The next major stop on my route was the somewhat major city of Meulaboh. I think Meulaboh is the largest city on the coast before you reach Banda Aceh. The distance from Blang Pidie to Meulaboh was a bit too much for one day of riding at one hundred and twenty kilometers. I could have done it, but there was no real advantage to riding all of that in one day. And after scanning Google Maps, I saw that there was a losmen located in the oddly named town of Alue Bilie. The fact that Google Maps said there was a losmen there was no guarantee, but it was worth a shot. Alue Bilie was fifty-two kilometers away, and I would likely get there before noon. I could look for this losmen and check it out. If it existed and it was acceptable, I could spend the night there, leaving a relatively comfortable seventy to eighty kilometers to cover the next day to reach Meulaboh, where I planned to take another rest day.
The ride to Alue Bilie was pleasant, as it skirted the edges of the mountains and went over multiple jungly rivers coming down from those mountains and heading to the ocean. It was the rivers that made the biggest impression on me, and I stopped on all the bridges to take in the scenery and ponder what kind of creatures lived in the water. I never did see anything, but the rivers were clearly wide enough and deep enough to provide a home for any number of large creature. There wasn’t much human activity on the rivers. I saw almost no boats of any kind and few homes or even men fishing along the shores. They looked serene and untouched, but, of course that was something of an illusion. I’d noticed on my ride that the rivers and the ocean were treated by many of the local people as a floating garbage dump. In Tapak Tuan, I was startled one day when a mother with her nine-year-old boy passed by on a scooter. She drove right to the edge of the ocean, and then with a powerful series of swings, tossed three bags of garbage into the water. I knew it wasn’t my place to add any editorial commentary, but I couldn’t help myself, and when the woman drove past me, I gave her an astonished look and imitated her throwing motion. I was basically trying to communicate “What the heck did you just do?” with sign language. I was chastising her. On top of that, I saw multiple people come out of their homes, walk over to the river, and toss bags of garbage into the water. This happened all the time, and they did it in a manner that implied that this was their daily routine. I’m sure it was emotionally satisfying to them because the water was usually flowing very strongly, and the bags of garbage would float on top of the water and then be swept away and out of sight. But all that garbage had to go somewhere. And I guess it eventually went out to the ocean where it contributed to the massive floating islands of plastic we keep hearing and reading about.
I reached Alue Bilie in a fairly short time. As a town, it was little more than a widening of the road, but it was somewhat bustling. And the losmen really did exist. I first came across the sign for the place. The sign read Losmen Bg Igur. I looked around, and I didn’t see anything that looked like a losmen. There was a rundown house of some kind with a young man lounging in a chair out front. There was a gravel road that went over a big metal platform where trucks were weighed. And that was it. I rode along the gravel road and over the platform (while wondering how much my bike weighed) and found nothing out back but a gravel parking area. I concluded that this house had to be the losmen, and I returned to the front and approached the young man. He confirmed that this unimposing structure was the Bg Igur. I went inside and walked around the place to check it out. There was a desk right inside the doorway, but no one was there. The whole place was empty, in fact, and I was able to walk from end to end through all the rooms without seeing anyone.
It was a strange place, to put it mildly. The front area was a large room with an assortment of vinyl sofas and junk strewn about. It could have passed for a living room. The large room behind that was a utility area with some old motorcycles – kind of like a garage. And here and there along the hallway walls were bright purple curtains. I pushed aside one of the curtains, and I found that behind each curtain was a door. These had to be losmen rooms. From the decor and the location and the tone, I suspected this place served largely as a house of ill repute. What other place would choose bright purple curtains like that?
I knew that the next stop was to shout for someone or go around and bang on doors until I rousted the owner or manager. But I’m never very good at that. So I decided to just sit down and wait until someone showed up. While I sat, I heard the sound of a TV coming from a room situated opposite the desk. I concluded that the owner/manager had to be in there, but I was reluctant to bother them. I sat for a while, catching my breath and letting the sweat dry on my body. I began to realize that I could probably sit there all day and no one would show up, so I went outside to the young man sitting on the chair, and I asked him about the place. He got up and banged on the door with the TV sound and shouted something about “kamar”. Kamar means room, so I guess he was saying that a customer was there and wanted a room.
A somewhat unkempt and frazzled woman came out of the room and was suitably startled to see me. I don’t imagine that in her lifetime she has soon too many foreigners at her place. The room she showed me was extremely odd. The bordello decor continued on the inside with more bright purple curtains and a very large bed with equally bright sheets. The bed took up 80% of the room, but there was a wardrobe of sorts in the corner. This wardrobe had seen better days and all the doors had been ripped off and were leaning against the wall. Large cobwebs hung down from the ceiling everywhere I looked, and large stains covered everything else. The room had its own bathroom, its door also hidden behind a purple curtain. The bathroom was more of a closet. It was impossible to go inside and then close the door easily. The only way to do so was to insert your body deep as possible in the farthest corner with your feet wedged between the toilet and the water tank. And then if you hugged the wall and sucked in your gut, you could just barely swing the door past and close it behind you. The bathroom in general and the water tank in particular was full of cockroaches, crickets, and other creatures. Those in the water tank were dead and floating on top of the water.
The room did not make a great impression on me, to put it mildly. However, it did have its positive qualities. For one thing, it existed. That is the greatest quality any hotel can have. It was certainly the only hotel or losmen in the one hundred and twenty kilometers between Blang Pidie and Meulaboh. If I wanted to stay indoors, this was the only game in town. Plus, it had an air conditioner. And judging from the coolness I noticed coming out of a different room, it had a fair chance of actually working. The price for the room was 150,000 rupiah. I guess for a room with a private bath and air conditioning, that is reasonable. But as I scanned the cobwebs, dirt, and stains, and contemplated the sea of dead crickets floating on the water in the tank, it seemed a bit high. It seemed like the place people came to die, and I hemmed and hawed, but I finally took it. I’ve certainly stayed in worse places. It wasn’t the dirt and the spider webs and bugs that bothered me per se. It was just the price. This felt like a room for 100,000 rupiah at most, not 150,000 rupiah. But that could just be my personal prejudices. For Indonesians leaving comments on hotel rooms in Google Maps, 350,000 and 500,000 rupiah was considered cheap. From their point of view, 150,000 rupiah must be a bargain.
I ended up being quite glad I took the room. As I mentioned, I’m perfectly happy living in squalor. I’ve done it many times. And once I got over the pain of handing over 150,000 rupiah, I was content. I was even happy because the air conditioner, weak as it was, was effective, and I could feel the temperature of the room dropping and dropping. A key feature of that is not the low temperature per se but the reduced humidity. You don’t know how much the sopping wet air is affecting you and your gear until you suddenly have an air conditioner sucking the moisture out of the air and drying the place out. The place becomes much more comfortable as your skin dries and all your gear dries.
Once I had unpacked and settled in, I set off on my bike to explore the town. There wasn’t much to see, to be honest, but there were some restaurants, and I stopped at a tiny place and ordered mie goreng. Everyone around here insists on calling it Mie Goreng Aceh, but I don’t know what is special about it to make it a regional Aceh dish. I spent much of the rest of the day reading a book in my air conditioned bordello.
I spent time also looking at maps to plan my ride to Meulaboh, and I was delighted to see that there was a small local road that went the entire distance. I had thought I’d have to ride on the main road all the way to Meulaboh. That wouldn’t have been too bad because the traffic is quite light, but the road is inland away from the ocean and looked to be passing through massive oil palm plantations. That would be fine but edging on the monotonous as far as cycling goes. But this local road cut away right after Alue Bilie and followed a winding river straight down to the ocean. Then it turned and followed the ocean closely all the way to Meulaboh. I guessed that taking that route would add a few kilometers and perhaps a couple hours to my ride, but I didn’t mind that, especially since I knew that Meulaboh would have a wide selection of hotels to choose from. It’s a large enough city that it would likely offer other luxuries like an Indomaret with cold drinks. With a comfortable home like that waiting for me, a long day is not such a hardship.
I woke up as early as possible the next morning, and I was very happy to find out that I wasn’t locked inside the losmen. The door to the outside world was closed and locked, but the key was still inserted in the door, and I was able to get out without waking anyone. This had been the same at the Losmen Fawwaz, and I was able to unlock the door myself and get out. That was a nice change from other countries where I constantly found myself locked in as if in a prison, not a hotel.
I think I was on the road and pedaling around 6:20, and it was still dark and very cool. The turn-off to the local road was about five kilometers past Alue Bilie, and I got there after a pleasant time watching the sun rise over the mountains. I happened to be passing over a very wide river just at the moment the sun first peaked over the mountains, and I broke my general rule about never photographing sunrises, sunsets, feet, footprints, or waterfalls.
The road alongside the river was every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped. I passed multiple small villages with all the children on their way to school. Everyone greeted me, as usual, and there was tons of interesting scenery to absorb. My one frustration was that I passed so many people that I wanted to photograph. People – especially the elderly – were out front of their houses sitting on benches. I wanted to take pictures of all of them, but it wasn’t really possible as I zipped along on my bike.
I decided early on to really relax on this day and not worry about when or even if I would get to Meulaboh. I wanted to live on the road rather than treat the road as something to complete to get to a destination. That worked out quite well, as I stopped whenever I was tired and I saw a nice place to get a cup of coffee. I didn’t even think about it or worry that I was wasting time. I just followed my instincts and stopped whenever I felt like it. These places offering coffee were often on the side of bridges, and they gave nice views of the river. I’d enjoy my coffee, chat with local people, and occasionally read from my Kindle.
I kept my eyes open for roads leading right to the edge of the ocean, and I soon found a promising spot. I crossed over a bridge, and right below me was a small fishing harbor on the river. And beyond that, I could see massive ocean waves crashing on a beach. After checking out the fishing boats, I rode my bike down a road that turned into a path and eventually led to a wide and wild beach. I pushed my bike through the compacted sand as far as I could until I felt it was in a safe place. My new trailer and handlebar bag system came into its own here because I was able to change into my swimming trunks and go into the water without worrying too much about the safety of my gear. I had a lock on the zipper of my trailer and a lock was built into my handlebar bag. I also had locks on the zippers of my two pannier bags, and unless a thief had the strength of Hercules and could pick up my entire trailer and run away with it, everything was as safe and secure as could be expected.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I have a tendency to not do something if it feels like too much trouble. And I have to train myself to ignore those feelings. I think I wrote about this a little bit already as it relates to camping in my tent and not bothering with taking a shower because it seems like too much trouble. But when I do make the effort, I find that it takes just a few minutes, and I feel so much better. The same goes for things like taking a swim in the ocean. There I was standing on the beach in the hot sun with my bicycle at my side. And the obvious thing to do is go for a swim. However, my instinct is not to do it because it seems like too much trouble. But on this day, I ignored that instinct and I went for a swim. This involved removing all my clothes and changing into my swimming trunks. I was a bit worried about that because Aceh is fundamentalist Muslim, and I didn’t want to get in trouble for nudity on a beach. But there was no one in sight anywhere, and I was able to block any offending views of my body with my bicycle. I also made sure to make the switch as fast as possible.
All of this took some time and effort. I had to prepare my clothes, put away my glasses and sunglasses, lock everything up and make sure it was all secure. But once I was padding down the sand and into the heavy waves, it became clear that it was all worth it and more. I didn’t dare go out too far because the waves were massive, and there was clearly the chance of being pulled out to sea by the retreating water. I didn’t know if there really was a rip tide or an undertow capable of pulling me under, but I saw no need to take stupid chances. I stayed close to shore and I made sure not to get distracted and get pulled too far out. The waves were so big that I could be standing in water up to maybe the top of my ankle, and then a wave could come in, and I’d be in water up to my chest and even shoulders. When that volume of water went back out, there was little chance of fighting it. It just pulled me off my feet and swept me away. I anticipated the really big waves like that and I let them carry me towards shore, and when I felt the momentum slowing and then reversing, I’d put down my feet and do my best to hold my position. If I just stayed in one place and let the water go past me and back, there would be no chance of holding my own. I had to let the wave first carry me to shore and then plant my feet.
It was glorious being in the ocean and experiencing those waves. The scenery could not have been better. The beach didn’t have the tropical picture-perfect postcard glamour of beaches in the Philippines. It was more wild and unkempt, but the wildness came with its own style of beauty. It was one of those moments where you could really appreciate where you were: on an empty beach in wild Sumatra.
By the time I emerged from the ocean, I had a small audience of three or four people who had heard about the crazy foreigner fighting the waves. This made changing out of my wet shorts and into my cycling attire a bit more complicated, but it wasn’t that a big deal. My audience had stayed relatively far away because they had the sense to stay in the shade of some palm trees. And this time, I simply wrapped my towel around my waist before I pulled down my shorts. Then I kept the towel in place as I pulled up regular shorts. It worked a treat.
I have to say that the road felt brain-scorchingly, mind-numbingly hot once I had gotten back on my bicycle after the cool water and fresh wind of the ocean. My memory of that dip in the ocean was so pleasant and so strong that when, roughly twenty kilometers before Meulaboh, I had the chance to check out another such wild beach, I took advantage of it and went in for another swim. On top of that, I stopped at a couple of places to order an avocado iced smoothie. And then I stopped for lunch at a rather nice place I found. When I finished my lunch and went to the toilet, I found that the toilet room was quite large. I took advantage of that to once again strip off all my clothes and douse my body from head to toe with water from the water tank. I was turning into a wild man who whipped off his clothes and dumped water on his head at every single opportunity. I had to do this to survive in that heat.
As has been the pattern, the final twenty kilometers were more difficult than I expected or hoped. Perhaps the utter joy of the ocean dips and the avocado smoothies was wearing off, and the unrelenting sun and the pounding pain in my butt was taking ascendance. Whatever was going on, the last few kilometers were hard, and I found myself taking any excuse I could to pull over in some shade and check Google Maps or adjust something on the bike – anything to take my butt off that painful seat and reset for another kilometer or two.
Sometimes when you reach a new town, things just go well. Things fall into place. Towns just click right from the start. Other times, I feel like a town and I get off on the wrong foot. And that is what happened with Meulaboh. Things just went wrong and once they started to go wrong, they continued to go wrong. I just couldn’t find my footing. Despite Google Maps, I got all mixed up and confused. I couldn’t find any of the hotels listed. I rode aimlessly up and down streets over and over again. Google Maps said that the hotel was right there, but there would be nothing there. And the main streets were all designated one-way – a very annoying trend in Indonesian towns. And the biggest main street had a large cement divider in the middle, effectively cutting you off from the other side. I’m sure all these one-way streets and dividers is meant to alleviate traffic congestion and increase safety, but I’m willing to bet it does neither of those things. All it means is that people drive the wrong way on the wrong side. All it does is make navigating a city like Meulaboh extremely frustrating and difficult. It’s impossible to go anywhere because you are constantly facing one of these dividers or a one-way street.
I did manage to find one potential home for the night. This was the Aiva Losmen, and it looked very promising. It was new and big and bright. The rooms were all on the ground floor with easy access. Every room had air conditioning and a private bathroom. From the pictures, they looked new and cheerful with nice beds and clean sheets. And the price for the basic room was 170,000 rupiah. That was an extremely good value for Indonesia. 170,000 per night is more than I wanted to pay, but for a room like that, I’d gladly pay it. After all, I had just paid 150,000 for a disgusting bug-filled dive. An extra 20,000 on top of that for all that extra stuff is amazing. But, since this was unlucky Meulaboh, all those rooms were taken. My only option for the Aiva was to jump up to the 350,000-rupiah-a-night option. And that was too much for me.
I went looking for another losmen, but no matter how much time I spent looking, I couldn’t find it. It was so frustrating. And the local people were unable to help me at all. I was told much later that this losmen wasn’t even in Meulaboh. It was located in another city entirely, and its marker on Google Maps was a mistake. In the middle of this search, I came across a sign for another losmen. The sign indicated that it was three hundred and fifty meters down a side road. I rode up and down that side road as far as a kilometer, but I never could find this losmen.
Meulaboh was wearing me down and wearing me out and I could feel my stress level and frustration rising and rising. And then I had a stroke of luck. I was riding up one of the local roads when a young Indonesian man on a scooter stopped to talk to me. I could tell instantly that he was a special type of person. For one thing, his English was quite good, and he spoke it in a natural way. He was also very comfortable with me, and he seemed to understand instantly what I was all about. Most Indonesians have no idea what to make of me. I might as well be an alien from a distant galaxy as far as they are concerned. But this guy clearly had spent time with foreigners. He seemed westernized to an extent, and when I said things, he instantly understood what I meant. He knew what a backpacker was and what a backpacker was looking for in accommodation. He said he couldn’t promise anything, but he knew about a losmen that was nearby, and he could guide me there.
I quickly agreed, and I followed behind him as he rode his scooter through a series of local roads and alleyways. And in a short time, we arrived at what became my home: the Losmen Mustika Sari. It turned out that this was the very same losmen that the sign was for. The problem was that the losmen was NOT, as the sign indicated, three hundred and fifty meters up the signposted road. It was located two hundred meters up that road and then one hundred and fifty yards to the right down another side street. In other words, you had to go up that road and then turn right, but there was no sign at the corner to indicate that you had to turn. So I just went up and down and up and down the first road and never saw it.
For some reason, I didn’t feel particularly welcome at the Losmen Mustika Sari. There was a rigid, stiff, and cold feeling to the place and to the people running it. The lobby for example, was not welcoming at all. It was simply a giant square space with cold tile and some vinyl sofas off to the right. It felt like the entrance to a church or a mosque instead of a hotel. It felt institutional. There were the usual portraits of a range of people around the walls. I always assumed these were the owners of the hotels, and they tended to pose with the grimmest facial expressions and the least friendly body posture, as if they were reminding you that they were the boss, the owner, and you better behave.
The woman at the front desk was not unfriendly, but I wouldn’t say that she was friendly either. She looked at me almost with terror – like a deer caught in the headlights. Over my time at the Losmen Mustika Sari, I tried to break the ice with the various women running the place, but they never met me halfway. They simply stared at me with wide eyes and appeared to be waiting for me to go away. It didn’t help that they were in full Islamic garb. That always makes me nervous as I’m afraid of offending their sensibilities by just being a hairy male from across the sea, by just existing as myself. It’s hard to get comfortable when you realize that everything about their life right down to the clothing they are wearing is meant to limit and control their contact with men.
But setting aside the somewhat cold and unwelcoming tone of the place, I happily took a room. The economy room cost 100,000 rupiah a night, and to my surprise, that included a private bathroom. When we discussed the rooms at the front desk, I understood that the cheapest rooms all had a shared bath. To get my own bathroom, they said, I’d also have to spring for air conditioning and a TV and all the other things I don’t need or have any use for. But when they showed me the cheaper room, I found out that this wasn’t true. The room was quite large (though most of the floor space was taken up with a king-sized bed), had a table and plastic chair, a fan on the roof, and a small but functional bathroom. There were no windows on three of the high cement walls, but there was a window out into the hallway beside the door. I quickly learned that with the door and window closed, the room got quite muggy and uncomfortable. But since the hotel as a whole was open to the outside world, if I cracked open the window and left the door open a little, I got a nice air flow and the room cooled down.
I happily took the room, paid my 100,000 rupiah ($7 US), and began to move in. I felt a bit weird moving in because I wasn’t sure how the women would feel about me trundling across the immaculate tile floor with my trailer and bike. I wasn’t allowed to wear outside shoes in the lobby, after all, so what does that mean for rubber tires? I decided to take it slow, and I brought in my handlebar bag and pannier bags and water bottles all separately. I figured this gave the women a chance to get used to me and the strange things I’d be bringing into the room. Then, after taking a deep breath, I brought in the trailer. I don’t know if this caused any unhappiness, but at least no one shouted at me and no one got upset. I planned on using my bike to run some errands, so I left it locked up outside for the moment. I figured I wouldn’t spring my bike on them until they’d had a chance to recover from the sight of my trailer.
The young man who had helped me find the losmen invited me to join him and his friends down at the beach later to watch the sunset. I really couldn’t do it, though. I was far too tired to even think about going out, and I still needed to unpack and find water and rinse out my clothes and a dozen other things. The most important errand was to find water. I asked about the location of a water purification company, but no one could help me. I ended up cycling all over Meulaboh and battling once more with those infuriating one-way streets and cement dividers, but I couldn’t find one. I eventually gave up and I headed back to the hotel intending to just buy bottles of water from a local shop to get me through the night. However, just before I reached the Losmen Mustika Sari, I found a water depot. It was about three doors down from the losmen. They were neighbors, and yet no one knew this or was able to tell me about it. That’s a perfect example of how local informants are generally of little help.
I intended to spend a day in Meulaboh. I’d only ridden three days to get there, but even those three days had taken a toll on my body, and I needed at least a day to recover. My losmen is far from the coast, but there appeared to be a nice coastal area attached to the city, and I intended to ride my bike down there and do some exploring. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain the next morning and the rain continued for quite some time. Meulaboh continued to present a difficult face. I went out in my rain jacket to find something to eat, but things just didn’t work out. I didn’t care much what I ate. I just wanted to find a little restaurant where I felt welcome and where I could get some food with little fuss. But Meulaboh just isn’t that kind of town. I went into restaurant after restaurant, and people all reacted like they’d just seen a terrible traffic accident. Nobody could relax around me, and nobody would meet me halfway in terms of the language barrier and help me to get across it. They largely ran away or just laughed and made jokes with the people around them. This felt strange because I hadn’t had this experience in Indonesia up until now. And I started to get a little stressed out and little bit annoyed.
One thing that annoyed me was the common practice of having signs for products that they did not provide or sell. This is a common thing in Indonesia. Just because a shop has a big sign that reads “Fotocopy” plastered over the front means nothing. They might have a photocopier or they might not. The signs are not that relevant or helpful. Chances are they had a photocopier ten years ago, but they don’t have it anymore, and they just never bothered to take down the giant Fotocopy sign. The same applies to restaurants. It’s difficult to order food when you don’t know what kind of food is even available. So it’s handy if a restaurant has a big sign that reads “Mie Pancit” or “Nasi Goreng.” Then at least I know what they have. And if they don’t understand what I say, I can just point to the sign and the picture. But in Meulaboh, none of the restaurants actually made any of the food that they advertised. It was so frustrating. I finally decided to just settle for mie goreng. It isn’t the most exciting or filling meal, and it probably isn’t even that great an idea because it is very spicy, and my stomach can’t handle spice. I found a series of little shops that clearly had noodles in the display along with all the ingredients for mie goreng. They had big signs out front saying Mie Goreng. But when I went in and asked for Mie Goreng, they’d tell me that they didn’t have it. I remember at one place, I brought the serving staff outside so that I could point at something else on the sign. I don’t even know what the dishes were, to be honest, but they all started with the word mie, which means noodles. So I figured I couldn’t go wrong with most of them. The first was mie goreng, and they told me they didn’t have that. So I went down the sign and pointed to all the other items on the list. There was mie kerang and four other items starting with mie. I pointed to them all in return, but they said no, no, no, to all of them. And this was the only sign in the place. And it was a big, brand new sign.
I admit I got a bit annoyed at this point. I’m sure they had no clue what I was talking about, but I said in English something about how it made no sense to have a big sign when you don’t actually sell or make any of the dishes on the sign. With body language, I indicated how they should remove the sign and throw it away. They just smiled and laughed nervously. These poor people just happened to be getting the full brunt of the frustration that had been building up in me for months over the meaningless signs. I left that place, and I continued walking down the street in the pouring rain with cars and motorbikes blasting their horns at me. There was nowhere to walk except out in the street with the traffic, and I started to dislike Meulaboh more and more and more. I just was not having a good experience in this town. I eventually found a little place that appeared to have the ingredients for mie goreng and the woman working there said yes when I asked for mie goreng. That was all well and good, but the seating was uncomfortable. A cold rain sprinkled over my table no matter where I sat. And since it was outdoors, as all restaurants were, I was constantly fighting off flies. On top of that, the portion of mie goreng I got was very small. It was, at best, a quarter of a meal for me.
Later in the afternoon, I became hungry again, and I went out for a second lunch. Unfortunately, my second lunch was even worse than my first. I had seen a big outdoor restaurant that appeared to specialize in chicken in the form of ayam penyet. I thought I could use some protein after so many days of noodles and rice. But this place was terrible. I ordered ayam penyet, and the piece of chicken I got was so small and so thin that it was barely there. They tried to disguise that fact by piling on tons of sauce. There was almost no chicken under the sauce. And the rice it came with was a child’s portion. Yet it was expensive. And being outside, I had to continue to fight with the flies. This restaurant felt like a sucker’s game. It was clearly a chain of some kind and they made their money from looking convenient but serving measly portions. It is not a place I would ever return to. Terrible value.
As I walked away from the ayam penyet nightmare, I decided it was time to take back control of my life. I went to the one place I can almost always count on: Indomaret. I bought a liter of full cream milk, spaghetti, and a bag of meat-based bolognese spaghetti sauce. That was going to be my dinner. When I got back to my hotel room, I cracked open the liter of milk and downed three quarters of it in one long, amazing drink. I felt energized and alive afterwards. THAT’s food! Then later on, I fired up my Trangia stove and boiled a huge man-sized portion of spaghetti. Over top of that, I poured a massive amount of meaty spaghetti sauce. It was AMAZING. I felt full and satisfied in a way that I hadn’t for days.
I forgot to mention that my main task for the morning had been to book flights for my next visa run. Things were coming down to the wire, and I had to book the flights right away. I was extremely nervous about this because something always goes wrong, and because I wasn’t sure of my plans, I had waited until the last minute to book the flight to Kuala Lumpur. At first things didn’t look good. My visa expired on August 5, and one flight for that day was already sold out. The second one still had seats, but they were really expensive. However, there were still reasonable prices on flights on August 4. That meant I would lose a day, but I had no choice. When I first went through the process of booking the flight, Visa denied the payment. And I was so annoyed. I figured I’d have to call CIBC and sort out all the problems once again. But before I did that, I decided to try one more time, and I pushed on the “pay now” button again. I held both my hands high in the air with fingers crossed. And to my joy, the payment seemed to go through, and I confirmed the flight. With that done, I figured I might as well book the return flight. I had nothing to do in Kuala Lumpur, so there was no reason to hang out there for long. I probably should have booked my return for the same day. I never thought of it before, but if my flights were timed just right, I could land, go through the airport, turn around and fly right back. Then I wouldn’t even have the expense of a trip into KL from the airport. But I would be nervous that returning so quickly would send up red flags. And I don’t mind staying in KL a bit.
Booking flights online was such a stressful experience. At every stage, there seemed to be some kind of problem. Even the AirAsia website had a system where I had to swipe a bar on the screen to indicate that I wasn’t a robot. But it wouldn’t work. I swiped and swiped and swiped with my mouse but it failed each time and asked me to do it again. Then I had the idea of using my finger. My laptop’s screen is a touch screen. So I used my finger, and it worked. That was a relief. And after being rejected by Visa the first time, my next two transactions seemed to go through. At least the flight was confirmed and I was able to check in and print out my boarding passes.
But this morning, when I turned on my phone, the first thing I got was an email from CIBC Visa about a fraud alert and how a transaction had been declined. And it said I should contact the bank right away to clear this up, etc. But I didn’t know what this meant. Was this an automated message in response to the first attempt that was declined? Or had they retroactively canceled the later transactions that appeared to be successful? There was no way to know. I intended to call CIBC to figure this out, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I didn’t want to begin my second day in Meulaboh with that level of stress.
I had gone to bed pretty early not entirely sure if I was going to stay in Meulaboh for one more day or leave in the morning. But when I got up, it was pouring rain out there again. Plus, during the night, I began to suffer from one of my usual bouts of stomach problems. I was in a lot of pain for a long time. So I was in no mood to pack up and leave. I don’t have a lot of extra days before my flight on August 4, but it should be okay. Let me do another quick calculation:
It is approximately 250 kilometers from Meulaboh to Banda Aceh. Assuming relatively easy days of fifty kilometers each, I would only need five cycling days to get there. (Though that includes 5,300 feet of climbing). It’s probable that I will cover that distance in four days. And, assuming I arrive in Banda Aceh on August 2, I will have one or two rest days in the middle. The problems are twofold – finding an affordable place to stay in Banda Aceh, and finding a place to leave my bicycle. All of the hotels in Banda Aceh seem to be even more expensive than in other cities. I suspect this is partially a lingering effect of the tsunami relief effort. Prices always skyrocket when there is a disaster and NGOs and relief agencies come to town. They have deep pockets, and prices start to go up, and they remain there even after the disaster is over.
