Bukittinggi

I had to move fast to get to Kuala Lumpur by December 8th. That's why I took a 48 hours bus ride out of Jakarta, with a ferry to Sumatra and then a never ending sloping road through the hills of south Sumatra. We arrived in Padang at 2 o'clock in the morning, which was the final stop of the bus. Luckily the bus driver allowed me to sleep in the bus for the night and organized the security guy to drive me with his moped to the Bukittinggi bus station in the morning. There I slept some more and then headed into town. I was clearly the only tourist anywhere close and had to let them take some photographs. Then I walked to a park from where you can see a nearby canyon. There I met Tito - a rice farmer. Since he had nothing to do he decided to join me to walk up the canyon. The Canyon is absolutely littered with plastic and a good example how not to do it. After a 1.5 hours walk we arrived at some waterfalls. We took a naked shower under the waterfalls and dried in the sun, afterwords we walked up to a village where he knew some friends. On the walk he confessed that he was bisexual, what made me kind of feeling awkward after being naked in this remote canyon just a few moments ago. In the village we drank some tea and spoke with the guys.
In the evening the guy in charge of my hotel suggested that I could go to a English school in the south of Bukittinggi for a few days and teach the kids how important it is to learn it. I had to decline, because I am short on time. But it sounded really tempting. The next day I was of for Lake Toba.