 2pm bus 90 minutes and down 38 hairpin road into steep sided volcano crator Manijau - villages around a lake a travellers hangout , OK but a bit disappointing. Not so quaint or atmospheric. Locals moaned about the lack of tourists, it seems from 1980 to 1998 riots there were hordes, now only 20 or 30 if you add up all the guest houses between the town and 5Km after Bayu village. So I tried spread my money around : I stayed at Febby's and ate at other places to. I would recommend the Beach guest house next door cos it's more organised, (the influence of 2 Australian son in laws) The Beach place straight down from the town to the lake is highly rated. The chillout places in Bayou seemed to always have 6 Indonesian lads hanging around waiting to share their dope with western girls.  A typical sight, no tractors water buffalo are used for farming | |||||||
Fri - biked around the lake
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- seems lot's of different tribes, but apart from a few old houses not so interesting - market at Bayu etc as usual it rained 1 or 2 times a day | Found there is a hot spring bathhouse 200m from Febby women 9-4pm - best to go late as famers climb in dirty after work.
Tourism killer - loudest mosques in the world |
I've been to a lot of muslim countries and they usually have a muezzin calling people to prayers, but I never heard them as loud as in Indonesia. You go to a chillout lake place like Maninjau and then you get woken at 5.30 am by a super amplified call, which penetrates earplugs , which can go on and on ... No wonder there's no tourists. | In northern Sumatra some areas like lake Toba it seems 100% Christian so you don't have this problem.
Sun - exploring - Met some village People |
First went out with Slovenian guy to look for magic mushrooms in the buffalo shit, I don’t know why he didn't just buy them I think they are $5
| tried to see waterfall - too many leeches Met some village People A quite a big contrast from a few weeks ago in Australia : people living on a few dollars a day, more tribal (matrilinear), buffalo for farming, 3rd world : basic standards, low education , litter in the countryside, etc. People are friendly tho.  sastra house 3  sastra house 2  sastra house sastrapeople VIDEO Mon -rain rain
Confusing money : being a millionaire
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When I went to the ATM in Bukittingi I took out wow 1 million. It not too bad to calculate as that's about 10,000 to 1 USD ie about $100. But it does get confusing cos dealing with all those 1000s make things seem expensive. You want 3000 for water ! last time I only paid 2000, doesn't 2000 seem expensive for a piece of pineapple ?
| Particularly a hotel room was going for 20,000 and a beer the same. So what do you pay a guide ? Surely 50,000 is expensive , but it's only $5, but it is 2.5 hotel days so it must be quite a lot. A teacher told me she gets 20,000 a day, later I learnt 100,000 is normal for a government school teacher so 100,000 a day or $1 an hour is good money. I think they should lop off 000 so things cost 20 instead of 20,000, in Malaysia you don't think twice about spending an extra 1 ringgitt, but it's the same as 2300 Rupiah which seems a lot of money. I don't like it when some locals say "you foreigners are so rich". The villagers dollar poverty is purely a product of a poor exchange rate for the rupiah. Local things cost local prices ... Foreign travel is expensive, but local property cheap Usually they can afford a nice house by the lake wheras in a developed country this would take a high salary. There exists the possibility for confidence to increase in the rupiah so that it triples or increases 5 fold, like what has happened with Russian rouble or Korean money. And foreign travel could become cheap as at the same time local propery becomes expensive. |
Tues - hiked from lake to top of the rim at Lawang top |
went back to hike to the waterfall on the way I hooked up with a NZ couple. We'd been told to hire a slall boy. He was quite insistent it was a long way not $1, but $5 First waterfall VIDEO |
Indonesia - Tourist dis-Information |
... I think we were a bit ripped off by the kid, on the way it wa a tremendous jungle trek for an hour hacking through with his machete.. On the way back after 15 minutes we switched to a good path much much easier. To walk back took 35 minutes !.. Why didn't we go up that way ? | (now I know that's typical of Indonesian guides; to make it seem like a big hike)
In other countries the information seems clearer. If there's a waterfall to see then it's marked on a map and there's a signpost on the road. In Indonesia I found it was difficult to get good directions. Often this is a product of the local guide industry. They want to keep things secret so you have to pay money to a guide. I'd been told to hire a small boy from Anas to guide us, but actually I realise, Anas is not the best place to begin from, Later I realised the path from the lake mosque leads up to series of 7 waterfalls, another path from Bayu village market leads upto our waterfall of the second of the 7. |
Next tea with villagers and up to Anas Hostel. Then hiked all the way to the top of the volcano ridge in 1 hour - good photos of the view down to lake and sea.  hammock at Ana's Homestay  Lawang view  Buffalo lake and sea view When you reach the top there' 2 viewing platforms one 500m north along the road and another 500m south I met another freelance guide - Wen who took me by motorbike and showed me a couple of places where people were using bulls to crush sugar cane and boiling the juice to make sugar blocks.
Wed - Another waterfall in a rainstorm with Febby, Arhit and Manual
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The owner of the guesthouse wanted to earn a little extra money by guiding us to another waterfall. But on the way we encountered a heavy rainstorm so that the rain was heavier than the waterfall and we had to shelter instead of bathing. | 
 With Guide Febby and Manuel and Arti waterfall VIDEO
Tourism Killer - anti-western prejudice |
Inside the door of my room someone had scrawled "Freedom for Palestine, British and Americans are murderers", Wow even if he meant not to be racist and by Americans actually meant American government the idiot who wrote that is really making a positive contribution to world peace NOT as well as demonstrating a total lack of perspective on reality. I guess it popular at the mosque to rant about the American government being out to murder muslims. Anyone with a moderate grasp of muslim deaths would know the Americans are not very good at murdering muslims : unfortunately many magnitudes more are killed by other muslims even if you count every death caused by insurgent bombs and bullets as caused by Americans. Unfortunately it's the norm for muslim military and police to be brutal against their own countrymen look at the tens of thousands of separists/people killed by the Indonesian military, not to mention the frequent wars between muslim countries : Turkey kills Kurds, Syria invaded Lebanon, Sadam invaded Kuwait was it 2 or 4 million people killed when he made war with Iran and the wars and mass shootings in the stans of the old Soviet Republics which are largely ignored by CNN. How many Iraquis have been killed for being disrespectful to President Bush ? None of course. Remember crazy leaders like Sadam had many executed for things like writing on a banknote featuring his face.
| With greeting like that is it any wonder hotels are empty
Thursday - back to Bukittingi
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It's cheap enough in Maninjau, cos you can eat at village foodstalls, but after 1 week I'd had enough, especially since you get rain everyday and I had to think my visa was only 30 days, so I decided to travel north to Lake Toba and leave Indonesia from Medan. | So took bus back to Bukittingi |
