Yay! Not a one week delay between day 2 and 3!
Sorry to burst your bubble but those drying nets there? Yeah, that's how your ikan bilis is made. Hahaha.. Not exactly the most hygienic of ways but 100% pure natural goodness! Also, probably a good reason to remember to wash any salted fish you buy!
This little old lady has been drying fish since ever. She was really cute and spunky! I dunno if i could stare at those little fish all day every day. And Indon culture lesson, ikan bilis is known as ikan tri.
This is probably my favourite picture the whole trip. Love the blue blue sky.
You will not believe how many nets of dried ikan bilis there were...
The restaurant and lodge from yesterday? This is a view of the "cliff" that it was on. To the left of the picture, there's a tree that sort of stands alone? They say the wave nearly covered the top of that during the tsunami.
Now this is Really, REALLY fresh fish.
Left the project site at Lhok Kruet and on the journey back. This is a piece of the bridge foundation for what used to be the main road. That got destroyed during the tsunami. The current road is about 2 km in, but there are still bits of it that are treachorously close to the water's edge.
Haha.. really. Would you drive over that? It's held strong so far, though!
Here's a better view of the river 'ferry' service. 3 boats tied together with a platform on top. These engines were stronger than the earlier one as it was crossing the river mouth, nearer the sea. Inceidentally, rafts are called 'raket' in Indon (like 'rakit' in BM) but i was curious as to why they would name themselves a racket, which it really is. The 'raket' racket. Hur hur hur.. i am so funny with my puns (-_-")
Not just any lady using a parang (machete) to straighten a nail on a plank... She's actually sitting in one of a row of stalls that has popped up at either end of the 'raket' rackets. Whole communities actually exist on the traffic that uses the rafts! Hats off to them, i say. Anyway to earn a living.
So after a slightly scary journey on bad roads in a 4wd in the rain, we made it to our next project site called Krueng Tunoh. There's something about the air right after rain. So fresh, and makes for beautiful misty hills! And green somehow tends to look greener too.
The mangrove trees that we helped to fund. They're planted along the fringe of the ponds which are used to grow prawns. Beyond the pond, sort of where the hills converge? Just past that is the coastline, which is why the water came rushing in come tsunami.
You don't really get kampung food much more authentic than this. Note the lack of cutlery other than serving spoons. And the best kind of table mat - a floor mat!
Okay, looking back at this photo, i really wonder WHY i ate anything with sauce that looks like muddy water. But you know, all sense sort of escaped me. I have a STRONG suspicion that this is the dish that left me with debilitating food poisoning the next day.
The lady at the back is the kind host who cooked us that nice (- food poisoning crabs) meal. Her husband is on the right and the dude on the left works for our project partner. Anyway, story of being told off for not being pure enough. It was time for solat after the meal and when they asked if i wanted to, i said no. And i think being a predominantly Muslim country, this was pretty alien to them. The farmer (husband on right) said: "Oh, once upon a time in Aceh, EVERYONE had to pray. Now it's alright though. But they would have to cover their heads and make sure their clothes covered their wrists. Also, here, women who want to be married have to be able to read the Quran. *gulp* Back in the olden days, women had to have a white cloth lain under them on their wedding night." *double gulp* I couldn't help but feel that that was directed at sinful, immodest me.
Anyway, this is round the other side of earlier pictured ponds. At the base of the cliff you can spot a tiny bit of sea spray. Basically the sea formed a sort of pincer around a hill. And the village is right behind the hill. Water rushing in from all sides so that about 2 km of land got washed away
More mangroves...
Me posing in front of the pond. Hahaha... Look, i was already dressed decently okay? Just minus the headscarf. I don't think i deserved that lecture about the good wife!
This is Pak Wahab and, apart from being a bit too rigid Muslim for my liking, he is a real star. He lived in a small house next to the pond and was farming pre-tsunami. He had a wife and a few kids ranging from 5 months to 8 years. They were all at home when the tsunami came in and he remembers holding on to his 5 months old baby and trying to outrun the waves. Sadly, his whole family perished. In the following 3 months, he hand dug the ponds that you saw above. He's since remarried and has a daughter, and is a real champion for our project. It felt almost sadistic to hear his story, because he said you never forget about the family you lost. Especially on festive days, when there used to be so many people and they could share all the food together but now it's a lot quieter. We cannot even begin to imagine what some of the Aceh people have gone through.
On the way out of Krueng Tunoh, passed by this contraption which i found interesting. There's a fishing net underwater and at night, they switch on a light suspended in the middle to attract the fish. They then pull the net up and voila! Easy catch...
A visual for you to show the before, during and after tsunami photos. See the greenery that was lost? Not just that, but most of the soil is still salinated from the sea water and that means you can't grow anything on it til the salt's slowly gone out.
This is pretty much the same view as above. All those patches of sand were once covered in vegetation, if i'm not mistaken.
And here's a shot of that large USAID- funded American highway that runs through the Aceh towns. What a disconnect! I mean, they're blowing up hills and tearing down mangrove forests that were JUST PLANTED post-tsunami just to fit this monstrosity in! Plus, the project started 2 years ago, and with the state of portions of its road, I won't be surprised if it's not done 2 years down the line. Ggrrr... the amount of misused funds and abandoned projects!! So disheartening.
Anyway, another mandatory sunset snap. In my defence, most of these pictures were taken from the car so they're not perfect.
Another snap of those lovely dried fish. Not very good but you can see they hang the fish/sotong from the roof to dry. This lady's just collecting them as the sun sets. But it's really quaint - they're flattened out so they all look like pomphrets! (incidentally my fave sort of fried fish)
You can just about see the tiny fishing vessel here. It's called a 'bagan' and is a large net in the middle with a small boat attached so that you can leave the bagan out while ferrying yourself and hired help back and forth from land. (Plus the catch too)
And there, the sun set on day 3. This is probably the last photo-heavy day and I would have loved to have some more free time the next day, but the muddy-water sauced crabs decided to strike. And it was food poisoning of the throwing up sort. Ew.
This is the view from inside the car on top of a raft crossing the river. Those planks on the riverbank then get attached to the raft for the car to drive onto land. It costs about 20,000 Rupiah to cross (USD 2) and whole economies of the raft sort have popped up since the tsunami washed out bridges (and they either haven't been rebuilt or makeshift bridges get washed away with the next big flood). Anyway, raft ferries - definitely an experience!
Parts of a bridge that was destroyed in the tsunami. 4 years on and left to rust. (That wouldn't happen in Malaysia - they'd have taken the metal for scrap! But this is about 3 hours drive from the city...)
