A few year ago I read Dave Gorman’s “America Unchained” where instead of moaning too much about The Man he instead set about traveling from West to East doing his level best to buy food, fuel and lodging from independent, “Mom & Pop” businesses. It was a typical Dave Gorman adventure travel log where he was beset by difficulties and problems and ended up coming-out the end having learned a few things and developed a few more tales.
One of the reasons he set out to do this crossing was due to him having stayed in so many soulless, identikit hotel rooms while undertaking the American leg of his latest comedy tour. That identikit hotel room is alive and well across the world and involves a small entrance corridor off of which is a windowless bathroom with hotel branded soaps, toothbrushes and combs. After the bathroom there is then the main room proper with a varying number of beds, furniture, a television facing the beds and a window. Depending on how much one has paid will determine whether there are hot drinks making tools, writing paper, a telephone, blinds, bed decorations and a minibar.
Our hotel in Band Aceh last night followed exactly the pattern as described above and would have irritated Mr Gorman loads. Now Banda Aceh can be forgiven lots mainly because it was all but wiped out on Boxing Day 2004 thanks to a tsunami where thousands were killed and the town was largely destroyed. However having just spent three delightful nights on the island of Pulau Weh it is very hard to think too favorably about our Banda Aceh box.
Freddie’s, our guest house / resort on Pulau Weh was like no other that Lawrences have stayed in. It is a collection of bungalows built into the low level cliffs on the eastern side of the H shaped island with steps that lead down to a white sand beach and a clear turquoise sea. There are none of the uniform hotel rooms but the resort, run by the eponymous Freddie, is hot on getting the things right that need getting right. Firstly getting from Banda Aceh airport to the the ferry and then the ferry to the resort is a well organised and slick procedure thanks to excellent organization from local taxi driver and people mover extraordinaire Mr Irfan. Freddie then welcomes new comers with a calm assurance and the delightful beach bungalows have exactly what is needed: comfortable beds, plus an extra pull out bed for extra bodies, perfect in our case as we rented two bungalows. Freddies had done away with plastic water bottles in rooms providing refillable water storage and glasses to go with the kettle and cups.
However it is the food, much of it cooked by Freddie and thanks to his expert tutorage, his well trained staff, that really sells the place, if the location hadn’t already. The breakfast buffet priced at around 35000 rupiah per person is excellent and then the evening dinner buffet at 65000 is even better. On night one we tucked into fresh tuna steaks, rice, mango salsa, salads, cheese layered potatoes, fruit and cake after a starter of mushroom soup and calamari rings. And the next two dinners were equally good too. We will be returning just for the food!
But back to Banda Aceh and the hotel…. A short walk out of the place and we found a river and next to the river a few roughly built tables. Using Rupert’s fledgling Bahasa, Edwin’s dramatic tendencies and our combined have a go approach we managed to order plates of noodles, use the loo and wash hands. The only small snag was that we may have laboured the point a little to much when asking for no chilli in the noodles, to the point whereby the opposite could have been communicated. The day didn’t end with too many bangs though, just a group photo with the noodle chef, his family and some mad, noodling eating foreigners.