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)

West Sumatra's Silver City

The village of Koto Gadang, just outside Bukittinggi, is a traditional centre for high quality silver lacework jewellery. Other touristy knicknacks too. Like rather big silver Minangkabau traditional houses.



















I bought a nice little silver lacework brooch, but passed on the houses.

Bukittinggi antiques

We have in our Sydney home some decorative little drinking glasses that were bought (by another member of the household) in an antique shop in Bukittinggi in West Sumatra nearly 30 years ago. Seems there were several funny little antique shops there at the time, stocking an eclectic mix of  things, including lots of stuff from Dutch colonial times. I hadn't noticed them on my own previous visit to Bukittinggi, but that just goes to show how we all see different things!













And what do you know, they're all still there, still selling all that same old stuff. Or at least, still stocking it - I never saw any customers in any of them.

A multitude of mosques

West Sumatra seems to be particularly well stocked with mosques. No shortage of places to pray. Some small villages seemed to have two or three.

They're building them everywhere, sometimes way out in the back blocks. The dome is always completed first. "Where's all the money coming from?" I asked tour guide Erik. "Is it from Saudi Arabia?" Not usually, was the reply. Often it's from the overseas Indonesians, who want to give something back to their home villages.

The accidental zoo visitor

I've never visited an unrecommended zoo before. According to Lonely Planet, Bukittinggi's zoo is "terrible. (animals are underfed and live in cramped conditions) and we don't recommend visiting it."

I saw what they meant.











It's adjacent to the Fort de Kock park, without a separate gate or entrance fee, and I wandered in by accident. I did get to see Sumatran tigers and Sumatran elephants though.

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!

The Japanese tunnels of Bukittinggi

The Japanese Caves, or Japanese Tunnels, in Bukittinggi are one of the city's most interesting features. They were built during Indonesia's World War 2 occupation by Japan, by local slave labour.

Bukittinggi was a major centre of Government during the Japanese occupation, as it had been during Dutch colonial times. In 1948 and 1949 it was the capital of the new Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia.

It's an enormous complex, with a total tunnel length of 1.4km. There are ammunition rooms, dormitories, kitchens, meeting rooms, even a torture room.













Indonesians do not have fond memories of the Japanese occupation, and I was told that very few Japanese tourists come here even today.