Anyway we made it and it was very exciting when the ferry left the dock. It was a smallish speed ferry that couldn't carry any cars. The trip took 3 hours and when getting off the boat I know that this is a different world to Malaysia and certainly to Singapore. Smoking and shouting guys everywhere, Old women carrying huge bags and that was before we had passed the immigration counter.
When we walked into the Terminal building we were asked for 25 USD each (which Basti was luckily carrying) to get two visa issued. The desk where we had to pay did not look more official than any of the fried chicken sales men on the streets of Melaka. No badges or uniforms, nothing. One of the touts who somehow made it to the international side of the immigration barrier already asked us where we want to go to, as no one wants to stay in Dumai anyway. We tried to ignore him somewhat while our Visa's were issues. In a small office with three desks our fingerprints and photo was taken.
The office was set up for two small desks in each of the corners and one large desk in the middle. There was young guy on the left and a girl on the right who seem to have been doing the work, while there was an older guy leaning back on a leather chair with cigarette on his and and his feet on the table. Welcome to Indonesia.
Either way, we got our Visas and could pass through immigration and Customs.
Outside our friend the tout managed to convince us to take is little mini Bus to the Bus agency. As Alan said, here there is not one major bus terminal but lots of little bus agencies who run scheduled services in little 8 seater busses across the country.
The guy drove us a couple of Kilometers into town and we got of at a place called BMW 2000. The office was a garage with a desk and it didn't take long until the staff tried to arrange a marriage between me and the receptionist. After a friendly mentioning of the lovely girlfriend at home they gave in, thank god.
It was 2 pm now (actually no, since we went back a time zone it was only 1pm) and our bus was going to leave at 5pm.
Not much to do here after we walked up the road a bit and checked out the local supermarket. It was, however, very different from anywhere I've been so far. A little bit like Mongolia maybe, but different. Lot's of scooters of course, the shops were all garages that sold food, tires, fruits or anything from the there. There were huge holes in the ground but it didn't feel unfriendly.
We had some food (Nasi Goreng of course) next door and killed some time. Most locals didn't speak a bit of English aside from "hello friend" but the one that did wanted us to teach an English class for him while we wait for the bus. As we were told it's better not to go for these, we left him alone and he did the same to us.
At 5pm precisely our little Street racing Suzuki Arena with a sports exhaust and surely some other modifications under the hood left to Padang. Padang is on the West coast of Sumatra which meant we had to cross the fourth biggest island in the world ... in an illegal street racing van... What a fun way to travel.
It was only 5 people and the driver so far. That was quite comfy. Then the driver turned on the Stereo and turned onto the muddy path that was going to be our road for the next hour I knew there was no sleep in sight on this overnight journey.
The compilation the driver chose was a mix of 1990s to 2010 techno, house and trance songs at a volume that you could barely hear the sports exhaust any more.
The other reason was the driving style which reminded me of Need for Speed with a missing Reset button. At first I was actually a bit terrified as we did have a couple of close calls in the first 20 minutes, and I mean really close calls. Then I used the magic of reality alteration and thought, since the driver stayed very calm throughout all this and he must be doing this every second day and is still alive (there was no question that we would have been dead if we crashed as there were no belts and behind our heads were stacks of metal containers of some sort) it should be alright.
And in fairness, this driving would be impossible on German or Irish roads, but here oncoming traffic would slow down or even stop if they saw it will be a close overtake. In some cases it was literally less than a meter where we squeezed the little van through.
After an hour or so we had a brake and picked up couple of other passengers to continued south west. A little bit later one of the drivers friends who was doing the same route with the same type of care joined us and the guys were having fun chasing each other with their modified vans. Every couple of hours we stopped for a cup of coffee and later also for some food.
By now we were well used to the driving style and expected to survive the trip.Our planned arrival time was suppose to be 8 am (which would make this a 15 hour night rice with a couple of coffee stops for the driver).
Around 2 or 3 am we had some food along the road (lots of places here are more of a shed with at least one open wall, so they can't really close and have to stay open). The food was good, and gave us the last bit of energy we needed. Here we told the drivers the details of where we want to be dropped off and it was decided to change to another (a third) van, which wasn't tuned as much.
In this one we had a bit more space on the last row of seats and after a couple of kilometers I even fade away into sleep.
I woke up once a couple of times and the surroundings got more city like and the sun was coming up.By now we were on the southern half of the globe. That's right! The first time I crossed the equator was in a little street racing van on the roads of Sumatra!
Half dead we arrived at the Hang Tuah Hotel in Padang at 7 am. First thing was to have shower and then straight to bed to catch up on the missed sleep.
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