I landed in Medan, Sumatra’s major city and began a rather surreal adventure. I was immediately reminded of India as crazy and dusty chaos ruled the streets. This seemed more Kolkata than Kuala Lumpur and I liked it, strangely it all felt more familiar. Confusion began quickly of course, in the form of a crazed and enraged pink haired old lady from Leigh Park, Portsmouth (if you know it, I’ll say no more) who had no idea what she was doing but seemed to be on a mission to retrieve a child from somewhere, whilst recounting 40 years of misery and woe to me in the passport queue. We were getting nowhere fast, in fact we were getting nowhere at all as I stood at the desk with nothing happening. After a short while I caught the attention of the customs officer who eventually told me all about his favourite hobby – collecting different money from around the World…
“I see, very interesting” I said
“Perhaps this crisp US Dollar bill would compliment your collection somewhat?” I conjectured
“Ah, thank you sir, yes it would. Welcome to Indonesia” he replied
And quick as that I was in the country.
Just as the pink haired lady vanished, I met my next new friend, Rhadd the retired bass guitarist from New Orleans. This interesting and very friendly fellow had given up touring with Harry Connick Jr to live on a Malaysian island and teach monkeys how to pick coconuts from the trees. I was anticipating fun times ahead as I spent the next couple of days traveling with Rhadd, on his way to surf the West coast of Sumatra. We got on tremendously and although I was disappointed to hear he’d never met the great John Denver, he whole heartedly agreed about the immortal genius of the man. I was suitably impressed however, by his tales of performing with Neil Young, The Band and Dr John. Hmmm, be a rock star and then retire to an island, do they have age limits I wondered?
Eventually of course, Rhadd turned right and I turned left and onward to another new favourite place – beautiful Lake Toba. Soon enough I’d made my next new friend, the likeable Jason who was taking time out before setting up his alternative lifestyle commune to isolate himself from the World. This sounded like great fun and we got on famously for the next few days. We stayed in a fantastic lakeside hostel on the island in the middle of Lake Toba, itself a flooded volcano crater where the world moves slowly, and the locals even slower. So slow in fact, that shops would lie open yet empty day after day as a rather sad and poignant reminder of a once thriving tourist trade now decimated by earthquakes, tsunamis and terrorism. With more souvenir shops than tourists it was a sad sight in such beautiful surroundings, but the locals couldn’t have been more friendly or likeable, even driving me down the coast to catch my ferry after a mix up as I was leaving. Before that all too soon departure, we hired motorbikes, acquired a couple of friendly American companions and headed for the hills to find the lake on an island in a lake on an island (think about it). We found it up high in the green rolling hills with grazing cattle and children fishing, a scenic sight indeed. Unfortunately we’d left it a bit late to get home and it was only as darkness fell did we realize that my headlight didn’t work… Fortunately I managed to guide the bike nervously and slowly home using only my hopelessly inadequate head torch to find the way, and by permanently indicating left in a futile attempt to make myself visible…
Goodbye again to more new friends then, as I headed south to Bukkittingi to find out what all this fuss about earthquakes was.
|  | 
|
