Wednesday, November 18, 2015

In the past, I’ve always had either a notebook and a pen (a very slow method of writing for me), or my AlphaSmart NEO (which is a brilliant and simple writing keyboard). This is the first time I’ve had a laptop computer let alone a laptop and a smartphone. It’s a bit overwhelming to have all this power at my fingertips, particularly when my new budget hotel actually offers a wifi connection. It’s so easy to get distracted by the Internet. One link leads to another. One video leads to another. And though you turned on the computer to write in your journal, two hours go by, and you have done nothing but check Facebook and comment on pictures.

But back to yesterday. After my morning writing session, I went outside with the intention of getting breakfast. However, the weather was clear, and instead, I walked over to the Asahan Hotel to book a room. I decided to forego breakfast in favor of packing up and moving hotels. The Asahan Hotel offered so much more than the Hayani Hotel. The whole hotel adventure was kind of amusing actually and fairly typical of my daily life. I’d realized that the Asahan Hotel was clearly the only reasonable game in town. I’d spent days looking for information about a nice, budget place to say in Tanjungbalai, but I never got anywhere. It turns out that if I’d only typed “Losmen” and “Tanjungbalai” into Google, I’d have found it. I never used the word losmen in my searches, so it never came up. Plus, the Asahan is right on the busy main road of the town that runs from the ferry port and then over the bridge into downtown. I crossed that bridge on my bicycle, but instead of going straight, I decided to turn left. I needed a breather from the heavy traffic, and so I went for some open streets. Had I just gone straight, I would have seen the Asahan and probably stayed there from my first night. But chance had me go left, and chance had me stop at that crazy police station, and chance had the guy there show me the Hayani instead of the Asahan. And I imagine he showed me the Hayani because it is a bit of a place of ill repute, and that would suit his somewhat drunken character. Anyone else would probably have brought me to the Asahan.

I don’t regret it though. I enjoyed the seedy atmosphere of the Hayani, and I liked that crazy courtyard nearby with the insanely loud karaoke. It also gave me a sense of value in the Indonesian hotel economy. I can compare a place like the Hayani to the Asahan and see what it is reasonable to expect for your money. The comparison is illuminating. The Hayani’s cheapest room cost 80,000 rupiah, or about $6 US. That came with pretty much nothing except a towel – and tons of dirt, spiderwebs, and (as I found out) bedbugs. The Asahan’s cheapest room costs 60,000 rupiah or $4.30 US, and it comes with a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a bar of soap in addition to a towel, bathroom slippers, and my own bucket for the bucket bath. On top of that, I get nice big windows, a big mirror, a soft bed, a nice cabinet, a clothes rack, and a balcony. In addition, I was astonished to find out that the Asahan offers free wifi, unlimited hot and cold purified water, and very friendly staff.

Not that it is all perfect. My room at the Asahan is about half the size of the dirty one at the Hayani. Plus, my room overlooks the busiest street in the city, and the noise of the traffic is constant. There is a large mosque right beside the place, and the call to prayer at 4:40 in the morning is stunningly loud and extremely long. I doubt that I could ever master the art of sleeping through it. The walls between the rooms are quite thin. In fact, the walls only go partway up. The top two and a half feet is just screen. So noise carries. The floor is wooden. That’s nice for character, but it makes the room shake when people walk back and forth, and footsteps make a loud booming sound.

Signing in at the Asahan Hotel was a painless and professional process handled by one of the very young men running the place. I haven’t seen the usual old men and grumpy (but nice) older women you usually find behind the scenes at these places. One of my problems with the Hayani Hotel was the women who did the cleaning and the laundry. I’m one of these people that like to be left alone. I don’t need my room cleaned every day. I can clean my own room for that matter. In any event, my gear covered every square inch of the room, desk, bed, and floor. There was no way that anyone could get in there and do anything useful. I also don’t want to put my possessions at risk. But these women would pounce on me at every opportunity and ask for my key and other things. I never really understood what they wanted, but they bothered me all day long every day no matter how many times I just shook my head and smiled.

I paid 120,000 rupiah for two nights at the Asahan, though I’m sure to stay longer. They wrote out a long and beautiful receipt, and Anang, one of the young men, bounded up the stairs with my key and towel and showed me to my room and demonstrated how the fan and the light worked. One interesting aside is that since the rupiah has gone crazy, the local coins have become useless. They pretty much have no value anymore, so you don’t see them in circulation. As I mentioned before, 1,000,000 rupiah is about $100 Canadian. So there is little point in having coins. The smallest note that I’ve seen in circulation is 1,000 rupiah, and this is the equivalent of a dime in Canada. So the 1,000 rupiah note IS a coin for all intents and purposes. It just is made of paper instead of metal.

I returned to the Hayani Hotel and took advantage of this move to do some reorganizing of my gear. I really have no idea how to pack up my current range of stuff, and I packed carefully, making sure that I did it properly. I also packed with an eye to cycling. I’m currently wondering how much gear to put in the trailer. The trailer is much larger than I realized, and I could easily carry everything in just the trailer. I don’t need any other bags at all. But that would make the trailer relatively heavy and somewhat inconvenient. Plus, I need at least one pannier bag to carry my valuables and serve as a backpack when I walk around the city. But I’m wondering if I really need two. Technically, I don’t. But the question is whether it is safe to put things like my camera lenses or my computer into the trailer. At the moment, I put them in my pannier bags.

When I was done, I went through the difficult process of carrying my gear down to the lobby. It was quite a chore carrying it up those narrow staircases, and I tried to do the reverse process with a bit more thought and care. One advantage of the trailer is that in certain conditions it would be easier to deal with one large bag instead of four small ones. Those conditions would involve being able to unhook the trailer and then just wheel the thing directly into my room. But I think that will be a rare occurence. Most of the time, I will have to carry it up and down stairs. And I’ve already learned that to do that safely, it is best to dismantle it. So before carrying anything downstairs, I removed the wheels and the tow arm. This turned the trailer into a duffel bag. I was pleased to note that this still meant making only two trips. I carried the trailer duffel bag down in one trip. Then I went back up and carried down the two pannnier bags and the two wheels. And that was it. I took my time assembling everything in the lobby of the hotel and then wheeled my bike and trailer out into the street.

A minute or two later, I was wheeling up in front of the Asahan Hotel, and I began the equally complex task of disassembling my gear and bringing it up to my new room. I took my time and made sure that I did it right. The bike was going to stay downstairs locked up somewhere. I unhooked the trailer and removed the pannier bags. I wheeled the trailer over to the foot of the stairs and then removed the wheels and tow arm. Then I was able to carry my two pannier bags and the wheels up to my room and leave them there safely. Then I returned for the trailer bag itself. I figured out a good way to carry this rather large bag, and I was done. It was a pretty painless processs. It could easily be debated that a full set of pannier bags would be no more or less difficult, but there is no question that with pannier bags, you always are faced with leaving some gear behind, and that gear could be stolen while you are up in your room. In theory, the trailer bag is at risk, too, but no one is getting very far carrying that beast. People could grab a complete pannier bag and run off with it. But they can’t do that with the trailer.

I spent a few minutes settling into my room and unpacking. Then I took a refreshing bucket bath. I noted the clever use of a float valve in the water tanks serving the toilet and shower. It makes perfect sense and it is very inexpensive, but you don’t see that very often. I do remember seeing it once before, but I can’t remember where that was. Perhaps in Cambodia long ago. I know that my hotel in Tacloban had a similar set up for the well in their main courtyard. In most places, they just have a tap, and people have to monitor the tank and then turn the tap on to fill the tank when it gets empty.

Once I was settled, I went out into the city looking for lunch. The path of least resistance led me to my pangsit restaurant where I ordered mie tiaw. It was delicious. Then I walked for a kilometer or so to where I was told a paint store was located. I was interested to see if they carried alcohol-based paint thinner that I can use in my Trangia stove. I was pleasantly surprised to find the paint store exactly where I was told – right across from the Saksi Mosque. The people there were extremely helpful and friendly, and with some trial and error and language problems, I eventually uncovered a small plastic bottle labelled “Spiritus Methanol” or methylated spirit. There is some confusion surrounding the names of fuels that you can use in this stove, but this sounded right to me, and I bought one bottle to test it. They had other much larger cans of some kind of paint thinner, but the labels were all in Indonesian and had no information about the chemical compound of the fluid. No one at the store could tell me either. As with everything when you are away from your home country, things get confusing. When I check websites, I am told that “methylated spirits” make an excellent cooking fuel, but “methanol” is toxic. But my bottle combines the two (!) and calls itself “spiritus methanol”. So which is it? Is it methanol or is it methylated spirits? It’s impossible to know for sure. My guess, based on past experience, is that this is a good cooking fuel and is non-toxic.

After my success with the fuel, I went for a very long and very action-packed walk around the city. I didn’t intend to go so far and do so much, but one thing led to another. I was very surprised and very pleased to find so much of interest. My walk first took me through a typical neighborhood where I stopped for a fresh fruit shake. I wanted a mango shake, but the guy told me that the mangos weren’t ripe yet. He suggested another fruit. I had no idea what fruit it was, but I agreed. These fruit stalls are all over Tanjungbalai. They all carry the most enticing range of fresh fruit, and they can whip you up almost anything you like for a mere 5,000 rupiah, or about 36 cents US. They have their own power source to run a blender and even a machine that seals a plastic lid over the plastic cup. I was amused to see that when this guy opened up the tray for the sealer, about a thousand ants came pouring out. In Canada, you might back away at this point and go somewhere else, but that is par for the course here. No one is going to worry about some ants on their fruit shake making machine. It’s not like you are going to be able to keep them off. You also have to simply trust to fate that the water is purified and the ice was made with purified water. If not, you’re going to get sick. And I always get sick. It’s part of the experience – a horrible part, but unavoidable. Other people have iron constitutions. Mine is made up of soft goo. I get sick all the time.

Everywhere I went, people called out to me and gestured for me to come over and chat with them. I would do so and most of the time find out that they can’t speak English. There’s a funny moment when they gesture for me to come over and I start moving toward them. A look of “Oh, my goodness! What have I done?” comes over their faces. The foreigner is actually walking over to them, and they start to panic. This happened at a Honda dealership, and I spent about a half an hour there posing for pictures and chatting with people with the help of an interpreter – the local English expert. I think this picture-taking craze can be blamed on Facebook and camera phones. Everyone has a Facebook account and some kind of camera phone. So they are obsessed with selfies. And a selfie with a tall foreigner is too good to pass up. It’s Facebook gold.

From there, I found myself inside a busy market. It was the first I’d seen in Tanjungbalai. I had been beginning to wonder where the markets were. I’d been all over, but I’d seen none at all. This puzzled me. This market assured me that I truly was in Asia. The plan is to return to this market with my real camera at some point and try to get some nice pictures. From the market, I made my way over a long and narrow bridge. It was quite an exciting crossing, and I filmed a lot of it with my phone’s video camera. The video is a bit bouncy and jumpy since the camera on my phone isn’t stabilized, but it looks cool. The problem is that the file ends up being huge, and it is almost impossible to upload it anywhere. From the bridge, I got wonderful views of the river in both directions with tantalizing glimpses of large fishing boats and tall temples. I made mental notes of where I could go exploring next.

On the other side of the bridge, I realized that this was the bridge I’d already crossed on my bicycle when I rode from the ferry dock. I hadn’t recognized it at first. I shot some more video on the other side and then I walked back into town. My walk took me along the riverfront, and I found some beautiful temples and some interesting restaurants and market areas. I stopped here and there to take “selfies” with people. I got closer and closer to the fishing boats, and then I saw another long bridge leading to an area filled with fishing boats. It was a bit of a tiring walk to get to that bridge and then across it, but it was worth it. The views were extraordinary and it was great fun to see all the life on the boats and on the bridge. One side of the bridge was filled with small snack carts. People were selling everything from fruit shakes to chips to fried chicken and a dozen other things I can’t name. I stopped for another fruit shake, crossing my fingers that all would be well in the stomach department.

My smartphone was essential to this whole process. The GPS mapping ability meant that I knew exactly where I was at all times and knew exactly where to go. That removes so much stress, it’s incredible. On past trips, you have to constantly worry about how you are going to get back. You can go wandering deep into the markets and small streets and cross random bridges, but you have to be careful to mark your way and follow your progress on a map, or you will never make it back again. It’s stressful. But with the phone, you only have to worry about running out of battery. As long as there is power, I could never get lost. The GPS doesn’t depend on wifi or cell phone towers or anything. It works independently from satellites. As long as the satellites are up there, I was good to go. So odd to think that all these satellites up there in near space were plotting my position in the middle of a fishing village in Sumatra. In a way, it’s also odd to see these smartphones in everyone’s hands. In the old days, all the technology would be in the hands of the relatively wealthy tourist in a place like this. There would be a very large divide between the foreign visitor and the old woman selling fried noodles on the bridge. The foreign visitor would have a camera and all kinds of other technology. But now, the playing field is even. The old woman whips out HER smartphone and wants to take a selfie with you and upload it to her Facebook account. The world changes and marches on.

I was quite exhausted after my long walk but very happy with some of the pictures I’d taken with my smartphone. It had been a fun day. I went back to the hotel and after a short rest went looking for dinner. I’m still very unsure of my way when it comes to food here. I’ve got the noodles thing figured out, so I had another bowl of pangsit to start. I figured that would take the edge off my hunger, and then I could go looking for something more substantial. And with that food in my belly, I wouldn’t be as irritable. After the noodles, I found myself at the extremely popular restaurant beside my old Hayani Hotel. I’d been wanting to eat there since I arrived. There were always a crowd of people waiting there, and when you see that, you know the food is good. They only made two things as far as I could see. I didn’t really know what they were, but I was going to find out.

When I approached the place, I was reassured to see about fifteen people waiting out on the streets. Most had driven up on their scooters and were waiting for their order to go. No one was sitting inside, and, in fact, it looked almost impossible to get inside past all the cooking tables and grills lined up along the street. I hesitated, but then I got someone’s eye and asked with a hand gesture if it was okay to sit inside at a table. I was given the okay, and I went in. Then I checked out the food. My impression was that they served a kind of rice flour pancake. I thought it was a breakfast dish, but all these people were here at dinner time, so there had to be something more. That something more turned out to be a big, thick square thing that I saw cooking on a central grill. I didn’t know what it was, but I asked for one of those and for one of the breakfast pancakes.

I had nearly asked for two of the square dishes, but I’m glad I didn’t. When it arrived, I was taken aback at just how big and dense it was. It was not a snack. It was a meal. The basic process is this: someone in the back is working on a very large amount of rice dough. At least, I assumed it was rice-based. No one has been able to clear that up for me yet. I saw a man come out of the back with an armload the size of a big load of laundry. He dumped this giant mound onto a table, and workers crowded around it. Each person deftly pulled out a small chunk of this dough by hand and sliced it off with a knife. Then they kind of twisted it inside out with their fingers, turning it in on itself and kneading it and shaping it into a perfectly round blob. This was then slammed down onto a tray. Dozens of these round blobs would be left underneath a wet cloth to await the next step.

Next, a man would take this tray of round blobs and partially flatten each one out to about the size of the palm of your hand. Then another man would take these and put them onto a large granite table top that had been greased. With precise and practiced movements they smoothed out these blobs with their hands into larger and larger areas – essentially making a pancake. Once it reached a certain size, they would grab one size of it and peel it off the counter and flip it around. They would flip it perhaps a dozen times. Each time, it would stretch out and flatten until it was paper thin and about the size of a pizza. I can’t even imagine how much practice it took to get that right.

When they had this paper-thin pizza-sized rice pancake, they could do one or two things with it. They could fold it over and over and over again until they had a narrow strip and then roll that into a ball. This ball would then be flattened out and cooked on a grill. This made the breakfast pancake. It’s called “cane” and has a flaky croissant-like texture and is served with sugar. The other preparation method led to the giant meal I was eating. I learned much later that it is called “Martabak Mesir”. Instead of folding the rice pancake, they leave it flat. Then they add a thick layer of filling made of beef and vegetables and many, many spices. Then the pancake is folded over the filling into a square shape. This square is grilled and then cut up into tiny squares and served with a bowl of sweet soup. The martabak is very hot and spicy, and the sweet soup was a nice, soothing contrast.

It was great fun to sit there and watch them prepare this meal. I tried to ask them questions, but the language barrier made that difficult. I had to learn by watching and then by searching the Internet. Rea saw my picture of my dinner, and she told me its name. Then I found it on Wikipedia. This dish has a complicated history. It appears to originate in Yemen, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, and was spread around the world by Indian traders. The word “martabak” comes from a word meaning “folded.” And that makes sense, because they fold the dough many times over the filling. And “mesir” means Egyptian in Indonesian.

I had a difficult time finishing the martabak mesir, and then I still had the cane to eat. I didn’t really want it at that point, but I had ordered it, so I just kept munching away until it was all gone. I was the center of a lot of attention while I ate, and I ended up giving my “facebook” to people in the restaurant. Everyone wants to be Facebook friends with me. I paid for my meal and then made my way back to the hotel intending to relax and look over my pictures of the day. Instead, there was a knock at my door, and a young Indonesian man was standing there. He had the room next door to me, and he was so passionate about English that he wondered if I would talk to him for a while. We sat outside on the balcony and chatted until after 11 o’clock. He was one of these people with a natural facility for languages. He picked it up by watching English movies. He studied English in school, but he hated books and grammar. He just liked to talk, and he was fearless about making mistakes and learning by doing.

I asked him questions about himself, and I learned that he was from the big city of Medan and he worked for a rice cooker company. He was a technician, and it was his job to go to various cities around Sumatra and repair the rice cookers if they break down. It seemed a very quaint type of job. He was here in Tanjungbalai for two days, and he, with his partner and driver, would repair twenty or thirty rice cookers. Then he would return to Medan and be sent out to the next town. His dream (as with many people) was to move to Canada – to Toronto in particular. I tried to describe the realities of life in Toronto – how boring and empty and lonely it might feel to him after a life in Indonesia. I can’t imagine someone from Indonesia being happy in Canada unless they were an engineer or something and went there to make a lot of money. The empty streets of Toronto would be a rude shock after the overwhelming life of the streets here. And how could he live on Canadian food after the richness and flavor of Indonesian cuisine? I can’t imagine it. And how would he react the first time he breathed -20 degree Celsius air into his lungs and felt them burn? He could have no real idea what life in Canada is like.

We ran into quite a few areas where his vocabulary failed him and we weren’t able to communicate easily. But it was a relief to me to talk with someone in English even to that extent. But when 11 came around, I was too tired to continue and I said goodnight. My plan had been to go to bed early and then set off with my camera in the morning, but that will have to wait for another day. It’s sunny outside, which is a nice change. After this lengthy journal-writing session, I guess it is time for lunch.

 

 

 

Tags: Sumatra Part 01