Batak to Sumatra
Oct. 1st, 2018 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeTwo years have flown past again which of course means it’s time for Pye to take kids to Indonesia. This time saw the triumphant return to North Sumatra, to see if teenagers could be less resilient and good at travelling than a nine year old.
The cunning plan was to use the stop-over to have a quick explore of Jakarta, which Garuda thought would be best done with a departure time of 6:10am. Hideously, this meant Pye had to make the 23 students and four staff meet at 2am, wahhh! Pye learned that her new phone’s alarm default is ‘silent’ (why would that even be an option, let alone the default?!), but fortunately her fitful napping meant she checked the clock every hour anyway, so was still on time, unlike one of the students who had all three of his alarms fail on him - how’s that for a great start to a trip?
Fortunately the flight was uneventful and with the time difference we arrived in Jakarta mid-morning. Pye had some darn fool idea that they might go to the hotel from the airport and be able to change clothes and maybe have a cheeky snooze, but Teunis the guide had other ideas – resting is for pansies! He was super-keen to show us the National Museum, so we stampeded straight there, lest it shut for the afternoon. It turned out to be a whole bunch of pillaged statues and stuff that the Dutch had knocked off over the years, which of course was just what a bunch of people who’ve just got off a flight want to see. Next he was like, “Right, let’s have lunch and go to the mosque*!!” but when everyone started to silently weep he got the message and let us go to hotel.
* Teunis repeatedly pronounced it as ‘moss-kay’ which is now how it is to be said by everyone everywhere.
Still, there was zero time to waste, so after a brief wash and rest we were out and at ‘em again, off to one of Jakarta’s massive malls. It was almost too big for our lil brains to handle, but served as a great reminder that Indonesia isn’t just people living in rude huts and selling sate. And Jakarta itself was remarkably pristine and clean, what with the Asian Games having just been afoot.
The next morning we headed out nice and early to see the Istiqlal mosque. The kids loved it!
Moose’s favourite bit was this guy who had apparently been rolled up in a rug…
… and he was completely devastated to find it was not actually the case.
The national mosque is built across the road from the national cathedral (on Fridays everyone parks at the cathedral, on Sundays everyone parks at the mosque), so the group crossed the road like a bunch of frightened lemmings to have a peek and make the Catholics back at school happy with us. We had to wait for a service to finish before doing a quick and underwhelming cruise through, but hopefully at least one student noticed the contrast of a neo-Gothic European-style church rubbing shoulders with a Middle-Eastern-style mosque.
With a flight waiting for us and the streets full of Sunday traffic, we crammed in a flying visit to MONAS (the National Monument, where the lines were too long to have time to look around the museum part, oh darn), Kota (the old colonial part of Jakarta) and the actually quite underwhelming old port Sunda Kelapa (which Pye’d never been to before so she was happy to see it anyway).
In the afternoon we jumped on a plane to make it to our main destination of North Sumatra. Despite Indonesian providers not holding public liability insurance (something the school board gets very tetchy about), Pye had insisted that the Trijaya Tour and Travel team take care of our itinerary. They greeted us at the airport with a big banner and their staff dressed up in traditional Karo Batak costume. One of them was Elli, our bestie from the last couple of visits, who Pye felt quite proud to be able to recognise in full dress-ups. Here she is later, not dressed up…
We had a new guide, Idris, who was very keen to take us straight to the mosque the next morning. Pye wasn’t too keen to endure a full-blown mutiny so early in the trip, though, so tried to negotiate it down to a lazy morning in the pool, followed by hanging out in Sun Plaza. Idris bristled considerably and seemed very cross to be thwarted in his intent to show these bule everything cool that ever existed in Medan, but eventually agreed and countered with a visit to Maimun Palace in there too. Pye agreed, even though she thought was likely going to be quite dull – but then we discovered that now they do full-on traditional dress-ups for tourists as a money-spinner! The kids all enjoyed getting their bling on, while Moose enjoyed being a little shit and rubbing his bum on things that signs told him to stay off.
After this surprisingly fun cultural experience, we went off to Sun Plaza so that the students could heroically pitch in to help with efforts to stimulate the Indonesian economy. They took their mission very seriously, and every little bit counts. Now, in the squad they had an ex-student with them, because Pye is kind and this girl is likely to become the next Jane Goodall (she will be referred to as JG2) and Pye thought she’d provide some inspirational young-person leadership. However, Pye had stupidly forgotten that young people who grew up in Lara and go to uni in Adelaide are less worldly than the average frog who has lived its whole life under a rock. JG2 was quickly overcome by the heat and change in diet, and threw up three whole times in one afternoon. But she was full of solutions on how to get better! Oh, that’s good, very mature! Thank goodness that Pye stuck her neck out, this is all going to be rad.
“Maybe I should stop drinking water because every time I’ve vomited I’ve just had a drink so maybe that’s what’s causing it,” JG2 said.
OMG are you fucking kidding me, do you want to be hospitalised with dehydration, because that’s how you get hospitalised with dehydration. There aren’t enough faces or palms in the world to cope sometimes. She did get marginally better at being a person later on, but hot tip, try to make a good impression at the start.
OH AND IN BREAKING NEWS, water is henceforth and forever more to be known as ‘sky juice’. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules, that’s just how it is.
Medan’s charms are usually quite quickly exhausted, but Idris had a surprise up his sleeve as we headed out the next day for Bukit Lawang. He took us to a Marian shrine called Graha Maria, which looks like an Indian temple and is 100% batshit crazy. Its designer, Fr James Bharataputra SJ, saw us coming and steamrolled out to engage in Indonesians’ favourite hobby, which appears to be causing groups of pasty young people stand in full, blazing sun forcing them to feign interest in incredibly detailed information about topics which are very definitely extremely interesting, while their teacher displays Olympic-level attentive-listening skills. The folks back at school were sure to froth over the way he was inspired by the mystery of the incarnation as suggested in the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, and how every single aspect has a meaning behind it and visitors of all faiths can immediately feel a sense of entering a pilgrimage centre and place of welcome to encounter God and his people.
I mean yeah, but have you seen this little diorama of mini Bethlehem?
And I know it’s ‘suffer the little children’, but does it have to be so literal?? And also, I don’t like the way Moose is eyeing off that deer, but this one’s on you, Jesuit priest dude who maybe snacks on edible marijuana for fun before building an edifice and proudly telling us how architects only came on board after he’d finished.
Shaking off our pious confusion, we climbed back aboard our giant bus to head down to Bukit Lawang and anyone who complained about the comfort of said bus was welcome to seek alternative arrangements.
When we got to Bukit Lawang, despite the fact that the Ecolodge is actually very nice, the kids collectively engaged in their favourite activity, which is spazzing out a bit when their comfort levels drop below 3.5 stars and maybe the shower in their hotel room is different to what they’re used to. Pye tried to care, but was too busy having rage blackouts watching Dutch tourists leave their Bintangs unfinished when she wasn’t even allowed to have even one. She was planning on taking up residence in the rafters in order to more conveniently drop down upon their selfish heads and wreak terrible vengeance, only her eminently sensible colleagues pointed out that she didn’t want to strain any muscles needed for wandering around the jungle the next day and convinced her to go to bed instead.
The even-more-sensible Bukit Lawang rangers split the group into four sub-groups for the six-hour jungle trek, and Pye decided it would be fun to give all the groups animal names. The group with the fairly confident Year 11 girls called themselves ‘Harimau’ (Tigers, in honor of all the ones that would live in Gunung Leuser National park if they weren’t all off going extinct). We thought it was hilarious to call the super confident boys’ group ‘Pacat’ (Leeches, because eh, why not, a laugh’s a laugh). The pretty-much blind girl and the chronically unfit team called themselves ‘Kukang’ (Slow Loris, ah ho ho, we see what you did there). And Pye’s middling team were ‘Orangutan’, something that several people went out of their way to point out was funny because Pye’s hair is red, as if she didn’t do it on purpose…
Suitably named, off we strode into the wilderness, coming across a bunch of playful Thomas Leaf monkey supermodels…
… the occasional macaque who had the good sense to stay off in the jungle lest Moose kick them in the nuts for being nasty macaques, and at least six orangutans, including this big beasty dude!
Pye is notorious for knowing what’s hilarious, such as co-opting innocent teenagers into taking this selfie with this boi in the background and calling it ‘Rangas for rangas’.
(she was extra excited, because her phone made up for its stupid alarm defaults by having a feature where you put your camera in selfie mode and hold up five fingers to trigger a photo #okaythatcool).
Anyhoo, later we also came across a mamma orangutan with a cheeky six-year-old. Team Pacat swear up and down that they were there when the big male and the mamma came across each other and started batting their orange eyelashes. Apparently they were just about to have some special ranga cuddles when the six-year-old came screeching out of the canopy and totally cock-blocked them, what a little shit!
When not watching pongo coitus interruptus we also came upon another mamma with a much, much smaller bubby – apparently only about a month old. The sound of everyone’s ovaries exploding was, quite frankly, deafening.
I MEAN LOOK AT ITS ICKLE GRIP ON ITS MAMMA’S FUR DON’T PRETEND THAT YOUR OVARIES AREN’T COMBUSTING RIGHT NOW, I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE A DUDE, YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING DOWN.
If you’re thinking that six hours wandering around in the jungle sounds like entirely too long a time period, you would be quite correct. But fortunately everyone managed to husband enough energy to stumble back down the hill and restore their strength for the next day’s grand elephant-shaped encore.
We’d always thought that the reason that the road from Bukit Lawang to the elephant-eco-tourism village of Tangkahan was so craptacular was because the Palm Oil Barons were greedy mo-fo’s who cackled evilly while taking their profits off-shore and not investing in local infrastructure. But, according to Idris, the real reason that the roads are so crap is so that ninjas can’t sneak in and make off with palm oil too quickly in the middle of the night. Upon reflection, it actually makes sense!
Still, the kids were excited to get into jeeps and rumble off to the morning elephant-scrubbing experience. Pye stoically endured the verbal attentions of the driver who wanted to know at what age Australian girls were allowed to get a boyfriend, and who revealed that he longed for a bule girlfriend but had given up hope because his English isn’t that great. After offering to sell him a Year 10 girl for 20 cows, Pye realised that her lusty powers had inspired this poor defenseless driver to crack on his absolute hardest. Pye found this very disrespectful to the fake relationship she’d waxed lyrical about – especially when he said that she should give him her hat and/or sunglasses as a token of remembrance and asked for her phone number - she was all like, fucker you’re going to have to make do with memories, it’s not my fault your English isn’t good enough to find a bule girlfriend and also you’re really gross and if you ever ask a woman again why she changed out of shorts into long pants after an elephant-washing experience maybe you deserve a giant tusk in your tail pipe.
Anyhoo, back to the elephants! When they rocked up, Stinky n Pye’s mutual Tangkahan bestie lady was all like, “Aiiii, my spesh friend, you have returned! Holy moly, check out this big fricken crew of souvenir-buying teenagers you’ve brought with you! AW YISSSSSSS *backflip* *high five*!!” And we’re pretty sure her pupils were replaced with dollar signs…? To build suspense, the elephants are no longer kept in a paddock beside the car park – instead, you go down to the river to [literally] cool your heels until the pachyderms show up. HERE THEY COME, TRUMPETING LIKE THE FLIGHT OF THE VALKRYIES TOOT TOOOOOOT
AND THEY BROUGHT THEIR BABBIESSSSSSSSS!!
Pye had maybe talked up the poop extraction activity more than she should have, but hey, look, this guy actually had a bag on his arm as he reached deep into this elephant’s rectum to pluck its delicious elephant apples before they could besmirch the river.
HA HA, YOU SAID ELEPHANT APPLES LOL
With the privilege of seniority, Moose reclined and let Lil Iggy do all the hard work scrubbing the elephants, and please can everyone not tell him how more than one elephant let out a blerruppering fart while someone was scritching away near the business end? He would be very sad to have missed out on the experience.
Everyone had a terribly grand time helping the elephants feel all clean and shiz, and look, here is evidence that there were four teachers all in the same place at the same time!
As is traditional in the Tangkahan experience, we had lunch at Mega Inn, where one of the girls fell in love with one of their [relatively clean] doggos and announced, “Saya mau membunuh anjing ini!” She meant, “I want to [mengambil – take away] this doggo!”, but what she said was, “I want to KILL this dog!” To their credit, the staff were quite mild, and merely politely asked that she not murder their pet, while she agreed that yes, she would refrain.
The jeeps then began the laborious journey back to WiFi – I mean, the Ecolodge ahem yes, let’s not misplace any importance here. At one stage one of the jeeps at the back broke down and everyone in front had to stop and wait, but that was okay because there was heaps and heap of Putri Malu beside the side of the road! In case you haven’t met either of us before, Putri Malu is a touch-sensitive plant that folds in on itself on contact and it’s fricken awesome and don’t think that anyone else who ever finds it doesn’t agree and if they don’t they are silly in the brain!
Pye also prevailed upon the jeep drivers (both thirsty and respectful) to stop in at ‘Coconut Stop’, a lovely pause by the wayside where one can, for a price, wildly wield a knife attached to the end of a stick to pick a coconut and then slurp down its watery innards. It’s always a nice way to break up a trip, and finally a kid thought of asking a question which none of us have bothered to ask for years – that is, ‘why the frickedy frack do you like sticking egg shells on the pokey caculent?’.
It turns out that the answer is……… ‘because the caculent is spikey pokey and we don’t like getting spikey pokeyed’. We suppose we should have seen that coming….
That evening we were supposed to host a visit from a representative of The Orangutan Project, an organisation to which we had previously donated a generous sum. Said representative had been lined up two months previously to come and tell the kids about their work and to graciously accept a symbolic cheque. Little did we know that TOP dude doesn’t ‘keep a conventional calendar’ and the day before wasn’t enough notice because he is building something out in the jungle, his ute had snapped in half, his mate has his motor bike and it’d cost Rp400,000 to get here (nice try ah ha yeah, fo sho that’s what it costs yeah right). Instead of trying to bust a gut, the quick-thinking team gave the idea of getting the lil twit the flick and instead asked a photogenic waiter from Ecolodge if he’d mind posing for a photo opportunity. We’d say that it worked out just fine, and the kids were thrilled that they didn’t have to listen to anyone talk at them! Pye reckons they got away with it…
SOCIAL MEDIA POST:
It's our last night in Bukit Lawang and we were delighted that a representative from the Orangutan Project was able to come to visit us and so eloquently share their experiences, as well as accept a symbolic cheque that represents the donation all the wonderful independent fund-raising the students did. We hope our contribution is able to make a difference!
Of course, if you’re a lying liar who lies, you’re sure to get your comeuppance. And lo, indeed, this was the case for poor Pye, who, the very next day, was sat upon the toilet (in her semi-open bathroom), releasing the kraken, when she did verily hear a noise other than that terrible commotion made by her nethers. She looked up and there was a monkey staring at her! “Ooh hello and heck, do I have to fight you?!” said Pye. But no, the monkey was a nice polite Thomas Leaf monkey, not a nasty macaque and it was like, “Pfft, Whatever!” and swung down off the roof. “Huh!” thought Pye, “That was a nice encounter, I am pleased it was not a macaque I was compelled to fight for ownership of my toothpaste tube, I might very well have found myself concussed upon the floor having attempted a ninja kick with my pants around my ankles!” But even as she sat thinking these thoughts, the rest of the mothers’ club came down one at a time. Four more Thomas Leaf monkeys, each with an increasingly small bubba on her chest swung past, paused and eyeballed Pye on the way past, all while she sat there rapt. Pye doesn’t know for sure what they scored her out of ten for the poo, but will treasure the experience for all time.
The main problem with North Sumatra is that its cool things are separated by relatively short distances but definitely terrible roads. So in order to get to Lake Toba for our next adventure, we have to go pretty much back up to Medan and down again, breaking the trip at Brastagi. They try to sell it as an ‘impressive route through the jungle to the mountain village in the Karo highlands’ and yep, they are legit 100% correct that it is… but they are not counting on the teenage ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat or to play on a telephone-machine until they feel bus-sick and then complain and want their Bu to fix it when they felt nauseated. But at least no one felt the need to hang a whizz and therefore popped off out the back door of the bus while paused in traffic WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE and then was TERRIBLY SURPRISED when the bus kept going and they had to run re-board the bus like NIC*LAS M*LONE did in 2016 MAY HE NEVER BE FORGIVEN.
Anyhoo, unless you want to climb a volcano (which Pye most certainly did not want to do with a 50/50 split of lame ducks and mildly competent humans who are good at not vomiting every twelve hours), the only thing to do en route to Brastagi is to spend some time at a volcanic hot spring AKA THE SOUCE OF ALL THE FARTS THAT EVER FARTED now who do we know that loves that shit?
So yep, it was indeed the same hot springs (open 24/7) that we hiked down to in 2012, but we still didn’t wish to immerse our genitals in because they were kinda manky public-pool-like stinky ponds that smelled like the worst farts ever. GUESS WHAT – the pools hadn’t changed, and also Pye’s opinions about immersion had remained the same. The students were proud to make an exception, but Pye cannot document their experience because that would involve photographing students in their bathers and that would be creepy. Please enjoy instead a couple of stuffed animals enjoying the farty farts. One of them of partially clothed, while the other is completely naked, do you want to look closely who is who?
The first time we ever stayed at Sinabung Hills we had such a great time playing in their children’s playground that we’ve never wanted to stay anywhere else. Like, legit, we have NEVER BOTHERED looking anywhere else (well, Stinky did, one time and can confirm that it wasn’t worth it). This is how much Moose loves Sinabung Hills!
Incidentally, as we left, the manager was all like “Sup, nice to see you, say hi to the fam, see ya next year!” lol. So there might be better places to stay, but why would you bother? Well, maybe because you’re a newly-formed Year10Boy-Year11Girl Power Couple and you don’t want your friends and also maybe your teachers to quasi-bully you…? AH HA THEN don’t let said friends and teachers make you pose for this…
… while your other friends lock in a forbidden embrace in the balcony above. NB Pappa Mclean AKA Love Police still aggressively policing pregnancy laws #NotOnOurWatch
Moose wanted to make extra-sure that everyone knows that he hearts Sinabung Hills, so popped down in the morning.
Meanwhile the kids climbed on a fiberglass elephant in order to fortify themselves for a spot of shopping in the market.
Bless their cotton socks, we turned our backs for two seconds and when we turned back, four kids had purchased matching jumpers and ridiculous pants. OMG YOU ARE OUR FAVOURITEEEEESSSSSSSSS.
After the local shopping bonanza, everyone climbed back aboard the bus, where Pye would have been pleased to learn how the Batak have a second funeral five or more years after burial where they wash off the bones and put them in the lil house bit on top of the house, but she was too busy taking photos of the new fashion faux pas to properly learn her shit. She’d also never noticed the signs on heaps of restaurants saying ‘B1’ and B2’. Turns out this is common code for what kind of meat they serve. What kind of meat, you ask? Well, B1 is dog
and B2 is pork 
. Sometimes you see B3 (cat) but apparently this is rare…
Regardless of Pye’s egregious ignorance, the road trip continued, punctuated with some very cool stops, including Sepiso-piso Falls. Upon arriving, the matching-jumper-boys immediately elected to do the only thing that made any sense…
While others among us continued to get terribly cross about the misuse of apostrophes in a language that doesn’t even use apostrophes, like this!
As tradition would have it the next stop is always the old king's houses at Rumah Balon Purba. It government doesn’t start dropping some cash to rebuild those destroyed by lightning strike or voracious lil wood-eating buggers, there won’t be any left in a while, but for now, this little patch of history is still here. In the pre-modern days (before Europeans told everyone why their boss should be a queen/king that no one would ever meet) every hill and hillock had a king who was proud surveyor and commander of all the lands and, of course, women-folk in his domain. The mainly female cohort of students listened attentively to how the local king chose his wives from the most attractive of the rice-threshers he currently surveyed and, with an eyebrow cocked, subtly indicated that they fervently felt grateful for where and when they’d been born. The boys might have too, it was hard to tell from way down where our perspective was, but maybe they’d all just automatically put themselves in the position of the king, I don’t know, I don’t shape society.
Then we powered on to Toba, pausing again at a traditional stop – the same one where we stopped last time for a meal that took about two hours to come out. This time we settled for sampling a ginger-spice tea that'll put hairs on your chest. It worked for Moose, anyway.
Something different this time around was a proliferation of selfie props balanced on the hillside, each more precarious than the last. Risk assess that, I dare you!
Some students seemed concerned that there might be a repeat of the massive super-volcanic eruption that occurred about 77,000 years ago, but fortunately we were not plunged into a volcanic winter lasting six to ten years. We were aiming for a private boat, so it was a nice change that we didn’t have to race for the ferry. Lil Iggy thoughtfully helped us get across Lake Toba to Samosir for the next stage of our adventure.
We’d budgeted for a rest day on the first day on the island, which is very convenient for kids getting terribly ill (aka feeling a bit off in the tum-tum and losing all resilience). We did our best to make sure all the students were able to buy presents for their families, and carefully chose not to imbibe any magic mushrooms.
Someone had had the brainwave of doing ‘Indonesian Idol’, prompted by the knowledge that one of the boys could actually do that Russian crouching down dance thing. Some magic card tricks and double-jointed screams of horror later, it was confirmed we were the most talented group on the island. Oh and also, we continued to bully the Blossoming Romance power couple by giving them matching Lake Toba loving t-shirts, that’ll teach you to have emotions!
Fortified with team building fun, it was then time to cram a butt-load of culture down everyone’s gullet. Lil Iggy was judged, found guilty and sentenced to execution on Ambarita’s megalith execution table …
While Moose languished in jail for crimes he most definitely committed…
The drunken-shuffle dance at Simanando was just as electrifying as always…
… and check out how the rain comes up in this photo at Tomok’s mystifying kings’ tombs!
For some reason this is where Idris started to tell us about how they don’t say ‘penn-iss’ but rather ‘gun’, the opposite of which is ‘butterfly’, which was baffling but still better than when he went on for ten minutes about how freely available pot was going to be when we got to Bukit Lawang…
We were too lazy to go in search of the lake that has an island in the middle of it (making it an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island) and instead steeled ourselves for the long trek back to Medan. For a change, we didn’t stop at the grand old hotel in Siantar, but rather a roof-top terrace style place. I suppose the real question is why *wouldn't* there be Tuesday lunchtime karaoke at a random restaurant out in the sticks, but the kids got super-into it (even the one who just five minute before was ever so pale and tragic and in need of attention because she felt bus-sick).
Pye was watching our progress on Maps and as we approached Medan, she braced herself for a few more hours of stop-start traffic jams, but lo! Part of the new highway is open! And it’s a toll road, so there was next to no one on it – we fairly flew along that concrete rainbow, cranking out speeds of up to 80 kilometres an hour! Wheeee!
Back at Hotel Deli River we were banished to our rooms while they ‘fogged’ the main building to kill bugs (half an hour before dinner, but what do we know about pesticides, eh?).
The staff put on a very special ‘last supper’ providing Nasi Tumpeng – a dish commonly reserved for big celebrations, bless. And then it was revealed that the kids on this trip are actually very clever ninjas, who had somehow managed to snag our favourite cigarette sign to present to Pye as a thank you gift! How’s ‘Never Quit’ for a slogan, eh?
The last day was all about filling in time before going to the airport. Idris was finally allowed to take us to the Grand Mosque, where Pye finally realised the decorations on the toilets look like the poo emoji!
Then Idris took us to the Maha Vihara Maitreya Cemara Asri Buddhist Temple, where Moose made a pest of himself by repeatedly shouting, “Have you heard about Salman Rushdie's sequel to ‘Satanic Verses’? It’s called ‘Buddha, You Fat Fuck’! Geddit!?!!”
I honestly don’t know what else we should have expected. Except hang on, is this one texting?? Damn kids today, always on their phones!
Speaking of social media, the very well-meaning but not always social-media literate person in charge of the school’s Facebook had been taking joy in cutting and pasting Pye’s updates onto the official school feed. Whereas phrases like ‘Thanks, lil dude!’ and words like ‘rad’ were fine for the context where they were originally posted, they didn’t really work in their new environment, but no one was game to tell her. Instead, the students just dared to see how awful Pye could make a post and see if it made the cut, which is how we get this gem:
Our last hurrah in Medan was lit! Mesjid Raya, a Buddhist temple, then a last-ditch effort to get rid of our excess rupiah back at Sun Plaza. Yeet!
So far it hasn’t made the cut, but we can keep hoping. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful, unless you count the girl who had apparently had a tummy ache for two days only choosing to tell us about it on the bus to the airport. We took her to the airport medic who diagnosed her with not having eaten anything, so we got her something to eat, but she didn’t want to eat it because her tummy hurt, can you see how this problem arose…?
Moose can’t bear to be that patient so he buggered off to make friends with the Asian Games mascots and play with some of Medan airport’s cool art and we think maybe he took a dump on those rocks but Pye didn’t look too closely because she had already dealt with enough shit today thank you.
The flights were both blessedly uneventful, with the only remarkable thing is what they did to Deadpool 2 to screen it on a plane (spoilers, they took all the swears and anything vaguely sexual out, lots of ‘fudge!’ and ‘Cheese and Crackers!’ going around – it was like, 90% of the movie!). And then we were home! Hooray, we did it!! Now do it again in two years!!
The cunning plan was to use the stop-over to have a quick explore of Jakarta, which Garuda thought would be best done with a departure time of 6:10am. Hideously, this meant Pye had to make the 23 students and four staff meet at 2am, wahhh! Pye learned that her new phone’s alarm default is ‘silent’ (why would that even be an option, let alone the default?!), but fortunately her fitful napping meant she checked the clock every hour anyway, so was still on time, unlike one of the students who had all three of his alarms fail on him - how’s that for a great start to a trip?
Fortunately the flight was uneventful and with the time difference we arrived in Jakarta mid-morning. Pye had some darn fool idea that they might go to the hotel from the airport and be able to change clothes and maybe have a cheeky snooze, but Teunis the guide had other ideas – resting is for pansies! He was super-keen to show us the National Museum, so we stampeded straight there, lest it shut for the afternoon. It turned out to be a whole bunch of pillaged statues and stuff that the Dutch had knocked off over the years, which of course was just what a bunch of people who’ve just got off a flight want to see. Next he was like, “Right, let’s have lunch and go to the mosque*!!” but when everyone started to silently weep he got the message and let us go to hotel.
* Teunis repeatedly pronounced it as ‘moss-kay’ which is now how it is to be said by everyone everywhere.
Still, there was zero time to waste, so after a brief wash and rest we were out and at ‘em again, off to one of Jakarta’s massive malls. It was almost too big for our lil brains to handle, but served as a great reminder that Indonesia isn’t just people living in rude huts and selling sate. And Jakarta itself was remarkably pristine and clean, what with the Asian Games having just been afoot.
The next morning we headed out nice and early to see the Istiqlal mosque. The kids loved it!
Moose’s favourite bit was this guy who had apparently been rolled up in a rug…
… and he was completely devastated to find it was not actually the case.
The national mosque is built across the road from the national cathedral (on Fridays everyone parks at the cathedral, on Sundays everyone parks at the mosque), so the group crossed the road like a bunch of frightened lemmings to have a peek and make the Catholics back at school happy with us. We had to wait for a service to finish before doing a quick and underwhelming cruise through, but hopefully at least one student noticed the contrast of a neo-Gothic European-style church rubbing shoulders with a Middle-Eastern-style mosque.
With a flight waiting for us and the streets full of Sunday traffic, we crammed in a flying visit to MONAS (the National Monument, where the lines were too long to have time to look around the museum part, oh darn), Kota (the old colonial part of Jakarta) and the actually quite underwhelming old port Sunda Kelapa (which Pye’d never been to before so she was happy to see it anyway).
In the afternoon we jumped on a plane to make it to our main destination of North Sumatra. Despite Indonesian providers not holding public liability insurance (something the school board gets very tetchy about), Pye had insisted that the Trijaya Tour and Travel team take care of our itinerary. They greeted us at the airport with a big banner and their staff dressed up in traditional Karo Batak costume. One of them was Elli, our bestie from the last couple of visits, who Pye felt quite proud to be able to recognise in full dress-ups. Here she is later, not dressed up…
We had a new guide, Idris, who was very keen to take us straight to the mosque the next morning. Pye wasn’t too keen to endure a full-blown mutiny so early in the trip, though, so tried to negotiate it down to a lazy morning in the pool, followed by hanging out in Sun Plaza. Idris bristled considerably and seemed very cross to be thwarted in his intent to show these bule everything cool that ever existed in Medan, but eventually agreed and countered with a visit to Maimun Palace in there too. Pye agreed, even though she thought was likely going to be quite dull – but then we discovered that now they do full-on traditional dress-ups for tourists as a money-spinner! The kids all enjoyed getting their bling on, while Moose enjoyed being a little shit and rubbing his bum on things that signs told him to stay off.
After this surprisingly fun cultural experience, we went off to Sun Plaza so that the students could heroically pitch in to help with efforts to stimulate the Indonesian economy. They took their mission very seriously, and every little bit counts. Now, in the squad they had an ex-student with them, because Pye is kind and this girl is likely to become the next Jane Goodall (she will be referred to as JG2) and Pye thought she’d provide some inspirational young-person leadership. However, Pye had stupidly forgotten that young people who grew up in Lara and go to uni in Adelaide are less worldly than the average frog who has lived its whole life under a rock. JG2 was quickly overcome by the heat and change in diet, and threw up three whole times in one afternoon. But she was full of solutions on how to get better! Oh, that’s good, very mature! Thank goodness that Pye stuck her neck out, this is all going to be rad.
“Maybe I should stop drinking water because every time I’ve vomited I’ve just had a drink so maybe that’s what’s causing it,” JG2 said.
OMG are you fucking kidding me, do you want to be hospitalised with dehydration, because that’s how you get hospitalised with dehydration. There aren’t enough faces or palms in the world to cope sometimes. She did get marginally better at being a person later on, but hot tip, try to make a good impression at the start.
OH AND IN BREAKING NEWS, water is henceforth and forever more to be known as ‘sky juice’. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules, that’s just how it is.
Medan’s charms are usually quite quickly exhausted, but Idris had a surprise up his sleeve as we headed out the next day for Bukit Lawang. He took us to a Marian shrine called Graha Maria, which looks like an Indian temple and is 100% batshit crazy. Its designer, Fr James Bharataputra SJ, saw us coming and steamrolled out to engage in Indonesians’ favourite hobby, which appears to be causing groups of pasty young people stand in full, blazing sun forcing them to feign interest in incredibly detailed information about topics which are very definitely extremely interesting, while their teacher displays Olympic-level attentive-listening skills. The folks back at school were sure to froth over the way he was inspired by the mystery of the incarnation as suggested in the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, and how every single aspect has a meaning behind it and visitors of all faiths can immediately feel a sense of entering a pilgrimage centre and place of welcome to encounter God and his people.
I mean yeah, but have you seen this little diorama of mini Bethlehem?
And I know it’s ‘suffer the little children’, but does it have to be so literal?? And also, I don’t like the way Moose is eyeing off that deer, but this one’s on you, Jesuit priest dude who maybe snacks on edible marijuana for fun before building an edifice and proudly telling us how architects only came on board after he’d finished.
Shaking off our pious confusion, we climbed back aboard our giant bus to head down to Bukit Lawang and anyone who complained about the comfort of said bus was welcome to seek alternative arrangements.
When we got to Bukit Lawang, despite the fact that the Ecolodge is actually very nice, the kids collectively engaged in their favourite activity, which is spazzing out a bit when their comfort levels drop below 3.5 stars and maybe the shower in their hotel room is different to what they’re used to. Pye tried to care, but was too busy having rage blackouts watching Dutch tourists leave their Bintangs unfinished when she wasn’t even allowed to have even one. She was planning on taking up residence in the rafters in order to more conveniently drop down upon their selfish heads and wreak terrible vengeance, only her eminently sensible colleagues pointed out that she didn’t want to strain any muscles needed for wandering around the jungle the next day and convinced her to go to bed instead.
The even-more-sensible Bukit Lawang rangers split the group into four sub-groups for the six-hour jungle trek, and Pye decided it would be fun to give all the groups animal names. The group with the fairly confident Year 11 girls called themselves ‘Harimau’ (Tigers, in honor of all the ones that would live in Gunung Leuser National park if they weren’t all off going extinct). We thought it was hilarious to call the super confident boys’ group ‘Pacat’ (Leeches, because eh, why not, a laugh’s a laugh). The pretty-much blind girl and the chronically unfit team called themselves ‘Kukang’ (Slow Loris, ah ho ho, we see what you did there). And Pye’s middling team were ‘Orangutan’, something that several people went out of their way to point out was funny because Pye’s hair is red, as if she didn’t do it on purpose…
Suitably named, off we strode into the wilderness, coming across a bunch of playful Thomas Leaf monkey supermodels…
… the occasional macaque who had the good sense to stay off in the jungle lest Moose kick them in the nuts for being nasty macaques, and at least six orangutans, including this big beasty dude!
Pye is notorious for knowing what’s hilarious, such as co-opting innocent teenagers into taking this selfie with this boi in the background and calling it ‘Rangas for rangas’.
(she was extra excited, because her phone made up for its stupid alarm defaults by having a feature where you put your camera in selfie mode and hold up five fingers to trigger a photo #okaythatcool).
Anyhoo, later we also came across a mamma orangutan with a cheeky six-year-old. Team Pacat swear up and down that they were there when the big male and the mamma came across each other and started batting their orange eyelashes. Apparently they were just about to have some special ranga cuddles when the six-year-old came screeching out of the canopy and totally cock-blocked them, what a little shit!
When not watching pongo coitus interruptus we also came upon another mamma with a much, much smaller bubby – apparently only about a month old. The sound of everyone’s ovaries exploding was, quite frankly, deafening.
I MEAN LOOK AT ITS ICKLE GRIP ON ITS MAMMA’S FUR DON’T PRETEND THAT YOUR OVARIES AREN’T COMBUSTING RIGHT NOW, I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE A DUDE, YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING DOWN.
If you’re thinking that six hours wandering around in the jungle sounds like entirely too long a time period, you would be quite correct. But fortunately everyone managed to husband enough energy to stumble back down the hill and restore their strength for the next day’s grand elephant-shaped encore.
We’d always thought that the reason that the road from Bukit Lawang to the elephant-eco-tourism village of Tangkahan was so craptacular was because the Palm Oil Barons were greedy mo-fo’s who cackled evilly while taking their profits off-shore and not investing in local infrastructure. But, according to Idris, the real reason that the roads are so crap is so that ninjas can’t sneak in and make off with palm oil too quickly in the middle of the night. Upon reflection, it actually makes sense!
Still, the kids were excited to get into jeeps and rumble off to the morning elephant-scrubbing experience. Pye stoically endured the verbal attentions of the driver who wanted to know at what age Australian girls were allowed to get a boyfriend, and who revealed that he longed for a bule girlfriend but had given up hope because his English isn’t that great. After offering to sell him a Year 10 girl for 20 cows, Pye realised that her lusty powers had inspired this poor defenseless driver to crack on his absolute hardest. Pye found this very disrespectful to the fake relationship she’d waxed lyrical about – especially when he said that she should give him her hat and/or sunglasses as a token of remembrance and asked for her phone number - she was all like, fucker you’re going to have to make do with memories, it’s not my fault your English isn’t good enough to find a bule girlfriend and also you’re really gross and if you ever ask a woman again why she changed out of shorts into long pants after an elephant-washing experience maybe you deserve a giant tusk in your tail pipe.
Anyhoo, back to the elephants! When they rocked up, Stinky n Pye’s mutual Tangkahan bestie lady was all like, “Aiiii, my spesh friend, you have returned! Holy moly, check out this big fricken crew of souvenir-buying teenagers you’ve brought with you! AW YISSSSSSS *backflip* *high five*!!” And we’re pretty sure her pupils were replaced with dollar signs…? To build suspense, the elephants are no longer kept in a paddock beside the car park – instead, you go down to the river to [literally] cool your heels until the pachyderms show up. HERE THEY COME, TRUMPETING LIKE THE FLIGHT OF THE VALKRYIES TOOT TOOOOOOT
AND THEY BROUGHT THEIR BABBIESSSSSSSSS!!
Pye had maybe talked up the poop extraction activity more than she should have, but hey, look, this guy actually had a bag on his arm as he reached deep into this elephant’s rectum to pluck its delicious elephant apples before they could besmirch the river.
HA HA, YOU SAID ELEPHANT APPLES LOL
With the privilege of seniority, Moose reclined and let Lil Iggy do all the hard work scrubbing the elephants, and please can everyone not tell him how more than one elephant let out a blerruppering fart while someone was scritching away near the business end? He would be very sad to have missed out on the experience.
Everyone had a terribly grand time helping the elephants feel all clean and shiz, and look, here is evidence that there were four teachers all in the same place at the same time!
As is traditional in the Tangkahan experience, we had lunch at Mega Inn, where one of the girls fell in love with one of their [relatively clean] doggos and announced, “Saya mau membunuh anjing ini!” She meant, “I want to [mengambil – take away] this doggo!”, but what she said was, “I want to KILL this dog!” To their credit, the staff were quite mild, and merely politely asked that she not murder their pet, while she agreed that yes, she would refrain.
The jeeps then began the laborious journey back to WiFi – I mean, the Ecolodge ahem yes, let’s not misplace any importance here. At one stage one of the jeeps at the back broke down and everyone in front had to stop and wait, but that was okay because there was heaps and heap of Putri Malu beside the side of the road! In case you haven’t met either of us before, Putri Malu is a touch-sensitive plant that folds in on itself on contact and it’s fricken awesome and don’t think that anyone else who ever finds it doesn’t agree and if they don’t they are silly in the brain!
Pye also prevailed upon the jeep drivers (both thirsty and respectful) to stop in at ‘Coconut Stop’, a lovely pause by the wayside where one can, for a price, wildly wield a knife attached to the end of a stick to pick a coconut and then slurp down its watery innards. It’s always a nice way to break up a trip, and finally a kid thought of asking a question which none of us have bothered to ask for years – that is, ‘why the frickedy frack do you like sticking egg shells on the pokey caculent?’.
It turns out that the answer is……… ‘because the caculent is spikey pokey and we don’t like getting spikey pokeyed’. We suppose we should have seen that coming….
That evening we were supposed to host a visit from a representative of The Orangutan Project, an organisation to which we had previously donated a generous sum. Said representative had been lined up two months previously to come and tell the kids about their work and to graciously accept a symbolic cheque. Little did we know that TOP dude doesn’t ‘keep a conventional calendar’ and the day before wasn’t enough notice because he is building something out in the jungle, his ute had snapped in half, his mate has his motor bike and it’d cost Rp400,000 to get here (nice try ah ha yeah, fo sho that’s what it costs yeah right). Instead of trying to bust a gut, the quick-thinking team gave the idea of getting the lil twit the flick and instead asked a photogenic waiter from Ecolodge if he’d mind posing for a photo opportunity. We’d say that it worked out just fine, and the kids were thrilled that they didn’t have to listen to anyone talk at them! Pye reckons they got away with it…
SOCIAL MEDIA POST:
It's our last night in Bukit Lawang and we were delighted that a representative from the Orangutan Project was able to come to visit us and so eloquently share their experiences, as well as accept a symbolic cheque that represents the donation all the wonderful independent fund-raising the students did. We hope our contribution is able to make a difference!
Of course, if you’re a lying liar who lies, you’re sure to get your comeuppance. And lo, indeed, this was the case for poor Pye, who, the very next day, was sat upon the toilet (in her semi-open bathroom), releasing the kraken, when she did verily hear a noise other than that terrible commotion made by her nethers. She looked up and there was a monkey staring at her! “Ooh hello and heck, do I have to fight you?!” said Pye. But no, the monkey was a nice polite Thomas Leaf monkey, not a nasty macaque and it was like, “Pfft, Whatever!” and swung down off the roof. “Huh!” thought Pye, “That was a nice encounter, I am pleased it was not a macaque I was compelled to fight for ownership of my toothpaste tube, I might very well have found myself concussed upon the floor having attempted a ninja kick with my pants around my ankles!” But even as she sat thinking these thoughts, the rest of the mothers’ club came down one at a time. Four more Thomas Leaf monkeys, each with an increasingly small bubba on her chest swung past, paused and eyeballed Pye on the way past, all while she sat there rapt. Pye doesn’t know for sure what they scored her out of ten for the poo, but will treasure the experience for all time.
The main problem with North Sumatra is that its cool things are separated by relatively short distances but definitely terrible roads. So in order to get to Lake Toba for our next adventure, we have to go pretty much back up to Medan and down again, breaking the trip at Brastagi. They try to sell it as an ‘impressive route through the jungle to the mountain village in the Karo highlands’ and yep, they are legit 100% correct that it is… but they are not counting on the teenage ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat or to play on a telephone-machine until they feel bus-sick and then complain and want their Bu to fix it when they felt nauseated. But at least no one felt the need to hang a whizz and therefore popped off out the back door of the bus while paused in traffic WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE and then was TERRIBLY SURPRISED when the bus kept going and they had to run re-board the bus like NIC*LAS M*LONE did in 2016 MAY HE NEVER BE FORGIVEN.
Anyhoo, unless you want to climb a volcano (which Pye most certainly did not want to do with a 50/50 split of lame ducks and mildly competent humans who are good at not vomiting every twelve hours), the only thing to do en route to Brastagi is to spend some time at a volcanic hot spring AKA THE SOUCE OF ALL THE FARTS THAT EVER FARTED now who do we know that loves that shit?
So yep, it was indeed the same hot springs (open 24/7) that we hiked down to in 2012, but we still didn’t wish to immerse our genitals in because they were kinda manky public-pool-like stinky ponds that smelled like the worst farts ever. GUESS WHAT – the pools hadn’t changed, and also Pye’s opinions about immersion had remained the same. The students were proud to make an exception, but Pye cannot document their experience because that would involve photographing students in their bathers and that would be creepy. Please enjoy instead a couple of stuffed animals enjoying the farty farts. One of them of partially clothed, while the other is completely naked, do you want to look closely who is who?
The first time we ever stayed at Sinabung Hills we had such a great time playing in their children’s playground that we’ve never wanted to stay anywhere else. Like, legit, we have NEVER BOTHERED looking anywhere else (well, Stinky did, one time and can confirm that it wasn’t worth it). This is how much Moose loves Sinabung Hills!
Incidentally, as we left, the manager was all like “Sup, nice to see you, say hi to the fam, see ya next year!” lol. So there might be better places to stay, but why would you bother? Well, maybe because you’re a newly-formed Year10Boy-Year11Girl Power Couple and you don’t want your friends and also maybe your teachers to quasi-bully you…? AH HA THEN don’t let said friends and teachers make you pose for this…
… while your other friends lock in a forbidden embrace in the balcony above. NB Pappa Mclean AKA Love Police still aggressively policing pregnancy laws #NotOnOurWatch
Moose wanted to make extra-sure that everyone knows that he hearts Sinabung Hills, so popped down in the morning.
Meanwhile the kids climbed on a fiberglass elephant in order to fortify themselves for a spot of shopping in the market.
Bless their cotton socks, we turned our backs for two seconds and when we turned back, four kids had purchased matching jumpers and ridiculous pants. OMG YOU ARE OUR FAVOURITEEEEESSSSSSSSS.
After the local shopping bonanza, everyone climbed back aboard the bus, where Pye would have been pleased to learn how the Batak have a second funeral five or more years after burial where they wash off the bones and put them in the lil house bit on top of the house, but she was too busy taking photos of the new fashion faux pas to properly learn her shit. She’d also never noticed the signs on heaps of restaurants saying ‘B1’ and B2’. Turns out this is common code for what kind of meat they serve. What kind of meat, you ask? Well, B1 is dog
and B2 is pork . Sometimes you see B3 (cat) but apparently this is rare…Regardless of Pye’s egregious ignorance, the road trip continued, punctuated with some very cool stops, including Sepiso-piso Falls. Upon arriving, the matching-jumper-boys immediately elected to do the only thing that made any sense…
While others among us continued to get terribly cross about the misuse of apostrophes in a language that doesn’t even use apostrophes, like this!
As tradition would have it the next stop is always the old king's houses at Rumah Balon Purba. It government doesn’t start dropping some cash to rebuild those destroyed by lightning strike or voracious lil wood-eating buggers, there won’t be any left in a while, but for now, this little patch of history is still here. In the pre-modern days (before Europeans told everyone why their boss should be a queen/king that no one would ever meet) every hill and hillock had a king who was proud surveyor and commander of all the lands and, of course, women-folk in his domain. The mainly female cohort of students listened attentively to how the local king chose his wives from the most attractive of the rice-threshers he currently surveyed and, with an eyebrow cocked, subtly indicated that they fervently felt grateful for where and when they’d been born. The boys might have too, it was hard to tell from way down where our perspective was, but maybe they’d all just automatically put themselves in the position of the king, I don’t know, I don’t shape society.
Then we powered on to Toba, pausing again at a traditional stop – the same one where we stopped last time for a meal that took about two hours to come out. This time we settled for sampling a ginger-spice tea that'll put hairs on your chest. It worked for Moose, anyway.
Something different this time around was a proliferation of selfie props balanced on the hillside, each more precarious than the last. Risk assess that, I dare you!
Some students seemed concerned that there might be a repeat of the massive super-volcanic eruption that occurred about 77,000 years ago, but fortunately we were not plunged into a volcanic winter lasting six to ten years. We were aiming for a private boat, so it was a nice change that we didn’t have to race for the ferry. Lil Iggy thoughtfully helped us get across Lake Toba to Samosir for the next stage of our adventure.
We’d budgeted for a rest day on the first day on the island, which is very convenient for kids getting terribly ill (aka feeling a bit off in the tum-tum and losing all resilience). We did our best to make sure all the students were able to buy presents for their families, and carefully chose not to imbibe any magic mushrooms.
Someone had had the brainwave of doing ‘Indonesian Idol’, prompted by the knowledge that one of the boys could actually do that Russian crouching down dance thing. Some magic card tricks and double-jointed screams of horror later, it was confirmed we were the most talented group on the island. Oh and also, we continued to bully the Blossoming Romance power couple by giving them matching Lake Toba loving t-shirts, that’ll teach you to have emotions!
Fortified with team building fun, it was then time to cram a butt-load of culture down everyone’s gullet. Lil Iggy was judged, found guilty and sentenced to execution on Ambarita’s megalith execution table …
While Moose languished in jail for crimes he most definitely committed…
The drunken-shuffle dance at Simanando was just as electrifying as always…
… and check out how the rain comes up in this photo at Tomok’s mystifying kings’ tombs!
For some reason this is where Idris started to tell us about how they don’t say ‘penn-iss’ but rather ‘gun’, the opposite of which is ‘butterfly’, which was baffling but still better than when he went on for ten minutes about how freely available pot was going to be when we got to Bukit Lawang…
We were too lazy to go in search of the lake that has an island in the middle of it (making it an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island) and instead steeled ourselves for the long trek back to Medan. For a change, we didn’t stop at the grand old hotel in Siantar, but rather a roof-top terrace style place. I suppose the real question is why *wouldn't* there be Tuesday lunchtime karaoke at a random restaurant out in the sticks, but the kids got super-into it (even the one who just five minute before was ever so pale and tragic and in need of attention because she felt bus-sick).
Pye was watching our progress on Maps and as we approached Medan, she braced herself for a few more hours of stop-start traffic jams, but lo! Part of the new highway is open! And it’s a toll road, so there was next to no one on it – we fairly flew along that concrete rainbow, cranking out speeds of up to 80 kilometres an hour! Wheeee!
Back at Hotel Deli River we were banished to our rooms while they ‘fogged’ the main building to kill bugs (half an hour before dinner, but what do we know about pesticides, eh?).
The staff put on a very special ‘last supper’ providing Nasi Tumpeng – a dish commonly reserved for big celebrations, bless. And then it was revealed that the kids on this trip are actually very clever ninjas, who had somehow managed to snag our favourite cigarette sign to present to Pye as a thank you gift! How’s ‘Never Quit’ for a slogan, eh?
The last day was all about filling in time before going to the airport. Idris was finally allowed to take us to the Grand Mosque, where Pye finally realised the decorations on the toilets look like the poo emoji!
Then Idris took us to the Maha Vihara Maitreya Cemara Asri Buddhist Temple, where Moose made a pest of himself by repeatedly shouting, “Have you heard about Salman Rushdie's sequel to ‘Satanic Verses’? It’s called ‘Buddha, You Fat Fuck’! Geddit!?!!”
I honestly don’t know what else we should have expected. Except hang on, is this one texting?? Damn kids today, always on their phones!
Speaking of social media, the very well-meaning but not always social-media literate person in charge of the school’s Facebook had been taking joy in cutting and pasting Pye’s updates onto the official school feed. Whereas phrases like ‘Thanks, lil dude!’ and words like ‘rad’ were fine for the context where they were originally posted, they didn’t really work in their new environment, but no one was game to tell her. Instead, the students just dared to see how awful Pye could make a post and see if it made the cut, which is how we get this gem:
Our last hurrah in Medan was lit! Mesjid Raya, a Buddhist temple, then a last-ditch effort to get rid of our excess rupiah back at Sun Plaza. Yeet!
So far it hasn’t made the cut, but we can keep hoping. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful, unless you count the girl who had apparently had a tummy ache for two days only choosing to tell us about it on the bus to the airport. We took her to the airport medic who diagnosed her with not having eaten anything, so we got her something to eat, but she didn’t want to eat it because her tummy hurt, can you see how this problem arose…?
Moose can’t bear to be that patient so he buggered off to make friends with the Asian Games mascots and play with some of Medan airport’s cool art and we think maybe he took a dump on those rocks but Pye didn’t look too closely because she had already dealt with enough shit today thank you.
The flights were both blessedly uneventful, with the only remarkable thing is what they did to Deadpool 2 to screen it on a plane (spoilers, they took all the swears and anything vaguely sexual out, lots of ‘fudge!’ and ‘Cheese and Crackers!’ going around – it was like, 90% of the movie!). And then we were home! Hooray, we did it!! Now do it again in two years!!
