Medan - Indonesia
5/6/05
At 8 am we were in a bus heading to Medan. This trip was peanuts compared to the last one. It took only 4 hours and both the road and the bus were nice.
Not surprising, the driver was racing another bus.
The deal here is that the bus riding in front is the one picking the passengers waiting by the road. If you are the second bus you will not pick extra passengers. So, when you have two buses trying to be the first one, you have a nice stupid irresponsible race.
The good side of the ride was that we met an Indonesian teacher that told us a lot about Indonesian life and how difficult it is to be a teacher in Indonesia.
We got to Medan around noon and were again in a mission to find a hotel.
Medan is also a big city, crowded, polluted and with crazy traffic. To cross a street is almost impossible.
Christian said that the city is completely different than what he knew 30 years ago.
The city is not really a touristy attraction, it is hard to walk due to the traffic and the lack of sidewalks that are tiny and most of the time taken by warungs or parked motorbikes.
Because we had left our Lonely Planet Indonesia in Lake Toba in exchange of a Lonely Planet Malaysia, we didn't know what to do or where to go in Medan.
When we asked some locals what were the points of interest to visit, they were suggesting us to check the malls. Well, we tried to make it more interesting but we ended up going to the mall.
5/7/05
We had the morning free to visit Medan, before going to the airport to catch a flight to Singapore at 2:30 P.M.
The military museum seemed to be the only thing to fit in our schedule. The place was empty and we were the only visitors.
An Interesting thing that we learned in the museum was that Indonesia uses as official date for their independence the date they claimed independence, and not the date after the independence war, when the Dutch officially recognized them as an independent nation.
We then walked by an interesting Hindu temple and stopped to visit it. This temple looked very different from the Hindu temples we visited in India.
At 8 am we were in a bus heading to Medan. This trip was peanuts compared to the last one. It took only 4 hours and both the road and the bus were nice.
Not surprising, the driver was racing another bus.
The deal here is that the bus riding in front is the one picking the passengers waiting by the road. If you are the second bus you will not pick extra passengers. So, when you have two buses trying to be the first one, you have a nice stupid irresponsible race.
The good side of the ride was that we met an Indonesian teacher that told us a lot about Indonesian life and how difficult it is to be a teacher in Indonesia.
We got to Medan around noon and were again in a mission to find a hotel.
Medan is also a big city, crowded, polluted and with crazy traffic. To cross a street is almost impossible.
Christian said that the city is completely different than what he knew 30 years ago.
The city is not really a touristy attraction, it is hard to walk due to the traffic and the lack of sidewalks that are tiny and most of the time taken by warungs or parked motorbikes.
Because we had left our Lonely Planet Indonesia in Lake Toba in exchange of a Lonely Planet Malaysia, we didn't know what to do or where to go in Medan.
When we asked some locals what were the points of interest to visit, they were suggesting us to check the malls. Well, we tried to make it more interesting but we ended up going to the mall.
5/7/05
We had the morning free to visit Medan, before going to the airport to catch a flight to Singapore at 2:30 P.M.
The military museum seemed to be the only thing to fit in our schedule. The place was empty and we were the only visitors.
An Interesting thing that we learned in the museum was that Indonesia uses as official date for their independence the date they claimed independence, and not the date after the independence war, when the Dutch officially recognized them as an independent nation.
We then walked by an interesting Hindu temple and stopped to visit it. This temple looked very different from the Hindu temples we visited in India.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 6:29 AM
1 Comments:
Great stuff guys, interesting narrative of your journey, can't get enough it. But please put more pictures up. I want to see what you saw. They say a picture is worth thousand words. Can't wait to join you guys in peru.
Love Danny & Doris
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