I like travelling in countries where you instantly turn into a multi millionaire. You hand out just one 100 US$ bill to the money changer and find yourself loaded with a pile of notes in local currency. The flip side of the coin is, that in the beginning you will always end up in sweat when you receive the first multi digit bill for a simple lunch and then find out that you will lose your millionaire status far too soon again, if you don’t schedule a next appointment with another money changer.
The waypoints, directions and the profile of todays ride has been published at the rider’s meeting. We will add another 1600m to the total climbs. What will be the reward? We all hope there is more than a Coke-Stop reward at the end of the climb! 
My first rest day is almost over. Although I was rather busy with fighting the environments and getting everything setup to be able to stay connected with all of you, I did find some time to explore the neighborhood, as posted earlier.
Due to the late arrival of our vans yesterday, there was some left over work to be done today. It was basically I fight with the slow and instable internet connection to get my blog updates done. I decided to use my Samsung as a hotspot for my Thinkpad and speed and reliability is like hell. With just 4$ / 2 GB data volume this is well invested money and gives me a lot of extra spare time, when fellow riders are still waiting for a network response on their first click of the day. I also managed to get my Garmin GPS tracks linked to Google map, such that you can follow my tracks on the daily Stage Detail entries (stage 01, stage 02).
Now everything should be in shape to finish write ups, photos and maps much quicker. However do to the limited internet accessibility I do not permanently maintain the photo sections of the blog, but enrich the daily posts with more pictures as usual.
No I need to get some rest, to regain energy for the long 150+ km with a huge climb ,,,
An Indonesian ‘clored bull’ – Kratingdaeng – don’t know if they would give me wings, too?! I found the bottle in a ditch next to the road with so much more debris that is dumped into this beautiful countryside. Most part of Africa is in the meantime miles ahead in respect to environmental concerns and tidiness.
Tweet ##transoceaniaAll you need in one place …
German bakery, Bicycle rental, more than enough Bintang beer (plus lemonade), fresh MMs (the only mushrooms I like 
), massages, my own Restaurant and happy faces wherever you pass by or stop. The people are so nice and friendly – A friendly ‘semalat pagi’ and ‘terima kasi / sama sama’ can open hearts and doors. 
Today I used the rest day in Tuk Tuk to do some extra cycling besides internet, laundry and bike service. The heavy downpour stopped during the night and in the morning we were greeted w
ith great sunshine – Cristiano obviously
talked again to the God’s! When most of the other riders decided to stay at the lodge and use internet or go the few steps into the village, I grabbed my bike and explored the nearby surroundings. Not a bad decision. At first up the hill west of town, to watch the paragliding training, then down to Tomok to see King’s Tomb. Thereafter up again to the 
waterfall and from there to Amberita, then to King Siallagan Stone Chairs site, and along the eastern coast of the peninsular back to Tuk Tuk through little settlements and alleys of tourist stores. Actually I didn’t ride all the way up the waterfall on a narrow single trail, simply to safe my energy for tomorrow and because I am confident to see many more waterfalls through out Indonesia which are far easier 
to reach. 
The kids are always excited to see me with my funny “zoo-helmet”. I met cute little 2 year old Jessie at Joe’s. She is the neighbor’s daughter, but wants to spend all day with ‘aunty’ in the restaurant – the owners brother is married to a 
German living in Düsseldorf. Yesterday I met Jonas with his brothers and father who are here to spent the vacation at their granny’s. They are from Schorndorf, a city very close to where I live and have relatives – what a small world.
Although it was raining hard and long last night the locals tell me that it was a far too dry season and a lot of the harvest did not mature.
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