Bintuhan → Pajang

Day 9 — Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park

This is the losmen (cheap lodging) we stayed in. The three of us shared one bed, but we were tired, so we slept without any problem.

We went for a morning walk. We could see all the way round the bay. Amazingly, people live right at the water's edge.

Breakfast at the stall where we had dinner last night. He made us instant noodles. We bought some kue (snacks) too, but the meal cost under 100 yen each, astonishingly cheap.

The driver's outrages didn't stop. He even charged us for an oil change. He had even changed the oil filter, though we hadn't yet driven 1,000 km. And he was driving quite far off the road we had specified. In short, he'd got lost. We talked it over with the oil-change shop staff too, but neither the driver nor the staff seemed to know how to read a map.

In the end, by a big detour, we managed to reach our goal, the World Heritage site of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. The decisive difference from Japanese forests is the density of the plants. A truly dense jungle. I felt its powerful life force.

This red soil is probably laterite.

Refuelling. In Indonesia we only saw Pertamina petrol stations. Petrol and diesel were the same price, about 45 yen a litre. Cheap!! As you'd expect of an oil-producing country. On Sumatra too, high-quality crude oil is produced in quantity at places like the Minas oil field near Pekanbaru.

The road through the national park stayed rough, and our average speed fell to about 20 km/h. It was full of potholes, and there was no way to speed up with any confidence. The jungle pressed in close, so we could hardly see ahead. We kept driving and finally came out on the south-west coast. The waves of the Indian Ocean were strong, and for some reason the sea was a cloudy yellowish colour. But there was no bad smell, and no rubbish scattered on the beach. The sunset was beautiful.

The state of the roads on Sumatra, and inside the national park at that, completely exceeded our expectations. We had really wanted to get to Bengkulu today, but it was impossible. A miscalculation, and our mistake. We had dinner before reaching our lodging. A simple buffet-style restaurant, with countless geckos crawling on the walls. In the end we reached a hotel in a town called Pajang at about 10 p.m. It was a cheap hotel, but a little pricier than a losmen, so we gave the driver the amount over his daily allowance. I still can't forget the driver's fearless grin when we handed him the money.

To the next day