Sunday, November 22, 2015

It rained steadily all last night, but the sun is out now and the skies are bright and clear. The plan for today is to take my bike out and ride back to the ferry dock where I arrived and then beyond it to follow the road all the way to the coast and see what there is to see. I’ll bring my camera, of course and snap some pictures.

Yesterday, was also a day for photography. I got out my Olympus and repeated a walk that I took a couple of days ago. At that time, I only had my cell phone with me and took some landscape type pictures. This time, I hoped to take a few portraits. To that end, I put on my 150mm lens. It’s by far the best lens that I have and is extremely sharp. I almost didn’t take it with me to Indonesia at all. When I was in Malaysia, I was dismayed at how heavy my gear was, and I made an attempt to weed out non-essentials. The 150mm lens and the grip on my camera were obvious candidates. But in the end, I brought them with me and now I’m glad I did. In Malaysia, I wasn’t very focused on photography. But now the mood has come back, and if I didn’t have this lens and the camera grip, I’d be very annoyed with myself. In fact, I left a few things behind in Malaysia and now I’m annoyed that I did.

The Indonesians are great subjects for portraits because they are huge hams and love to have their picture taken. I could take pictures of people all day long if I wanted to. It is almost too easy. I could set up a booth and everyone in town would line up and sit down one by one for a portrait – like picture day at a school. I’d get even more customers if I set up two stools and I sat down to pose for a picture next to them. Few people ever show any interest in seeing the picture afterwards, so it’s not clear to me why they want their picture taken. What do they get out of it? But I’m not complaining.

I walked down to the river and I shot some pictures of the fishing boats from the shore. Several men in small boats offered to take me in their boats across the river and around the boats. It was tempting, but I was more interested in walking, and it’s a dangerous thing to take your camera gear into boats and over water. I hadn’t waterproofed my bag or my gear in anticipation of doing anything like that.

Whenever I stopped or sat down, I became the object of intense interest from groups of students. Eventually, the bravest of them would come over to me and ask if they could take a “selfie” with me. Once the dam was broken, there would be a flood of such requests. I began to feel like a wax dummy at a museum – one that has been set up for such pictures. I would strike a stiff pose, and then the students would pose beside me or behind me one by one in succession for their photo. My grinning muscles began to get tired and sore after a while.

There really isn’t much to say about the day in general. I walked and took pictures. I took some nice ones of some people. The ones of the fishing boats weren’t anything special. It was midday and the light was pretty harsh. I know that is the worst time for photography, but I always end up going out around that time. It’s best to go out early in the morning and late in the afternoon for the softest and best light, but I’m generally doing other things at that time. I realized that I was becoming better known. Tanjungbalai is a smallish town (though from the intense traffic, you’d never realize it) and I am unusual enough here that people have begun to recognize me. It is a good lesson to learn because you realize that your behavior is being monitored and noted. You can’t have a meltdown and get angry because people will know about it. For example, as I was walking along, a man pulled up beside me on his motorcycle. He wanted to chat with me, and he said that he knew that I had visited the Alex Essential English Course. He’d heard all about it. And he was wondering if he could bring his daughter to my hotel one evening so we could sit in the lobby and chat. His daughter wanted the chance to practice her English with a real live foreigner.

I followed the river as I did before, and then I crossed the bridge, stopping for a fruit juice partway over. I went slower this time and talked with a lot of people and took more pictures. I walked out to the end of a couple of rickety wooden docks and took some pictures from there. And I had watermelon juice this time. It was very good. The man and woman at the fruit juice stand remembered me, and they produced a chair for me to sit down. It’s a uniquely Asian thing, I guess, to sit down in the middle of a very busy bridge and drink watermelon juice. When you think of a Canadian city and imagine the absolute worst place to stop and disrupt traffic, it would have to be in the middle of any type of bridge. That’s the one place you’re sure to get busted by the police. Yet, in Tanjungbalai, the bridge is the place where precisely this happens. There are a couple of dozen such food and drinks stands along the bridge and people stop everywhere to indulge. It is dangerous and disrupts the flow of traffic, but no one cares.

I spent some time back at my hotel sorting through the pictures I’d taken and uploading a few of them to Facebook. I’d have uploaded an entire album instead of individual photos, but I don’t know how to do that on my phone. I need my computer for that, and the Internet is still down. It doesn’t appear to be returning anytime soon. I went out for dinner with a brief stop at a bakery to pick up something to have with my coffee in the morning. I’ve been to this bakery twice to buy the same thing and we have the same rather confusing conversation about the price. The woman tells me the price is fifteen thousand rupiah. I count out fifteen thousand from my wallet and try to hand it over. She waves it off and insists again on fifteen thousand. Then we go into the comedy routine of making sure if she means fifty or fifteen. Is it one-five or five-zero? She keeps saying fifteen, but she won’t take fifteen. So then I hand over fifty thousand, and she doesn’t want that either. She wants fifteen thousand. Last night, I eventually gave up and gave her a note for 100,000 and asked for change. That should cover it. At first she wouldn’t take it, but she brought it to the woman at the desk who handled the money. And this woman counted out 85,000 rupiah in change. So the bread did cost 15,000. So why wouldn’t she accept 15,000? What had we been discussing that entire time? And, as I said, this happened both times I went there. Another mystery that will remain unsolved.

And that’s about it for thoughts about Indonesia this morning. Assuming my bike ride goes well today, I should be ready to leave Tanjungbalai and head inland soon. I’ll have to do some pondering about my first major destination. As much as people tell me I have to visit Lake Toba, I now don’t want to go there. It’s beginning to feel like the Niagara Falls of Indonesia – a big, plastic tourist destination. I’m sure it isn’t, but that’s how it is being presented.

 

Tags: Sumatra Part 01