Here we go again, it is a hell of a ride so buckle up. I am in Pedang, south Sumatra, overlooking yet another part of the Indian Ocean. The palm trees sway in the breeze, the water crashes down (surfing is big here), and the people smile like there is no tomorrow. In September of 2009, only a few months ago, Padang was hit my a massive earthquake. Any building over three stories was brought to mere pebbles, as well as many smaller less sturdy homes. The devastation is still very present. Arriving late last night I could see toppled buildings everywhere. This morning walking around was just a reaffirmation of what I saw last night. The walk to the Internet cafe was a humbling experience to say the least. It is hard for me to put into words what I see. My camera is not working very well so I cannot even give you an image to link with the few words I've written. You can imagine though, a city of just under a million people and many surrounding areas being hit by one disaster after another yet their spirits remains high and strong. It is something that will stick with me, the strength and endurance of people in this world makes my life in Canada or any struggle surrounding my life seem like a trivial bump in a still, very sturdy road. Even now as we speak there is flooding in Jakarta, the island of Java where I am heading tomorrow to get my flight to Vietnam.

I spent the few days before this in Lake Manujau, another massive crater lake surrounded by mountains, cliffs, and dense forest known as jungle. Before that I was in Bukit Tinggie, I am not sure how to spell the names of some of the towns which seems silly but the letters do not make much sense when put in order so I'll spell them phonetically, and well, at least I can pronounce them. Bukit tinggie has a huge canyon which I spent a day walking around in. It was beautiful. I took a bus from there to Manujau where I stayed in nice treehouse style bungaloo for five days. It was the worst to get in and out of but had a great view of the lake. I rented a motor bike to get around the lake. This area about 150 Km away from Padang was hit by the same earthquake and the opposit side of the lake from which I was staying had fallen rock all over the road. Roads had been destroyed, houses collapsed and so on. It it hard to write 'and so on' when refering to such disater.
The trip on the motorbike turned out to be a 8 hour journey. There are not ATM's in Manujau and we were all out cash. The closest town was only one hour away but the ATM was out of order so we had to keep on keeping on. WTF! It is as if we were in lennoxville, ran out of money and had to drive to Montreal on a motorbike to get to an ATM. Did I mention it was 30 degress outside and we had not planned on such a journey in the blistering sun. Yeah, my arms and face were a glowing bright red when we finally arrived back. Builds character my mom would say, thanks mom. Tell that to my peeling nose. No harm done though and we did get to see an extensive amount of the countryside.

Indonesia is home of the clove cigarette and the guitar. It is their national pastime. Combine the two and that is what you see everywhere. They are a people of great hospitality and courage. Definitly a great choice on my journey and a great place to visit. If you are 11 years old and cannot drive a mottor biker a top speed, passing cars and avoiding clusless tourist you would be fit to grow up here. They do it well.
We leave Pedang tomorow in order to make the flight on the 7th of March. Why leave tomorrow it is only the 4th? Well the bus we are taking is 36 hours and the flooding in the area will not help so off we go for a two day one night bus. Did I mention my ipod does not work. It will be fun, more character building, hell, at this rate I'll be quite a character by the time a arrive home.

Bora- I crave your comments.

Keep reading, I'll try to post more often, the internet is more shoty here and the days are filled with much adventure but I am thinking of the readers. Fcaebook is also not allowed in Vietnam so email me if you need to.