one week later, i think i’ve finally recovered. mostly. ron, kim, and i left for medan last sunday morning. the trip there - no problem. mostly. until we actually got to medan – a formidable city. apparently, the medanese, if you will, are born with a special ability. they can navigate an entire city of 2.5 million people without the aid of signs. of any variety.
we were looking for one specific store the night we arrived. for 3 hours. ron made me ask directions. 3 times. we never found it. by 8:30 pm, we were starving. so we got directions about 4 more times to a mall we needed to go to. people kept giving us road names, which doesn’t help, because THERE ARE NO STREET SIGNS!
eventually, we found ourselves at a different mall. which was easily the highlight – the ONLY highlight – of the trip. we found a pizza hut – a RARE treat! we also found awesome ice cream in waffle cones. and i bought 5 new movies and a pair of red shoes. can’t go wrong there, right?
we made it to our hotel (finally) at 11 pm. i blew up my entire air mattress manually, meaning i used my mouth and not a pump. just in case that was confusing. and then we went to sleep.
the next morning, we all took turns with the hot shower. not so much because we NEEDED showers, but just because we could. then we headed off to do more shopping in the big city. not much is available here in tarutung. there is literally 1 grocery store here. for 27000 people. and said grocery store is about the size of my living room at home in america.
anyways, off track. we knew we would have yohanes, plus ron and kim’s dog and cat (who finally received all their shots and paperwork in order to move to another island), so we tried to get as much shopping as possible out of the way before they landed at 12:20.
we did good. the back of the truck was full before we went to the airport. everyone made it safely, though the animals were a little mad. ok… they were BURNING UP with rage. but they calmed down pretty quickly. sadly, yo’s luggage didn’t come, which is not good news since he packed basically everything he owned to move here. all he had was the clothes on his back and his much beloved guitar. the airport just told him they’d call him before 2 IF his luggage showed up. we all prayed hard. and shopped some more.
around 3, the call finally came from the airport. so we headed BACK across town (about an hour’s trip) to get his luggage. 2.5 hours behind schedule.
we were ready to head out at 4:30, 4 hours behind schedule.
and then gentur called from home to ask us to pick up some sinks for ron and kim’s new house that is being built. they were waiting for us. at the contractor’s uncle’s father’s grandson’s house. in an alley. far away from all discernable landmarks. in the middle of the city of 2.5 million people who don’t need street signs. THREE AGONIZING HOURS LATER, we found the house (“yeah, over by the railroad tracks”), threw the sinks on top of everything in back, tied everything down, and braced ourselves for the long drive home. 7 hours behind schedule.
we spent another hour trying to find our way OUT of town. there were not even signs directing us to the toll road. and once we finally found the toll road, none of the ramps had signs to indicate which one was the entrance ramp to go south. we got outta dodge at 8:30. 8 hours behind schedule.
because we were lost in medan, we left town on a different road than the one we came in on. this is dangerous in indonesia, because there are very few roads. from medan to tarutung, a 6 hour drive, there is ONE road that you can take. so we were hoping to pick up the right road at some point. luckily, the javanese way of traveling is to stop every 15 minutes or so and ask directions, or at least ask if you’re going the right way. and luckily, yohanes is javanese. he is, in fact, the only reason we made it out of medan in only an hour.
however, unfortunately, the city we were aiming for is named parapat. and what makes this unfortunate is that we discovered (4 hours too late) that there are TWO parapats on sumatra! well, i never…
every time we stopped to ask directions to parapat, people would tell us, “yeah, just keep going down this road another 2 hours or so.” eventually, we made it to parapat. now, the parapat we were looking for is a resort town on the very edge of danau toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world. when we finally arrived in some podunk little village with a “welcome to parapat” sign and no water in sight, we knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. 12 hours behind schedule.
because there are so few roads, our only option at this point was to drive BACK 4 hours the way we came to find the right road. 16 hours behind schedule.
to complicate matters, the dog and cat were in the truck with us. somewhere between midnight and 1 am, right around the time we realized we had just driven 4 hours in the wrong direction, the cat got really restless. i said, “i think he has to pee.” we kept driving. roughly 2 minutes later, the cat peed. all over me. all over my only sweatshirt. all over the entire backseat. one word: awesome.
i voted to dump the cat there and leave. the stupid wrong parapat could keep him. everyone else just voted to stop more frequently to let the animals out.
anyways, we eventually made it back, stink and all, to the right road. btw, it’s really hard to find people to ask directions at 4 in the morning. i slept, albeit uncomfortably, for much of the night. i did wake up at one point to see some kind of muslim party involving exotic dancers in someone’s front yard. again: awesome.
the sun was rising when we stopped to take a rest for about 45 minutes. 17 hours behind schedule.
a few hours after that, we stopped at a little shack beside the road to stretch out and eat breakfast. 18 hours behind schedule.
a few hours after THAT, we finally made it home. our 6 hour drive officially took 20 hours total. can i say, once again: awesome.
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