The adventure continues..

Janet mentions in the About page that she prefers to have a plan, and I prefer to fly by the seat of my pants. Well, it's just me now, and I think I've forgotten what plan means. I am planning to fly out of Jakarta next week before my visa expires, planning to get there by bus, and planning to stop at several towns along the way to see the southern half of Sumatra where no one can speak English and there is no tourist infrastructure. That's where the plan ends.

On Sunday I wanted to leave Bukittinggi and head south, but I didn't decide where to go until the afternoon. I looked at a map and decided that the capital "city" of Bengkulu, Sumatra's most isolated province, would be my destination. Unfortunately the once-daily bus from Bukit to Bengkulu had already departed. So I decided to hop on a bus and head two hours south to the provincial capital, Padang, in hopes that there would be a bus leaving for Bengkulu. There wasn't.

The driver dropped me off somewhere in Padang, and I hopped on the first minibus that said it was heading to the terminal (the Indonesian word for bus station). When I got there, I realized that it was the local bus terminal and there were only minibuses there. By now it was already dark, so I started asking other minibus drivers if they were heading to the "terminal to Bengkulu." Apparently there is no long-distance bus terminal in Padang, and each bus leaves from its company's office. One driver was really nice, and he stopped off at several of the agents and inquired about a bus to Bengkulu for me, all while his bus was full of passengers. Eventually it became apparent that there were no buses to Bengkulu that leave that late. It's so far away that the night buses leave earlier in the day. At this point a college student sitting near me who couldn't speak much English said that I could come stay with him, so of course I accepted!

The student, Rahmat, lives with four of his classmates. They were all really nice, and one of them spoke better English than I speak Indonesian, but most of the talking was in Indonesian. First we got some dinner and brought it back to the house. After eating, they made some coffee and the four of us played dominoes, ate Durian, and drank coffee. The teams were Rahmat and I verses two of the other guys. I feel bad for Rahmat, because they are all clearly very good and our team lost every time. I guess my dominoes skills are lacking. There was a punishment for losing - the winning team smears coffee grinds on the losing team's face.

The losing team.

The boys.

They also taught me that Durian and coffee go well together. You drop a chunk of Durian in your coffee, and it gives the coffee a nice flavor. When you finish you coffee, the Durian is coffee-flavored. Yum.

I am one of the few Durian-eating bule out there.

Later that night we watched a martial arts movie that was made in Bukittinggi. The movie was surprisingly good. The plot resembled a Bruce Lee movie, and I understood everything that was happening even though I only understood 3% of the dialog (no subtitles). I guess dialog isn't too important in that type of movie.

The next morning, after they insisted on treating me to a Padang breakfast favorite, we headed to the beach. At the beach we saw local men "fishing." Groups of about 10 men were pulling on a rope that went endlessly into the sea. I imagine at the end of the rope is a net full of fish. I was encouraged to join in, so I spent a couple of minutes as an Indonesian fisherman.



After that we went to a bus agent, and I jumped on a bus to Bengkulu that left at 10 AM. It was over an hour before we left Padang because the bus just drove around picking up more passengers. These buses refuse to go until they're almost full. Finally, at 6 AM the next morning, I arrived in Bengkulu! The hotel I'm staying at is supposed to be very popular with backpackers. I asked one guy how many bule (white people) come through per month, and he said two or three at most.