Mud cow mayhem

It was a Saturday, so my tour guide offered me the pièce de resistance in West Sumatra experiences: the 'cow race'. They're bulls actually, and it's all about their ability to run fast and straight to the end of the course.

It's also about inter-village rivalries, the driver's ability to stay in control, and most of all it's about mud, noise and dangerous thrills and spills. Most drivers fall off and the bulls go careering into the crowd.





It's fabulous fun actually. Even when I fell into the mud when the tour company's corporate fold-up seat collapsed under me!






When I was in West Sumatra 30 years ago they were doing buffalo fighting. They didn't really fight - they had a head-to-head stand-off and then one ran away. They were very proud of this tradition, and it was supposedly a defining part of their culture and identity.

Where did buffalo fighting go? I've a feeling it was to do with the gambling that went with it. I was assured that there's no gambling with the cow-racing of today. It's supposedly about the honour of the village, plus it's a way of putting a value on your animals. The faster and straighter they run, the more you can get for them when you sell them for farm work.

Car-free Bukittinggi back on its bike!

It was Car-Free Sunday in Bukittinggi! Turns out it's only car-free for a couple of hours or so, and I suspect it was only applied in a small central area of the city.

It's a great idea though, and I gather it's happening in many Indonesian cities most Sunday mornings.






It took me a while though to work out what all the bikes were about. There were dignitaries by the dozen making speeches, and a lot of the starters looked extremely fit and mean. I thought a high level  bike race was about to break out.  The Tour de Sumatra maybe?






 
But no, when the starting siren eventually sounded, it was a rather slow and wobbly procession that gradually warmed up and headed off down the road for a gentle little circuit or two. In hindsight I realised the front row was probably the police and military contingent, and most of those behind seemed to have hardly ever ridden a bike in their lives.

And they're off!

Anyway, long live the car free Sunday!

Bukittinggi people

In Mainland China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, the V sign is a popular pose in photographs. It is used in both casual and formal settings. For the most part in these countries, the gesture is divorced from its previous meanings as a peace sign or as an insult; for most the meaning of the sign is "victory" or "yeah", implying a feeling of happiness. It is used in both directions (palm facing the signer and palm facing forward). In certain contexts the sign simply means "two", such as when ordering or boarding a bus.
The pose is gaining significant popularity in South Korea due to the common usage amongst Kpop idols and young people – especially in selfies. V signing is commonly linked with aegyo, a popular trend in Korea meaning 'acting cutely'. - Wikipedia

(Indonesia too, clearly. I've been wanting to clear that up, though I'd been pretty sure that's how it was!)

Girls just want to have fun

And that includes Sumatran girls, hijabs and all. In the west we sometimes think Muslim girls don't do stuff like frequenting arcade dancing machines, or "9-dimensional" virtual reality parlours.

Well, they do!




    (Click on the video)

Bukittinggi's volcanoes

There's a long line of volcanoes running down the length of Sumatra. Many are active, and one of the most consistently active ones is Marapi, pictured on the left here. (Not to be confused with Java's Merapi, with an 'e', which I climbed three years ago. Earlier this year Marapi exploded several times, and there was still smoke coming out of it last month.

On the other side of Bukittinggi is Singgalang - not active just at the moment I think. The clouds on the picture below are just clouds. I'd planned to climb a volcano or two on this trip to Indonesia, and these two would have been prime candidates. Didn't happen. A mixture of lethargy and a lack of other willing tourist expeditioners to share the costs with.

Lake Maninjau

The road down to West Sumatra's Lake Maninjau is quite an attraction in itself, with its 44 hairpin bends. Here we are, approaching bend 21.

It's a huge and scenic lake, formed 52,000 years ago in a volcanic explosion. Travellers often spend a few days here while exploring Sumatra.



One of the things you do is swim in the lake, usually in one of its 'hot springs' areas. I had a swim, and revelled in the perfect warm water conditions. I swam around and tried to locate the edges of the warm area, but couldn't find them. I was a bit hindered by my fear of the buffalo that was sharing the water with me. Saw later that it was in fact tethered to the shore, so I needn't have worried!

Sumatran coffee 2 - the 'cat poo' type (and it's OK!)

I've previously resisted the civet-poo kopi luak (luwak coffee), that's also the most expensive coffee in the world. It seemed like a bit of a joke, a bit unsavoury too, maybe. And there were the animal welfare aspects. The animals are often kept in tiny cages and forced to eat coffee.

So I was a bit hesitant when tour guide Rara offered to take me to the Rafflesia Luwak Coffee place near Bukittinggi, to sample the stuff.

"Ripe Coffee is Eaten By Civet Cat In Sumatera Jungles", it says on the packet. And indeed what happens, as explained by the delightful lady who runs the place, is that local farmers scour the jungles, collecting the droppings (right hand tray below right) from beneath the self-sown coffee trees which have escaped from the plantations. The civets eat the ripe berries, and their digestive juices supposedly produce a magically enhanced brew.

It's sorted and roasted (left hand tray), and it's all quite safe and hygienic. She also said there were no cages involved in this operation. And I believe her.

Needless to say I tried the stuff. And it was good! A very nice full, rounded, smooth coffee, with a hint of cinnamon. Actually the cinnamon was there because I added it. It's what you do, though the coffee was good without it too.

A 100g packet cost me $20, and there was no discounting to be had. That seemed expensive by Indonesian standards, but in fact it's probably about what you pay for a single cup of the stuff in some countries.

Sumatran coffee 1 - the traditional stuff

One of the places that tour guide Erik took me to near Bukittinggi was a small coffee processing place. Aromatic and atmospheric, I was quickly in the mood for my morning coffee, which came accompanied by the delicious roast banana strip with coconut.


 Here's the bean roaster










The roast beans are spread out and cooled













And poured into the grinder

The beans

 

The grounds

 Making the banana & coconut treats

Too many tour guides, not enough tourists

In Bukittinggi last month there was a marked shortage of western tourists. The tour guides were most concerned. The European summer holiday season should have been under way, but so far only a handful seemed to have made it to West Sumatra's traditional tourist capital.

There seemed to be unemployed wannabe guides all over the place. I employed a couple of competent, established guides though. Here's Erik, polishing his car.

One theory was that the earthquakes and tsunamis of recent years had frightened people off. Another was that the ending of the Medan to Penang ferry service (due to competition from cheap airlines) had severed the well trodden backpacker route up through Sumatra. But travel has its fashions anyway. Destinations go in and out of vogue. And a lot of travellers go straight to Lake Maninjau or the Harau Valley these days. For old times sake I was staying put for a whole relaxed week in Bukittinggi.

I used Erik's services for two full day tours. Here he is, showing me how a designer rural fish cracker factory works.

And here's Rara, of LITE 'N EASY Tours. She did a magnificent job of looking after me for another couple of days.

 She came equipped with corporate umbrella, corporate fold-up chair, and corporate LITE 'N EASY Tour sign.

Padang's colonial relics (and a run-down harbour)

West Sumatra's capital, Padang, is a big and thriving city of almost a million people, and by and large it's not particularly run-down, with lots of new buildings post the 2009 earthquake. But the old Dutch colonial quarter is as run-down as it gets. The old Dutch and Chinese warehouses are not looking too good. Not much rebuilding here since the earthquake. I suspect there's a heritage order or something on the area, and maybe the owners are waiting for it all to collapse so they can bulldoze the lot?

Lots of decaying old boats in the old harbour too.

Padang people

Schooners 2

In Jakarta a few days earlier, I'd been unable to get into the old schooner harbour, but no such problems in West Sumatra, in Padang's old port. I was waved in by a friendly watchman, and was free to wander and photograph the colourful scene around me.

The old schooners came and went. Trucks and boats were being loaded and unloaded.

The cargo on this one was bamboo poles.

Kopi Luwak - If it tastes like crap .....

As souvenirs of my Indonesian trip, I thought about bringing home a few packets of the legendary kopi luwak, or 'civet coffee', the world's rarest and most expensive coffee.

As all caffeinaholics know, this is the stuff that's made from the predigested beans extracted from the faeces of a civet, a cat-like creature which inhabits the coffee plantations of Sumatra. It's said to be special because the animals select only the very best beans to eat, and also because of the predigestion services that they provide which allegedly enhance the flavours.

Crap, say most serious coffee connoisseurs, using a rather well chosen word, in the circumstances.

100g packets of the stuff cost about $25 in a shop in Jogja, and $60 to $80 in the Jakarta airport duty free shops. Fortunately I'd done a bit of research on the stuff. It seems that there's now a big market in fake Kopi Luwak (of course, with those prices), and when it's real, it's produced in inhumane battery farm conditions these days. To confuse matters, there's a chain of coffee shops called 'Kopi Luwak', and they sell coffees, and packets of coffee beans, with that name, but which seemed to be totally conventional coffee.

So, what a load of crap! I'm with the kchronicles.com analysis of the situation, as per this cartoon.

More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak