On the way we pass through smaller and bigger towns. In a lot of towns police is on the road and points the drivers to pass at a post. There the driver reaches out a hand and empties it in the hand of the policeman. We can continue our drive without much delay. Is this a tax of the town that is paid? Or is it what they call bom-penger in Norway? The first time I saw that on the road I did not dare to pass. In Holland a bom is what the English would call a bomb so we turned the car.
Afterwards we learn that it is not a road full of bombs but one has to pay money to be allowed to use it. Penger is the Norwegian word for money. I noticed that there are lots of doorsmeer and tempelban on the way. Doorsmeer remembers me of the "doorsmeren en olie verversen"-act every half year (as far as I remember) for my mothers car.
She did not like it as she had to bring the car to the garage and she could not use it that day. This doorsmeer looks real Dutch. The tempelban is a word that makes me puzzle. A tempel is a temple and the Dutch ban is in English also ban, I guess. Do they want to ban all the temples here? It takes some days before I find out that ban is a tube or tire. I guess that tempel is the name of the mark. I have not seen many temples on Sumatra, not in Medan and not on the way either.
In the night I mostly was awake, but at daytime I took my naps. Maybe there were temples and I did not see them because I was asleep. At night one does not see as much as at daytime. The stops were always at a restaurant that was lying on the road. I had been surprised about the rubbish that was thrown out of the window in Medan, now I saw, that that is normal practice in Indonesia.
At every bus stop, the bus was cleaned. At the inside the floor was swept and everything that came together this way was swept down the stairs of the bus and landed on the floor of the parking spot. All the passengers and drivers had to climb over it when they wanted to enter the bus again. On the parking spot were several rubbish heaps lying.
To me, coming from Europe, this is a waste of energy. I learned step-saving. This means if you go somewhere, take that what also has to go that way, with you. I would have taken a bag or tin to put the rubbish in and empty that in a rubbish-bin but I must confess, there were not many rubbish-bins available. Maybe I am too European? Or are the Indonesians in coma? Than I can offer them hpi-COURSES.