Happy Birthday to Jay!
10 June 2009 | Sibolga, Sumatera
Well, it's the 10th of June, Jay's birthday and we are travelling yet again. Not exactly the way we had hoped to spend the 43rd anniversary of Jay's birth, especially setting off at the ridiculous hour of 2am but the need to get out of Sibolga was strong. We will celebrate Jay's birthday in a day or so in the seclusion and splendour of the Bay of Plenty and rumours of a big swell soon to hit the area make this journey all the more appealing.
We left Afulu on the 6th of June and stopped on the way at Teluk Siaba where we planned to get a good nights sleep before an early start to tackle the 86 miles we had to cover to get to Sibolga. Were it not for the fact that we had to get our visa's renewed we would have decided to avoid Sibolga all together. Teluk Siaba was a little bay dotted with seaweed rafts and a couple of fishing platforms, it wasn't long after we anchored that the local fishermen approached to have a chat. We found out that we were the first yachts that had ever anchored in there, the boys hung around on Raku and then came to the beach with us to continue the chat. There was a haphazard wooden jetty coming out into the bay that the local boats tied up to and beyond that was their village. We could see the smoke rising from behind the trees which generally tells you there is a village nearby, we were invited to go visit them but our time schedule meant that we had to keep moving to Sibolga. Sleep that night was interrupted by eager locals passing behind the boats with their music as loud as they could make it in the hopes that we would come out for a chat, ignoring them they eventually went away.
We were up at 4am the next morning and made it to Sibolga by 5.30pm, just in time to get the anchor down and watch a magnificent sunset. People were lined up along the shoreline enjoying the cool time of the day and floating around in the water in rubber tyres. The sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer floated across the water to us. We had dinner and had just relaxed on the couch to watch a movie, grateful for the fact that the locals had decided to leave us alone for the moment when we heard a hello being shouted from the back of the boat, we weren't going to get off so easy! A local fisherman wanted to come on board to talk, the Indonesian people don't seem to have any concept of time or privacy and after a bit of back and forth banter we finally managed to convince him that we had had a big day and that we were going to sleep. Under normal circumstances we would have chatted for a while but after a big day and lack of sleep it is very hard to try and converse in broken Indonesian, the brain simply refuses to work! Due to a lack of English speaking tourists to the area, English is not as widely spoken, the result is that our Bahasa is getting better but it also means conversations are slow as each person tries to work out what the other person is trying to say!
The next morning we up anchored and moved to another area where we were to meet Peter, a visa agent who was going to help us get through maze of paperwork and officials to organise our visas. It still took several hours of sitting in the immigration office. Once we were fingerprinted, photographed and paid in full, we were free to explore Sibolga. We treated ourselves to a meal at the oddly named CFC fast food restaurant. We asked what the CFC stood for and were told Kentucky Fried Chicken but Kentucky was spelt with a C in this case, I don't know how the Colonel would feel about that! Along with the regular burgers, fried chicken and fries were things like Mie Goreng (Fried Noodles), chicken wrapped in Pandanus leaves and fried rice as well as strange drink combinations such as orange juice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or the one Ian was brave enough to try, Avocado juice with a scoop of chocolate ice cream!
Our transport around town alternated between motorised becaks, motorbikes with a closed in side car, just big enough to squeeze two people into uncomfortably and something similar to a rickshaw which was much more comfortable but slower due to the reliance on pedal power. It was nice just to ride around the streets having a look but we didn't really do a lot of sightseeing. We were determined to get stocked up and out of there as soon as possible. It was hot, busy and the water was full of rubbish, dead fish and bloated up dead water rats. The smell that wafted to our boat from shore was disgusting and on more than one occasion the smell was so bad that it woke us up at night. Not to mention that the sewage goes straight into the harbour but the locals were still swimming in it, the sound of childrens laughter could be heard as they bomb dived into the filth.
Due to the lack of white tourists in the area we were told that many of the local children had not seen white people (orang putih) in the flesh so when we were in the Supermarket a gaggle of schoolgirls followed me around touching my backpack and the back of my head and giggling. It was bizarre! Most people would come up and chat but others would just walk up, stand inches away from your face and just stare for 10 minutes. It was becoming tiring and when we finally left Sibolga the relief at not feeling like the prize exhibit in a zoo was great. But we did enjoy some good meals out, one at an Indo restaurant and the other at a Chinese restaurant called Taipan. There are a number of Chinese in Sibolga.
It's always interesting to see new places but we were glad to say goodbye to Sibolga and head back into the wilderness again.