Sabang

I’d read that it rains a lot in Sabang but this was otherworldly. Water poured down from the sky and all that my shuttle bus could do was to divert a portion of it as it drove faster and faster. The vehicle was leaking—it could do nothing else in such a downpour—or better described, it was bleeding water through every conceivable orifice and non-orifice: the doors, windows, ceiling, floor, all simultaneously, all ferociously, rather like The Shining, and I sat in the exact middle of it all, the only one to not get wet.

And then it was over. There was rain one minute and then the next there was none. The tropics are good that way. Very seldom is it drizzling or threatening to rain. When it rains, it pours, and then it’s done. There’s been a lot of such storms during the trip, but somehow a warm rain isn’t nearly as problematic as a cold one. At home, when it rains, I generally stay home. I don’t want to go out, traffic is bad; in short, rain changes everything. Here, nearly nothing changes. Rain comes, people get wet or take a short break to take cover, and generally within 30 minutes or an hour, they’re back to whatever they were doing beforehand.

I’ve had good luck with the weather on this trip. I’m not sure that one can go too far wrong being in the tropics during the northern hemisphere’s winter. It’s been mostly 70-100 degrees, depending on the island and the elevation, and that’s one of the reasons that I choose this time of year to travel. It’s certainly been hot on this trip, and frequently enough, a bit too hot for me. Not at all hot like Ghana where I would be drenched with sweat within five minutes of leaving the house, but still hot enough. And on a very few occasions, it’s been too cold (overnight on a ferry, sleeping on a thatch floor on a mountain, riding on the back of a motorcycle in shorts, in a car with too much air conditioning). But it’s also been perfect on a few memorable occasions. I love that sensation of the weather feeling “perfect”. When the air temperature and the breeze are just right, or when the water temperature is ideal. I’ve been fortunate to have a handful of those moments on this trip, and while fleeting, I think that it’s one of my most favorite things. And on Sabang, I had one or two of those moments.

Sabang, or Pulau Wei as it’s also known, is an island just off the north coast of Sumatra. On it lies Kilometer Zero, or the point where the Indonesian archipelago “starts”, “ending” thousands of miles later in Papua. Kilometer Zero is not only the most westward point in the country but also the most northern, and, as such, it’s actually closer to Bangalore and Chennai than it is to Jakarta. It’s also the home to world-class diving and snorkeling, and I spent nearly two hours doing the latter in some of the clearest water I’ve ever seen. I’m a total novice with such things, but I think that when one sees thousands of beautiful fish of all sizes and colors, including a small shark, that it’s a good spot. I rather felt like I was in someone’s very expensive aquarium as I swam about, taking it all in. The only spot that was dicey is when I came upon what appeared to be a swarm of very tiny jelly fish and freaked out a wee bit. I didn’t want any part of a jelly fish sting, and had also read that jelly fish are what attract the manta rays, another creature best avoided in my book.

Places like this tend to attract “travelers” (not quite nice enough or close enough for tourists), and I’ve been trying to figure out how I fit under that title. I mean, technically I’m here working, so I’m not really one of “them”, but I also wasn’t working this weekend, and certainly not as I snorkeled around. And some of them perhaps aren’t technically “them” either. Perhaps they’re NGO workers who are here on break. But they look and act the part, and I wonder if I do too?

I’m not sure what makes me so uneasy about being one of them. One of the first travelers I saw upon my arrival in the beach town of Iboih—or perhaps he’s not a traveler at all but has gone local—was a man in his early fifties with braided or dreaded hair down below his knees, tattoos littering a good part of his body, and his bare chest adorned with two nipple rings (one in each). For me, he was less appealing than the manta ray, and I was trying to figure out if I feared becoming him or if I already was him in a small way. It’s complex, this whole traveling thing, and I’d really like to square a few things away in my head before I do it again. I think that it would give me more of a sense of purpose, something to ground me.

But maybe the shuttle bus ride where all of the others were getting wet and I sat bone dry was a sign from above, a message saying that I was different than all of those other travelers, that my calling was a higher one. But probably not. More likely, it was just dumb luck, the same dumb luck that made me be born in the first world to a middle class family. The same dumb luck that allows me to travel to Sabang, to spend part of a day snorkeling, and to spend the rest of the weekend trying to figure out if I’m a tourist, traveler, or none of the above. I really shouldn’t complain.