At the entrance to the Kraton (the sultan’s palace). Floor tiles at the Kraton. Plenty of exploring to be had

Street life

Street art

A bird market

More birds

A mobile kitchen!

A becak – The next most popular transport in town

And another

A nice city to explore. Much less polluted and more chilled out than other big cities we’ve visited in Indonesia… if you can cope with the batik touts!

An afternoon on Pandangaran beach. Fishing the hard way… and hard for the fish as all the small ones get caught this way.

Pandangaran’s nice enough for a day, but we head to Batu Karas, an hour or so south west…

Chilling at our surf shack

Jorge waiting for waves

Up on day one – yeah! … But not solely attributable to my sporting talent – aparently these are the easiest waves in the world ever to learn on!

Jorge… looking more professional than I

Wipeout! (Jorge – hee hee!)

The local lads know the way

An amazingly quiet place, until the Bandung scouts turned up to camp for the weekend! We discovered slalom surfing isn’t much fun… but perhaps good training for Bali?!

Batu karas sunrise

Playing as the sun goes down

Practising his moves!

Batu Karas point break seen from the fishing village in the adjacent bay

Given the right conditions and surfing skills you can surf all the way from the point across both bays… but it’s a bit of a walk back!

Dig, dig!

Yep, the tsunami devastated these poor people’s lives too

Eco moment. Lawrence the lobster’s awful morning being entangled in a fishing net then washing up to be baked on the beach has a happy ending! Hmmm, don’t think I’ll be able to eat shellfish for a while!

A day trip down the nearby Green River…

… to the Green Canyon, with new friends Federico and Unik

Danau Toba – the world’s largest volcanic crater lake! We stayed on Samsoir island, in the lake. Again, the scenery here doesn’t match with my preconceived ideas of Indonesia

But the water buffalos and rooftops give it away that we’re not still in Europe

Tradional Batak houses. This is the so called Bible belt of Sumatra, and the culture and language is very different to the rest of the island. Pork and alcohol are back on the menu too!

And another – beautiful

Farming, fishing and craftwork are the main professions on Samsoir

Dry rice fields

Wet rice fields

Drying the rice

A Batak church

A traditional Batak music performance we invited ourselves to watch

First sight of the volcano (2090m), and the smoke!

Reached the crater rim a couple of hours’ climbing later.

A little disappointed to finally peer into the crater and discover a lake rather than bubbling lava – but still very cool!

In the crater of a volcano!!!

Stinky sulphourous gasses – I had to give the fried egg in my packed lunch to Jorge as I was feeling nauseous with the overpowering eggy air!

Action shot!

Stars of more strangers’ photos! We really are celebrities in Sumatra!

Palm oil! The National Park’s protected, but we travelled for three hours through plantations to reach it.

The Presidential Suite! Birthday treat. Thanks parents!

Cheeky monkeys on a mission outside our room

Off into the jungle!

Hanging out at the park entrance

Breakfast time!

Posing for photos…

And not watching the bananas closely enough!

Deep in the jungle!

Cornered my Mina, the bad girl of the jungle! We heard she’s bitten 60 people in a bid to get food as bad guides in the past used to feed her! 20 mins chasing ensued but Cholis our guide protected us!

Lunch preparations

Our ride back to the village!

Checking out the rapids

A special birthday dinner

And a birthday serenade

Followed by lots of guitar playing, bongos and singing… and a little tune from me too; only after most people had gone to bed

What a fantastic day!

A very green lizard!

Chosing a traditional sarong from the Friday market. Bought the green one on the back wall just above my shoulder. Thanks nannan!

Don’t know what you this but it’s nice and everywhere

An ingenious fridge

BBQ – mmm!

About town

Chocolate!

A typical lunch. Very happy to be back to nice food and decent portion sizes here in Indonesia

The Alas river

Monkey business! We were lucky to see many different types, just wandering about in the trees along the ‘main’ road. And…

A wild orangutan!!

Takengon – bigger than we’d imagined

Closer in

Typical houses

A satellite dish half the size of the house and a water buffalo in the garden seems to be the norm

The local wideboys

Cool air, pine trees… Feels like anywhere but Indonesia

An afternoon dip

Travelling in style! Realising we could only rent meaty fully manual bikes here (and neither of us being able to ride them), met some guys from the local Vespa club (!?) who were starting a business taking tourists round the lake.

A lot of hard work

Local life

The air in Indonesia always seems to be smoky one way or another

Smoke of a different kind!

Push, push!

The secnd cave tour con of the lake… although this one came with a superb guide who spoke ‘English’ and seemed to be making up random facts, talking about giraffes and kettles! Well worth the money!

Back in town for a traditional coffee – raw egg and sugar whipped before pouring on hot coffee… mmm! (And did you know that Starbucks get most of their coffee from the Gayo Highlands!?)

The owner wanted to pose for a photo too!

An incredibly beautiful place – in which we saw no other backpackers at all… probably thanks to Lonely Planet’s warning that the area has been notably unstable in the past… and the lengths you have to go to to get there and onwards anywhere else!

Plenty of busses in the station…

… but as this is one of the better stretches of road, you can imagine why only bikes and small vans can go long distance

A lunch stop in the middle of nowhere. The villagers were intrigued to see foreign faces passsing through

Finally left the Perhentians! Made our way down the east coast of Malaysia, stopping at Kuala Terrenganu, Cherating and Kuantan on the way to Singapore. Nothing huge to report. Singapore very cool, but also left a big hole in our budgets! Sorted out visas for Indonesia, bought an Indonesia guide and enjoyed warm showers and great food :)

Found out it was a bit of a mission to get to the north of Sumatra from Singapore so opted to fly instead; which actually worked out cheaper as well. So took to bus back up to KL for a couple of nights, visiting Jorge’s friends there again before flying into Banda Aceh. Heading off the plane to the arrivals ‘hall’ chaos ensued and we felt we’d arrived back home. Malaysia tried to be way to organised (and didn’t quite manage). Organised chaos is much preferable, and that’s what we’ve found here. Feels much the same as Thailand in that resect.

It’s extremely beautiful the little we’ve seen of it so far. The people are lovely, and go out of their way to wave, say hi and chat to practise their English. The language is more or less the same as in Malaysia so we’re off to a head start and can get about, buy stuff and order food no problem. Conversations are another matter, but we’ll keep practising!

We’ve been in Pulau Wei, an island 8okm north of Aceh for the past four days. It’s a tropical paradise. Probably the most beautiful island we’ve been so far. Bit deserted post tsunami and earthquake but the locals are really positive and keen to see tourists coming back. The bemo (moped rickshaw taxi) driver took a detour this morning on the way back from the ferry port to show us a huge ship that had been washed inland by the tsunami here in Banda Aceh – apparently just one of numerous. Looks like it’s being used as a power station or something now. There’s evidence of lots of rebuilding still, and of course sadly, the destruction the tsunami caused, including mass graves. Poor people here haven’t had much luck, but they all seem to be content, happy and positive about the future.

Yesterday on the island got stopped on our moped in a roadblock by the fashion police! They waved us on once they saw we were westerners. Read about it before that they have police to check that people are appropriately dressed for the muslim state.

Only staying here in Banda Aceh tonight before moving on towmorrow to the Gayo Highlands, to continue the long journey south. Nice enough here, but small enough to see in a day or two, and really expensive compared to other places too. Plan to spend my birthday in Bukit Lawang, to see the orangutans!! Very excited about that!

Hopefully find a fast connection and upload some photos soon to make you all very jealous ;)

Until then…

Another tropical paradise!

Our new neighbours

Ipoih village

A perfect playground

Amazingly blue!

Road block!

Kilometre zero – Indonesia begins here!

Along the road

…and again…

Filling up

Early morning on Gapang beach

Gapang beach by day…

…and by night

Heading back to Banda Aceh

The captain’s smalls drying in the wind!

Back in sight of the mainland…

Our first view of Sumatra!

Sumatra looks so jungly, mountainy and volcanoey… can’t wait to get down there!

Aceh from the air… so flat you can see why the tsunami caused such devastation here

A lot of rebuilding is still in progress, especially in the area leading to the new port

A huge ship that got washed kilometres inland with the wave

The river, where the port used to be; pre-tsunami

The main part of the mosque was one of the few buildings that survived intact

Outside the mosque

An upside down / circular rainbow?!

At the (hugely overpriced) hotel. NGO presence in the city means prices have rocketed

Hanging out at the hotel

A busy and very friendly city. Felt like superstars walking about town as everyone calls out to say hello. Didn’t know quite what to expect, but there’s a good vibe here.