Thank Tuk It's Over

**Thank Tuk It's Over**

Hit Jakarta today, crossed the finish line 6 hours late and missed all the fun. Did have fun walking away from our tuk tuk for the last time though. It's been an awesome trip if not rather difficult at times too. Mainly thanks to the three wheeled tin can we have had to rely on. It's drive and reliability seems to be governed by a formula that only returns entirely random and often inconvienent outcomes.

Below I'm going to cover a few recent events leading to todays climax as I've not put much online in the last few days due to a lack of internet, time, battery power and a barricade of fatigue. Enjoy.

After our 600k night stink to Bengkulu we stuck around a while waiting for Team Moist to catch up. While we waiting we searched for accomadation. Something nice and breazy on the beach possible? Turns out the beach is mainly used to store corpses and faeces so we headed off into the city centre and found a place half built. The half that was built was awesome. Once our Moist friends had caulght up we headed out with the intention to cruise down south along the costal road and maybe even hit a few waves. First stop was the guitar shop, where we purchased pellet guns and a skateboard. Essential jungle costal survival equipment I can assure you...

 

 After we we all geared up we got some directions from a local, in a language we didn't understand. The outcome was rather difficult and incredibly sandy ...

 

 After our costal plan failed we headed back inland  and up the mountain into the jungle. Shortly before finding the correct road our lights failed, leaving us fair game for trucks. We headed back to the city to make some repairs and ended up losing an entire night. With 1400Km to go with less than a day and a half to do it in, we had to bite the bullet and jump on a truck. The truck thundered us down to the edge of Sumatra where we dismounted the truck to find our battery had died. So had our clutch. After some mocking from locals, we pushed our tuk tuk up onto the ferry and crossed over to Java where we split from Team Moist and went hunting for a new battery before powering along the pot holed pseudo-road towards the finish line some 100Km away. (Yes there is a large well maintained toll road that it apppears all the other teams took however dispite our best diplomatic efforts, we failed to gain access. Something about not having enough wheels or big enough bribe mutter mutter)

Shame to ride so much of the trip on a truck but we did get some awesome images from the ride....

 

Well that's it. Sat in the hotel now deleting emails I don't want to reply to. Couple of days in Jakarta before returning to face the music.

It's been awesome. The word on the street is that about 15/24 tuk tuks made it here.

Thanks to all the other teams that made it much more than just a race through the jungle on a heap of junk, keep in touch bishes.

Peace.

Happy 

Bengkulu, Indonesia

Left for the port... Got lost, got dark, lights failed..returned to bengkulu. Lights fixed(ish)..second attempt commencing... 600k

Bluffs, Landsides & 600Km in a Day

Dang what a torrent of potholes, blazing sun beams and buzzing jungle nighttime oddness we have contened with other the past 24 hours.

We needed to make up time after getting our tuk tuks seized so we have just driven 600Km from Padang to Bengkulu without stopping through the night. We saw and almost fell victim to a Discovery Channel style landslide, shame the GoPro doesn't film well in the dark. We then traveled through the national reserve/park over night as part of this. A bit of a shame we didnt see it in the day but the sky was so clear and the longrass and tree's were alive, was not a bad trade. A little later on our fan cut out and our tuk tuk started to steam like a train. Although this looked cool (yes, steam trains are cool) it was a bit of a problem to drive. Guess what rocked up on the poor excuse for a road through the two jungle cities? A Toyota racing team truck equipt with a mechanic. Bodged up our fan a treat. Real cowboy style. I didn't even see him do a risk assesment... but it works so onwards we chug... 

Oh btw, we called the seized padang truck drivers bluff.. after letting them sweat for the whole night while we drank and then slept we woke up the next day to find them waiting for us, at no cost. Bam. Waiting for us 17Km out of town though. It's not all bad, we had probably the nicest road side short term relationship with the local people since coming to Indonesia.. free drinks, cheap welding (brake cable snapped whilst on truck) and a round of icecream for the local children. Smiles all round, and no one begged or even robbed us. Horah, high fives. 

Got some things to fix or try and get fixed tomorrow morning and then aiming todo 350Km from here to Krui for some surfing before trekking across to Jakarta to the finish line on Saturday. Daaanng I will be disapointed if we don't get  to pretend we know how to surf. It will be tight. Fingerscrossed.

Peace! Happy 

Seized by Police

Balls, our tuk tuks turned up in Padang on the back of a truck only to be seized by the police. We were then asked to pay to release the tuk tuks and drivers. Bored of being screwed over, I say we leave em them and forget our deposit. We sent the messager away, disapointed.

Padang, Indonesia

Found a nice city in Sumatra, hurah.

Belawan Shuffle

Bad spelling alert. STFU though, not sleept in 2 days.

A couple of days ago we picked up our rickshaws from the port in belawan after they crossed the malacca straights. (This post is a bit delayed, been a lack of internet access) It was nice to see all the teams together again, it was also an exciting exit from Belawan. We got swamped. Four of us left the port in a convoy, three of which had non-driving rickshaws. We were luckily enough to have a semi working rickshaw. That was of course untill I stalled it at a shady corner somewhere, the rest of the convoy, all walking, were a fair bit behind.. By the time Mark turned up to give me a bump start, our rickshaw was swamped with local scamps, and my pockets were swamped with local hands. A mad bash and dash then played out to escape the area. Once safely away we bombed back down without our troublesum rickshaw to see how the non-working rickshaws were going. Also swamped. A bag was snatched from one of the 'shaws by a drive by motor bike and was caulght action man style on foot by a Joel the aussie hero. An exciting exit from belawan.

In prapat today, not much better. Ended up getting seperated from my team mate and thanks to my own bad navigation, ended up in baka country. Apparently the baka are nice..one thing that is for sure is that they expect a lot of cash to help you with directions. After an awkward exchange of broken indonesian between myself and a baka boy, the boys family was called to plough through the bags I had in the back of the shaw. A family piled in and started unzipping. In the middle of nowhere, jungle and rice fields either side of the steep dirt track I was on, the rickshaw failed. More pushing and wrestling commenced. Thankfully, an enterprising moped turned up as I was evicting my new friends from our bags, and helped me flag down a tow to get me and shaw out of the country side. Eight hours after being sepratred from my heavy, Mark, with a busted-ass rickshaw, we were back on track. Another exciting tail. Not sure why I'm the focus of so much agression. Although A little troublesome, its actually quite exciting. Additionally, the country side was the prettiest landscape I've ever seen. Traditional south east asian farming set in the most beatiful scenery.

 In a hotel with a few teams now, deciding how we are going to cover 300km a day from tomorrow onwards to make the deadline. 

 First task tomorrow is getting our rickshaw rolling again. Busted carborator (whatever the fak that is). 

 Peace!  J 

Parapat, Indonesia

Abandoned by my convoy and team mate, got lost and attacked by baka people. Need to change my deodrant maybe.

Belawan, Indonesia

Robbings, motorcycle chases, herotics and one-inch punches. What a place.

Butterworth, Malaysia

Made it to the ferry port in Malaysia, somehow. Indonesia tomorrow.

Hat Yai, Thailand

Totally dead sparkplug stopped us leaving hat yai. ppl say spark plug all the time so whys it so hard to find 1 to fit. No ferry4us