Asian shock in Sumatra

Indonesia - Sumatra, XI.2014

Arriving in Asia, especially in such God-forgotten place like Bandar Lampung, was like a jump into deep water. Again, why Bandar Lampung? Apparently flights Prague - Dubai - Jakarta - Bandar Lampung were significantly cheaper than just Prague - Dubai - Jakarta, Strange, isn't it? But I guess that's kind of the things you have to search for if you want to get cheaper flights - unusual solutions.

First shock was the heat striking after getting out of the plane. Tropical thirty degrees after air-conditioned aircraft, and after November Sofia and Prague made a nice contrast. Better from cold to warm, anyway. Airport itself is a small pavillion, few buildings with red roofs surrounded by palms, and looks more like houses on the side of a long and empty road used only for take-offs and landings.

Next shock as we got out of the airport was the noise. First experience with Indonesian traffic, which we've found the most dense and crazy in all the trip including Malaysia and Thailand. No rules, scooters everywhere, and crossing the street was like a struggle for survival... each and every time. Here's a short clip from Jakarta center, but believe me, even in small town like Bandar Lampung it was the same.

The tip for crossing streets was to find a local people and cross with them. As we got more advanced in this art the solution became to raise the hand in stopping gesture (or "down boy" gesture, as for the dog), and just cross hoping that all the vehicles will respect your right to live. Seemed to work, just there was always one more scooter charging every time.

Let me tell a bit about Sumatra itself. Before getting there I was excited as it is not much of a touristic destination - at least not as much as Java or Bali. One main road goes from south to north for over 2400 kilometers To give the scale it's a similar distance as from Madrid to Berlin or Rome to Stockholm... And in fact, it is not much of a touristic destination, finding English speaking people was not so easy to do at first, finding the tourist information center - impossible. There's always a solution, like the first taxi driver called his English speaking friend to translate on the phone the directions to the place - creative juices flow when there's money to be earned.

Still, we've been left by the driver in some bus station outside of the main city. Lucky to have GPS on tablet, we've started to walk towards something that was supposed to be center. Decided to enter a university expecting there will be some people knowing English, and indeed. We got welcome by the nicest professor of business management ever - and I know what I'm talking about since I've studied business management. He offered us water, invited to his office, and since his assistant was going to pick up someone in the center he offered us to drive with him. Just to the entrance of a hotel, where we could sleep over the jetlag from travel to the other side of the world.

As you can see, not many pictures from Bandar Lampung. Why? The town itself is not that spectacular and I had not much opportunities to catch anything worth photographing. But the story continues, as things were happening.

Next shock was the reaction of the locals to the foreigners. As we were walking down the streets people were waving, shouting "Mister, mister, hello!" and even stopping the cars to open the windows and greet us. At least when we were walking together, because when I was going out alone no greetings have welcomed me... strange, as I look definitely more foreign than Dani, with my blonde hair and pale carnation. Later on we understood that this kind of attention may have been brought on us by Dani's uncovered shoulders in a Muslim country - hypothesis that confirmed when put to test. The rate of "Mister, mister!" was going down with covering up shoulders, and disappeared with covered head.

Later on we met with Delta from Couchsurfing to talk about our Sumatra plans. And he literally destroyed every each one of them, telling us that the elephants in the Way Kambas National Park were just poor, chained, beaten up creatures. I didn't want to contribute to that, neither here, nor later in Thailand. He also told us that the transportation on Sumatra is really not newbie-friendly, and as we were extreme newbies in Asia, we started to think about changing the direction to Java. After meeting with some foreigners here and locals for an evening coffee we've decided finally that it is a right choice to postpone Sumatra for undisclosed future, and now get an easier Asian start somewhere more friendly.

Just before getting on a bus to Java we got our first scam (not counting overpaying for the taxi from airport). Going to a local restaurant, ordering nasi goreng, and getting not only the dish but plenty of side dishes. Wow, cool, great, that's nice - I've thought. Let's try everything just a bit, so we get the experience. And that was the point of the scam - even if from a small dish of fish you got one of them, you had to pay like for a whole dish. And I am sure the next customer would be served the exactly same ones, but uh, whatever. Instead of 30k rupias it cost 78k - so around 5 euro. Not much for a scam.

By the way, the woman on the photo (one behind Dani), was carefully counting the things we ate after the meal was finished. Guess it is serve-all-you-can and pay-what-you-eat kind of system.

We've left Sumatra in a really surprisingly convenient bus, with AC, blankets, some snack and water, heading for Jakarta overnight. Short visit, and now headed east - opposite to logical direction, as the flight back was from Bangkok, but hey - adventure, right?