Bandar Lampung to Kotabumi
March 20th
I went out at about nine in the morning to try and cash a travellers cheque. It took me a good hour and a half and ten different banks! Even when i found a bank that would cash it, the clerk didn't know what was going on and i had to tell him the exchange rate! It was complicated by the fact that the travellers cheques say "pounds sterling" and their exchange rates printout says "GBP", or Great Britain pounds.
We went to the bus station at around midday, hoping it wouldn't be as full-on as it was the previous night. But it was. If anything, it was worse, as we actually wanted to get one of the tickets that these bastards were hassling us to buy. But they were so pushy and there were so many of them onto us at once that we just couldn't be deal with it at all. In the end, we just gave up and went back into town to buy a map and check out the trains. One of the worst things was wanting to get out of Bandar Lampung but not even knowing the name of the next town on our route.
The railway station was weird. It was more or less closed up, with no ticket office open or anything. But we talked to some of the staff and they told us there was a train out at nine o'clock that night. We didn't fancy spending nine hours more in that town, waiting for a train that would drop us off at three in the morning at a town we didn't want to go to. So, armed with a map of Sumatra, we went back to the bus station. This time it was fairly simple and we were soon on a bus on the way to Kotabumi, the next town of any kind of size on the map, about a hundred kilometres north.
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When we first got off the bus at Kotabumi, we thought "Shit! We messed up badly again!" But it turned out to be the best move we'd made for a long time.
Soon after arriving, we ended up buying tickets for Pakanbaru from a ticket agent with an office on the highway. These cost us about the same as they would have from Bandar Lampung, but we didn't have to fight our way through a crowd of shouting hassling desperados to get them. There was supposed to be a bus at about seven o'clock, which was two hours away. That wasn't too bad.
The man we bought the tickets off took us next door to a little rumah makan and bought us coffee. Then we decided we wanted a beer and they pointed us to a small tobacco, sweets, drinks etc shop over the road. It was run by an old man who was really nice and friendly. He asked us if we wanted to drink the beer there. When we said yes, he sat us in a couple of folding chairs, gave us glasses and opened the bottle for us.
Sitting in that little shop drinking beer was probably one of the most pleasant moments of the whole journey. I had a bit of a chat with the old man and wished my Indonesian was better so i could have talked to him properly and asked him a bit about himself instead of just telling him about me. He seemed to have a better than average knowledge of geography - well, he knew where Timor was, anyway, which most Indonesians didn't seem to - and i wondered if he'd done a bit of travelling himself. He seemed like he'd have some interesting stories to tell anyway.
A couple of boys came up to the counter to buy a cigarette each and asked him who we were. They were a bit off, and even more so when he said we were having a beer. One of them looked even more disgusted by the foreigners in the shop. Anyway, before he could say anything else, the old man told him that we spoke indonesian, which shut him up.
A few more adults and kids came to have a look at us, but the old man sent them away. We had another bottle of beer and then went back over to the bus agent's place - just in case he decided to go home early or something. We had the tickets, but we needed him to get us on the actual bus when it came. We needn't have worried, but sometimes it pays to stay in sight, so they don't forget you.
Kotabumi to Kiliran Jao
Just around dark the lightning started and not long after it began pissing with rain. We sat in the office and waited and i talked with some geezer who spoke a bit of English which he'd picked up in Bali. I ended up giving him my dictionary to help him learn English. I kind of had the feeling that we were on our way out of the country and i wouldn't need it any more. Somehow i forgot Malaysians speak the same language. Duuhhh!
One bus came along, but we didn't take it as we wouldn't have had seats. Then after a while another one came and we thought bugger it, we'll just get on, seats or not. But no chance! It was so crowded that the other passengers wouldn't let us get on board. Back through the pissing rain to the bench in the office.
Then, not long after seven, we finally got lucky on the third bus and ended up with two seats together. It was fairly comfortable too.
That bus was in a pretty bad state. The back shockies were virtually non-existent, which made it lurch quite badly round corners. And the road for probably the next six hundred or so kilometres was appalling - just one long series of sharp bends, one straight after the other, with only room for one bus or truck on each corner at once. It was slow and extremely uncomfortable. I hardly slept at all that night.