HELLO MISTERRR!! Worlds collide in Sumatra

We'd love to be able to say that things have looked up since we last posted, but we continue to be at a low ebb here in Sumatra. The blatant sexual harassment and stone-throwing have not resumed since we left the province of North Sumatra, but the sense of being absolutely alien and alone persists.

Partly it's that whilst the scenery is exceptional we're bored with villages. Indonesian ones aren’t photogenic like Cambodian ones; most of them are just a bit grimey, dull and depressing and populated by little children who scream at us, bored bigger children who follow us on motorbikes photographing us on their mobile phones and bored men who grunt and shout pointless questions at us.

Yes, mainly it's that we've absolutely had enough of being stared at and shouted at all day every day. You'll recall that Hannah in particular has struggled with this since Day 1, but by now we both feel completely oppressed by the incomprehensible, inescapable attention. We do try to understand it. We talked this morning about the time we spotted a dugong in the Red Sea; we followed it and wanted to keep staring at it until our air ran out. Maybe that's what it's like for the people here, some of whom may never have seen a bule (white person) in the flesh. Except we aren't dugongs. We aren't even famous. We're just a couple of cyclists.

And partly it's also that there's a certain low-level unpleasantness to much of the attention we receive and to many of our direct interactions. This is hard to describe and it varies. People demonstrate zero empathy; they just stare and/or shout, often without smiling. Often there's a sexist undertone to our interactions and there's xenophobia too, or at least a sense of 'them and us'. Zoe says she recognises (from her work) the feeling of having to find the maturity within herself to face up to a pack of immature human beings some of whom need to score points at her expense. Hannah accepts she doesn't yet have this maturity and isn't motivated to develop it just now.

On top of this we feel homesick, for the lovely people in our lives back home, and also for our own identities. Here (unlike the other countries we've been through) we're acutely aware of the bullshit people think they know about us. We can sometimes gain an ounce of respect by saying we're in our thirties and we're married (it's clear people assume otherwise). To express anything of our true identities (independent, feminist, the list goes on..) is unthinkable.

We're still clinging to the advice some of you sent us in response to our 'cry for help' from Vietnam: we try to draw strength from the smiles of genuinely welcoming people; we try not to beat ourselves up; we seek respite when we can (though the laughable quality of accommodation doesn't help with this!).

Being the control freaks we both are (different kinds of control freak, mind!) all of this is putting us both right on the edge. We’re up and down like mad and occasionally wonder what the hell we're doing!

And there's one more thing. We selected our current route down the west coast of Sumatra because the road is quiet and therefore relatively safe to cycle on. But Indonesian driving is APPALLING, so the exciting prospect of arriving in Java – the world's most densely populated island and the cultural heart of Indonesia - in a few days' time is tinged with foreboding. Whenever we are in real danger (and we will be) we'll put our bikes onto a train or a bus, though the latter mode rarely feels any safer than staying on the bikes!

To end on a positive note we're thankful for each other, we're thankful for the fantastic trip we've had so far, and we continue to appreciate how lucky we are to have such a good life to go back to in January.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of photos from Indo. Internet connections aren't fast enough to handle the size of Zoe's files.

I'm a feminist, get me out of here!

Since arriving in Indonesia a fortnight ago we've experienced some real highlights. Sumatra is beautiful, and it's been really sad to observe that tourism has reduced to a trickle since the Bali bomb and the various tsunamis, flash floods and earthquakes of recent years. We've been cycling through the biggest and most exhilarating (and exerting) landscapes of the trip so far, around the cool shores of Lake Toba (the largest crater lake in the world), past volcanoes and waterfalls and through immense jungle- and mist-filled valleys.

At Mount Leuser National Park we hired a guide (and his sidekick) to take us on an overnight trek into the jungle, where we saw wild orangutans at very close range as well as macaques, Thomas leaf monkeys and black gibbons. We returned to our starting point by way of three truck inner-tubes lashed together to form a hair-raising but hilarious white-water raft!

Yet paradoxically we've had the hardest two weeks of the trip to date: to our complete surprise and horror North Sumatrans display both an oppressively male-dominated culture and an unexplained hostility to tourists. Plenty of individuals have been nice, of course, but the prevailing atmosphere in the province is intimidating. The first thing we noticed was that many people (both men and women) stared right through or seemed to glower at us. Then as we cycled through villages we noticed that amongst the expected barrage of friendly and curious calls of 'hello mister', 'where you go?' etc there was a lot of deliberate taunting: jeers, grunts, roars of 'buleh' (lit. 'albino', though nice Indonesians will tell you it translates as 'tourist') right in our faces as we passed, aggressive laughter, hisses (tsss-tsss), kissing noises, wolf whistles, sexual gestures (licking their lips, holding their crotches) and so on. Boys tried to grab onto the bikes as we rode past and, worst of all, each day we had at least one instance of boys throwing stones at us from behind.

Most North Sumatran men appear to be lazy, chain-smoking, disgusting, misogynistic, neanderthal brutes who sit around all day while the women do the work. A handful did things like walk up and stroke our arms without the slightest invitation. Others invited themselves to sit with us as we tried to eat meals (their minds clearly full of movie-inspired notions about what we represent!). And every single one of them, it seemed, felt he had the right to sit and stare at us and/or interrupt our privacy and interrogate us menacingly with the predictable 'where you go?', 'where you from?', 'you not have husband/ children?' etc. In short they were absolute ****s [insert the rudest four letter word you find acceptable], from the age of about ten onwards.

Lest it has not been clear from previous blog posts let us stress again that not once were we made to feel intimidated by men or boys as we cycled through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

For the first time in the trip we have frequently invoked the power of our fictitious 'husbands', Matt and Adrian, who we say have gone ahead to the next town. When one slimy bloke (who thought he was it because he was a 'kepala desa' or village head) suggested a night-time trip 'to the hill to take photographs of the town' Zoe responded without hesitation: 'oh no, I don't think my husband would like that'.

We're using the past tense because just when we were starting to think we might have to change our plans (we could not bear the idea of six more weeks of constant intimidation: 'if I never see another village in my life it'll be too soon' said Zoe) suddenly everything changed. What happened? On Sunday night we crossed the provincial border* into West Sumatra. Literally overnight normal, gentle, smiling South-East Asian service resumed. How bizarre! We can only assume tribal cultural differences are at play: the northern Bataks are deeply patriarchal, whereas the western Minangkabau are a matrilineal tribe. If we uncover any further explanations for why it was so grim oop north we'll let you know.

*The story about how we crossed the provincial border is worth telling. Throughout Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia it has consistently been the case that towns with a hotel have been situated at 90-100km intervals. In Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand that meant we often cycled 100kms per day. Here in Indonesia the mountainous landscape means this won't usually be feasible. As cycling in the dark and staying with villagers are no-nos for us (and camping doesn't really seem like an option) we have started making use of the excellent public transport and throwing our bikes on the top of buses for the last 20-30 kilometres some days. Sunday was one such day. We were aiming from a town called Lubuksikaping over the provincial border. Hannah had found the website of an interesting new, Australian-run hotel on the edge of that town. The first bus we hopped could only take us to a filthy intermediate town (called Panti of all things). We stood in the rain and dark in Panti for over an hour as realisation dawned that the service to Lubuksikaping had finished for the day. Flagging down yet another bus and seeing yet another driver shake his head Hannah tried some proper hands-clasped pleading and it worked: the young driver/conductor team spotted an opportunity and what those bloody awful management consultants call a win-win situation took shape. The bikes and their cargo travelled in comfort inside the bus. We had agreed a price of 100,000 rupiahs for the 1hr+ journey (less than $10). The two guys seemed absolutely thrilled with the deal, which they supplemented by taking on four other customers and picking up two of their mates for the ride. So there we were charging along in the pitch dark in our chartered bus with eight men. Given everything we've described above, what was most striking was that all of them were completely delightful (apart from one who sat very quietly and then threw up on the floor, much to the disgust of the driver). We got chatting to a religious studies student who helped to convey to the bus team that we were aiming for a particular hotel in Lubuksikaping. Faint alarm bells started to ring when not one of them had heard of the hotel nor even the road it was on, but on arrival in Lubuksikaping (where we were expecting to be dropped at the bus terminal) it was clear they had collectively resolved that we should be taken right to our destination.

A young woman on a moped thought she knew the place and was able to direct the bus driver. He drove some distance to the very edge of town and turned up a pitch dark lane. A resident confirmed this was the road. As the bus bumped its way up the tiny gravel track Hannah had confidence in her research, but Zoe (and the rest of the bus) were clearly skeptical. The conductor hopped out to ask directions at a house. A woman came out of the house and got into the bus. What was going on? Soon afterwards the bus headlights illuminated a half-built hotel behind a locked gate. The woman seemed to be associated with the 'hotel' and said there were rooms available, but the bus driver looked askance and said to us 'there are no lights'. After some discussion it was decided that we should be taken back to a hotel in the town, which we had passed a good half hour earlier. At that place the conductor hopped out again to enquire about a room for us; a veiled woman came out to have a look at us and to explain the hotel was full due to a local government convention. After driving around the town a bit more a room was finally found for us on the fourth attempt. We gave our chaps a 50% tip, they shook our hands warmly and back they went to Panti. We went out for a late supper at a street stall where all the staff and customers were men; not one of them bothered us.

Though we're relieved to have escaped the north and optimistic that the rest of Indonesia will be as great as anticipated we're both feeling a bit flat. Our next destination is a beautiful place that Hannah has been to before – a crater lake called Maninjau – where we hope to pick ourselves back up and get ourselves in gear for the final six weeks of our Asian epic.

Obama!

Returning from a jungle trek in north Sumatra we had barely finished saying goodbye to one set of apes and monkeys when we discovered it was also time to say goodbye to the world's most powerful ape and say hello to America's new president. Congratulations Obama.

By the way, is anyone (apart from our parents) still reading our blog and looking at Zoe's lovely pictures? We're feeling a bit unloved...

Reflecting on our first three months/ five countries

We're spending a whole week here in Georgetown (Malaysia) enjoying the multiculturalism of the place and psyching ourselves up for the next and final leg of our journey (two whole months in Indonesia and a very long bike ride from Medan to Bali). We've also been reflecting on our first three months/ five countries and the highlights so far.

In Beijing we were bowled over by the effort that had gone into making the city 'perfect' for the Olympics. Detractors may say it was a bit of a white-wash (and indeed ugly or half-built buildings had been hidden behind giant billboards), but we found Beijing an impressively confident, thoroughly modern and of course bike-friendly city with sights that took our breath away: the warriors at Xi'an, the Great Wall, sixteen acrobats balancing on a bicycle, oh and that Opening Ceremony (which we watched on tv like you did!).

The food in Beijing was completely stunning and we didn't have to try hard to find the very different cuisines of at least ten Chinese regions.

In both Vietnam and Cambodia over 70% of the population are rural and poor. This makes for a visually stimulating but intense cycling experience; we found ourselves the star attraction in an endless parade of village life for six or more hours a day!

Our overriding impression of Vietnam was of the (sometimes overwhelming) friendly, generous and family-oriented people. Most accounts talk of scams and rip-offs, but this was categorically not our experience when away from the main tourist sites. Highlights included a week cycling along the inland Ho Chi Minh highway in the north of the country (an exceedingly poor rural area) during which time we did not see another foreigner, Saigon (a place well on its way up), and a week spent crossing the lush and prosperous Mekong delta area in the far south west of the country.

Generally speaking the food in Vietnam did not live up to our high expectations (set in Hackney of course!), though we did develop an addiction to their delicious coffee, which is served in an individual filter perched on top of a glass of sweetened condensed milk!

In Cambodia rural people do not have electricity or running water, yet their attractive stilt houses are sturdy and they appeared to us to have a better quality of life than the urban poor, who's rather grim lives must be hard to bear when surrounded by the new urban rich and the many western expats and tourists.

Angkor Wat defies all superlatives, though it was hard to square this 12th - 14th century Cambodian achievement with the state of the country now; the legacy of the Khmer Rouge is palpable everywhere. Overall we were left slightly disturbed by Cambodia and were relieved to escape its astonishingly bad roads for Thailand.

Crossing national borders overland is a fascinating experience because differences are noticeable instantly. Bangkok felt like another world after Cambodia, and overall Thailand felt rather like a holiday within a holiday. The highlight was a four-day 'live-aboard' diving trip to the uninhabited Similan Islands.

Cycling in Thailand was very different: whilst the roads and drivers were excellent the lack of cyclists meant we were often chased by dogs. The cooler last hour or so of daylight (which had been our favourite time in Vietnam and Cambodia) became our most feared time of day!

Here in Georgetown (Malaysia) we've been like proper tourists and visited Chinese temples, beautifully preserved clan houses and mansions and ramshackle shophouses, mosques, Hindu temples and many remnants of the British colonial era. We've sampled Indian, Chinese, Malay and 'Nyonya' food and visited botanical gardens and a tropical fruit farm.

In both Thailand and Malaysia we've enjoyed a break from constant attention from locals. Being less developed we expect Indonesia to be more like Vietnam and Cambodia in this regard.

We're looking forward to getting back into a daily cycling routine through Sumatra and Java (which are mountainous, in contrast to our flattish routes through Vietnam and Cambodia), before finishing up with another little 'holiday' (and some more diving) in Bali at Christmas. Indonesia is predominantly a Muslim country and Hannah can speak some of the language, factors we think may make a difference to our day to day experience.

Overall we're struck that the countries we've visited have been more different than similar. We've also enjoyed the contrast between our cycling days (which we love but which do feel rather like 'workdays') and our rest days (which feel like 'weekends'). We're loving the feeling of extreme physical fitness, and though we haven't lost much weight we reckon we're a bit firmer all round! And finally, though we miss our friends a lot it has been lovely to have such a chunk of time together by ourselves.

As well as our friends and families we also miss:

• Red wine
• Zoe's cooking
• Clothes in general but specifically jeans and other cotton things
• Mountain biking/ my other bike (HD)

Whilst we can't claim to have reached any profound spiritual conclusions we have enjoyed having the mental space to develop some ideas. I'm pleased to report we've finally accepted the received wisdom that it's important to:

• Drink plenty of water
• Let your body rest
• Stretch
• Cover your head in the sun
• Carry a hankie
  

One conclusion we have reached is that most our trips will probably be by bicycle from now on; neither of us can bear to be at the mercy of public transport (see image above of the inside of a Thai bus) and other people's schedules!

We've cycled 3600kms so far, and (touch wood) no punctures yet.

Looking back at Cambodia again

We keep a daily journal for our own records. Looking back over our journal for Cambodia we realised we ought to recount a couple more of our memorable cycling days there.

If you've read the blog entry called 'First fortnight in Cambodia' you'll recall that from Phnom Penh we cycled north up the Mekong River for three days to a place called Kratie where we wanted to see the endangered freshwater dolphins. You'll also recall that we described in mostly positive terms the bike ride north through an endless parade of rural life, including the incident with the farting granny and the wanking boy. From Kratie we had hoped to catch a boat back to Phnom Penh, but inexplicably (and absurdly, given the state of the roads!) long-distance boat services no longer run up and down the Mekong in Cambodia. We didn't fancy taking a bus so we had little choice but to retrace our steps, and since the route would be familiar we decided to attempt the 220kms in two days instead of three. Unfortunately we misjudged the effect of heavy rain on the unpaved roads; these turned out to be two of the most gruelling days of the trip so far:

Day 1 (120kms) was a Buddhist festival so Hannah resolved to try to be calm and 'Buddhist' and not to get wound up by everybody. She did quite well until about mid afternoon. During the morning we came to a section of road that was still completely submerged by floodwater, taking instead a diversion through a Muslim village that can only be described as medieval-looking! Hannah made an MP3 recording of some of the sounds of the village, which we'll upload to this blog if we can figure out how to. We didn't find anywhere to eat during the morning so come lunchtime we were starving. In Chlong (farting granny's town) we rolled into a place describing itself as a 'Guesthouse and Restaurant' and asked to eat. Three people looked blankly at us until one finally led Zoe into the kitchen to show her a bone and half a cucumber. We got back on the bikes. A little further along the road it started to rain heavily so we pulled up at a roadside stall and were relieved to see some toasted baguettes and hard boiled eggs. We felt we made it clear that we needed to eat something and couldn't understand why the two teenagers running the stall didn't slice up the eggs and put them into baguettes for us. Frustrated, Zoe took over, saying 'here, peel the eggs like this and...' ...and discovered the reason for the teenagers' hesitation in giving us the eggs. Each one contained a fully developed (and hard boiled) duckling. We settled for plain baguettes dunked in some condensed milk.

Later that afternoon it rained so heavily we couldn't see where we were going. People continued to stare and shout 'hello' at us from under the awnings of their houses, and Hannah expressed frustration that nobody invited us to shelter. Eventually we found an unoccupied awning and after a while a woman came out of a house to give us some delicious banana-leaf parcels containing steamed sticky rice and fruit. Hannah had to eat her words about people not taking the initiative. We realised that people would probably love to show hospitality towards us if only we would let our guard down and also stay still long enough to let them build up their confidence.

Remember that Cambodian rural homes have neither electricity nor running water. During the afternoon we stopped for a sugar cane juice outside a house and – using the picture of a squat toilet in our 'point-it' book - asked the vendor if we could use her facilities. She indicated that she had no loo. We speculated that either a. she thought we specifically wanted to use a ceramic squat toilet and would not wish to use the drop-style loo that they probably have, b. she was ashamed of their basic facilities, or c. they really have no loo of any kind in the house.

By late afternoon we reached a stretch of road that on our way north had been very bumpy but quite solid. To our horror the rain had transformed this stretch to deep mud. People attempting to travel between villages to join their families for the festival had doubtless made matters worse. It took us an hour and a half to travel about 10kms along this stretch, often having to push the bikes due to their weight and our touring tyres' inability to gain any traction. This was stressful, not least because our painfully slow progress meant we felt trapped amidst the gawping, shouting people, some of whom (only men) had clearly been drinking.

It was at this point we were approached by a young woman teacher who wasted no time in inviting us (in good English) to stay the night with her family and to participate in the festival. She doubted we would make it in time for the last cross-river ferry of the day at 5pm (sunset is at 6), which would render us stranded on the wrong side of the river in Mudville. Remembering the rice parcel lady Hannah was starting to think maybe we should accept this invitation but, turning to Zoe, was startled by some rare decisiveness: 'No, I don't want to stay here. I've just had my arse slapped twice by this old woman'. Presumably she wanted to see what it would feel like. We know this is a cultural thing, but we just hate having our personal space invaded like this! So we pushed on as fast as our mud-caked bicycles would carry us and made it to the last ferry. The sun soon set and we had to cycle the last hour or so in the dark. Some stretches of road were thronged with (unseen) festival-goers and barking dogs, while other stretches were just total blackness. We came across a mangled motorbike surrounded by an ominously quiet crowd. It was all quite scary. On finally arriving in the town we drank cans of beer through straws to celebrate being alive whilst washing down our bikes, panniers, shoes and legs with a hose.

On Day 2 (100kms) we felt physically and psychologically drained from the previous day's exertions. Although the weather and therefore the (again unpaved) road were initially drier this was to be another exhausting and filthy day. In the morning heavy vehicles loaded with festival-goers covered us with dust. We couldn't face all the hellos, so we put our headphones in and our heads down for 60 bumpy kilometres until we reached the main road in the afternoon. It was at this point that it started to rain heavily again, and to their credit the usually maniacal Cambodian drivers slowed down quite a bit. Nevertheless, trying to balance 100 kilograms of self and bike along the very edge of a too-narrow busy main road required every ounce of concentration and upper body strength, so it was a nice bit of comic relief to come across a badly flooded paddy field where some enterprising person had rented out home-made pedalos (!) and people were doing their best to enjoy the public holiday despite the weather.

As we neared Phnom Penh we were gobsmacked to find that the perfectly good paved road we had left the city on (the main road between the country's two largest cities) had disintegrated! Cars, buses and lorries queued to bump and splash their way through enormous potholes, while hundreds of motorcyclists (and two bedraggled bicyclists) jossled their way up the sodden, sandy hard shoulder. Some of the potholes were so deep we would have fallen off our bikes had people not already marked the spot by placing plastic chairs or tree branches into them as a warning! Through all this people continued to call 'hello' to us.

We'd also like to tell you about our journey from Battambang towards the Thai border town of Pailin. In Battambang we'd been warned we would be 'orange' by the end of the day, and our informant was not wrong! What is incredible is that the 100km road from Battambang to the Thai border is not simply in a bad state of disrepair: it has never been paved. There is a photo on our Flickr page that gives some sense of this road. Although it was exceedingly bumpy (which is hard-going on the wrists in particular) traffic was light and (of course) slow, so we were in pretty good spirits all day until it started to get dark. It was at this point that a curious thing happened. Suddenly, and for the first time in the trip, dogs started to chase us. [This is a major hazard in Thailand too, where the lack of cyclists is presumably the reason.]

We made it to Pailin with frayed nerves and, having checked into a guesthouse, went out in search of a late supper and a drink. In a relatively (for Cambodia) up-market restaurant we were seated at a large table in a sort of private booth. A couple of uniformed waitresses hovered around, putting more ice in our beer every few minutes. [If you've never had ice in your beer you should really try it.] After a while they settled themselves down at our table without being invited and proceeded to chat and play with the ringtones on their mobile phones. Then a couple more waitresses joined them, followed by the manageress. As we ate one of the girls started to relate a story to the manageress about some kind of sexual assault. Although we couldn't understand a word we could follow the dramatic story because she demonstrated what had happened, using the manageress as 'victim', grabbing her boobs, embracing her, pretending to throttle her and so forth. We were gripped by what we can only hope was the plot of a popular soap opera.