The wheels on the bus go round and round...

…and round and round and round and round! This week has seen us travel from mid-Sumatra all the way to Jakarta- one 34 hour bus journey and another of 10 hours. Man! It was worth it though as Sumatra was beautiful.

We spent a total of five days in Bukittinggi exploring the town and surrounding area. The region, known as the Minangkabau, is dominated by rice fields, plantations and water buffalo. Indeed, Minangkabau literally translates as ‘winning buffalo’. Here, the women own the land and houses and pass them down to their daughters along with their mitochondrial DNA. However, families have to buy husbands for their daughters with buffalo, the required number depending on the man’s status. After Bukittinggi, we spent a few nights on the shores of Danau Maninjau, a volcanic crater lake. It was peaceful and beautiful, a stark contrast to Indonesia’s cities.

Following the previously mentioned 34 hour bus ride, we arrived in Bandarlampung, southern Sumatra, just as it was getting dark. With no map and very little information about the town, we wandered around unsuccessfully looking for a hotel. After a while, a nice guy in a shiny car came to our aid and drove us to a hotel. He shrugged off my thanks and said ‘’hey, Indonesian people’’. Yeah, right. Unfortunately, we have encountered far more people all too eager to lie and trick their way to our money so this genuine act of kindness was welcome, but a surprise nonetheless. Due to a complete lack of tourists, and therefore budget accommodation, we were forced to stay in a slightly more expensive hotel with hot showers and air con. Gutted! To my delight, just next door to the hotel was a Pizza hut. Now, I don’t really like the fact that Pizza Hut, along with the likes of KFC and McDonald’s, has taken over the world. However, I had no desire to inflict rancid-looking street food on my poor digestive system that had already been suffering for 10 days from the ill effects of food poisoning. We ate and slept like kings.

The whole point of going to Bandarlampung was to visit the nearby national park. The Taman Nasional Way Kambas is an area of lowland rainforest on the southeast coast of Sumatra. It is home to elephants, rhinos and prowling Sumatran tigers. Sounds lovely hey?. We didn’t go there. It seems that the tour agencies that used to organize trips to the park were either hiding or have packed up shop due to the decline in tourism that is so evident in Sumatra. We found no information about the park and no buses that went there. Shame. Instead, we boarded a bus to Jakarta, our final stop in Indonesia. We have a few more days to explore the city before flying to Singapore on Tuesday.