Recover Day

We rose out of our coma around 11 again and decided to explore the surroundings of the Hotel. Our primary concern, just after arriving in Padang was "how the hell do we get out of here?". It was Tuesday morning already and I had to be in Singapore on Sunday. By now we had learned that ferries and overland transportation are not really to be trusted here. They are fun and exciting but we didn't want to miss any of our flights (Basti also had to leave on Monday to meet his Brother in Perth).

We also had already paid for the night in Singapore and wanted to have a buffer zone before we both would again be leaving Asia.

There was no free internet in the Hotel and we decided to look for a cafe where we could look up flights to Singapore from Padang airport.

We knew from the map that the sea was to the right side but we went towards the town. Across the road we found a Mall and it had a coffee shop with some internet. It was some sort of south-east Asian version of Starbucks and the two coffee's cost us more than the use of the internet at the hotel.

It didn't matter, it was nice but there were no flights from Padang to Singapore to be found. So we decided to fly to Batam (another Island close to Singapore but part of Indonesia) and take a ferry from there.

We found cheap flights on Tiket2 (an Indonesian comparison site) but we would have to either pay buy Paypal or Bank transfer. As neither of us had enough money on their Paypal accounts and we were not sure on how quick the transfers would be we decided to find a bank and try to transfer some cash.

We checked a couple of banks and finally found one that would allow us to send money without having an account with them. So I signed the 682.000 IDR cheque and we were good to go. 682.000 Indonesian Rupees are about 42 €. It felt nice to be a millionaire for once :-).

Just minutes (maybe 5) after the cheque was signed I got a call from the booking agency to confirm the flight.

On the way back to the hotel we strolled through a proper south east Asian market. Pretty much half of the people shouted at us "Hello Mister" and not all of them wanted to sell us something. Most were just excited to say something to a foreigner. I should mention, since we have arrived in Indonesia I have not seen a single foreigner aside from Basti (and maybe a guy on the street as we drove past him - but I'm not sure about that one either).

Anyway, the walk through the market was very exciting. Before returning to the hotel room we checked back at our coffee shop to see if a confirmation of the flight has arrived. This time we didn't buy anything and were just standing outside the shop. Wifi still worked and indeed there was the confirmation.

We quickly changed into our swimming trunks in the hotel and now our plan was to head 150 m down the road to Padang Beach. When leaving the Hotel we already predicted it won't be long until it rains, but just 3 minutes later the heavens opened and proper wind hit the shore. We were soaked within 15 seconds and the palm tree trunks were bent, just like we've seen it on TV.

As I was wet now and the Indian Ocean was the last Ocean missing from my list I decided to just quickly walk down the stairs and at least go in belt deep. It was incredibly warm water... It was not colder than I would usually have my shower. "Boiling" compared to the Irish sea.

Back at the hotel we just wanted to quickly get a shower, relax a bit and then go down to the lobby and update our blogs.

Sitting there and writing for a couple a of minutes, a pretty girl came over and talked to us. She was from the hotel and was the only one that could talk English. We told here where we are from and what we are doing here. It was very interesting. Our conversation went from travelling, over religion to food.

Food was a good idea, Rita suggested to visit a little food place just down the street and we had some pancake filled with beef and some spices. Also very nice.

We tried to work out our plan for tomorrow (as we were going to leave early in the morning on Thursday). We came up with the plan to go to Air Manis (which means "sweet water" in Indonesian). This is a beach a couple of kilometers south of Padang and then return in the evening and stay another night at the hotel and leave here early in the morning to go to the airport.

It didn't seem to be very easy to get to the beach so Rita was going to write down some details on how to get there.After all this it was time for bed.