We flew into Banda Aceh Indonesia which was a short flight-- hour and a half. Indonesia is also another Muslim country so things were very similar to Malaysia. Many women wearing full coverings, prayer rooms everywhere and very religious. They also have religious police here so Tyler and I are now married haha because if we say we aren't married we cannot stay together at hotels etc. it is also to protect Michelle as if you aren't married it's free game and men will think they have a chance. When arrived at our hotel we also had to prove we were married which luckily people here also have the choice to keep their last name so they didn't question our different last names and we were able to convince them by showing our passports had all of the same stamps and dates.

Banda Aceh is a small city which was absolutely destroyed from the tsunami in 2004 which killed 60,000 people. The city is still not very modern because of this. Poor roads, not very clean etc. but they do have a pizza hut surprisingly haha.

Our hotel was $20 for the night and we were pleasantly surprised as we walked into it how great it was. NOT. It resembled more of like a abandoned creepy dirty house with incomplete walls and bugs and cob webs. So as we walk into our room which was suppose to be with AC we try to settle in however the power goes out about every 5-10 minutes which therefore shuts off AC. Whoohoo. Then to top that off we go to lie out our lovely hand made beautiful silky sheet my mom made for us to sleep on and realize there's tons of bugs everywhere. Yummy! So that's where we were like we can't do this!! So we left. The guy there was super nice and have us our money back. It's not like you can really get angry with them because they are so nice. The guy felt awful and he told us he had just bought the place. He had been working on a boat for years trying to save up for this. So you really feel for them. He showed us a hotel a couple doors down and stayed there. For $5 extra dollars we had a bit cleaner of a room, a working Tv and AC unit but we had a squatter. At least our legs are stronger from this trip! Haha

For dinner there really wasn't much to choose from. Theres always the sketchy stalls on the street with food but you never really know what it is or how safe it is to eat. We decided to try one of the stalls that food was being prepared fresh at. We just didn't really know what food it was but we ordered it and it was pretty good. Some kind of noodle dish very spicy with vegetables. Not bad. Except our mouths were on fire.

Since there was so much to do there that was about the most exciting part of our night. We watched the usual Jackie chan movies being played on TV and went to bed. We catch the ferry to Pulau Weh island in the morning.

Morning came fast as the traffic noise woke us up. Places have very poor insulation. we packed up our things to head out to the ferry and of course crammed our bags us and a girl we met and her bags on a motor bike with an attached seat which was our ride to the ferry. Now that "squished" feeling of even having 5 people in a 4 person car back home is nothing to us haha.

For breakfast there was nothing but this one local restaurant so we decided to try it. As we sat down they pointed to paper bags on the tables which I guess was what we eat. It ended up not being too bad. It was rice mixed with some spicy sauce and an egg wrapped in a banana leaf and of course Ty got the one with dried fish in it haha. They also had random tupperware containers with questionable things in them. Well off to Pulau Weh.

Talk soon
T&M