South Sumatra - Lampung

[kingwilly]

Industries include coal, cattle, sugar cane.

Tourism could do well, but.....this is indonesia, after all. Anyway, we had Visit Malaysia 2007, so last year, at a cost of $50,000 a think tank group eventually, come up with the Visit Indonesia 2008 slogan, pretty nifty huh?

So guess what Lampung province have come up with for their slogan this year? no idea, the cost, but pure genius.......

that's right, Visit Lampung 2009! dunno if I should laff or despair!

Anyway, as mentioned before the Trans Sumatran highway runs the length of the island, as does the mountain ranges.

The behaviour of the trucks, bikes and cars on this highway is damn frightening.



that's double white lines and the crest of a hill the black car is driving on.

this was the only double lanes I saw the entire trip, but it wasnt safe to stop for photos anyway else.

didnt stop the traffic though.

[kingwilly]

plenty of these fish traps, called pagan in the sunda straights,

[kingwilly]

we stayed at this okish self contained resort in Kalianda...

[kingwilly]

they even had a pump!

[kingwilly]

Slightly down the road a bit is a quite famous place called Pasir Putih, or white sand...

a dolled up beach side resort for Indonesia day trippers. we stopped, paid our entry fee, and braved the touts for boatrides, inflated tyres, icrecreams etc.

this girl was selling pet birds,

[kingwilly]

MrsKW asked how much for a boat ride was ?

350,000 Rupiah! WTF? No way. She explained that is from Sumatra, and we didnt want the bule price, nope, its 350K.

Thanks, but no thanks, we walked off to a vendor and had some fruit and drink.

(with peanut and chilli sauce it was quite delicious!)

[kingwilly]

meanwhile another boy from same boat tout wandered over and offered same trip for 250,000 rups, nope. go away.

then the owner came over, offered 200K - this is now about ok - still high, but we realised that we had no money in our pockets anyway, and needed and ATM, he explained that he could get a motorbike taxi adn return, MrsKW replied that we have a car, he said where,

I abruptly replied back in Indo - the red one just over there.

Oh, you speak indonesian? Yes.

Oh, i'm so sorry my staff tried to charge you the wrong price, its 100K - we didnt realise that you understood Indonesian

Anyway., we decided to try it out.

[kingwilly]

the boats had two motors on each side, the easier to lift over the coral reefs,



over to the island, that had a cave,



pretty green waters (if slightly polluted)

[kingwilly]

a broken piece of coral



and some gnarly old trees...



They then took the boat over a coral reef, and transformed the boat into a glass bottomed boat, well not really, it was a small box with a glass bottom that allowed us to view the damaged coral underneath...

[Andrew Hicks]

Well, I think it looks really nice and I appreciate the King's efforts to bring it to us. I only know from Medan to Lake Toba and so it's interesting to learn more of Sumatra.

But of Kingwilly himself there's nothing. Could that be his hand with watch and bling?

I guess he has control of the camera but I'd love to have a mug shot of the warm and wonderful human being that he is.

No,really!

Andrew

[kingwilly]

I guess he has control of the camera but I'd love to have a mug shot of the warm and wonderful human being that he is.

oh, ok then.

I took a ride on one of the powered boats also.

[sunsetter]

love that bird man carving, great pics kw

[Dick Farang]

Nice pics.

[Rural Surin]

Sumatra. One of my all-time favourite places. Great thread Willy!