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For the New Year I was in Indonesia at Tuk Tuk on Samosir Island in Lake Toba, Sumatra. Shortly after the New Year I traveled back to Medan and then caught an over night bus up to Banda Aceh on the extreme northern coast of Sumatra. The Aceh province had a more extreme form of Islam than the rest of Indonesia and generally wanted its independence from the rule of Jakarta. Banda Aceh had a beautiful central mosque and a colorful central market, however, I had really traveled up to the province to go out to the island called Pulau Weh. From Banda Aceh's port of Krueng Raja it was a 2.5 hour sailing out to the idyllic tropical island which was famous for it's marine national park and diving.
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1996 Travel Diary (Part 1)

Gjcmcclurg
2005-12-23 14:40:13

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/>Next I visited Nagasaki and it's Atomic Bomb Museum. The museum was both fascinating and disturbing - as I am sure it was designed to be. After the museum I went to the Epi-Center Park where a black stone column marked the exact spot over which the 22 kiloton 'Fat Man' atomic bomb exploded. Everything within 1 km was totally destroyed and the resulting fire storm burnt out everything within a 4 km radius (a third of the city and 75,000 people were wiped out).

Next I traveled to Kumamoto where I visited the famous castle and the beautiful Suizenji-Koen garden. After Kumamoto it was on to Aso. I checked into the Aso youth hostel and then retired to the communal hot bath for a soak. When I came to leave the bath I found that all my clothes were gone and nobody seemed to speak English. Trying to explain my situation with sign language, while being totally naked, was certainly not the best way to put the locals at ease with foreigners! I spent a day trekking up Mt. Aso and then traveled to the spa town of Yufuin. Yufuin was a pleasant little rural town set among paddy fields and surrounded by wooded mountains. I found a lovely traditional rotemburo (open air hot spring) and spent a few hours soaking with the locals.

My next stop was the city of Hiroshima back on the main island of Honshu. First I visited the Children's Peace Park which was set up in the memory of a young girl who died of leukemia. In her dying days the girl had set herself the challenge of folding a 1,000 paper cranes (the symbol of longevity and happiness), but she died having completed only 644. The children of her school folded the remaining 356. Nowadays the memorial is covered by perhaps a million paper cranes! After, I visited the famous A Dome which was still standing despite being only 30m from the epi-center of the atomic blast. Next I visited the Peace Flame that will apparently burn continuously until the last nuclear weapon is destroyed. ...