My god, what a rollercoaster this Sumatra ride is proving to be! Sitting here now in Tuk Tuk, Danau Toba (Lake Toba), listening to the waves softly lapping against the grassy shoreline, finally with some desperately needed clean laundry, and hopefully with the worst of last night’s and this morning’s persistent fluctuations between hot sweats and shivers behind me, it’s the first time since I arrived in Sumatra just over a week ago that my mind’s been in any fit state to pick up a pen and try to consolidate some thoughts. I was even compelled to agree to buy a cheap Batak pendant signifying good luck a couple of hours ago; this, a purchase by a man who hates shopping in general, is particularly disinterested in souvenir tat, and isn’t remotely superstitious! Ah well, we’ll see if it works! And it all started in Medan…

…within fifteen minutes of arriving, no less. Although in Belawan, to be precise, the port about thirty-five kilometres from the centre of Medan, where I eventually stepped off the twenty-three hour PELNI ferry from Pulau Batam. It was late-ish, dark, and I wanted nothing more than to get to a comfortable guesthouse in Medan as soon as possible. Maybe even see another welcome Western face after my all Asian start to Indonesia. But the price the taxi drivers were quoting was more than a third of my entire ferry fare, so I stuck to my initial plan to get a local “opelet” (minibus) instead; a fraction of the price. I saw the right number ahead of me and went with the tight-knit flow of Indonesians all heading in roughly the same direction, across the final bit of the shipyard, through the gates and across another yard-like area to where the opelets were congregating and touting for passengers. It was manic, but I got there, squeezing through a sudden surge of bodies coming the other way as I made the last few metres. But a guy sitting in the front passenger seat of the opelet I’d reached, leaning out slightly with his cigarette, thought he’d seen something, and asked me if I had all my belongings. I patted the pockets on my thighs, normally zipped tightly, with the zip itself hidden below a fold of fabric, to discover that the left hand one was open and empty. My wallet, gone. And with it, my bank card, driving license, all of my Indonesian money, and various other bits and pieces. My passport, thankfully, was still safely tucked away in the right thigh pocket. It didn’t take my mind long to compute the situation: dark, late, no money, thirty-five kilometres from a potential haven, no other potentially helpful Western faces around, not even any hint of a useful, official-looking office in sight amongst the chaos of the docking. My forehead was suddenly very hot and dripping with sweat, as was much of my torso; my T-shirt was soaked and clinging to my chest in seconds. Fingers around me were pointing at a nearby policeman, broken English telling me I should report the theft, but when someone walked over to him on my behalf and had a quick word in his ear, he appeared utterly disinterested, brushing the individual away to carry on with his, in all fairness quite intensive, job of organising the evacuation of people and traffic from the area. In any case, I knew the wallet wasn’t coming back, and my panicked mind was only telling me one thing, which wasn’t to ensure the accuracy of crime statistics in Belawan. It was to just get to Medan. I had some American dollars tucked away in my main rucksack for an emergency, which this most certainly was, and surely someone, somewhere, would change a few, at a highly favourable rate if needs be, just to give me a couple of days to play with and sort things out. And an untested credit card, which, rationally (not my current state of mind, alas), there was no reason wouldn’t work, if places or even ATMs would accept it. So I stayed put, got my rucksack onto the top of the vehicle, alongside the other luggage, and prepared to negotiate. With any luck, not until the other end of the journey, by which time I’d be in the stronger position of already being there!

But enter my saviour, Anthony from Singapore! He was already sitting in the minibus, had clearly absorbed the situation, and when I looked in, he beckoned me over to sit next to him. He introduced himself; some instant relief; everyone from Singapore speaks English. A start. “Do you have your passport?”. “Yes, I still have it, it was in my other pocket”. “Good, that’s the most important thing. Do you have some money?”. “I have some US dollars in my bag, and a credit card that should work”. “OK, don’t worry, we’ll make sure you get to a hotel tonight”. The words I needed to hear! Relief enough to relax a fraction, some breathing space to actually stop and think about the next step. “We”, it turned out, was Anthony, of retired age but not yet old looking, his Indonesian girlfriend (a similar age, not one of the questionable variety one finds in Asia that are thirty years younger!), whose family they were visiting in Medan for a few days, and her sister, who was clutching a large, new and boxed TV, possibly from Singapore, I guess.

The journey was a little under an hour, and I didn’t know exactly how things were going to work out, but Anthony was friendly and assured, so I placed my trust in his initial words and we just chatted about other things. A genuinely down to earth, nice guy. And it turned out they’d been in a first class cabin on the ferry, so once I’d heard that, I didn’t feel too guilty about imposing a temporary financial burden on him!

The plan, it transpired, was to go back to the aforementioned family home first, to drop off their luggage and say hello to long time unseen relatives, before taking me to the centre of the city to find a guesthouse. The opelet dropped us off on the edge of a main road somewhere, and we hailed down a couple of “becaks” (motorbikes with sidecars, covered seating for two at a squeeze) to take us the remaining few metres (which it really was, not walking was very lazy; a point I didn’t make)… to the army compound! Anthony assured me it was safe part of the city, being an army area. I don’t recall being worried that it wasn’t, but my guess is that the earlier tensions hadn’t entirely lifted from my face (likely, given that they hadn’t entirely removed themselves from my mind). Really it was just a house like any other, I saw once we got there, but simply one given to the husband of Anthony’s girlfriend’s mother. Or sister, I can’t remember. I thought they’d said sister, but she looked to me more likely to be her mother. I’ll never know. Anyway, we took our shoes off, went in, and sat cross legged on the floor. It was a really nice house, actually. Small, simple, clean, and elegantly furnished and arranged. Very homely, albeit in fashion very foreign to my preconceptions of what “home” is. And for half an hour they chatted, with wide smiles, clearly warmed to be together, whilst feeding Anthony and myself soft drinks and cakes with grated cheese on top. I was almost at ease again. My pulse certainly slowed, and I think I may even have stopped sweating for a short time!

Sometime after ten o’clock, we left. Anthony, his girlfriend and I managed to hail down and squeeze onto a single becak, Anthony sitting on the motorbike behind the driver, and my rucksack balancing vertically in the cart in front of me, with his girlfriend sitting to my side. It was still a fair distance to the centre, and took fifteen minutes or more for us to get there, but we eventually got to the stretch of road recommended by the Lonely Planet for backpackers, and I found a room at the third attempt, the first being full, the second being too expensive and requiring payment in advance anyway. I was left with a cheap hole, but it had a bed, a shower and a lock on the door, which were all I needed. I had tried to speak to Anthony earlier about paying him back, but he wasn’t having any of it, and was even offended when I raised the subject a second time. He’d mentioned to me earlier that he’d recently been baptised, to join the religion of his girlfriend and her family, but really he just believed in people doing good things for each other. And so we left it, his actions were equal to his words, he took only my immense gratitude, and disappeared back off to a Medan suburb.

I was wired, sleep was definitely out of the question, so I showered off my bodysuit of dried sweat, and went back to the first guesthouse I’d tried, which had a busy café full of backpackers; to get some water, and if I could afford it, a beer, with the fifty thousand rupiah note (about three pounds fifty, so I was optimistic about the beer!) Anthony had left me. And as luck had it, they also exchanged money there, albeit at a rate so bad the staff were apologetic about it. But the rate was of no concern to me, I needed the security of some Indonesian bank notes, so I changed a hundred dollars. The beer was ice-cold nectar, and I was ushered to a spare chair at a table to drink it, next to a couple of Australia based English guys, Matt and Willis, who I chatted to for a while, naturally sharing the tale of my plight. I relaxed some more. They went to bed shortly afterwards, but I splashed out on a second bottle of Bintang with my new found rupiahs, before finally heading to bed myself well after midnight, exhaustion from the adrenalin pumped out eventually overpowering my racing mind.

The Lonely Planet, when introducing the city of Medan, makes some reference to it commonly being amongst the contenders in travellers’ discussions about the worst places they’ve ever visited. It then goes on to say that this is unfair, and with such an attitude, its positive features, namely some mosques and old colonial sections, will be missed. Excuse my French, but b******s. Thanks to the local pick-pocket brigade, I was forced to extend my stay for a day, and walk around it. It’s a horrendous place! Well, what I saw of the centre, at least (the army compound wasn’t unpleasant, but I certainly wouldn’t send any tourists, armed with cameras, off to see it!). Constant, noisy, fume-pumping traffic; grubby, worn, instantly forgettable buildings; pavements riddled with holes; frequent shouts of “hello mister”, but out of habit, never with a genuine smile. One mosque, which is nice, big, and conveniently located right by the backpacker guesthouses, but that’s all, a thirty minute detour on the way back from the ATM and nothing more. Talk of Medan, having been in this part of Sumatra for over a week, revolves solely around time that unfortunately had to be spent there; success stories those of a rapid escape.

Now, granted, my frame of mind perhaps wasn’t a fair one to be casting judgement, but Matt, Willis and I spent another, unintended, day in Medan further down the line (another story for another blog entry), and my mind hasn’t changed. There may be some nice people, there may be some nice houses, or other refuges from the general unpleasantness, but relatively, Medan is crap. If you ever have to go there, plan your escape before you plan your entrance.

On the subject of my frame of mind, it actually lowered a notch further before things picked up again. My instinct the next morning, although not providing practical help, was to make contact with people; with Paula, family, friends, whoever. The natural instinct when things go wrong, travelling alone, I imagine. But Yahoo wasn’t having any of it! Still not thinking with a hundred percent clarity and focus, I struggled to remember if I’d changed my password or just remembered it incorrectly. But no, I’d been hacked, of all the days, and someone else was holding the reins of my email account. I pulled at my hair and resumed sweating for a short time, but then found the section of the Yahoo website I needed, and didn’t previously know existed. And victory was ultimately mine in the battle for control, knowledge of my mother’s home town and first pet letting me back in to reset the password and seize back my account. The whole episode probably lasted no more than half an hour, but internally it was another emotional ride, and not the way I’d hoped to start the day!

Breakfast and email contact later, I got sorted things out. I moved to a nicer guesthouse (the one I’d tried first and later had a beer at), got an Indonesian SIM card, phoned the guesthouse at my next stop (Bukit Lawang, heart of orangutan country) to let them know I was running a day late, cancelled my stolen bank card, and got some more money. No thanks to HSBC, mind you, supposedly my bank, with my money in their safekeeping! In fact, am I wrong in any way with the following logic? If I go to my bank, who I’ve generously employed to look after my money, and prove that I am me, should they not give me some of my money, which doesn’t belong to them, if I ask for it? Well, the answer is no! “The world’s local bank” – damn right, too bloody local, and no use to me anywhere else in the world! Their concession, however, after I simply didn’t go away (not making a stand, I was just taking a while to decide what to do), was to check my credit card (HSBC issued) and passport, and assure me that they’d advance me some money in the eventuality that the ATM rejected or swallowed it. But it worked, so I had money, and the potential to get more, even if it was at a rate that didn’t bear thinking about.

I also stopped by a travel agency, to get the PELNI schedule for the month for ferries from Medan to Jakarta. An entertaining encounter, where the grinning middle-aged manager, who spoke to me for a couple of minutes, then stepped aside and watched from a distance, forcing his two, young, very embarrassed and nervously giggling female members of staff, to handle my enquiry. Which they did perfectly well, after much scrambling around for details and clarification sought from their boss. And I left with what I came for, but of course not before the inevitable photograph requests and ensuing mini photo session!

Back at the guesthouse, I got some food, and was joined again by Matt and Willis, who it turned out were also heading to Bukit Lawang the next day, Matt having recovered sufficiently from a nasty stomach bug he’d picked up a few days earlier in Northern Thailand to travel again. And the three of us, with the addition a little later of Sam, also from England, proceeded to spend the evening getting drunk and solving all the problems faced by travellers in Indonesia, UK politicians and the English FA, amongst many others. A really good evening, and excellent tonic for theft stress, bringing Medan chapter one to a virtual close.