A Nice Short Vacation

I and my wife had a plan to go to West Sumatra for a couple of days for a vacation on the long national holiday, 20-23rd of March 2008 but it was canceled for some reasons. Staying at home for killing time was not good idea. Suddenly we decided to go back to the plan. Quick preparations were taken such as sending the car for a service and buying meals for the trip. And the 250 km journey to Bukittinggi begun at 5 pm…

When we were about to enter the border of Riau-West Sumatra, we got stucked due to hills slided while it was dark. After waiting for one hour, we were finally out of the long queue and arrived in Bukittinggi at 11 pm!

Since no hotel reservation had been made, we looked for the hotel around the city. Unfortunately, all the hotels were fully booked!!! After two hours with empty handed, we decided to go to the capitol city of West Sumatra, Padang (more than 100 km from Bukittinggi) to stay. But in mid of the trip I felt very tired and sleepy. We parked our car at the gas station and slept like a baby. Ha…ha..ha.. Pls don’t follow us coz it’s very dangerous!

Five o’clock in the morning, we continued to go to Padang. After made a several calls (thanks to the “108″ operator) we got the hotel. After had showered and breakfast, we started our ‘real’ vacation.

Padang is one of the biggest cities in Sumatra. The roads are wider than Pekanbaru’s. No jam at all. After took some actions near the beach, we went to Bukittinggi. And, upss… the city was full of tourists from local and abroad. No wonder, it was a 4-day national holiday and very hard to get a small space for our car to park.

We ate a lot of nice foods such as satay in Payakumbuh & Padang Panjang, “nasi kapau” in Bukittinggi. We also visited the Sianok Canyon in Bukittinggi but we just stopped in front of the famous cave, made by the Japaneese soldier during World War II. Not enough energy to step up the ladder in the cave. Don’t worry, we’ll be back!

Nasi Kapau

The Sianok Canyon

The Cave

After two nights spent, we went back to Pekanbaru in the afternoon. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Payakumbuh (120 km from Padang), another hills slided happen again. The worst thing was that it totally blocked the road. So, we had to take the other route to Pekanbaru, the longest one which was about 400km!!! Since it was becoming dark and I did not know the route, we decided to stay for another one night in Padang and immediately called my boss to inform him that I would not be able to go to Pedada the day after due to this force majeure.

 From Padang, we went back Pekanbaru in the morning and it took 12 hours to arrived in Pekanbaru at 7 pm. What a nice short vacation we had….