When we recount our travels to other people, it is common and understandable to leave out those throwaway afternoons when a simple task goes awry in a banal way.
Misadventures, of course – those spectacular and at times melodramatic failures of the expected – are the bread-and-butter of travel writing. But it’s less common to find narrative grist in a wrong turn (or a misremembered address) that sends you in the wrong direction for a few hours to no real consequence.
Not long ago, I arrived in the Sumatran coastal city of Padang on a swelteringly humid afternoon. My plan was to take a high-speed ferry to the Mentawai Islands the following morning. When my hostel-keeper suggested I get my ferry tickets in advance to save time the next day, I trudged out into the heat to buy them.
Getting lost takes on a tinge of absurdity when recalled in reverse, from that moment of finally having found one’s destination. As I was to learn, the high-speed ferry was not far from my hostel; just turn left when you get to the oceanfront road, and you’ll be there in less than ten minutes.
Friends, I turned right when I got to the oceanfront road, reasoning (foolishly, in retrospect) that this commercial-looking stretch of urban coast was more likely to yield a ferry office than forest-fringed shoreline in the other direction.
Within minutes I was dripping with sweat in Padang’s breezeless urban heat. Every hundred or so meters I saw buildings that looked like they might host a ferry office, only to find that they did not.
I should have turned around earlier, but – stubbornly clinging to my initial instincts – I didn’t. Finally, while resting in a sliver of shade near a fishing jetty, a group of tourists from Jakarta walked up and asked me what I was looking for.
When I told them, one of the men clicked his tongue and pointed in the other direction. “Three kilometers,” he said. “Give or take.”
I have no story to relate from that three-kilometer walk, though along the way I did meet a fisherman who was selling these fish.
I think they’re kind of beautiful.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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