Nova, his mate and I left Pekanbaru about 4 am. We drove for about 2 hours at 100 km/h to the logging kampung near Siak where Nova works. There was a lto of mist on the road and this, along with tiredness, had me nearly tripping.
At the kampung, I was fed rice, tofu, tempeh and sambal with boiled cabbage and roast spuds! I slept a lot and then walked around the kampung. My room was a large, three-bedded room with an en-suite mandi. A mandi is a bathroom which contains a squat toilet and a large square tank of water for washing or flushing. I found it was best to hide behind the tank so that I wasn't splashed when flushing. Also, wearing a lungi or sarung was incredibly useful. The floor of the mandi was always wet - it's also the shower room - so trouser cuffs would get soaked easily when taking them off or perching above the squat toilet. Not so with a wrap-around garment - it's easily removed without getting it on the floor. I hate trousers!
tea was tofu, tempeh, rice, sambal and tapioca leaves. This may seem boring but it was utterly delicious and the diet gave my bowels the clean-out they needed to get rid of the lurgie. I've not shat so wonderfully before or since.
The uka-uka is a sort of hantu (forest-dwelling ghost) in a popular Indonesian TV programme, I think.
I can't remember where I filmed travelling through miles and miles of kelapa sawit (oil-palm).
I do remember seeing on TV the latest restrictions on travel baggage and wondering how on earth I'd fit all my kit into my rucsac so it would count as one piece of hold baggage..
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006