March 14-16 By Joan

The road to Medan was like a slow descent into hell. Actually, it started with a gentle, but long, 300-meter? climb from the ferry terminal at Parapot. The road gave some awesome views over the lake. Then we began a very slow descent that lasted for two days.

On the first day, just after lunch, we ran into the fifth bike tourist we've seen in the country (the first two we met at the airport in Bali, but we never saw them again; later we met a tandem team in Bali. All four said they were only riding on Bali in Indonesia, and in retrospect, I see some wisdom to that). His name was Andrew, and he was from Darwin, Australia.

Andrew was a total godsend. He has ridden almost the entire trip we still have ahead of us. He rode around Europe, then rode the Kharkorum highway through Pakistan and China, from Katmandu to Delhi, and through Malaysia and Thailand.

The dreadful traffic in Indonesia, had worried me and Eric about all those other places. But Andrew said the traffic was really a lot better in all those other countries, except the main roads in India. He also said that the bathrooms and food carts were very clean in other countries like Thailand, which is good news, since it's sort of hit-or-miss here.

He also said that we wouldn't have to ride impossible distances to find food and lodging. On the K. Highway, he and his girlfriend generally rode 20 to 60k a day. They only camped once, and that was because they didn't want to pay an unusually large fee to sleep in a yurt. That was also good to hear, because it means we won't have to lug our tent around.

After we left Andrew, a big weight came off our shoulders. He made us feel like the best parts of the ride are still ahead. I started getting departure fever, really bad.

That night we stayed in Terbittingi, where the woman who checked us into our room needled Eric into giving her money by saying she didn't have any, even though she had a job.

The last day of the ride to Medan was hell. For the first half, the road was only two lanes, and several times, buses passing other buses ran us off the road. It reminded me of those first hellish days on Eastern Java. I kept thinking, I hope we live. Then the road became four lanes, which pretty much gave us our own lane to ride in.

As we got close to the city, though, several passenger vans (opelets) kept cutting us off to drop off or pick up passengers. They thought nothing of whipping past us at 40mph, then slamming on the brakes and cutting in front of us, forcing us to a stop. After this happened several times in a few minutes, I started screaming. Whenever someone cut us off, I screamed as loud and shrilly as I could, which freaked out a few of the drivers. I hit the side of one opelet with my fist. And when one opelet nearly hit Eric, I pulled up beside and yelled "Hati-Hati!" inside as loud as I could. That means Be Careful. I think the drivers were mostly amused that a woman would yell at them.

The last minutes of the ride were so awful that Eric and I decided to hell with Medan and that damn orangutan preserve we were going to visit. We can see Orangutans in the San Diego Zoo when we get home. Let's get to the airport.

So instead of searching for a hotel, we rode to the airport. Unfortunately, that's not a great place to get a good price on a ticket to Singapore. Someone quoted us a price of US$144 one way, compared to the $50 to $75 we had expected to pay.

So we retreated, found a hotel, and made plans to fly out on the 16th. That night, a taxi driver tried to rip us off by charging us triple the normal fare on our way home from an early dinner. For once I didn't roll over and pay it. I asked the front desk at my hotel to confirm how much the fare should have been, thrust the correct fare into his hands, and then Eric and I went up to our room. The taxi driver maintained a stunned face the whole time, but didn't follow us or bother us again.

Post Script by Eric: The next morning we walked around looking for travel agents. We found one that had an OK price but when we asked the departure times, he said one left in 55 minutes and there wasn't another for two days! He said he couldn't sell us tickets on the one in 55 minutes because we could not possible make the flight. We wasted another minute thinking about it than ran out of the store and jogged the three blocks back to the hotel. That took about 10 minutes.

We divided the work to save time at the hotel. I paid and got the bikes out of the back room while Joan got the stuff from our room. We went very fast. We were out of the room, paid up, and the bikes loaded in just 10 minutes.

The hotel had a free shuttle service to the airport, but they only had a small car so we opted to ride. That was a good idea since traffic was snarled and a car would have taken far longer than bikes - especially since Joan and I road like Javanese bus drivers. We even broke traffic laws that Indonesians don't break. We carried our bikes over medians and went the wrong way down one ways. But we got to the airport in 10 minutes.

Joan watched the bikes by the Xray (in Indonesia, they Xray everything just as you enter the airport, then again on the way to the gate) and I ran to the Singapore Air counters. The signs said, "FLIGHT CLOSED." I got a pregnant airplane worker's attention and pleaded. "Is it at all possible to get on that flight?" I asked. I expected that "absulutely not" from airport counter people that is so fearful but she didn't do that at all.

"They're all up stairs..." she said. "I'll see if I can get someone..." She got up like she was actually going to try to help me then she stopped. Then she spurted something out to the Malaysia Air people at the next counter. "There's another flight to Singapore on Malaysia Air at 1 p.m. The only thing is, it stops in Kuala Lumpur." It was the same price so we took it. Then we had three hours to kill. The ride to the airport had at least been exciting, if unnecessary.

Why the guy at the travel agency didn't consider the option of flying to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur I don't know. Even an Singapore Airlines person knew that.

next: Singapore.

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