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 awful lot of people. There was guerrilla fighting for years and tourists weren't allowed to visit because it was too dangerous. Then the most grisly salvation from the fighting came in 2004 when the Boxing Day tsunami swept through the province killing over 170,000 people and obliterating the low-lying areas of the capital, Banda Aceh. A year later, in the recovery from this catastrophe, the guerrilla fighters signed a ceasefire and everyone focused on building something better out of the rubble.

Today Banda Aceh is a clean, progressive and cosmopolitan town. Unless you know where to look you would have no idea that things had ever been so bad here. It's also got absolute bucketloads of coffee shops, bakeries and an incredibly pretty mosque.

On our first day we started off by having a serious snooze to catch up on our night-bus-related sleep deficit. Our driver had driven like a bit of a loon up from Medan, and anyway it's hard to sleep on a bus. Then we watched a bit of telly - I know, serious hardcore travellers eh? I mention it because even though we didn't really have any idea what was going on, we still managed to watch the telly for quite a while. Which proves that the best thing about TV is the pretty pictures.

After all that hard work, we headed out to the tsunami museum. On the way we got caught in an epic downpour so we caught a bekak (a motorbike with a sidecar which has room for 1.5 people) to take us there instead of walking. Bekaks are awesome, they'd probably be rubbish in the UK because it's cold a lot of the time, but here they're a good way to get into some flowing air and minimise unsightly face-sweating; as well as get around town.

The tsunami museum building is easily the most modern and designer building we visited in Indonesia (actually it's still being built in places). The displays were generally more "something to look at" rather than "something to read", so there wasn't much in-depth information (in English at least) about anything as such. But really the most arresting thing about the taunami is the film and pictures that were taken at the time, and there were plenty of these. If you didn't mind the zillions of kids there who were as fascinated by us as they were by the museum (and we didn't) then it was a pretty moving place to visit.

After the museum we went to a coffee shop where we were handed some mystery nibbles, which turned out to be delicious. Coffee shops became something of a theme after that.

On the second day we wanted to do a self-guided cycle tour of the town with a company just round the corner from our hotel. After walking up and down the same street and through the same fruit market three times we found that the company office had moved. Rather than spend hours tracking them down we opted for hiring a bekak to do the work for us (yay) and visiting the two most famous sights ourselves.

The first sight is called "boat on a house" and that's exactly what it is. It's another remnant from the tsunami. This boat saved the lives of 15 people who managed to clamber aboard and ride the tsunami wave before safely coming to rest on top of someone's house. It's been there 8 years now and is set up as a memorial. There's a cover over the boat now to protect it from the elements and some metal structures to hold it up, but it's still incredible to see.

The second sight is a huge electrical generator ship that was washed five km inland by the tsunami. To be honest the scale of things here is so vast it's really hard to take in properly. The ship is huge, the distance from the sea is huge and the number of houses that now lie - rebuilt - between the sea and the ship are huge.

While looking round the electrical generator ship we kept being asked to pose in photos with families and school groups who were also visiting the ship. This happened a bit while we were in Sumatra in general, but loads in Banda Aceh - I think it's because there are less westerners in town or maybe we're particularly funny to look at here. Depending on your mood it can be annoying, embarrassing or just downright "oh you! you think I'm a film star!" flattering. If nothing else it's a nice way to talk to non-travellers, even of this doesn't get much further than each other's names.

In fact, talking English to people seems to be our main entertainment super-power. Which is great because my Indonesian never got far beyond "fried rice" and "thank you". The next day, when we waited for Friday prayers to be done so we could buy our bus tickets, we ensconced ourselves in a coffeeshop (number four and counting I think) and four children aged around five found us and thought we were the coolest thing since sliced bread. They chattered around us for ages and when we realised that not even "What is your name?" was going to work, we resorted to showing them the screensaver pictures on my kindle and then Si took photos of us all together. At some point in the photo-taking session we must have uttered a secret gummy-bear magic word because the kids all spontaneously started jumping up and down and cheering for ages. I nearly fell over laughing at them, they were too cute to deal with really.

On the rest of our last day we decided to visit the Aceh museum and find out more about their history and indigenous culture. Unfortunately it was closed. We asked a girl there when it would open again, she said Monday. Ah, we were leaving that evening. But had we been to the boat on a house? Yes. And the electrical generator ship? Yes, that too. The tsunami museum? Ah, yes. So she told us "Then I think you have seen all of Banda Aceh".

Not ones to let a lack of things to see get in the way of a good time, we visited two more coffee shops and ate some more exciting nibbles. Then, caffeine-riddled and verging on the delirious we caught a final bekak to the bus station and the night bus back to Medan.

On a final and slightly more sombre note, on the way back we passed the scene of a very recent crash between a two men on a bike and one in a minivan. We were bound to see a crash eventually, but it was harrowing nonetheless. Our own crazy bus driver did slow down a bit afterwards at least and we both eventually got some sleep.