In Medan, Indonesia

We are in Medan, Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra. We took a Firefly Airline ATR-72-500 (212A), 9M-FYE, from Penang to here. The flight took about 55 minutes. It was fun flying on a turboprop. We flew lower and got to see more of the water.

The hotel we are staying at, The Palace Inn has made Jim’s day. It serves blueberry jam for breakfast! No more choice between Strawberry, which he only dislikes, or, Orange Marmalade, which he detests. The hotel has newspapers to read in two languages: Chinese and Indonesian. No English language newspaper on the hotel’s newspaper stand.

We found the large mall in town, and it had a movie theater. So, last night we saw “The Artist”, which is a very good movie. We are glad it won the best picture Oscar. It was fun seeing a black and white, standard frame, silent movie. Before that we went exploring the town. Jim found some antique cannons for about $1,500 that he fell in love with, but wasn’t sure on getting them home. We went to an old Chinese mansion which was owned by a cousin of the owner of the mansion in Penang. After the mansion tour we went across the street and had lunch at a 1930s restaurant, “The Tip Top”. After that we wandered through downtown and then caught a motorcycle taxi back.

The local schools must send their students to the large mall to ambush foreigners. Laura was stopped for an interview by two young students and so was I, and they were from different schools. The students also need to have their picture taken with you to show that you really are a foreigner. The purpose seems to be to get the students to practice speaking English.

We walked past Mr. Pancake restaurant and they had a picture of their avocado and chocolate pancake. They do seem to come up with some unusual combinations. We also had lunch yesterday at the Bollywood Café. Naturally, it was an Indian restaurant. Jim watched the employee run around the restaurant barefooted, and got to wondering, which is more sanitary, not wearing shoes in a restaurant, after taking your shoes off outside, or the American way of requiring everyone to have shoes. In this part of the world most people do not wear shoes indoors, restaurants included.
Jim was thinking that the urge to travel was with him when he moved to San Diego. He used to ride the busses just to see where they would go. He’d get on the bus and ride it to the end of the line, then ride it back.

We also have started staying in higher class hotels. On this trip most of the hotels we stay in cost $25-30 per night.

On television there was an Asian ASEAN League basketball game between two teams. What was interesting was that the one team was called the Saigon Heat, not the Ho Chi Minh City Heat.