Pusako Bukittinggi

... a preference for a man near the exit window." Yeah, try that one on Delta... <br><br>We're happy to be in Sumatra and it has been great to see the landscape and the cultures change as we have made our way across the western part of Indonesia. We spent 3 nights in Bukittinggi to visit a few sights in the local area which we will share with you in this entry. Enjoy!<br><br>Until next time,<br>Jon and Liz

... Enk who took me around to lots of beautiful places I had never been to yet, first by motorbike and then a sunset tour in the oldest truck in the world. It was all very wonderful! I had forgotten how beautiful that area is! <br><br>My next adventure was a trek from Lawang top to Lake Maninjau with Al and Adek, who had decided to do this "just for fun" on their day off, and invited me to come along. :) It was a pretty funny day and defenitely kept me busy ...

Well, the trip to Bukittinggi wasn't exactly what you'd called 'super executive' class, despite the price we paid. We were grouped in with 6 dutch people and told to wait for the bus in the agents office out on the main road. The bus showed up about 2 hours after the time we were told and it didn't look toooo bad from the outside but when we got on things soon took a turn for the worse. It was a 2+1 bus meaning that there should have been lots more room compared to the 2+2 ...

... top, it was so crazily windy I thought I might<br>seriously fall into the crater...but I didn't. The view wasn't as<br>amazing as my last volcano, but of course it was still very cool. The<br>way down was really tough though...we all did a victory dance when we<br>arrived at the bottom, that's for sure. <br><br><br>Minankabau Tour Day! <br><br>Then I spent most of the day sleeping, and decided to do a<br>not-so-strenuous motorbike daytrip through the Minankabau ...

Today's big effort and a goal of the trip was to get to the equator and replace the photo i had taken of me on the equator in Kenya that was lost turning a subsequent burgurlry a year later. The first effort was to get there. Between buttinngi where iWas left yesterday with a severe lack of funding. My hotel mgr tried to get me to rent his motorbike for 150000 r ($15). Gas extra, no ...

... to do - unfortunately we were off late in the morning and a group of university students had drained the village of bikes. So no sports for us, a lazy man's bike instead - we managed to arrange a scooter for rent. The road that circles the lake goes through many villages and in all of them you are treated like a super star with "Hello Mister!" and smiling, giggling, waving children running after the scooter. The circumnavigation took us all day with plenty ...

... for food. Padang Padjang does not really see any tourists so I was a bit of a local attraction. We went for walk around the outskirts of the town. It was a beautiful place nestled under Merapi Volcano. The volcano is the most active in Indonesia and ...

To think that we had found the BKK-Chiang Mai bus bad... The Dumai-Bukittinggi shot right to the first place in a competition of the worst bus trips. The bus was supposed to take about 12 hours but when we saw the rickety bus we realised it would be an uncomfortable 12 hours. The bus was loaded with everything from chickens (dead and alive and something in between) and 100 kg sacks of rice to motorbikes, with people stuffed in every available space ...

... to smell like rotting meat hence its other name 'corpse flower'. I was tired from my overnight journey so decided that I would check it out the following day. The overnight journeys are quite draining ...