There is always room for one more January 1995      When I was in college I got to experience something known as January Term or Jan term for short. Instead of two 18 week semesters, the school has 16 week semesters and has a 4 week "interterm" in January. During Jan Term, students would take one class and focus on it. Most students would take one class for two and a half hours a day, four days a week. Often, they would then go to Reno or Lake Tahoe or other places during their off days. However, some students elect to take travel courses. My senior year in college I decided to take one of these travel classes. This travel class went to Indonesia where we spent a month on the island of Sumatra.      Going to a third world country, to an island with a religion different than most members of the class, you should expect culture shock. And culture shock there was. Most of it you get over in a day or so. Men can openly hold hands but it was forbidden for a man and a woman to do so in public. You bathe by scooping water out of a tank of water called a Mandi. In some of the finer restaurants, which always seemed to have fresh fish on the menu, the daily special often was swimming around in the Mandi waiting to become your dinner.     Eating was defiantly a cultural experience. When you sat down to eat, you were brought a bowl of rice and other selected delicacies to eat with the rice. On of my favorite was fruit bat. In fact I have been disappointed in the fact that I can't find an Indonesian restaurant I the states that serves fruit bat. Other samplings in restaurants were less appealing. These were things such as the ox lung, the ox heart and another part of the ox I do not want to mention. I think you were charged 200 Rupia for the rice and 100 for each dish you ate. Often we would blow 500 Rupia on a meal. Fortunately, that came to about fifty cents each. I am sure we were charged double for things, too.     Sharing your room with assorted bits of wildlife took getting use too. I only fled my room once because of the arachnid that inhabited it with me. (It was big, it was fast and it had fifty of its friends with it.) Though we were not supposed to drink, our guides tended to look the other way and even tell us where to buy it. I am sure they got a commission on this which is why they wanted to look the other way. Bartering was even fun. Especially when you compared the prices you got with someone else on the same item. In fact there is only one thing I could not get used to. The bus rides.     Our first ride was an ominous sign of what would come. The teacher had rented two taxi busses to take us to an "Ecotourist" lodge outside Karanci national park. We had a good deal at this lodge. That is because it wasn't quite finished and we were the test group.     The busses came at 9 and we loaded into two mini-van like busses. Being "typical Americans" our posteriors were quite ride and three of us barely fit in the back seat and two in the middle seats. Of course our western modesty prevented us from actually touching legs or hips. However, we were still fairly squished. January also happens to be the middle of the summer in this equatorial country, so the ride would undoubtedly be hot, humid, and uncomfortable.     We drove for about half of an hour until we stopped at another hotel. The drivers were insistent on picking up ten more passengers into our already stuffed busses. Our teacher tried to explain that we were paying for "private" busses. The drivers explained back that their busses were not full and they could make extra money by taking these ten people. The ensuing argument took about forty five minuets in which it was settled that they would take six more passengers. That meant three per bus. Therefore, in busses no larger than mini vans we stuffed four passengers into the back seats and three into the front two.     The drivers were now very upset that they had been deprived of four passengers and wasted forty five minutes arguing with our teacher. They proceeded to drive at warp speed. The roads were very narrow and when they were not just missing cars in the other lane they were just missing children. Often they would pass on blind curves. It is a miracle that they only managed to hit one chicken. That is not to say hitting a chicken was not also a tragedy. The rural people depend on the chickens for eggs. Hitting a chicken is a tragedy because it drastically effects the food supply of the owners.     Somehow we managed to survive the trip. A few days latter we were to take another bus ride. This bus ride was to take us to the Orangutan rehab center on the northern end of the island. This bus was a public bus. It quickly became clear why the first bus drivers thought twelve passengers per bus was a private trip. The bus was very similar to a U.S. school bus. In fact, it may have been one in a past life. There were racks for gear on the top and the seats looked as if they would take two a piece. We were some of the first to get on. That was very fortunate because as the bus went north, it picked up more and more passengers. The passengers often had bags, luggage, and chicken cages. The chicken cages also contained chickens. The Indonesians would cram three, sometimes four people to a seat us obtuse westerners considered for two people. Some people even climbed on the roof to ride. At one point there were easily eighty people on a bus that was designed to sit fifty. At least this bus couldn't drive as fast as the first one.     When ever we took a public bus this happened. The conductors would cram as many people to the seats as possible. It is just a cultural difference. The Indonesians live in packed families. They do not have the scene of "personal space" that people from the U.S. do. By the end of our trip, we came to expect sharing a seat for two with three other people. Taking a taxicab in Padang on our last day, I was not surprised that the driver kept picking up passengers going to the same general palace. (I have no idea how he did the meter. Our little group came up with a bunch of little sayings. One of them was "there is always room for one more." That saying was because of the Indonesian propensity for always picking up additional passengers.      Fortunately, only one of the busses took chickens on it. Furthermore, I think only two chickens lost their lives and no children were struck during our stay. The busses always would blast some sort of music. Often the drivers choice, though to the drivers credit they would play our tapes when we requested.     All in all, my trip to Indonesia was fun. I learned a lot. I saw a male Orangutan build its "nest" for the night. Later in a primate biology class, the teacher said that it is rare to see that occur. I saw species of plants and animals that I never seen before nor will again. (I saw a species of annelid worm that I wish I never had seen though). The only thing I could not get use to was the bus rides. Guide Books |  FAQs |  Photos for Sale |  Travel Essays |  Links Contact info: