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...