Our departure from Padang airport to fly to Jakarta was a fitting finale to our wonderful stay with the people of Sumatra. Large groups of teenage boy and girl scouts waiting in the departure lounge for planes to take them to annual camp, engaged us in animated conversation.  We talked about our countries, families, jobs, plans and destinations. When it was time to depart to our separate gates the boys shook our hands and the girls held our right hand and bowed, touching their forehead on the back of our hand.

Jakarta was a modern sophisticated city of 20 million people.  It’s the capital of Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world with over 225 million people and the largest Muslim country in the world. The centre was dominated by the huge, 137 metre tall Monas Tower commemorating Indonesia’s independence from 300 years of Dutch colonial rule in 1949. It was set in a manicured park with flower beds and shady avenues of mahogany trees. Around the park the airy wide streets were lined with towering modern and imaginatively designed buildings. Every huge South East Asia city suffers from traffic congestion and pollution and each deals with it in different ways. Jakarta has the Busway, dedicated bus lanes where only the central buses run.  We used the Busway often to explore the city.

In Jakarta there are the traditional fruit, veg. and meat markets in the outskirts and huge sprawling covered markets in the south of the city selling everything from clothes and food to TVs and the latest electronics. In the centre, Indonesia Mall is the upmarket place to be. Here the glitzy traders are Cartier, and Tiffanys. Even the big British retail names like Marks and Spencer and Debenhams are represented. 

There are still remnants of the old Dutch town of Batavia preserved in the north of Jakarta. These include the stylish and famous Batavia Café. A grand place for a big colonial lunch, surrounded by the atmospheric whitewashed buildings of old Batavia.

We liked Jakarta and we liked the people. As on Sumatra the folks we met were helpful, chatty and friendly.

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Every time we spent a few days in Amsterdam we always enjoyed an ‘Indonesian Rice Table,’ a meal consisting of several small dishes each containing a tasty morsel. Now that we were in Indonesia we wondered if such a meal actually existed and was eaten by the locals.

In a small backstreet restaurant in Padang in Western Sumatra we were served the real thing. As soon as we sat down waitresses started bringing us small dishes of spicy chicken, grilled fish, marinated meat, pickled vegetables, curried egg, steamed cauliflower, there were twenty in all. Basically you only ate and only paid for what you fancied. Being intrigued by all these interesting tastes and flavours we tried a little bit of almost every dish.  Like Goldilocks we tried all the dishes finding some plates fiery hot, some cold and bland and one or two just right.  The meal resembled the rice tables of Amsterdam as much as the Chinese meals of Xian resembled those of a British Chinese banquet! 

The experience of the food was, however, enhanced by the friendliness of the people and the brilliant smiles of the staff when we complimented their cuisine with “Enak Secali” (Delicious).  We know how to be diplomatic.

This style of presentation was developed and is preserved by the Minangkabau people in Western Sumatra. On important occasions with many guests there can be many more dishes of offer covering huge tables or laid out on carpets in a traditional banqueting building.

        Traditional Padang Rice Table

Allan and Margaret standing outside the Padang City Museum with its wonderful traditional Minangkabau roof design.

It was dark, and the humidity so high that our clothes stuck to our skin and sweat dripped from our noses. Even on a bright day the dense Sumatran jungle screened out the light, allowing only the occasional shaft to illuminate a small patch of the forest floor.  There were no paths, so we followed a local man up clear streams flowing through narrow dimly lit gorges of sheer moss and creeper covered rocks. We climbed over slippery mahogany logs and balanced over thin, natural rock bridges. On the steeper slopes covered with slippery leaf litter we pulled ourselves up using lianas and creepers.

We had heard that a giant rafflesia flower was in bloom. These huge red and yellow flowers are over a metre in diameter and smell of rotten flesh. So Margaret bought a new pair of boots in Bukittinggi and we asked if someone would show us the way.

Bukittinggi is a delightful small town perched in the mountains of western Sumatra at the head of a rift valley called Ngarai Sianok Canyon.  The vertical walls of the canyon can easily be seen from the town, stretching dramatically away into the distance for over 25km.

Many of the older buildings have impressive roofs which rise, curving into sharp double spires at each end. The ridges curving up to points look like buffalo horns; but two sets of buffalo horns on each roof. This is from the ancient legend that the Malay people challenged the Sumatran people to a contest to determine who should conquer whom. The contest was a buffalo fight. The Malay contingent fielded a huge and magnificent female buffalo. The clever Sumatrans however entered a calf, starved of mother’s milk. On the horns of the calf they lashed sharp knifes. When the calf saw the female buffalo it immediately ran under it and the knives eviscerated the adult buffalo. So the Sumatrans won the day and they adopted the double buffalo horn roof design which is still revered today.

One of the historic buildings we visited, which boasted the sweeping buffalo horn roof design was a traditional royal palace. The original had been burned down in the past but a replica, enlarged to accommodate more visitors had been built in a new location.

At many places in and around Bukittinggi we met delightful, friendly, helpful and interesting people. A school group besieged us with warm smiles and happy enquiries outside a museum. A family asked if we would pose for a photograph with them and folks on the street just wanted to know where we were from and bid us welcome.

Around the town we visited coffee growing areas and walked through groves of cinnamon trees. The steep slopes were terraced into beautifully contoured rice fields marching up the mountains. We walked through these terraced fields to reach the jungle and the site of the rafflesia flower that blooms for only seven days every eighteen months.

Climbing hand over hand up an incredibly steep muddy slope in the dim jungle light we reached the place. Our guide sighed when we saw the huge, but unopened bud. “Ah” he said, “I thought it would be open today, perhaps tomorrow or the next day?”  

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