Flights for this trip were booked four months in advance so we could get the best connections and rates; four of us from Bangkok to KL to Banda Aceh came in at a shade under 10k with Air Asia. Returning we would fly from Banda Aceh to Medan then back to Bangkok so as not to backtrack over anything, this worked out even cheaper.
As expected the first hitch was in the airport at Bangkok where the overzealous security people decided that my dive torch was a lethal weapon and therefore could not be taken on the plane. There is a reason that budget airlines are cheap, and this you find out the hard way when you land at Kuala Lumpur's budget carrier terminal and have a fair hike from the plane, then a queue at immigration for an hour, then again on check-in for another hour before the next flight, then it's another trudge back over the sweltering tarmac to the plane.
The only bonus with the brief Malay encounter was the 90 day stamp on arrival (UK passport, Thais got 30), no questioning of funds, paying for visas, or silly cards to fill out … makes Sarawak and Sabah a very tempting option for the next trip.
Banda Aceh airport is primitive to say the least however getting the $25 visa on arrival was a doddle compared to the circus in Vietnam. After two flights and lots of queuing we just wanted to get into town, it had been a long day, so we actually went with the first guy that approached us offering a taxi, turns out he only charged 5000 rupiah (about 14 baht) over the going rate. This we soon discovered was because his taxi was a 20 year old Toyota with no brakes or windows!
Banda Aceh town is a melee of motorbikes, though nowhere near the scale of the chaos in Vietnamese cities. The roads are barely wide enough and unmarked but traffic seems to just ebb and flow as it pleases, there are far fewer cars here than in Thailand and the town center has some clean palm lined roads – a lot of NGO dollars poured into Banda Aceh during the tsunami cleanup.
After checking in at the very average Medan Hotel hunger had surpassed tiredness so we hit the streets as the call to prayer rang out and night fell. Our first feed was a little kebab stall offering some meat on a skewer labeled as 'turky', tasty it was … whatever it was. Next stop was the local night market where we could get amongst it and chow down on street food with the locals at local prices. Dishes here tend to cost about a dollar (30 baht) though I had yet to see a beer for sale anywhere in this deeply religious town which is still under Sharia law.
