Indonesia
by DR. MARAL YAZARLOO -
PATTRICK
It was around 6 pm when I landed in
Medan (Indonesia). When I reached
the immigration office, an officer took
me aside and asked me about the
validity of the visa in my passport ! He
took away my passport and told me to
wait outside. I didn't like this at all.
I was annoyed as my passport is the
most important document for my trip
and I wasn't ready to leave sight of my
passport. So I walked behind the
officer. He curtly told me to wait
outside till they called me. I continued
to follow him, trying to breathe and
calm myself !
The officer then started to click
photographs on his mobile, which
made me even angrier ! I didn't even
understand why he was doing it.
He then looked at me and asked,
"Why are you in Indonesia ? " I
replied, "I'm on a biking trip
around the world. My bike is
being shipped from Malaysia, so I
had to take a flight here".
And stepped out for dinner to the
first big restaurant we came across.
No one spoke any English, so we
took the menu and tried to figure
out what to order, based on the
photos included in the menu. In 5
minutes, our table was laden with
As soon as he heard about my
variety of food - chicken, mutton, fish
world bike ride, his entire attitude and vegetables. I found definite
transformed. I always knew bikes similarities between the cuisines of
could create magic ! He asked
Indonesia and Myanmar - spicy and
where he could view photos of
oily !
our ride. I told him, "Ride To Be
One, on all social media. "He
We dug into our meal, tried and
smiled, returned my passport and tasted everything on our table.
wished me a good ride ahead !
What I loved the most was the
avocado shake with chocolate, I'm
Partner too went through the
totally in love with the flavours. To
similar ordeal ! but it all ended
make sure that I had enough of it
well, thanks to our bikes.
for the first day, I ordered 3 big
glasses, just for myself.
While I flew to Indonesia from
Kuala Lumpur, partner and Bram
There was so much food on the
flew from Penang. Bram is a rider
table, that we could only sample a
from Belgium who started his ride
little bit of each dish. We thought
a year ago and happened to be in
it was a 'package meal', so the
Malaysia when we were there. We
quantity we ate didn't really
all shipped our bikes together.
matter. But, we felt really bad to
from Penang and we decided to
waste food, and more importantly,
ride together through Indonesia.
we wondered how much we
After the three of us reconvened, would end up paying ! When we
were done with our meal, the
we found rooms for about
server came to our table and
200,000 Rupiah (Indonesian
currency)
billed us only for what we had