Thurs 15th - Minang Kabu Tour

I decided to take one of the tours on offer in the Bedual café with a young Indonesian guy, surprisingly called Jeffery. He insisted that was his real name, one of the other guides is called John so maybe some Indonesians have European names. The price was 135000 Rupea about 7 pounds, for the full day 10am to 5pm.

Trip was called the Minang Kabu Tour It covered:

Visiting some small villages where we saw lots of coconut trees, cinnamon trees, Papua, cloves, chilies and of course lots of rice paddy fields.

Stopping of at some lovely view points in the mountains.

A stop at an ingenious but very basic waterwheel powered coffee mill.

A visit to some very old traditional Sumatran houses and a look inside the Queens house.

A stop for Lunch at Lake Singkarak.

All in al a very good tour. Jeffery was really good guide and spoke very good English. He was very pleased at the end to get some of the MP3s off my player. I ended up having quite a few beers with them afterwards with me behind the bar doing my DJ from the MP3 player. Really nice people and I had a great night.

The Bedual Café is apparently owned by a Scottish woman, from Aberdeen and her Indonesian husband. They stay in Scotland and only visit every couple of years. There was an interesting photograph of them on there wedding day with the Indonesian Guy in a kilt.

I’m going to take it easy today and maybe just visit the local markets.