.
I found a place to fill up my water bag. The young man was as confused as everyone when it came to charging me for my water, and he eventually settled on 2,000 rupiah. And that price is more than fair. I strapped the water bag to my rear pannier rack with bungee cords, and I set off for my hotel. Once there, I took another shower, and then I plugged in my lovely pink electric kettle to make a cup of instant coffee. I passed some time looking at the pictures I had taken that day and uploading a few of them to Instagram and Facebook.
The realities of cycling always make an appearance about this time. The large outdoor restaurants were calling out to me, and had I arrived in Blang Pidie by bus and felt rested and fresh, I’d have gone out for the evening and explored the town. But everything has a price, and riding my bike eighty-five kilometers to get there with many more kilometers to ride the next day, I was in the mood only to settle in to my room and go to bed early. I wanted to get an early start the next morning, and I couldn’t be out on the town until late. In any event, as pleasant as Indonesia is for a cyclist, it still isn’t easy. You are quite exposed out there on the roads with a lot of crazy traffic, honking horns, greetings, shouts, waves, and a blistering sun. After seven or eight hours of that, you start to feel a bit gun shy, and you don’t want to go out and expose yourself to all that again before you have to. It’s nice to have a hotel room where you can retreat and let down your guard and relax. I felt bruised all over – physically AND mentally – and I needed some time to recover.
