Part III

Salumut Malam,

I'm still at Bukittinggi, its a nice place, extremely nice by indonesian standards. Its surrounded by active volcanoes. There are very few western tourists here. Whoa, one just walked into the internet cafe, how novel! The call to prayer echos out from the mosques several times a day, I'm quite enjoying it.

I had a rather a eventful day after the last email. Just after leaving the i-cafe I was accosted by a teacher and a whole lot of kids, they wanted to practise their english. I had a bit of a yarn, then another dude Syahriful (Paul) came over. He's in town for the day from a small place 70 k from here where he runs a school. He's a representative for the Childrens Democratic Party apparantly and a journalist. He didn't manage to win a seat in the election though. He was there with a couple of english teachers. 2 unmarried young muslim women, one was 24 and didn't seem that happy about her marital status. Probably quite old for around here, another year and she'll be christmas cake. Later, I asked her what this fancy piece of card was she was carrying. She said "a marriage proposal" and then giggled to her friend. I don't know whether she was joking or not...

Paul asked if I could hang out and talk with them and the kids. Why not thought I, all part of the adventure. We went by horse driven buggy to the town square and met up with the kids. Another english teacher, also a young muslim women asked if I could help her out as well, so she joined us too. He picked us all up some lunch and we went along to Fort de Koch, the remains of a WW1 dutch fort. It was quite nice there, shady pine trees and people hanging out, it being Sunday after all. Chowed down to a tasty meal of rice and chicken and some sort of curry. Indonesians eat with their hands, thus so did I. I have to be careful being left handed cos thats the bum washing hand, they're not too bothered though, quite accepting. I chatted away to Paul, his english being pretty good. He told me about indonesia and being a muslim and all sorts of stuff. His daugher is 3rd ranked in the koran for west sumatra province. The koran is a song aparantly and they study the correct pronounciations for all the words. Theres very little extremism here, its not as the news would have you believe. I helped the kids out with a few phrases. "How are you?", "I am good" "What is your name" etc etc... and told them about New Zealand. They took some photos too, I'm going to be in the paper aparantly.

I gave the other woman a hand. She had some indonesian folk tales in english she wanted me to proof read and tape record me reading so she could make a book to teach english. She had gotten a german to do this once before but her teacher wouldn't accept it as it wasn't his native language. I helped her out for about an hour, her written english was pretty good, not too many corrections. Was interesting reading the folk tales, tales about spoilt princesses and the like that explained the colours in the lake or how a mountain got there. One was about a man whose father was a dog and he killed him and fed the liver to his mother. Then she banished him to roam the wilderness where he learnt black magic and time traveled back to his mother and they fell in love. I find it rather amusing that a whole lot of indonesian children are going to learn english with a kiwi accent. Was of a benefit to me because I actually had to think about things such as past-tense and nouns and the idiosyncrasies of english. I'm sure I was never actually taught the mechanics of english at school. I left their company after hanging out for the best part of a day.

Across from the fort, a huge colonial era bridge spans to the zoo so I had a look there too. Pretty miserable place with depressed looking animals which I suspected it would be so didnt stay long.

I got back to my hotel and discovered a nice cheap but clean homestay, right across the street with a helpful young dude at the counter. I met an old scottish woman Mikaya there. She's quite butch with tattoos, shes the first native english speaker I've talked to since leaving singapore. She also had an old SE Asian on a shoe string book with her. That was worth its weight in gold to me. She'd also been up north to hang out in the jungle with the orangutans. She gave me some good places to stay and loads of useful info so I took her out to dinner at some authentic little local cafe that took her fancy. There was a display case full of weird and wonderful foods to choose from. I had a fish in some hot red sauce and some green spinach like vegetables. Mikaya had some sort of curried egg I suppose it was. The eggs are blue here, but they taste good. The meal was absolutely delicous!

The tourist info centre was actually open today and i now have some useful maps of the area. I was supposed to go to check out this wicked canyon but went the wrong way and conveniently found this internet cafe, there are not many in indonesia and its painfully slow.

Ah, another day. I'm a bit out of gas, it's really muggy today. Most of the time the temperature here in Bukit tinggi is a rather pleasant 27 degrees at a guess cos we're about 1000m up. Gets muggy as when its cloudy though.

I found my way to panorama park today, the dude at the tourism centre put it in the wrong place on my map, or the map is dodgy. neither would surprise me. There is certainly an impressive view of a very impressive canyon. I checked out a WW2 japanese tunnel network built with slave labour which is part of the park. There are the remains of a cafe and display cases in there. This place in seriously in need of some tourism, the place has all the facilities and attractions but no tourists. It is nice how ever to be able to enjoy the places without throngs of annoying tourists. I hung out with the monkeys for a while at the park until the battery in my camera went flat. Excellent timing, I can go back. Its 10 mins walk from my homestay and entry costs 3000 rupiah. about 70c.

I am having to be more careful with the chump change I was throwing out willy nilly to beggars because I 'm having trouble finding people who can cash 50,000 rupiah notes from the ATM. Water costs 2000 and I need plenty of it in this climate. Try buying water with a 50,000 note. A tasty feed is only 5000 - 13000, depending on how much I eat.

There is an old italian dude staying at my home stay. He's retired over here but has to do a visa run every couple of months. Seems to live off peanuts and the occasional piece of fruit. Looks like a yogi, got that sinuey yogi body, but he's not. There's an old german fulla just turned up today too.

The mullah was singing and preaching for hours last night from the mosque near my lodgings. it was wicked. I chilled out on the deck drawing and taking in the vibe. Very hard to escape from the muslim influence here. The local manitoba tribe don't have a choice, it's very difficult to be manitoba and not muslim. Rather moderate muslims they are though, the women wear head scarves but not burqas or anything that full on and the men dont have beards. Can buy beer here but I havent yet, probably why I feel like sh1t today :-P