Exploring the Town

Trip Start Nov 08, 2006

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260

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Indonesia Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia
Sunday, March 28, 2010

Our plan was to go to Sumatra and Sulawesi over the course of 2 months, but Air Asia stopped their flights to Sulawesi. So we settled on just spending 6 weeks in Sumatra. We started in Aceh before making our way south toward Padang to fly back to KL then Bangkok.

We flew from KL to Banda Aceh because we wanted to check out Pulau Weh. But as we were landing, we saw that there was some great countryside around Banda Aceh that we'd like to see by motorbike. So we stayed in Banda Aceh for 2 nights first.

The first afternoon, we just wandered around the town (there's not much to it). We saw the mosque, checked out the fabric market, and had some decent food. Aceh has been pretty Westernized because this is where all the NGOs set up shop after the tsunami. The city was devastated by the tsunami and was one of the most severely damaged places in the world. But local effort and foreign aid have combined to fix things up and try to get back to normal.

There's not much to the city. I think for most people it would be better just to go straight to Pulau Weh, which is infinitely cooler.

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