As you might remember, I had just made it back to Leuser Guesthouse after my incredible 2D1N trek in the jungle of Ketambe. During my time in the jungle, and even before going to Ketambe, I started to think about my next destination. Basically, I decided that after the jungle I would like to go to a paradisaical island. Before going to Indonesia, my friend Marco advised me to go to Karimunjawa, which was indeed a paradise. Mai was herself going, after we separated in Yogyakarta. I heard though about another paradise, which had more diving options and which was in Northwest Sumatra. Thus, in the end, I decided to travel all the way from Ketambe to Pulau Weh 😉
How to get to Banda Aceh?
If reaching Ketambe wasn’t easy (flight to Medan, 7 hours of mini van to Kutacane and 1 hour of labi-labi from Kutacane to Ketambe), leaving it was pretty much the same. In order to make it to Pulau Weh, I would have to first make it to Banda Aceh. The way I saw it, there were 2 ways to reach Banda Aceh from Ketambe:
- From Medan to Banda Aceh by flight:
Ketambe to Kutacane by labi-labi (1 hour). Kutacane to Medan by mini van (7 hours). Medan to Banda Aceh by flight (1 hour). Total time: around 10 hours (taking into account delays and going from Medan city to the airport). Price: around 60 euros. - From Ketambe to Banda Aceh by mini bus:
Total time: around 17 hours. Total price: around 20 euros.
The picture above, taken from Google Maps, shows Medan, Kutacane, Ketambe and Banda Aceh. That gives you an idea of how huge Sumatra is. But that also gives you an idea on how “hard” moving around Sumatra is. On the picture above I chose “car” as my vehicle to get from Ketambe to Banda Aceh but, as you can see, there is no route. Why? Because even Google Maps doesn’t have a route between those two points. Thus, if you want to visit both Ketambe and Pulau Weh, plan your trip a little bit ahead and decide where you will start and where you will end. Also, leave some time for unexpected events and/or delays. You will thank me later 🙂
So, what did I do? In my case, since I wasn’t in a hurry, I decided to go with option number 2. To that extend, I spoke with the owner of Leuser Guesthouse. He called the bus driver and told him to pick me up at the guesthouse. He was supposed to pick me up at 22:00 but, that didn’t happen 😅.
From Ketambe to Banda Aceh by mini bus
It was 22:30 and nobody had come pick me up. Even if I was trying to use my solo trip to grow up and control my emotions, I started to not be able to help it. I asked the owner what was going on and he told me they should be coming soon. It was 23:00 and nobody had come pick me up… I really couldn’t help it anymore. I was pissed off and kind of angry. The owner called the bus driver and he was told they had forgotten to pick me up. Bravo!
It all seemed like I would have to spend another night at Leuser Guesthouse. It wasn’t my plan, it wasn’t what I wanted to do but, what could I do? I believe the owner really felt how pissed and disappointed I was and, since, in a way, it was on him, he did his best to fix the problem. Thus, at 00:00, a guy came pick me up with his moto. The mini bus had stopped for dinner and they would wait at that place for me.
I figured it would be kind of cold riding a moto at night so I wore long pants and a hoodie. I did well. After thanking the owner and his wife for his efforts, giving a tip to Sukarno and Habibi and getting my big and small backpack, I jumped on the back of my driver. Ahead of me there was an hour of curves under a beautiful starry sky.
The driver was really kind. Every 5 minutes or so he was asking: “are you O.K. mister?” To which I answered: “yes, I’m O.K., thanks”. He didn’t speak much English but was enough to have some chatting now and then. At some points the road reminded me to the one of my village. I was having the big backpack on my back and he was having the small one on his chest. He also told me now and then not to be afraid and trust him. I did my best lol.
Eventually we made it to the restaurant sound and safe. I thanked my driver a lot and, after paying 300 K (around 20 Euros), I made it to the mini bus. The people who were waiting for me were like, come on, you are late. And I was like what? Are you kidding me? Regardless, I found my seat next to the back of the mini bus and got ready for a night of sleep. Again, I did well wearing some warm clothes because, like always, it seems they didn’t really know how to control the aircon. It was freezing!
I guess in a way they know how crazy they are with the aircon because, on every seat, there was a blanket. Crazy, isn’t? The bus was comfortable enough and I spent most of the ride trying to catch some sleep. I would say we were around 15-20 people in the mini bus. Like ever since I stepped on Sumatra, I was the only white one. They didn’t speak much English so, unfortunately, like during my trip to Ketambe, I had to remain silent most of the time.
The trip was kind of long but I couldn’t do much. Little by little, I would be making it all the way from Ketambe to Pulau Weh. There was a guy next to me who spoke some English and, with that and the translator, we exchanged some words. We stopped a few times during the trip and, in one of them, I bought some hand-made chips. They were skewed in a skewer and cooked in the oven. They were really good.
The views were amazing. It was drizzling throughout pretty much the whole ride. That, plus the vast vegetation made me feel like I had never left the jungle. Palm trees and mountains all around, rice fields, some animals and some small towns.
We arrived in Banda Aceh kind of late. It took the bus driver a while to drop all the people and to cross the city until the ferry terminal, my final destination. I thanked them all, got out of the mini bus, picked my stuff and walked to the ferry terminal. It was too late. The last ferry had left at 16:00 and it was 17:00. I had no choice but wait until tomorrow.
Life lessons in Banda Aceh
I kind of felt like the night before, when the mini bus was supposed to pick me up at Leuser Guesthouse but they forgot about me. I felt angry and pissed off, just because reality hadn’t matched my plans. How many times we have faced (and we will face) that situation in life? Yet we spend most of our lives complaining. With what goal? Do we really get something out of complaining or getting angry? I think we don’t. I think somehow that way of behaving is kind of programmed in our minds. Regardless, I think we can (and we should) change it, for everybody’s sake.
Thus, I tried to overcome the frustration by deciding what to do next. I found a plug and, as my phone was charging, I started to do some research. The first fast boat was leaving at 08:00. I checked different accommodation options but found that they were pretty expensive. Sumatra has way less tourism than Bali or Java. That, plus the increase of prices after the 2004 tsunami, was the answer to my question on why accommodation was so expensive. To give you an idea, for a shitty room, I would have to pay a minimum of 200 K (around 13 Euros).
Pondering my sleeping options
The price of the room wasn’t the only problem. The ferry terminal was far away from everything. I didn’t find public transport options. The same went for Grab or GoJek. If I needed to use any of them I had to walk quite a lot before making to an area where I could hire their services. Thus, if I wanted to leave the ferry terminal and make it to a hostel, I would have to pay for a taxi. The first fast boat was leaving at 08:00, so, I would need to leave the hostel early, pay for another taxi and make it to the ferry terminal. All in all, if I wanted to sleep somewhere in the city, I would have to spend twice as much as what I paid for 3 nights and 1,5 Kg of laundry in Yogyakarta 😅.
I started to consider a different option as I remembered my night sleeping at the airport of Denpasar or the one sleeping at the airport of Medan. Why not going to Banda Aceh’s airport, sleeping there and coming back to the ferry terminal? I checked this amazing website and found out that, indeed, I could sleep at the airport. The problem? It was kind of far away:
After kind of discarding both sleeping in the city and at the airport, my brain came up with yet another option. It is amazing how well our brain works when our mind is at peace, rather than complaining 🙂 Since I was already at the ferry terminal and I would have to come back there, why didn’t I just sleep at the ferry terminal? I was thinking about that when a guy approached me.
Meeting Dian, the nicest taxi driver of Banda Aceh
He asked me if I needed help. I realised he didn’t speak much English so, I opened Google translator and we started chatting. I explained him my situation and the options I was pondering. That took around 30 minutes lol. His name was Dian and he was a local from Banda Aceh who worked as a taxi driver. Even if we had some struggle with the language barrier he showed himself as a very kind person the whole time. He offered to give me a ride so we could check different cheap hostels. I told him I had already done some research but all of them seemed pretty expensive.
Eventually I explained him I was considering sleeping there, at the ferry terminal, and I asked him what he thought. He replied that it should be safe, that not many people wandered around the terminal at night and that, just for one night, it should be alright. We kept on chatting and he kept on offering to give me a ride (cheaper than usual). Regardless of being kind, he had a job to do.
I thanked him for the offer but told him that, in the end, I would be trying to sleep at the ferry terminal. I wanted to thank him for his time and help so I thought about inviting him to have dinner. The city was huge and we were far away (by foot) from everything. I explained him what I was thinking and that was his answer:
Dinner and life lessons
We walked to his taxi and started driving. I believed I had already mentioned it, but, just in case… Indonesia is mostly an Islamic country, except for Bali (Hinduism). During my trip I heard that the country had experienced an increase on the number of Islam believers due to… money. They had a huge debt and South Arabi stepped in. They told Indonesia they would help them out with their debt in exchange of an increase on the number of Islam believers.
Java is also an Islamic island but, from what I saw, at a way lower level than Sumatra. In Sumatra, pretty much all the women I saw were wearing a burka. I even had to put a jacket to cover my shoulders. Why am I telling you all this now? Well, because we had been driving for a few minutes when my friend stopped right in front of a mosque. Why did he do that? Because it was praying time. It wasn’t the first time I was “exposed” to praying time in an Islamic country. I had already experienced it in Istanbul (Turkey) and in Yogyakarta. In the last one I got waken up every night, since we had a mosque kind of close to the hostel 🙂
So, while I was waiting for my friend outside the mosque, I started to think about where I was. Banda Aceh is a big city, with a population of around 200000 inhabitants. It has some interesting stuff to see such as the tsunami museum and the grand mosque. We passed by the last one and it was really impressive. All in all, I decided not to visit it and just go straight to Pulau Weh. A few days ago I was in the jungle, looking for orangutans. Now I was in a city which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami. It is crazy how everything can change in just a second.
Dian came back after praying and he took me to Dhapu Kupi, a nice and cheap restaurant. It was full of locals and I was the only white one, like so far during my time in Sumatra. I didn’t understand anything on the menu but, thanks to the few Indonesian words I learnt, the help of Dian and Google translator, I ended up getting some delicious stuff.
I was very hungry but I started to lose my apetite as Dian started talking about his past. On December the 26th, 2004, he was working outside of the city, like he had been doing for years. Little did he know that when he came back that day, he would find nothing and no one but his youngest brother. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami was one of the deadliest natural disasters recorded in history. And, I was having dinner with someone who suffered that disaster deep inside him.
When Dian came back from work that tragic day he found nothing but death and ruins. His house was destroyed, and all his family was dead, except for his youngest brother. As he was telling me that, I tried to make a (huge) effort to try to understand what he had felt back then. I couldn’t. It was crazy. His family was a big one (between 10 and 15 members) and he was pretty young (around 20 years old). What do you do in such a situation? How do you find the courage to keep on living? It seems that even though human beings are weak and have many problems dealing with emotions, at the same time, they have an envying sense of overcoming life’s strikes.
I was sitting there, staring at him, not knowing what to do or tell. I never expected to meet someone who suffered the 2004 tsunami in such a way. It is admirable how some people overcome these kind of situations. As of now, he was happily married, have two kids and was working as a taxi driver. There wasn’t much tourism in Banda Aceh but he started to feel an increase and so he started to study English. He was the perfect example of self improvement.
As I mentioned earlier, we are whining animals. We complain about everything. If we order some food and it takes more than x minutes, we complain. If our soccer team doesn’t win, we complain. We complain if someone doesn’t give us a present for our birthday or even if they do, but it is not what we expected. We complain if the flight doesn’t arrive on time, or if the food doesn’t taste as we expected.
Unfortunately, my knowledge and experience are not wide enough yet. I was born in a Western country and I’ve always been exposed to this kind of culture. I guess that in India or in many countries in Africa they don’t complain about these stupid things. They have way more important things to “complain” about. I guess that, Dian, when he found out everything he cared for was gone, he had no time or strength to complain about these things either.
We finished dinner (56 K for all the dishes and drinks we ordered) and we drove back to the ferry terminal. On the way, I advised him to install Duolingo, so he could keep improving on his English. We exchanged numbers and I told him I would call him when I was back in Banda Aceh, so he could take me to the airport and I could pay for his service (rather than using a different taxi or another service such as Grab or GoJek).
I thanked him for his time and help. I thanked him for having taken me to such a nice restaurant to have dinner. But, overall, I thanked him for the incredible life lessons he had just given me.
Sleeping at Ulee Lheue Ferry Port
Back at Ulee Lheue ferry port I looked around to familiarize with the place. There were some plugs and a food and beverages booth, which was already closed. There was a mosque and there were some toilets. The condition of the last one was… we’ll just say they weren’t the best toilets I’d ever seen. There were some chairs and benches and, even at night, there was enough illumination.
In the beginning I thought about trying to sleep on one of the benches, but I rejected the idea right after checking how “comfy” they felt. I kept on checking and, eventually, I decided to sleep on the floor, by a wall and a pillar which were creating some sort of corner. There would be mosquitos so I decided to wear long pants and a long-sleeve shirt to avoid them. I put mosquito repellent on my skin and I lit a mosquito coil. I used my backpacks as cushions and, as I was getting ready for a “superb” night of sleep, I saw someone approaching…
He didn’t speak much English but, once again, thanks to Google translator, we managed to chat for a while. As he was talking to me, one of his friends approached us. They were five in total. They came from Palembang, a city in the south of Sumatra. They drove their motos for a week and they covered around 2000 kilometres. Crazy, isn’t? I told them I was coming from a 2D1N trek in the jungle of Ketambe and they were also pretty surprised. I explained them how I had missed the last ferry as well as my idea of spending the night there. They smiled and told me they were going to do the same: spending the night at Ulee Lheue ferry port 🙂
We spoke for a little longer and, eventually, I stayed on the corner and they stayed on some benches a little further away. As I laid down and got ready for a weird night of sleep, I started to think about all the things I had lived in the last couple of days. The 2D1N trek in the jungle of Ketambe was a once in a lifetime experience. Being the only white person during my time in Sumatra was also kind of awesome. Deciding to spend 17 hours in a mini bus to make it all the way from Ketambe to Pulau Weh was kind of funny. Sleeping at a ferry terminal and meeting people who had travelled 2000 kilometers by moto was pretty cool. But, meeting Dian and learning some priceless life lessons was the cherry on the cake.
