Another chapter has ended, and a new one has just begun.
The past 86 days have absolutely become one of the best experience in my life. Although I had so many enjoyable moments, there were also times where I had to struggle hard to keep moving on. For sure, the strength that made me kept moving forward didn’t come from just myself.
Another chapter has ended, and a new one has just begun.
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Things have changed a lot since the 60’s, I arrived at Jakarta on Saturday (8/6), and there were certainly no blue fogs. Jakarta in a Saturday afternoon would look (and smell) like Saigon in its weekday peak hours. For that reason, I knew it was home and was very excited from the very moment I entered the city. Buses (most of which were still the ones operating 15 years ago), motorcycles, minivans and too many private cars were too busy racing to notice the excitement on the face of a weird looking person on a weird looking bicycle. Two very good friends from old high school days picked me up at Merak (a port 120 km from Jakarta) to then cycle together to Jakarta. There were several times when I encountered relatives and family friends (who have kindly waited the whole afternoon to congratulate my safe arrival) as we cycled through the streets of Jakarta. As I was cycling through Sudirman road (very near to the finish point, and probably the most well known road in the city), old time memories of the city came into my mind. Jakarta never felt more like home. I arrived a bit late at my old high school, to find myself overwhelmed with the warmth of people who have waited there for hours: my beloved family, friends (old and new), an old “enemy” (please pay attention to the quotation mark), folks from my old high school, and even young students I never met before. They say, the best moment of travelling is when you get home and lay your head on your pillow. I think I know the feeling now. As announced before, I had to travel by bus significantly in Sumatra. After I reached Pekanbaru (the capital of Indonesia’s largest oil producing province, Riau), I took a bus which travelled for 40 hours to bring me to Bandar Lampung. If the first two weeks of Sumatra amazed me with how fertile the soil was, beautiful forests, beaches, countless hills and mountains, the week of oil capital visit and 2-day bus trip gave me more insight of the island. Despite the fact that the island was very beautiful (and immensely RICH of natural resources) I was very impressed with how bad infrastructure was in the island. The famous Trans Sumatra road is very narrow that two big trucks or buses from opposite directions wouldn’t be able to pass at the same time. Contradictively, I can only imagine the number of people and billions dollars worth of palm, coffee beans, rubber and many more transported accross the island everyday. As I was travelling with a bus full of migrant workers going back to Java, a conspiracy theory came into my mind. I somehow realized that Indonesia never really had true poverty issues. The underlying problem is how foolish (this to me is a big word covering level of education, attitude, ethics, etc) majority of the people were, and the unfortunate fact that too many parties have been benefited with this situation. Small example (to lead my beloved readers to other bigger, more obvious facts :D) is how poor Indonesian families are troubled with their significant spending for cigarette, while at the same time 3 of 5 richest Indonesians all came from the industry. Another interesting example is how migrant workers (read: low income people) transport themselves home around Idl Fitri. Let’s say a bus ticket for them going to their hometowns in Java costs about 40 dollars, and the 1500 km trip (mostly on Sumatran road) would take about 48-60 hours. Firstly, these poor people don’t even have the concept of protecting their rights and safety. Time of arrival is just a joke, and drivers wouldn’t stop loading people into the bus to get extra money (the bus I took is a 55 seater with 75 person in it, not to mention the lugage). Secondly, these buses would stop every now and then in restaurants (where they would get free meal, coffee, and their buses cleaned) to kindly let the passengers use the toilet (not for free), charge their cellphones (not for free), buy food and drinks (overpriced stuffs), and then go back to the bus to find less space since several additional passenger have just been stuffed in. Amazingly, the passengers were very cooperative by being very consumptive. These are the kind of people that would save money from their full year of hard work, just to spend it all when they are home during the Idl Fitri holidays. I roughly calculated that 70-80 dollars maybe the average spending of these folks going home with such experience. Of course, they wouldn’t even have the idea of getting into an airplane, and be home in less than 5 hours. I have been waiting for this moment for a long long...distance. I remember myself shedding tears as I was entering Ho Chi Minh City (which was about 3500 km ago), simply because it was to0 similar to Jakarta. Six more days...and I will be truly home.
FYI, what you have up there is a famous song in the 70's sung by "Koes Plus", Indonesian version of the Beatles. The title of the song translates to "I'm going back to Jakarta, for sure!". The story started about a month ago, when I was in Laos looking for information about cycling in Sumatra. I found out through an article my sister sent me that there was a community called DUBIC (the cycling association of Chevron employees in Duri, Riau), and they were very active. So I somehow managed to contact them and they were very happy to welcome me at Duri. Duri is located at the heart of oil production area of Indonesia. Even this alone would have been a perfect reason for me to visit. I was very excited with the fact that Duri is a very interesting place (for me), and even more that there is an active cycling community waiting to show me around and have nice cycling tracks. As expected, the cycling community (comprised of DUBIC and Duri Mountain Bike Club) was very nice people, and I had a wonderful mountain biking experience around palm plantation and oil welds. The even borrowed me a very nice mountain bike (my hybrid tires wouldn't have made those tracks). Nice bike, very nice track, very nice people, very interesting surrounding!!! West Sumatra
It was 3 days before the fasting month of Ramadhan started, and the best five star hotel in Bukittinggi was having a food test dinner event for limited companies invited. We went to the hotel restaurant simply to check out the place, and probably have a sip of beer there if it was not too expensive. They didn't even let us go into the restaurant due to the event, and we went for a desperate attack. Peter transformed to be a German giant multinational company representative (which he actually was, just in Beijing, not West Sumatra), while I transformed to be a Chinese SOE representative that is building power plants in a nearby province. We had a very nice dinner on the pool side of a five-star hotel, and we were nice enough to pay for the beer afterward :D (I am starting to laugh already) Me and Peter did a night climb of a volcano in West Sumatra, called Mount Merapi. There are two volcanos with this name in Indonesia. One in Java (the naughtier one), and one in Sumatra (the higher one). We were informed that the normal climb would take about 5 hours. We started 11.30 p.m. and got a little bit excited that we arrived at the crater already around 3 a.m. After freezing for more than 2 hours beside the crater, the sun showed up and we walked ourselves to the peak. I have always been proud of having a body that functions regularly. I never have sleeping problems, as well as problems getting food in and out of my body :P This that day...was a minor problem. I had my "morning call" (the you-know-what thing) on a 2890 AMSL altitude. My friends were kind enough to let me have my peaceful moment on the peak of the mountain. I found that as a truly integrating to the nature moment. Of course, I also managed to get the place spotless afterward!! :D North Sumatra
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Mission accomplished:Traveled distance on bike:8002 km
AuthorLife is a chain of enjoyment. Define your pleasure, then strive to thrive. Welcome to my travel blog! Archives
August 2011
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