Bon voyage, guys! Looking forward to reading about your adventures soon.
Alex
Bye kids! Thanks for inviting us to the wedding it was wicked. Had a real laugh.
Graham, you said you wouldn't mind doing some diving - look up Pulau Weh off the coast of north sumatra. you can fly to aceh for pennies from medan and then its just a boat ride over there. its wicked because you'll be the only tourists on the boat (as opposed to Thailand!), there was a school of dolphins following ours! anyway the island is cool and you'll just hang out with the local guys and some monkeys and there's meant to be amazing diving there (whale sharks if you're lucky). I didn't have my PADI then though. Chances are you'd diving the dive sites without another diver in sight (except the Divemaster of course). Anyway just somewhere to think about if you're heading to Sumatra anyway.
From Medan you could also bus it down to Danau Toba and Samosir Island - an island bigger than singapore in a massive crater lake. Pretty beautiful. the best thing to do there is rent a bike and explore the island's indiginous peoples - Bataks (all christians wierdly). so right up your street. anyway Samosir is cool, lots of reggae bars and stuff, v chilled. used to be touristy (on an indonesian level) but pretty quiet these days.
Anyway just a few ideas if you've got a couple of weeks to kill from KL.