Bukittinggi → Padang

Day 16 — The old Japanese army tunnels

Today was the day we left Bukittinggi for Padang, where the airport is. Fort de Kock looked good, but our time was limited, so first we went to the old Japanese army air-raid tunnels.

Flamboyant costumes found in a department store. Traditional Minangkabau costumes, perhaps?

Before going to the tunnels we enjoyed shopping in the market. These are snacks piled up in huge quantities.

The market had a distinctive smell, probably given off by dried fish like these.

At the market we bought the classic bananas and an unusual fruit called salak.

Among the bananas we just bought were two joined together.

Peeled, the salak looked like garlic, but the smell wasn't strong, and it had an indescribable taste. A firm texture, and not very sweet.

Japanese manga were on sale all over the market too.

Mie bakso (noodles with meatballs), which I'd long wanted to try after seeing it in our food guidebook. It lived up to its reputation: not spicy, with the flavour of the meatballs coming through nicely. Very tasty!

At a stall, Ooi bought the durian dessert he'd been longing for. It looks a bit grotesque, but he was eating it saying "delicious, delicious". Taste is personal, though.

An assortment of sate ayam (chicken skewers) KEN bought at the next stall.

Entry to the old Japanese army tunnels was about 30 yen, and the area around the entrance was a park with a view over the Ngarai Sianok canyon. It was amazing how the edge of town suddenly turned into jungle.

This is the entrance. It runs deep down at an angle. Headlamps on, time to explore!

Inside, the passages formed a grid, and there even seemed to be toilets. If they'd wanted, they could probably have housed several thousand people.

Exploring inside, we found several things like emergency exits, but almost all had iron bars so you couldn't get out. One had an extremely small opening and no bars, so we went out and found ourselves halfway up a cliff leading down to the jungle. Right outside we also saw a big lizard, but it ran away at once, so we couldn't get a photo.

After exploring the tunnels, we caught a bus to Padang from the bus terminal. We thought we could just buy tickets at the counter, but lots of men called out to us, and we boarded after a lot of haggling.

On the way to Padang, the most powerful squall yet. On top of that, the bus didn't go into central Padang; we were dropped on the edge of town. Fortunately by then the rain had weakened a lot. Huge numbers of shared buses were running in Padang, all flashy-looking, some with horns that made strange sounds. We got one of these to take us to a lodging. We tried two places listed in our guidebook, but both cost about twice the listed price, so we gave up.

From the second place we searched for lodging on foot. It wasn't very cheap, but it was the cheapest of the ones we visited, so we settled on it and had dinner at KFC. Fried chicken was about 100 yen a piece, less than half the price in Japan! The taste was spicier than in Japan.

Back at the lodging we went straight to bed. Travelling for the first time in a while, and overwhelmed by the bustle of Padang, we were tired.

To the next day