Bukitttinggi (with a short stop in Batusangkar)

 (Note:) I have placed all my pic of Bukittinggi up on
 http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.392532717472623.89472.100001476944065&type=3        

             I arrived at Bukittinggi around 4p.m and felt completely lost! I asked the guy on the bus for directions to the hostels but he didn't really want to know so I ended up walking up and down the main street and eventually finding my way to the bus 'terminal'. I asked one of the guys at the terminal , 'how much does it cost to get to the location of all the hostels'. 2 guys responded. A guy in Indonesian said 7,500 and a guy responded in English said 2,000 RP and directed me towards the car... I landed at the hostel around 5 but Ullrich (the hostel owner  (Actually, Ullrich told me that the word 'Bule' literally means 'washed out' so when somebody uses that word, it's not really a compliment!)) said that they were full and to try Maninjau .So, back I went to the terminal where someone told me it would cost 50,000 to get there. I thought I'd be better off trying to look around all the hostels here so I took  another public bus back to the hostels and grabbed a room in na place called 'Nirwana hotel' for 70,000RP. It wasn't too bad and  they had free tea and coffee so I drank a fair few pints of tea!
            The following morning, I decided to go for a walk around the area.At one point, a guy stopped me on the street and explained that he was an english teacher in Bukkittinggi and an Indonesian teacher in Melbourne and he wanted to chat to me...I am getting used to these kinds of conversations at this stage so I said 'cool' and gave him the address of the hotel.
            Another 15 minutes down the road, I decided to take a rest.While I was sitting down, a guy on a motorbike pulled over on the side of the road and gave me a big talk on how he gives 3 day treks to people.I wasn't really interested in that but then he sid he knew a guy called 'Mr Edy' who ran an english school in Batusankhar and would I be interested in teaching a class. I told the guy that I wasn't really interested and he didn't seem to bothered.
             I changed the hostel from Nirwana to Ulrichs hostel and got chatting to a couple of lads staying in the hostel. Sam from england had an unreal amount of movies on his hard drive so i grabbed some of those. I was in 2 minds if I should take these though as I might be wasting my time watching movies when I could be looking at some scenery!!
            I decided to randomly walk out of the town.I walked for a godd hour and during this hour ,at leas 4 people stopped me and asked where I was going and do I want a lift! This seems to happen all over Sumatra!
           The following day, I headed down to the market where one of the locals started talking to me and showed me around the place. He  liked talking a language which I would describe as one fifth English  and four fifths Indonesian so I haven't a clue about the majority of the stuff he was saying (although he did say the word 'pasir' quite a bit so I reckon that means 'but') He told me to come back the following day so he could show me some more sights.I was not so sure if this was a good idea but the following day , I bumped into him  and he invited me to go into the local market to visit his friend who had studied agriculture in university.  His friend was REALLY knowledgeable about Ireland, He was telling me that he bought a stall at the market 10 years ago for 3 million Rupiah and the value hhad increased to 10 Million .He was hoping it would increse to 30 million  by the time he  hits 60 (He was saying that it's a bit of a struggle to get by if you are over 60 in Indonesia so he was trying to make some hay now! ) He mentioned his love for texas hold em which was interesting to me as It's frowned upon in Muslim culture to bet!
              I decided that I was going to take a tour  of Bukittinggi on the back of a motorbike as I don't really  want to drive around here with no license! (and  the tour guide knows all the places to visit anyway. )
              I spent most of the next day visiting various places from a coffee plantation to various fields (full of cinnamon trees,coconut trees, cloves,Mangos (They have a lot of fruit over here!) ) The tour guide told me that he was able to take off 2 days every month such that he could see his 4 kids. He seemed like an interesting guy and throughout various stages of the day , He stopped at couple of places off the beaten track to chat to the locals. This was really cool as I was offered free food at some point! (As usual, the locals seemed to come from everywhere to stare at me. This was ok though as in this instance I get the feeling that these people rarely see anyone that is not Indonesian and they made me feel welcome...)
             I decided to head on to another place but before I deecided to go anywhere, another guy stopped me in the street and asked me If I was interested in teaching English to some students as it would be good for the soul....I don't know if he was trying to freak me out or trying to help his friend (which happened to be 'Mr Edy') but I agreed to go to Batusangkhar for a day.  In the meantime, I wanted ti buy some runners as I was getting a bit bored from not getting much exercise. I went into at least 5 shops in Bukittinggi. I told the guys my shoe size was empat puloh lima (45) but none of them had a shoe that big. I found out later that day that my runner size was actually a 46!
            Anyway, I got a lift to Batusankhar .Mr Edy was at a meeting so I ended up talking to one of the teachers at the private school. She had never heard of Ireland. In fact during the 3 hours that I was sitting down at the front room of the school, I noticed that Ireland is not really a well known place in this side of the world! I went for a quick walk around the town.When I asked some of the guys in the shoe shop if they had size 45 runners, they laughed me out of the shop!!
            Edy arrived around 5pm .He seemed to be fairly stressed out as he was attending meetings all day. The school year was due to start the following day and I was leaving for Jakarta at 10am. So, I ended up talking to random students for a while before heading back to Edy's house. He had a specially built room built on to the side of the garage which catered for guests of the school. To be honest, I founds this a bit offputting as  It seemed like I was put into a prison cell away from the main house!!! Don't get me wrong, the room was really nice but it would have been really cool to interact with Edy a bit more. In fairness, he gave me a nice dinner and the bed was perfect but the atmosphere felt a bit cold. His house was in a gated community (This is the first time I have been in a house which had an electronic gate and I am not sure if I like it! )
           Anyway, I was here to teach so at 8 a.m the following morning Edy introduced me to one of his classes and I proceeded to teach them a few random things (just to get the kids talking.) At the end of the class, the class prefect shook my hand and then headbutted it (which was a bit different!)
            Edy  booked an ojek so at 10, I jumped on the back of the bike and headed to the bus stop. The Ojek driver ended up taking me to the wrong place and he had to dive 15 kms in the another direction to catch up with the bus driver!!! In fairness, he had plenty of time to catch up to the bus as that Bus (one from (close to Batusangkar)
 to Jakarta took 49 hours!!)