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.