April 14, 2015
Arriving in Bagan Batu: More than once
I kept trying to find the road west that would avoid me having to go back to the busy main road but it was a search that I could only now describe using one word and that one word would be fruitless. I knew the road existed because it was on at least one of the three maps that I had, but actually getting directions to the town of Ulungbatu-Julu, which at least two of my maps indicated was an actual place, was hopeless. People would either look shocked at the sound of Ulungbatu-Julu, shake their heads and say “No, no, no” in a style that would have been more appropriate had I announced that I was about to remove both of their ears and begun to advance upon them with a chainsaw, or they pointed me back in the direction that I had come, which I remained reasonably confident was the road east to Pujud, what with having just come from there. I tried one of the little roads that was going west anyway, and, after being told to turn around by every Tom, Dick and Harry along the way and ignoring them I soon came to a dead-end at a palm oil refinery and was forced to retreat somewhat sheepishly.
Finally I had no option other than to rejoin the main highway at what I thought was a small town named Bagan Batu. At first it seemed that this was just a wee little place but after a few kilometres I came to a much bigger town, which I realised was the actual Bagan Batu - a considerable town of at least 100,000 people, it naturally featured on only one of my three maps. Featuring on more than one of my three maps was another road west to Ulungbatu-Julu but heaven only knew where that road was in real life. I was getting very hot and bothered about all of this and the main road was busy and scaring me a bit and so it was quite nice when some teenage girls came up to me on the edge of Bagan Batu, squealing with excitement, and were so keen to spend time with me that they invited me to take a seat with them in the shade.
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It should be noted that the reason that the girls were so keen to meet me almost certainly had more to do with them wanting to practice their English than any Justin Beiber style idolising of me. At least in reality - in my mind I was Ryan Gosling, and their reaction was entirely understandable. The girl with the best English was a 16-year-old whose name began with P. We sat and had a drink under the shade of what I think was her mother’s drinks stall. Whether it was her mother or not is not half as relevant as the fact that she was a wonderful smiley woman. P’s brother was also there and a couple of other teenage girls who, unlike P, had their young Muslim heads covered. One of these girls howled with laughter at everything that was said, unless I addressed her directly, at which point she became terribly shy. The final girl was the funniest. She was called Yesi – “Like yes sir” and she found particular amusement in pulling at my arm hair and saying things like “Why are you not black sir? Why are you not black black?” which was one of those jokes where you probably had to be there. But the atmosphere was once again filled with joy and laughter and happiness. The people of Sumatra, I’d by now decided, were awesome.
The youngsters soon invited me to come and visit their English school. I was a little sceptical at first as it sounded just like the one in Dumai, but after mulling it over it seemed unlikely that the teacher could possibly be Mr Muchsin, and so I agreed. The kids jumped on their motorcycles and I followed them through the busy traffic of town, which included a worrying amount of riding the wrong way up the dual carriageway, before we arrived at Harvard English Course. Alas the course director, Mr Daniel, was not there, and so we sat on benches outside to wait for him. There was no telling how long it would take for him to return of course and as we sat there I was beginning to worry that it might look like I was spending too much time with 16-year-old girls, and so after a while I decided to leave and continue my journey. My plan was to go up to Lake Toba and then return to Dumai, and so I announced that I would definitely come back and visit the school on the way back, which I guessed would be in about a month.
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None of the teenagers nor anybody else had been able to tell me where I could find the small road to Ulungbatu-Julu and so I had little choice other than to continue on the main road. For a few kilometres it had something which could loosely be described as a shoulder, but as I headed out of town and into more palm oil plantations even that disappeared. The road was very busy with trucks that zoomed past blaring horns and it was narrow, with no escape route for me. In short it was one of the most dangerous roads that I had cycled on in the entire trip. If that wasn’t bad enough it was also uncomfortably scorching hot and the constant cries of “Hello mister” that were being hurled my way from every single person were beginning to wear a little thin. Suddenly this really, really wasn’t fun anymore and after being run off the road for the fourth time in twenty minutes I just stopped and thought to myself ‘you don’t need to do this!’ And it was true. I’d already made it across Asia, I’d won. Why was I now out here risking life and limb on such a dangerous road? I had no real reason to be doing this now.
So I used my authority as the head of this expedition and made an executive decision to stop, turn around, and go back to Bagan Batu, or to put it another way, I said “F*ck this sh!t.” As I retraced my steps I came up with a plan to go and volunteer at the English school and take some more time off from cycling. So, once back in Bagan Batu, I headed straight to Harvard English Course, with great intentions to change the lives of impoverished Indonesian youths forever, but there was no sign of P, Yesi, Mr Daniel or anyone and I quickly abandoned these intentions and instead headed for the fancy hotel across the road. There was something about the constant attention I was getting, the constant shouts, the constant stares, that was now causing me a great deal of stress and I knew that an expensive hotel would be the one place that I could escape everything. And I use the word expensive quite inappropriately, because it only cost twelve pounds, but it was a real nice en suite hotel room with a widescreen TV and a big bed and crucially no air horns or men shouting “Hello Mister!!!” It was very like the hotel rooms that I had occasionally used in China, little pockets of private space to hide from that difficult country.
Now, just for one night, I was hiding from Indonesia too.
Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 40,174 km (24,948 miles)
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