Missing padang update
S/V Galatea update
Neil Scott
Sun 26 Apr 2015 11:46
On Thursday we went to the small town called Bukit Tingi, about 2 hours out of Padang. It is up in the hills between two volcanoes, one that's sleeping and one that's active every now and then, but not today. We saw the sleeping one from Galatea when we were traveling towards Padang - it is shaped like Mt Fuji in Japan, but not as big. The town is quite pleasant, cooler, much smaller and more organized than Padang. We went to the park where you can look down into a big valley which they call Sihanok valley (kind of similar name to that Cambodian Prince). Then we went into some tunnels, (the Jap tunnels as the locals call them), about 40 meters underground that the Japanese army dug in the second world war. It was apparently going to be their centre of operations for their south east asian war operations. The tunnels are about 7 kilometers long - we only did a small bit of it, but it was interesting. We then had a nice beef Rendang lunch - me a small bit because I am still trying to get my stomach fixed. Then I got my iPad looked at - took the shop quite a bit of time to do, but anyway, it's now working again - had run out of data giga bytes. Then we came home, with some very heavy rain on the way. We read in the cruising guide the other day that Padang has one of the highest rainfall areas in the world. We didn't believe that until 4 days ago because it has now rained a lot since then. Lucky Galatea does not leak, well, the bimini a little. After returning, we read that the town had been the site of an aborted muslim attack against foreigners at a cafe downtown in 2006. Also that it banned Valentine's and New year's days because they were seen to promote hugging and smooching by young people. It was a good day though and a nice break from the boat. That's it for now from this end, though I say that with the wailing going on in the background. But I should say that it's nothing compared to the dreadful noise we used to get in Lombok. Neil and mike - S/V Galatea (Due to limited satellite bandwidth, please delete any previous text in the string or compose a new message when replying) |