After the volcano came the flood. Well, sort of, from our travelling perspective anyway. We spent the last few days of our time in Indonesia in the town of Banda Aceh which lies on the furthest northernmost tip of Sumatra. Banda Aceh has a troubled history. After failing to be conquered by the Dutch, the province of Aceh retained a seperate status until Indonesia gained independence after WWII. Indonesia sort of dragged Aceh under it's banner and that annoyed an...

This is just a quick little entry to mention a quick little trip we took to Berastagi. The town is the jumping off point for climbing a volcano or two. Woo! Despite living on one of the worlds biggest volcanoes for the last two days at Toba, I didn't feel like I'd got my geo-fix. And Si was quite happy to get some exercise. We stayed at the lovely Wisma Sibayak guesthouse and forked out the full £7 (IDR 100,000) for a room with it's own shower. The guesthouse o...

Simon's despatch: Lake Toba. If you've ever watched the RAC rally driving championships on TV and wondered how on earth they learnt to drive like that, the answer's probably that they drove the tourist bus from Bukit Lawang to Toba for years first! Once your adrenal gland has shrivelled to resemble a raisin the only course of action left to you is to develop a belief system based around the driver being an infallible deity. He obviously believes it himself a...

It all started when Lion Air misplaced my bag. After a brief stopover to change planes and admire the brown polluted skies of Jakarta (and be a bit smug that we weren't going to be staying there) we arrived at Medan airport in northern Sumatra. Well, "we" is me, Simon and Simon's bag. My bag didn't appear on the conveyor belt. But - no need to panic - we went along to the little Lion Air office to sort it out... Being a westener, I expected them to quickly tap m...

After the soaring highs and tedious lows of the Gili's, we moved on to see a bit more of Lombok island. By the time we came to move, my cold was coming along nicely and Si was also falling foul of the something we'd eaten. So the immediate plan was find somewhere nice to stay (which the oracle of Lonely Planet assured us was a place called Senggigi) and then Get Better. Senggigi is quite a nice place, the beach is lovely and there are ample tourist restaurants....