April 29, 2015
Getting a bit lost: So... many... palm... trees
Two weeks after first arriving at the Harvard English Course it was finally time to move on and resume cycling north, now with a hapless sidekick in tow of course. The two of us said our goodbyes, to the gentle and kind Mr Daniel and his family, and to the teachers, and boldly stated that we were off to ride our bikes to Lake Toba, 300 kilometres to the north, and then on to the city of Medan, 200 kilometres beyond that, from where we could take a boat back to Singapore. It was a long and arduous-sounding journey that drew admiring glances from those we were waving goodbye to. We set boldly off. Then after 500 metres, most of which had been in the wrong direction, Tom suggested we stop as he wanted to have something to eat.
After that false start and with my companion suitably filled with fried rice and caffeine we finally did escape Bagan Batu. We were going north on the same main road that I had turned around on two weeks earlier because of it being too dangerous. Fortunately, for reasons I can’t really explain, the road was initially much quieter this time. Unfortunately, hopes that I had finally found my hapless sidekick were dented as the much-more-heavily-loaded bike of Mr Tom disappeared ahead into the distance. Curses. The man volunteers to be my hapless sidekick and I still can’t keep up with him. I decided that when I did catch him I would explain that I was letting him go ahead in a sort of reconnoitring mission. But when that moment arrived I was too distracted by the amusing sight of him holding up a pair of khaki shorts that he’d found at the side of the road with great glee until he turned them around and saw a big rip through the back that had him sighing and throwing them down again.
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The road got busier as the day went on and by the time we reached a crossroads in a small town I thought it was too dangerous to keep going on the main highway. Tom said he didn’t mind the traffic at all and was happy to keep going, which was in keeping with the kind of cyclist he was - the kind of cyclist I meet sometimes that insist, almost as a deliberate statement, on being completely oblivious to the dangers of being a vulnerable road user or taking any safety measures at all. Tom was wearing all grey clothes, had dark panniers, no bright colours, no mirror and no helmet. Even being hit from behind by a car in Malaysia and sent flying over the handlebars hadn’t changed his attitude. But it would be me that would have to look after him if he got mown down by a truck here and so I suggested we take the left turn. One of the men in Bagan Batu had told me that we could turn left in this town and take the small back roads to the elusive Ulungbatu-Julu and I wanted to try. It didn’t matter to me that everyone standing around at the junction said “No, no, no” when we asked if this was the road to Ulungbatu-Julu. We were taking it. And fortunately the laid-back Tom remembered his sidekick role and agreed.
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The road was a pleasure to cycle on. Almost immediately almost all of the traffic melted away, and what was left was going slowly on the poor dirt surface. The road climbed and fell through short but steep hills that traversed a landscape of palm oil that appeared to stretch on indefinitely in all directions. Even having cycled across so much of south-east Asia this was a new level of palm oil monoculture. Every available space was taken up with the tropical crop. The only problem was that, as we got deeper and deeper into the plantations we started to get a bit lost, and it felt like we were going too much to the south. I started to doubt if this was the right way after all, and even suggested going back to the main road. But Tom now wanted to continue through the palm oil. We sat down to talk about it, until a man came by on a motorcycle. “Ulungbatu-Julu?” I asked him, without much hope seeing as not one person seemed to know that Ulungbatu-Julu even existed. “Yes, yes” he said, pointing ahead the way we were going with surprising conviction.
So we persevered and continued, deeper into the palm jungle. There were not very many people around but those that were shouted out “Hello mister” with great glee when they saw us. On one occasion this happened and Tom stopped. It was a group of four or five men that were sitting on a mat under the shade of a tree and there was something about them that evidently got Tom’s sixth sense in action because he wanted us to go and sit with them for a while. Tom’s sixth sense was obviously very strong because no sooner had we sat down than one of the men pulled out a little bag and rolled some ‘special’ cigarettes which Tom seemed, perhaps not unsurprisingly, quite happy about.
They passed the ‘special’ cigarette and talked and joked and I saw once again that Tom was very good with the people. They seemed to find him very entertaining and he played on the attention. His bike, with its freaky add-ons, was also a big draw for everyone. All of which I thought quite wonderful because I could take a break from being the centre of attention everywhere myself.
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We tore ourselves away from the now-quite-happy men and cycled on a bit further before sunset. I was quite content to be out in the countryside and making progress on these nice back roads, the fact that we were still quite lost being a temporarily ignored and trivial footnote as we found our campsite for the night. Given the monotonous landscape there will be no prizes for guessing where. The clouds were darkening and so I quickly got my tent up amongst the palm leaves whilst Tom just sat on his chair (yes, he was carrying a chair with him) thinking about dinner and not worrying about putting his own tent up despite the menacing skies. Inevitably it then started to rain.
“Ah, sh!t” said Tom.
Today's ride: 39 km (24 miles)
Total: 40,213 km (24,972 miles)
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