The 44 turns

Maninjau is two hours from the aiport in Padang. About one hour of this is spent doing hairpin turns.


Well, that's how it feels, anyway. The lake is in a volcanic crater so the journey up or down is, shall we say, rather steep. The road is famous for its 44 turns. You do switchback after switchback until everyone in the car is turning green and queasy.


Just when you've almost convinced yourself there can only be three or four turns left, you realize some cigarette company has put up a numbered sign at every switchback. And you realize you actually have fifteen to go. Thanks, cigarette company! No wonder everybody loves you guys!


The views of the lake do offer some consolation, though.

Victorious water buffalo

West Sumatra is the home of the Minangkabau people. Their traditional houses have distinctive, peaked roofs that draw up the heat and pull in fresh air.

The pointy roofs also mimic water-buffalo horns, and that is no accident. The word Minangkabau comes from an old legend having to do with water buffalo.

Centuries ago, the story goes, a Javanese army attacked Sumatra. Somehow the local people convinced them to gamble the outcome of the battle on a buffalo fight. The Javanese brought in the biggest, meanest water buffalo they could find.

But the Sumatrans chose a baby water buffalo. They kept it from its mother for a few days until it was quite hungry, and then sharpened its horns so they were like razors. When the two animals met on the field of battle, the hungry juvenile ran under the adult and tried to suckle, stabbing the larger animal to death.

(Oh cute, clever little Sumatra! Oh big, stupid, bullying Java! is undoubtedly the subtext of the story, reflecting the age-old resentment many smaller tribes feel toward Indonesia's most populous and powerful ethnicity.)

The area became known as Alam Minangkabau, or World of the Victorious Water Buffalo. And so it remains today.

Biking the Lake

We rented bikes and went out for a ride late in the day, following the afternoon rain. The air felt very clean and the light was amazing -- even my little cellphone camera could tell.


There was a big hill at the beginning of the ride and I had to stand on the pedals and pump with all my might to get up it. Some women sitting on a porch yelled and cheered and laughed at me in a friendly way. Sadly, I couldn't take their picture, or I would have fallen off the bike.

I did capture some other people, though ... like this farmer returning from the fields for the day.

And this man in a sarong and boy wearing pajamas, standing in front of a nice little house. I wonder if it's a vacation home.


This house is not so upscale. There were a bunch of children playing, but they all yelled and laughed and ran inside when I tried to take their picture. Then they kept peeking out at us from behind the safety of Mom.


It was a great ride. Even the trip back to the bike shop, down the narrow main road crowded with tourist buses, worked out fine. I was amazed that the drivers of big cargo trucks would stop and wait patiently while I slowly pedaled my way around a parked car and back to the side of the road.

We got back just before dark, and sat down to a meal of "tako," which turned out to be a big savory stuffed pastry, plus some deliriously tasty fried eggplant.


The star of the meal was a large wedge of fried mashed potatoes studded with chopped vegetables and local herbs. Here, inside the restaurant and with darkness falling fast, the cameraphone failed to do justice to the subject. So you'll just have to believe me when I say it was extremely tasty.

Escape to Lake Maninjau

It's tougher to get out of town now that Chad and I both have full-time jobs, especially since we work a lot of Friday nights and Sundays. But we're starting to get the hang of dashing out of town whenever we have 2 or 3 days off in a row.

Last time this happened we hadn't really planned ahead. So we just stuffed some clothes in our backpacks, went to the airport, and bought tickets. We ended up going to Maninjau, a crater lake in the hills of West Sumatra.

We got there in the evening after a long drive with an annoying driver who kept saying, "If you need a ride to the airport, just call me! We have an office in Padang! Just call the office! If you need a ride to the airport! So, when are you going to the airport?" (We pretended we weren't sure.)

The next morning we woke up to this view, which made it all worthwhile:

Rice paddies are like health food for the eyes. They're so intensely green. I couldn't get enough.


Just around the corner from our little cottage was the lake, which wasn't exactly an eyesore either:


There were little wooden canoes all over the lake, but no-one was sitting in them. Instead, the boaters were in the water, standing about waist-deep and jiggling sticks that pointed straight down at the bottom of the lake. As it turned out, they were collecting tiny clams.

I went to get my camera, and when I came back, the clammers were taking a break. I waved at them and started snapping pictures.

The clammers took out some containers of rice and began making eating gestures at me. At first I was taken aback, because this is sometimes how beggars ask for money in Jakarta. A moment later I blushed to the roots of my hair, because I realized THEY were offering ME food. I said no thanks, although I was a little curious to see what they were eating.


After taking some pictures of little flowers, I wandered back to our cabin for a mid-morning nap, wondering what other vestiges of the Big City I was carrying with me.

Junk food of the week: Green Peas Stick

What could be tastier than a bunch of green peas, all mushed up, and then rolled into logs, deep-fried, and coated with salt and sugar?


Well, okay, probably lots of things. But Green Peas Stick are what we have, so you might as well eat them.


(I spent the Balinese day of silence in Bali, blogging ... so more posts are on the way over the next couple of weeks.)

A Very Dangdut Christmas

I'm falling seriously behind on my holiday blogging. I'm still on Christmas, and we've already had a whole bunch of New Years: Javanese New Year, Muslim New Year, Chinese New Year, and New Year New Year. More on those later!

Anyway, last month some friends of ours organized a Very Dangdut Christmas party. This involved hiring an dangdut street band that our friend/colleague Ade wrote this lovely story about in the paper.

I didn't have high hopes for the band. Most of the dangdut outfits that come to our neighborhood just wander around blaring out-of-tune music on really terrible sound systems. But these guys were pretty good. Here's a couple of minutes of video; as you can see, it's a big band, with keyboard, drums, guitars, flute and singers:



Questions: 1. Why do I always seem to be videotaping in the dark? And 2. who is that mysterious mustachioed man?

Junk food of the week: Meat Filled Chicken

It's easy to see how this tragically bad translation happened. Someone must have looked up the Indonesian name, pastel ayam, and discovered that pastel is "meat-filled pastry" and ayam is "chicken." One little noun-confusion later, we arrive at "Meat Filled Chicken."


So, what is Meat Filled Chicken actually like? It's been several weeks since I tasted these, and all I recall is a kind of crumbly paste inside, and a strong flavor of salt.


I don't even want to know what you have to do to a chicken to make it shelf-stable for a year.

Note that the box says "A Gift From Indonesia," so now you all know what you're getting if you ask me to bring you a present!