Under Bukittinggi and far above

Bukittinggi had a dark, hidden past under its town. During the war, the Japanese used local Indonesians as slave labour to build underground tunnels where they stored their ammunition. We found the bunkers disturbing, as if a cloud of pain and death still resonated off the stone walls and rushed out.

Minangkabau territory

The architecture of this region was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Roofs were shaped like pointed buffalo horns. Close by Bukittinggi, we visited the largest house in all of Sumartra where once the king had lived. The huge main room was relatively empty, but the building itself was an architectural masterpiece. Behind was an equally beautiful small building that may have been for servants.

Bukittinggi and it’s famous mountain

Through jungle, mountains and over a winding road we left Pekanbaru and arrived six hours later in Bukittinggi near Sumatra’s west coast east of Lake Maninjau. Because of the altitude, approaching the Equator was relatively cool. Our Bukittinggi hotel was on a hill, but even higher was Mt Marapi not far away—smoke rising from its summit. This was Sumartra’s most active volcanic peak aptly named Mountain of Fire. The volcano had erupted more than one hundred times and was last active in 2020, but on our visit it merely signalled with a puff of smoke. 

Stinkin’ Pekanbaru

More than a year after our trek through Java, I handed my daughter an Indonesian guidebook and said she could plan our trip to Sumatra. It was two years since our last Indonesian visit before we flew to Singapore, caught a ferry to Bantam Island in Indonesia, then flew to Pekanbaru—the closest town in Sumatra.