Indonesia day 4

I'm only starting to realise now how hard it will be to keep a blog going everyday. so far i've written a blog post for the last 3 days but i have not had the Internet to post them.  As of recent, Internet is the least needed utility for me though. As i'm writing this post it's the 29th (day 6) and i can tell you that electricity, plumbing, toilets, and even clean water are scarce. It's amazing. Let me tell you about it

We woke up at 5:30 on the 27th to catch a flight to padang. we (Matt, brad and i) were traveling to padang to meet Rapani, a guide who would help us walk up mt Kerinci. Everything went smoothly except for when i got locked in Dennise's bathroom for 20 minutes because the door handle fell off.

We met Rapani in the late morning outside the airport holding a sign saying 'matthew james'. First class treatment, eh? At first he didn't believe it was me because my gmail thumbnail picture was taken a few years prior and i hadn't grown my disgusting face fro and head mop at that time. The drive from the airport was 7.5 hours long and featured a fantastic view of shacks, farms and beautiful countryside. At one point we got pulled over by a police blockade. A fat indonesian policeman waddled over and said something i interpreted as licence check. a quick bribe of 300000 rupiah later (30 aud) offered by Rapani and we were on our way. Most people we met along the road gave us white people an unmistakable expression of surprise, pleasure and confusion as we passed - except for an old man we passed who tried to spit at matt gates through the window.

We made our first stop at a local 'restaurant'. It was more or less a glamorized tent and that made food for locals by locals. rapani took us in and ordered us a bunch of food that we could never pronounce. At first we were hesitant because the curry was a sickly green, the chicken still had hair on it, the bowls were slimy, and there were very little black things covered in white things that were as hard as wood. We all shrugged our shoulders and whispered to ourselves 'when in rome' and started digging in. Everything was delicious. The curry was awesome and spicy. the chicken was succulent and extremely filling which was surprising considering it was only the size of 2 chicken nuggets. i guess that says a lot about australian processed meals. oh and the black things were pickled eels and once you bit into them they tasted pleasantly salty and spicy.

We finally arrived at jambi province in Desa Kersik Tuo.  Every house was extremely damaged and broken down except for the two mosques that surrounded our guest house. They were in quite good condition and had giant speakers witch sang out some prayer which nome of us could understand. Just like the mosques in jakarta, the Imam's really need to get singing lessons. the guest house had very limited electricity, unreliable taps, no clean water and holes in the ground for toilets. but at least it had a stable roof and one bed. Literally just what i was hoping for.