Bandar Lampung and beyond

I'm in a place called Bandar Lampung and I'm presently suffering from my first bout of travellers' belly. It's not great, but I've been travelling for two months and if this is the worst thing foodwise that's happened since i've started then i'm doing ok I reckon (esp as I've already eaten oysters in Thailand, tripes in Indonesia, and fuck knows what else that's been on the hands of the few hundred people who I've bought food off over the last eight or nine weeks). I'm in the south of Sumatra at the moment, having just spent 30 hours on a coach from the middle of Sumatra. It was truly horrific, especially as I was expecting it to take 24 hours, which seemed bad enough. Doing that with a dodgy stomach too took some iron will. Tomorrow I'm going to climb Krakatoa, which should be exciting, and then I think I'll be going to a national park on an island off the west coast of Java where they have panthers and monkeys in the wild. I think I'll be giving the national park near here a miss despite the fact that they have elephants here that play football (the guidebook says it's either that or death for them, but with no solid justification of why - you play football or you DIE, Dumbo).

I don't know what my plans for the next few months are, and that feels good. I want to go wherever the wind takes me, and I think it might take me back up to the middle of Sumatra where I found the most beautiful lake I've ever seen called Lake Maninjau. There are avocado trees, and papaya trees and durian trees (smelliest fruit I've even encountered that tastes of a mixture of strawberries and rotting onions) and you can swim in the lake all day or go fishing. The lake is actually formed in the crater of a volcano, so the water is really pure and clean, it's amazing. We took some motorbikes from the nearest big town through some beautiful mountains and stayed at a lovely little guesthouse with a bungalow to ourselves facing onto the lake about a metre away from it. The people there are very friendly, although there's a feeling that the place has seen better times. Apparently Sumatra is suffering from the downturn in tourism since the earthquakes/tsunami, as well as the bombings in Bali. Locals also tell you that the 30 day visa is killing tourism too, as it's just not long enough to see all of the massive archipelago that is Indonesia.

I've been looking for a teaching job in Sumatra, and Bukit Tinggi, where I spent a few days and caught the coach from recently seemed like a pretty good option. I was approached by a guy who was looking for someone to improve the English of the staff in the bank where he works, and picked a salary of 4,000,000 Rupiah for a month's work out of the air with the help of an Australian guy that was with me at the time. Turns out it wasn't that far off the mark, but the job anyway was a nonstarter, so I'm looking for something further afield - Padang, possibly, or somewhere in Java if I get that far. Vietnam is still a possibility, but that would mean taking a flight to Hanoi and then just winging it, which I'm not averse to, but I'm not sure the demand for English teaching is that great there. I think I'll stick around in Indonesia for the rest of my 30 day visa then take a flight back up to Bangkok to meet up with brother Paul for some spiritual moments in Thailand.

I'm off to take a taxi to Kalianda for 30,000 Rupiahs. Kalianda is 60km away, and 30,000 Rupiahs is about two quid. I ate today for 15,000, and that was expensive. Life o'Riley, I tell ye...

Mal a l'aise en Malaysie

Today I find myself in a town called Jelantut, in the region of Kalantan in Malaysia. We caught the train here this morning from Kota Bahru, on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia and travelled through the 'jungle' at not too great a speed. The intention was to take the jungle railway, but I realised after buying the ticket at 6am in the railway station amidst the worst infestation of black shield bugs I have ever had the ill fortune to experience, that we were in fact booked for the fast train. Given that we had only had four hours sleep after arriving back from the Perhentian islands at around 10:30pm, I realised that whatever train I was going on, whatever was going on outside would be of little interest to my heavy lidded eyes. Breakfast was my hundredth meal of nasi ayam (rice and chicken) in a shower of insects, the odd one plopping onto my rice or my head every five minutes, and we then hurried onto what I hoped was the right train, managing to pick up a banana leaf of rice and some unknown substance in case I was hungry on the six hour journey. The journey passed as I expected, uncomfortably in a freezing cold carriage with the air con on full. I have a bad cold at the moment so it was all the more unpleasant, particularly as you could put your head against the window and feel the sweet sweet warmth of the jungle humidity outside. It's very confusing. I've learnt quite quickly to bring heavy socks and a big jumper for travelling under the bittersweet blessing of aircon. I'm sure that that's what gave me my cold incidentally.

We arrived in Jelantut at lunchtime and my iron resolve to get away from the Lonely Planet herd immediately dissolved when we were approached by a man with a big van and promises of a room for 25 Ringgits (not bad, incidentally, but a sweat box nonetheless). So here we are now waiting to go to Taman Negara tomorrow, a mountainous jungle area inland from where we are now. We have to take a boat up the river tomorrow and then we enter into the National Park, where we can trek in the jungle and spend nights in hides watching unsuspecting animals around salt licks (unsuspecting in many ways as I hear one of them is an artificial salt lick, bizarrely, perhaps it's a jungle guide prank). There's little to do in little town expect eat and try not to spend any money. I have once again undulged by love for roti canai - a small chapatti served with a curry sauce, and today discovered the delights of murtabak - a chapatti filled with egg, spices and other unknown substances and fried. Truly delicious. We wandered around this transit town in search of some fruit, found some pineapple and then gave in to the heat and b ack to the hotel. i'm now freezing in the air con, and am planning to have an air con break shortly outside...

Malaysia seems to be so functional compared to Indonesia, and I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing. everything seems to run much more smoothly but that might just be that Malaysia is more westernised than any other SE Asia country. The British influence is apparent everywhere, not least in the number of Malaysians that speak English, given that schools adopted an English curriculum some twenty odd years ago. Whilst in KL I met a brother and sister Anglophile tag team, who knew all the words to the Coldplay song that was playing in the bar, and apparently used this to reel in unsuspecting Anglos like me. Never again will a throw in a passing comment about someone's level of English so flippantly. I learned, in stereo, how Zoe had learned English from two London gals and that's why she has an London accent and her brother is sick of hearing her English accent (but apparently cultivating one of his own) and she can switch from English accent to American and oh this is a good song ad nauseum. It was nice to meet such friendly locals, don't get me wrong, but difficult to endure with so little sleep and frankly so little input on my side.