Last time we posted a blog we were at Jakarta airport. It was just before we decided that it was not worth it to go into the city and try to find a hotel in the middle of the night when we had to be back in 5 hours for our next flight. This, however, was the wrong decision. We first tried to sleep on the floor outside the departures terminal with all of the other people who didn’t think it was a good idea to get a hotel for the night. It was hot, loud and smelled like a bathroom, probably because we were about 50ft from the bathroom door. Next we decided to try another spot on some dirt/dead grass in the parking lot area. This was much better except for the vicious mosquitos that were determined to eat us alive and did a pretty good job of it. Haley ended up sleeping for about 90 minutes and I slept for maybe 30. Note to self: never sleep in airport parking lot again…ever.
After that, we flew to Padang and then took a minibus to Bukittinggi. When we finally got there, we had been traveling for 29 hours with almost no sleep and we were tired. We ate some food, walked through the market and went to take a nap around 2pm. We didn’t get up until 8am the next day. As usual, our expectations were not fulfilled upon arriving in this new place. We had 9 days before we were to catch a once-weekly flight from Padang to Nias via Palau Telo, and Bukittinggi did not look like a place we wanted to settle in. Mostly because we felt like we were residents in a zoo. During our first stroll through the crowded market everybody stared at us. Everybody. A lot. Haley was wearing a summer dress with spaghetti straps, which we thought might be the issue in a town where most people are Muslim, with the women wearing head coverings. After our extended rest we went outside with much less skin exposed and now only 99.9% of people stared, pointed, and discussed us amongst themselves. It was a bit awkward to just be stared at, so we started to say hello to people. We discovered that as soon as you say hello, almost every time the other person would smile big and return the greeting and instantly become super friendly asking your name, telling you theirs, asking where we were from, what we were doing, etc.
ever feel like someone is watching you?
getting ready for the national anthem
After a day of catch up and rest in town, we headed to Abdi Homestay in the Harau Valley about 2 hours away where we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary and our 1 year anniversary of this trip. Abdi has 4 basic (cold water scoop showers, plywood doors, etc.) but super sweet bungalows at the base of a waterfall and cliff. There is no electricity so each evening, our buddy Yoga would come by and light gas lanterns in our room, bathroom, and on our balcony – super romantic. Ikbal, the owner, and his wife Noni would follow about an hour later to deliver a delicious vegetarian dinner. We would eat our dinner by lamplight on our balcony and chat, while the geckos scrounged theirs from the insects drawn to the light of the lanterns. One evening, a huge but quick storm moved through the valley and we sat and watched and listened as lightning and thunder cracked and crashed, echoing back and forth against the cliff walls. Extremely cool.
rice patties in harau valley
Harau itself is really gorgeous – huge cliff faces, waterfalls, rice fields, gibbons, macaques, punky monkeys, and the tiniest bit of jungle not yet taken over by agriculture on the edges of the valley. The major downer was, as usual, trash and sucky development. There are all of these amazing waterfalls sprinkling down sheer cliffs but at the bottom they had built nasty ‘swimming’ pools and put shacks selling crap souvenirs and crap food and there is trash absolutely everywhere. Plastic bottles, styro foam containers, plastic bags – in huge quantities. It was one of the worst trash situations we had seen yet and we were pretty bummed. But Ikbal had told us there was one waterfall with no development, no trash, and no people. So the next day we were getting ready to head out to find that waterfall. Gabe went for an early walk to take some photos of our waterfall after the storm. And that’s when everything went to hell.
Our camera – brand new and delivered by Aunt Jo in August – stopped working (seemingly unrelated to my dropping it a month prior but who knows). I will spare you most of the details but we eventually left Harau early and headed back to get it fixed. Gabe took it apart and put it back together again 5 different times but was never able to get it working. So we had no camera from our second day in Harau up until our very last day in Bukittinggi (about 5 days) when we bought yet another camera. Before we left Harau, we did find the trashless, peopleless waterfall which was stunning – probably the best waterfall we have seen the whole year and we had it all to ourselves all afternoon. But we had no camera. We also rode a motorbike all through the different fingers of the valley which was gorgeous, but, again, no camera. We also saw a crazy mutant cat whose DNA got confused in vitro. He was exactly half orange and half black with a perfect line down his face and back. We had to stop and pat him and look him over to convince ourselves he wasn’t spray painted. But again, no camera.
our waterfall
Our return to Bukittinngi was the beginning of a stint of celebrity status, where we really felt like we had a first-hand experience of what famous people must feel like when they go out into public. Every day we were in Bukittinggi we were stopped at least 10 times for photos and autographs and requests for our facebook names – everyone arguing with each other and jockeying for a position right next to us, pushing each other out of the pictures so they could have one by themselves, asking if they could take just one more. Walking through the town square at night in search of dinner one night, we had to make a run for a back street before we starved to death – we had been stopped 4 times in 5 minutes by curious locals wanting to chat and take pictures. There were also several groups of students from nearby towns who had come to Bukittinggi on field trips in hopes of meeting and interviewing tourists. One evening, we were interviewed 5 different times and happened to run into the students’ teacher, Mr. Haris, who was not any less excited than his students to meet us. He basically begged us to come to his classroom the next day and given his town was on the way to Lake Mananijau, our plan for the next day anyway, we went. Our presence at the school and in the class created absolute mayhem. We did our best to teach two lessons on how to extend and accept or decline an invitation, and how to pay compliments, but I don’t think anybody learned anything. It was so loud, everyone was talking and pointing and taking pictures, and there were no fewer than 40 other students from other classes crowded around the windows and doors of the classroom, yelling and talking and being generally fascinated.
After promising Mr. Haris we would come to his house later that day to meet his family and have tea, we headed on to Lake Maninjau – a huge (17km x 10km) volcanic crater lake. We had an awesome time riding our motorbike on the backroads of the lake, through countless local villages, people’s fascination with our existence/presence rivaling and often beating that of the locals in Bukittinggi. We went to Mr. Haris’ house as promised for tea, met his lovely wife and their two children and graciously declined their invitation to change our itinerary and come stay at their house for a week. After Mr. Haris sent Gabe out to the main road on the motorbike and made me walk with him so he could show everyone he had friends from America, we said goodbye and headed back to town. It was a funny day.
The rest of our time in Bukittinggi was spent with students and in class. More photos and autographs on our second to last day led to downright pleading by a group of girls to come meet their classmates and teacher at the town fort. We sat under a tree on display for about an hour and a half surrounded by curious locals – students, teachers and randoms alike. We answered question after question, showed them pictures of our trip, handed out autographs and facebook names, and of course had our picture taken a million times. Our final day we went to yet another class at the invitation of the teacher, Mein. The students were ages 3-5 and were really cute. They sang songs and performed for each other in English and then we all headed to “Texas Fried Chicken” for Vania’s 5th birthday party. There we all got crowns, we sang songs, played silly games and ate cake. It was nothing short of adorable. That evening Mein and her 2-year old son Shadik (who really knew how to cry) treated us to dinner at a local Padang restaurant and we packed up for a 5:30 am departure to Asu the next day.
lake maninjau near bukittinggi
wahhh
hehehe
yay
Our trip to Asu was pretty smooth and took about 11 hours. We flew from Padang to Nias Island where we got a car to the other side of the island and then a boat to Asu. The car and boat went pretty much exactly as planned and were very straight forward. The flight was ridiculous and uber-sketchy and awesome. Here are the top reasons why:
- The airline is called NBA.
- To reserve a seat, they just write your name on a sign-up sheet. You don’t even have to pay until you show up to catch the flight.
- That concept was too scary for us given the flight is only once a WEEK, so we got to the airport extra early (3 hours). Good thing as when I happened to look at the tickets after we paid for them – at 7:45am, I noticed it said the flight was at 8:30am, not 10:50am. What about the schedule posted right on the ticket office window here that you referred us to last week?, we asked. Oh, that’s old. Ooooookay.
- Our tickets and boarding passes were hand-written.
- They weighed our luggage, our hand luggage, AND us.
- Our id’s were never checked – EVER.
- We put our bags on the belt to go through the scanner and decided to risk not emptying out our water bottle. Turned out to be no problem given the chair in front of the X-ray monitor was unoccupied.
- The information about our flight on the airport screens said it departed at yet a third and different time. Oh, that is because we haven’t told the airport about the new schedule yet, the sweet lady tells us.
- When the flight was ready to go, the guy who checked us in came around the waiting room and collected passengers in person. “ Time to go”, he said. “Wait here, we all go together.”
- The plane looked about 50 years old, the cabin was not pressurized, ear protectors were on each seat, and the crew said precisely nothing before take-off much less gave a safety briefing.
- The windowframe was held on by velcro.
- The pilots were smoking during the flight.
- The flight “computer” was nothing more than a Garmin GPS mounted near the gearshift.
- The pilots were grinning and celebrating and gave each other a big thumbs up after we landed successfully the first time (we had a stopover on another island). Gabe was pretty sure it was one of their first few solo landings ever.
I feel pretty excited that we made it to Nias alive and despite having had a blast on the flight and having arrived totally safely, I would not recommend you take NBA Airlines, ever. I think we were pretty lucky. So now we are settling in to life at Asu Surf Camp which is absolutely amazing so far. And I say that despite having arrived with an intense flu/fever and having been in bed/the hammock since we arrived yesterday. Earl is taking care of some boat business back on Nias. Gabe and Sam are out on the wave in front of the camp right now which I can see from the hammock. The weather is gorgeous and the surf conditions look perfect. I am trying to heal up so I can get out of bed/ the hammock and go in search of the litter of seven 6-week old puppies that are at the camp. It’s great to be with our good friends Earl and Sam again. I think we are really going to like it here. More soon.
first sunset on Asu
Sam and Earl at the beach at sunset
Love,
Haley and Gabe
Other notes:
Haley wrote most of this blog and Gabe removed 1 ‘outrageously’, 2 ‘ridiculous’ and then gave up on that plan.
Our second hotel in Bukittinggi was directly next to a mosque that was very loud. Especially at 4:30am.
For one of the few times on our trip, our expectations were exceeded when we arrived at Asu and again when we were served dinner at Asu Surf Camp.
The Bukittinggi zoo is bad.
There are not many tourists in Bukittinggi or Harau Valley or anywhere around here.
Happy birthday everyone whose birthday it was recently….Jarod, Jordy, Nicole, Willa, Tara, Zoe Rubin, Zoe Hameed, and Benji whose birthday it is today – in Europe anyway – even though this blog is going to be post-dated. We love you all so very much.
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