Bicycle Touring Indonesia
This week’s Travelsonabike2 bicycle touring post comes from Indonesia on the 21st-February-2012. It was a long day and my first full day of cycling in Indonesia, and the last country before I reached Australia. The final destination on this ride, at this time anyway.
Tuesday 21st February 2012. Dumai to Pekanbaru. 124 miles.
I like hotels that serve an early breakfast. Last night’s hotel served breakfast from 6 am. It means I can get a few miles under my belt before it gets too hot. Mind you, it was raining for the first two hours today, which was rather pleasant and kept things a bit cooler.
All the locals look at me when I’m cycling along, getting wet, and keep asking me to go and shelter with them. They all take shelter or put on waterproofs, or more often than not, just a plastic bag. I’m happy getting wet, especially when it’s not too heavy. But then I suppose it cools down quite a lot to them. I just find it a much more comfortable temperature for cycling. It’s still swelteringly hot, though. It was cloudy for much of the day and didn’t feel that hot. Maybe I’m getting acclimatised to the heat.
Decisions Decisions
I’ve been a little undecided about which route I should take through Sumatra and have been asking the locals which is the best. I get a different answer each time I ask. Which, funnily enough, is the route that takes me through their village. In the end, it didn’t matter. I missed the road that I was undecided about taking anyway.
Hotels seem to be few and far between. And when I do find one, there seem to be several others in the same town. I passed a bunch of hotels after around forty miles this morning. But then that was it until I arrived here in Pekanbaru. It’s been a long day.
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