November 2011
22 posts
1 tag
Chubba the cat with six toes (maybe seven).
We thought the night bus from Banda Aceh to Medan couldn’t have been worse than the one up – how wrong we were! I won’t go into too much detail as it was awful but we’re pretty lucky to be alive to tell the tale – Dave stayed awake all night just to make sure the driver stayed on the road – we’d made the mistake of sitting at the front of the bus and it was like being in some extreme simulator, I...
1 tag
Humbling Banda Aceh (north Sumatra, the most...
I have to admit that I think, initially, the main pull to Aceh for us, was Pulau Weh – the alleged cherry on the cake for travellers in Sumatra.
However, after several days there, despite meeting some fantastic people, I began to let my mind wander and my interest became drawn to Banda Aceh, the town where our raining bus spat us out for the ferry to the island.
Having been to Sumatra in 2000, I...
1 tag
Pulau Weh to go
Our adventure here started with a Mexican standoff which was really funny. There were a lot of people on the boat across who had presumably got different buses or arrived the day before. The touts were whipping themselves up into a frenzy trying to herd people into their minibuses. Dave, Sam and I were shocked to hear that a 40 minute journey was going to cost 50,000 rupiah each – the same price...
1 tag
The bus that rained
So, three of us (Dave, Sam and I) having decided to go to Roy’s for some live music ended up getting to bed somewhere around 4am, which would have been fine except we were leaving Lake Toba the next morning…and still had to pack.
Bizarrely, I woke up naturally at 9am and didn’t feel too hideous and so begins the journey from Toba to Weh.
The first stage is the little ferry from Toba to Parapat...
1 tag
Making friends in Lake Toba
Instead of leaving Lake Toba, we decided to just change guesthouses, which actually felt like going somewhere new anyway.
We stayed for a week in Merlyn but were starting to feel quite isolated - and while Dave went hiking round the island one day, I went in search of a new home. We had been to Samosir Cottages before to use the free wi-fi but for some reason thought it would be way out of our...
