BUKITTINGGI - INDONESIA

After being stuck at Lake Toba for 2 days longer than we wanted we were looking forward to going to Bukittinggi.We had to go back into town and wait for the bus at the travel agent which was due at 5pm. The travel agent told us of a good place we should eat at while waiting. Now I was not too hungry so I only had a snack and waited outside. Soon after Robbie came out arguing with the travel agent who ordered food then said he had no money to pay for it. The worst thing was is that Robbie had made it clear to him he was not paying for his food before he went in, he had meat in his food when he asked for vegetables and rice. He had also just dropped his camera so he was not in the best of moods.

The travel agent just sat there with a big smile on his face as if he was proud of what he had done. Robbie would not leave him until he paid up which he did after about an hour and stormed off in a rage. The bus turned out to be delayed, every hour it was put back another hour until it finally arrived at 10pm.

As usual I never sleep well on transport and was drifting in and out of sleep all night. About 2am there was a massive downpour and the road had degraded into a muddy track no better than the one going throughmy local woods back home. I fell asleep for several hours only to find us in the same place. The police had became involved trying to move the traffic, in the end we all had to get out and push the bus up a hill.

The scenery was great but by midday we just wanted to get there, the driver gave way to every other vehicle on the road adding loads of time to the journey. I crossed the equator by land for the first time but there was no sign where you could have your picture taken unlike in other parts of the world.

An hour after it got dark we arrived in Bukittinggi 27 hours after catching the ferry across Lake Toba. We then faced another problem, it was a public holiday and every hotel and guest house in town was full.

We went to the Sari hotel and was told by the woman that she had a house to rent at about 5 times the cost of a normal room. We knew that was our only option above sleeping rough on the streets. On the way there we asked the Indian teenager things like did it have hot shower and he kept nodding and saying yes.

When we got there it was just a room in a house that was filthy, no locks on the door and no shower or anything like that. The Indian lad had a massive grin on his face and I wanted to punch him, he knew full well he had us and we had no choice.

The following day we stopped at a nearby hotel, one used the facilities while the other kept the receptionist talking with a load of stupid questions. As everywhere was still booked up we had no choice but to continue to Padang on the west coast. The good news however was we had seen the last of Sumatra's nightmare road system.