Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

Lake Toba: In Lake Toba we found a traditional Batak house to rent for 4 dollars a night.  You crawled in through the 4ft high doorway, and the floorboards creaked a symphony every time you stood up, but it was a very fetching home.   our house We spent our days riding around the island in a haze of tranquility, dreaming of living there forever.        We made it up to the top of the island where fewer people lived, and everything looked cold and windswept.  There were more little shacks and shed-churches, and amazingly ornate graves with miniature Batak houses on top.     The pigs wore strange neck garments.  We faffed about photographing houses, and bounced over rickety bridges and up gravel paths.    We found a tent full of hand carved totem poles, still being made.    At night the kids from the restaurant next door sat and took mushrooms, g...

After the surreal Kuala Lumpur experience, we discovered our original plan was somewhat bereft of reality.  As in, it wasn’t going to happen. We had decided to head further south to hop across to Sumatra at Melaka.  We hadn’t, however, taken into account that there was in fact no way of getting the bike there.   This meant we were in for a longish trek north again, back the way we’d come, to cross from Penang to Medan, northern Sumatra.    An uneventful motorway day saw us rock up in Georgetown, Penang, and hoof it to the ferry office to ask about tickets the next day.  They gaped at us when they saw the bike, and once again, we wished we had planned ahead slightly.  There is no car ferry.  There are smelly little passenger ferries, and for transportation, there are ‘onion boats’.   We scarpered, and, once ensconced in a rip-off hotel room that smelt of sewers, wandered around the backstreets, peeking into the ancient Chinese shop ho...