--- written on Monday, July 26, 2010 ----
The ESW blog is being updated! Go check it out at eswpadang.blogspot.com. We'll be making changes to the entries (adding links and pictures) as we go along.
Only one more month in Padang! Definitely going to miss this place. There are things I miss about the US and part of me wants to go back to “reality”. It seems so unreal that I'm sitting here in West Sumatra. I guess I've always wanted to go to Southeast Asia and here I am.
We started off the week with a huge rainstorm in the early mornings. Luckily, it wasn't raining anymore when we stepped out of the house. But the bus that we took decided to take some detour and then somehow missed the turn to go across the bridge. This bus is big so it had to make some hapzard backing up to get back onto the right road. We still manged to get to Andalas at a reasonable time for our meeting.
I finally got a tour of the Engineering Department today. We went to see the soils laboratory to see what kind of equipment they have. Hopefully, we will do some soil investigations next week. They seem to be pretty well equiped with hand equipment. No fancy computerized stuff, which is good for us actually. I wish I had done an internship at a small geotech firm where I got samples from the field and did lab tests on the samples. I think I know what the basic tests are but I've never done them more than once. If I had worked just one summer a small geotech firm, I would know exactly what kinds of tests I would and should do for this project. But since I don't have such experience, let's hope the geotech references I have on my compuer are good.
We went back to the construction site of a school again to see their progress. Short visit but very interesting stuff. One of the students who work at the construction clinic oversees the project on behalf of TB, the structural engineer who did the design for the rebuilding. I wish I have this kind of experience (overseeing construction). I would be able to learn so much more than sitting in a design office.
The construction site is very close to our place so we went back to our dorm to get our internet accounts set up (finally!!). We found the office where they do this kind of stuff. The door was closed so Andi tried to get the attention of the receptionist by looking through the window and knocking. But she ignored him so he got Greg to look through the window. This worked! The receptionist came to the door and opened it. So we finally signed up for an internet account at our place and then spent the rest of the afternoon discussing our plans for the next couple of weeks.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Weekend activities in Padang
--- Written on Sunday, July 25, 2010 ---
Picking up where I left off last time about our activities for this past week. On Thursday, we had class in the morning and then went off to survey pedestrian overpasses. This was the only day of the week where I wore a shirt and it wasn't very hot. We surveyed two pedestrian overpasses total (there are only two of them in the city) and wrote down what we can about them. They're made with steel and are not very well maintained. This is probably because no one uses them to cross the road. The only people who uses them are people who want to hangout in a quiet place. Not sure about using these as evacuation structures. They really need to be well designed so that people use them in everyday life. Otherwise, people will not think of going there in an emergency.
We got out of class very early on Friday because our instructor had to go off to a meeting. We hung out in one of the offices in the economics building, where one of our housemates work. This office had its own router so we were able to get really good internet. It was great to have such fast internet. Wish we had that at our dorm. It's so hard to get work done without the internet. Especially since I associate nighttime with productiveness and preparing for the next day.
In the afternoon, we went to survey some mosques. We were able to go by car which made everything a lot faster. We did 4 mosques in one afternoon, very big achievement. This was a cultural experience for me. I had to wear long pants, long sleeves, and a head scarf. This head scarf thing is very difficult. All the girls here wear it all the time and they have to use a lot of pins. I wasn't going to wear it for very long so I didn't bothered with the pins. In retrospect, it might have been better to pin it all down since it kept slipping. I wasn't able to concentration on the first mosque at all.
I think we did pretty well on our visits. The first visit was the one that the students evaluated last quarter so we just looked around. The second visit was a mosque/educational center under construction at Padang State University. We literally walked onto a live construction site, without any advance notice, with sandals on. They let us walk around, take pictures, make drawings, etc. We talked to the “engineers” on site who only had architectural drawings and got the name of the company who has the structural drawings. We got some really goo d information though and it was very good to see the thing under construction. We should really go visit more construction sites. This kind of thing would never happen in the US. We would have had to talk to someone way in advance and only be able to go visit after hours or something like that.
After all the surveying, we went to the beach to watch the sunset with Andi. After that, we had dinner at a nice looking restaurant, eating Padang style, and end up paying a pretty reasonable price. We walked back and got juice on the way. Very productive Friday. That night, we planned to run to Air Manis (nearby beach that is on the other side of a hill) Saturday morning and then go to Pariamon on Sunday.
Actual weekend activities. We woke up to go running to Air Manis. Just as Greg was trying to turn off the alarm, we got a call from Andi, who said that he got wrong information and that it's better to go to Pariamon on Saturday instead of Sunday because the trains will be less packed. So we had a quick change of plans, slept for another hour, and went to the train station.
The train ride itself was quite the experience. This was the first train ride in Indonesia for all of us. The train runs from Padang to Pariamon with stops in between. We got on at the first station and they didn't open all the cars so that people at later stations will have space to sit. I think this is a pretty good policy since people will spread out otherwise and take up more room than necessary. Some things to remember about trains here though:
Rule 1: If you're lucky, they might decide to refuel and your departure will be delayed by half an hour or more.
Rule 2: Do not sit near the head of the train. The conductor will keep ringing the train horn forever. This horn is super high pitch and super loud. To ensure a pleasant ride, bring earplugs.
Rule 3: Expect to move slower than traffic. I think the fastest we got was about 20mph.
Rule 4: Don't worry about being hungry on the train because at every stop, there will be different people coming on and selling everything from candy to fried rice. We got some pieces of sugar cane. I was happy. Prices are pretty normal but change is hard to come by.
We only ended up spending about 2 hours in Pariamon. We walked around the beach for a little bit, went to eat lunch, walked around the market a bit, chatted with some English students at UNP, and then went back on the train. The city is pretty much like Padang except smaller and with a nicer beach. The train ride back was much nicer since we adhered to Rule 2 (see above).
It was nice to get out of Padang and see the countryside. I think Greg took about a hundred pictures with my camera. We got back and was tired from this whole train ride experience. We showered, ate some food, and then headed off to Pasar Seni to meet up with one of our housemates. Last Saturday, our housemate went to hang out with people the artists and musicians at Pasar Seni and they took him to a place in Chinatown where they played instruments and sang. He really wanted to show me this place so we managed to get a taxi to go to Chinatown.
I haven't really walked around Chinatown. We got to a place where there were about 30 people gathered and a lot of kids singing. Most people there were Chinese but they were singing in Indonesian and Minang. They pulled me up to the front, gave me a mic, and asked me to sing something. After a lot of discussion and thinking, I finally thought of 月亮代表我的心. By this point, I had realized that most (almost all) of them don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese so I had a hard time thinking of a song that they would recognize. They recognized this one immediately and everyone sang along. Our friend from Pasar Seni said that I could just start singing something and they will follow with the music. If I had a better voice, I probably would have done so.
After the song, they found someone who spoke Mandarin. She did not grew up somewhere else in Indonesia where the Chinese community still speaks Mandarin and Fujianese, along with some other dialects that I wasn't familiar with. She said that most of the Chinese people here don't speak Chinese anymore; only a few from the older generations. They all communicate in Indonesian. They are all Catholic and everyone there that night were from the same church. I see why everyone I meet thinks I'm Indonesian and expects me to speak the language.
Just as we were about to leave, a huge tour group came in. The group of musicians played a few popular songs, including a very popular Minang one. Everyone was happy and there was a lot of singing. It was all very strange. After the tour group left, they started up the kareoke machine, and we made our exit.
Sunday. We woke up early once again and headed off to running to Air Manis. Greg and our other housemates have gone before and this was the first time I joined them. We took two angkots to get further south and then started running. I was doing fine on the first flat part. And then we hit the hill were the roads became really steep. It was either a very steep incline or a very steep descend. I walked most of this because I was trying to not be out of breath (on the inclines) and not to kill my knees (on the descend). The beach itself was pretty nice. There was a lot of garbage around towards the entrance. The beach was very flat so the water remained shallow for a long way out. The locals say that in the afternoon, you can walk out to one of the nearby islands. There were a lot of surfers. We hung out at this one restaurant on the beach for a long time and then took an angkot down the hill.
We were all pretty tired by the time we got back. We showered and took naps. We met up with a local friend of ours to hang out before she goes to another city for work. We went to the market and got Kevin's guitar fixed and got Greg a watch (finally!). Then we went to eat martebak (the meat kind) and ordered a sweet one to go. We took it to the beach with us and spent some time chatting on the beach. Pretty nice weekend overall.
Picking up where I left off last time about our activities for this past week. On Thursday, we had class in the morning and then went off to survey pedestrian overpasses. This was the only day of the week where I wore a shirt and it wasn't very hot. We surveyed two pedestrian overpasses total (there are only two of them in the city) and wrote down what we can about them. They're made with steel and are not very well maintained. This is probably because no one uses them to cross the road. The only people who uses them are people who want to hangout in a quiet place. Not sure about using these as evacuation structures. They really need to be well designed so that people use them in everyday life. Otherwise, people will not think of going there in an emergency.
We got out of class very early on Friday because our instructor had to go off to a meeting. We hung out in one of the offices in the economics building, where one of our housemates work. This office had its own router so we were able to get really good internet. It was great to have such fast internet. Wish we had that at our dorm. It's so hard to get work done without the internet. Especially since I associate nighttime with productiveness and preparing for the next day.
In the afternoon, we went to survey some mosques. We were able to go by car which made everything a lot faster. We did 4 mosques in one afternoon, very big achievement. This was a cultural experience for me. I had to wear long pants, long sleeves, and a head scarf. This head scarf thing is very difficult. All the girls here wear it all the time and they have to use a lot of pins. I wasn't going to wear it for very long so I didn't bothered with the pins. In retrospect, it might have been better to pin it all down since it kept slipping. I wasn't able to concentration on the first mosque at all.
I think we did pretty well on our visits. The first visit was the one that the students evaluated last quarter so we just looked around. The second visit was a mosque/educational center under construction at Padang State University. We literally walked onto a live construction site, without any advance notice, with sandals on. They let us walk around, take pictures, make drawings, etc. We talked to the “engineers” on site who only had architectural drawings and got the name of the company who has the structural drawings. We got some really goo d information though and it was very good to see the thing under construction. We should really go visit more construction sites. This kind of thing would never happen in the US. We would have had to talk to someone way in advance and only be able to go visit after hours or something like that.
After all the surveying, we went to the beach to watch the sunset with Andi. After that, we had dinner at a nice looking restaurant, eating Padang style, and end up paying a pretty reasonable price. We walked back and got juice on the way. Very productive Friday. That night, we planned to run to Air Manis (nearby beach that is on the other side of a hill) Saturday morning and then go to Pariamon on Sunday.
Actual weekend activities. We woke up to go running to Air Manis. Just as Greg was trying to turn off the alarm, we got a call from Andi, who said that he got wrong information and that it's better to go to Pariamon on Saturday instead of Sunday because the trains will be less packed. So we had a quick change of plans, slept for another hour, and went to the train station.
The train ride itself was quite the experience. This was the first train ride in Indonesia for all of us. The train runs from Padang to Pariamon with stops in between. We got on at the first station and they didn't open all the cars so that people at later stations will have space to sit. I think this is a pretty good policy since people will spread out otherwise and take up more room than necessary. Some things to remember about trains here though:
Rule 1: If you're lucky, they might decide to refuel and your departure will be delayed by half an hour or more.
Rule 2: Do not sit near the head of the train. The conductor will keep ringing the train horn forever. This horn is super high pitch and super loud. To ensure a pleasant ride, bring earplugs.
Rule 3: Expect to move slower than traffic. I think the fastest we got was about 20mph.
Rule 4: Don't worry about being hungry on the train because at every stop, there will be different people coming on and selling everything from candy to fried rice. We got some pieces of sugar cane. I was happy. Prices are pretty normal but change is hard to come by.
We only ended up spending about 2 hours in Pariamon. We walked around the beach for a little bit, went to eat lunch, walked around the market a bit, chatted with some English students at UNP, and then went back on the train. The city is pretty much like Padang except smaller and with a nicer beach. The train ride back was much nicer since we adhered to Rule 2 (see above).
It was nice to get out of Padang and see the countryside. I think Greg took about a hundred pictures with my camera. We got back and was tired from this whole train ride experience. We showered, ate some food, and then headed off to Pasar Seni to meet up with one of our housemates. Last Saturday, our housemate went to hang out with people the artists and musicians at Pasar Seni and they took him to a place in Chinatown where they played instruments and sang. He really wanted to show me this place so we managed to get a taxi to go to Chinatown.
I haven't really walked around Chinatown. We got to a place where there were about 30 people gathered and a lot of kids singing. Most people there were Chinese but they were singing in Indonesian and Minang. They pulled me up to the front, gave me a mic, and asked me to sing something. After a lot of discussion and thinking, I finally thought of 月亮代表我的心. By this point, I had realized that most (almost all) of them don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese so I had a hard time thinking of a song that they would recognize. They recognized this one immediately and everyone sang along. Our friend from Pasar Seni said that I could just start singing something and they will follow with the music. If I had a better voice, I probably would have done so.
After the song, they found someone who spoke Mandarin. She did not grew up somewhere else in Indonesia where the Chinese community still speaks Mandarin and Fujianese, along with some other dialects that I wasn't familiar with. She said that most of the Chinese people here don't speak Chinese anymore; only a few from the older generations. They all communicate in Indonesian. They are all Catholic and everyone there that night were from the same church. I see why everyone I meet thinks I'm Indonesian and expects me to speak the language.
Just as we were about to leave, a huge tour group came in. The group of musicians played a few popular songs, including a very popular Minang one. Everyone was happy and there was a lot of singing. It was all very strange. After the tour group left, they started up the kareoke machine, and we made our exit.
Sunday. We woke up early once again and headed off to running to Air Manis. Greg and our other housemates have gone before and this was the first time I joined them. We took two angkots to get further south and then started running. I was doing fine on the first flat part. And then we hit the hill were the roads became really steep. It was either a very steep incline or a very steep descend. I walked most of this because I was trying to not be out of breath (on the inclines) and not to kill my knees (on the descend). The beach itself was pretty nice. There was a lot of garbage around towards the entrance. The beach was very flat so the water remained shallow for a long way out. The locals say that in the afternoon, you can walk out to one of the nearby islands. There were a lot of surfers. We hung out at this one restaurant on the beach for a long time and then took an angkot down the hill.
We were all pretty tired by the time we got back. We showered and took naps. We met up with a local friend of ours to hang out before she goes to another city for work. We went to the market and got Kevin's guitar fixed and got Greg a watch (finally!). Then we went to eat martebak (the meat kind) and ordered a sweet one to go. We took it to the beach with us and spent some time chatting on the beach. Pretty nice weekend overall.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
ESW Padang Blog
For updates on the work side of my life in Padang, go to:
ESW Padang Blog
This may or may not be temporary. We want to get something set up on the ESW Stanford website but not sure how long that will take.
ESW Padang Blog
This may or may not be temporary. We want to get something set up on the ESW Stanford website but not sure how long that will take.
Fakultas Kedokteran
We live in the Medical School Campus. We live pretty far in. I'll take more pictures of our place.
At the "bus stop" outside our street.
More pictures of the road outside our dorm.
At the "bus stop" outside our street.
More pictures of the road outside our dorm.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Pasta Dinner in Padang
We cooked a pasta dinner. I don't think you can find this anywhere in Padang. Pasta+vegetables. Not local cuisine. It was really good though.
Back in Padang
--- written on: July 21, 2010 ---
Sorry, the last “back in Padang” post a bit lame. We got back on Sunday afternoon after our flight was delayed for about an hour. This is pretty normal apparently. As soon as our plane landed, it started pouring rain. So we decided to take a taxi. This was a good choice since we would've gotten soaked otherwise. After we sat in the taxi for a while, Andi realizes that he took the same taxi when he was leaving for Japan. He and the taxi driver had a good chat on the way back.
We came back to a pretty quiet dorm. There was no drinking water, as usual. Our housekeeper is supposed to get someone to refill our bottle of water but sometimes he is slow. Water at restaurants are boiled before they are served or made into ice. I haven't had any problems with the water here so far. We spent the night doing a bit of work, mostly figuring out goals for the rest of the summer.
We having language classes this whole week. So we got up bright and early Monday morning for class. These classes have really helped. I wish I have more time to study and review things though. We're always so busy. We spent Monday afternoon doing more planning, replying to emails, scheduling stuff, etc.
Tuesday afternoon, we had a meeting with about 6 students from Andalas University. We talked about our projects and what we are trying to accomplish. They all seemed to be interested in our projects. We asked for help with mosque visits and they were very enthusiastic. We got several volunteers for visiting mosques on Friday. Hopefully that will go well. I need to figure out how to put on a head scarf before this. I just bought one today. Learning something new everyday...
Wednesday afternoon, we got to the construction clinic after our class and waited around for TB, the famous structural engineer to take us to see some retrofits in progress. We went to see the retrofit/rebuilding of a school that the construction clinic is working on. The workers were putting in more reinforcements into joints. Everything seems to be going pretty well. I really think American construction sites are too clean and waste too much construction material. This one feels like real construction is going on. I wouldn't mind helping out, maybe tie some rebar!
After the school, we visited some churches that are being rebuilt. This was kind of weird since Padang is mostly (99%, no joke) Muslim. Apparently there is a Catholic corner. This is probably the biggest concentration of women who don't wear veils in town. The church that TB is working on was built 106 years ago. They are reusing the same bricks and keeping the same architecture. He is really keen on keeping the heritage buildings the way they were. This church is in the same complex as a Catholic school. The little girls here wear short skirts instead of long ones (and no veils). Otherwise, the uniforms look pretty much the same as any other elementary school in town: white shirts and red pants or skirts. It still surprises me how early some of the little girls start wearing the veils. I guess it's also a part of the school uniform.
We also visited a church that was pretty much demolished and being rebuilt altogether. TB was pretty upset about this because apparently, the church owners were advised by some American professor to take out all the old stuff and replace with a steel frame. So now they are tearing out all the stuff that was built 100 years ago. TB thinks a lot of it could have been saved; the building just needed more reinforcement. Prime example of why he seems to dislike foreigners. They come in without any knowledge of the city's history, make some offhand comments, and end up destroying part of the city's heritage unintentionally.
We went through the biggest traditional market in town on our way back and picked up a few things. It started to rain so we didn't stay long. We cooked pasta with lots and lots of vegetables when we got back. It was pretty good, even though we didn't have salt. Pretty proud of what we managed to do with a tiny cutting board, small fruit knife, small gas stove, and mini pots and pans.
For Thursday, we're planning on surveying some pedestrian bridges. On Friday, we're going with some students to doing some mosque assessments. I think we are going to see a nearby site where huge landslides occurred during the last earthquake. We have a ton of things planned for next week as well. We hope to keep ourselves busy until Ramadan. Ramadan will be a very interesting cultural experience for us. It starts mid-August. Will definitely blog about that when it happens.
Sorry, the last “back in Padang” post a bit lame. We got back on Sunday afternoon after our flight was delayed for about an hour. This is pretty normal apparently. As soon as our plane landed, it started pouring rain. So we decided to take a taxi. This was a good choice since we would've gotten soaked otherwise. After we sat in the taxi for a while, Andi realizes that he took the same taxi when he was leaving for Japan. He and the taxi driver had a good chat on the way back.
We came back to a pretty quiet dorm. There was no drinking water, as usual. Our housekeeper is supposed to get someone to refill our bottle of water but sometimes he is slow. Water at restaurants are boiled before they are served or made into ice. I haven't had any problems with the water here so far. We spent the night doing a bit of work, mostly figuring out goals for the rest of the summer.
We having language classes this whole week. So we got up bright and early Monday morning for class. These classes have really helped. I wish I have more time to study and review things though. We're always so busy. We spent Monday afternoon doing more planning, replying to emails, scheduling stuff, etc.
Tuesday afternoon, we had a meeting with about 6 students from Andalas University. We talked about our projects and what we are trying to accomplish. They all seemed to be interested in our projects. We asked for help with mosque visits and they were very enthusiastic. We got several volunteers for visiting mosques on Friday. Hopefully that will go well. I need to figure out how to put on a head scarf before this. I just bought one today. Learning something new everyday...
Wednesday afternoon, we got to the construction clinic after our class and waited around for TB, the famous structural engineer to take us to see some retrofits in progress. We went to see the retrofit/rebuilding of a school that the construction clinic is working on. The workers were putting in more reinforcements into joints. Everything seems to be going pretty well. I really think American construction sites are too clean and waste too much construction material. This one feels like real construction is going on. I wouldn't mind helping out, maybe tie some rebar!
After the school, we visited some churches that are being rebuilt. This was kind of weird since Padang is mostly (99%, no joke) Muslim. Apparently there is a Catholic corner. This is probably the biggest concentration of women who don't wear veils in town. The church that TB is working on was built 106 years ago. They are reusing the same bricks and keeping the same architecture. He is really keen on keeping the heritage buildings the way they were. This church is in the same complex as a Catholic school. The little girls here wear short skirts instead of long ones (and no veils). Otherwise, the uniforms look pretty much the same as any other elementary school in town: white shirts and red pants or skirts. It still surprises me how early some of the little girls start wearing the veils. I guess it's also a part of the school uniform.
We also visited a church that was pretty much demolished and being rebuilt altogether. TB was pretty upset about this because apparently, the church owners were advised by some American professor to take out all the old stuff and replace with a steel frame. So now they are tearing out all the stuff that was built 100 years ago. TB thinks a lot of it could have been saved; the building just needed more reinforcement. Prime example of why he seems to dislike foreigners. They come in without any knowledge of the city's history, make some offhand comments, and end up destroying part of the city's heritage unintentionally.
We went through the biggest traditional market in town on our way back and picked up a few things. It started to rain so we didn't stay long. We cooked pasta with lots and lots of vegetables when we got back. It was pretty good, even though we didn't have salt. Pretty proud of what we managed to do with a tiny cutting board, small fruit knife, small gas stove, and mini pots and pans.
For Thursday, we're planning on surveying some pedestrian bridges. On Friday, we're going with some students to doing some mosque assessments. I think we are going to see a nearby site where huge landslides occurred during the last earthquake. We have a ton of things planned for next week as well. We hope to keep ourselves busy until Ramadan. Ramadan will be a very interesting cultural experience for us. It starts mid-August. Will definitely blog about that when it happens.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Adventures in Jakarta
written at the airport on July 18, 2010
(sorry, totally forgot I wrote this)
Leaving Jakarta and going back to Padang. Really looking forward to going back to the dorm room and chilling there. I think we've had enough of this big city and big spending deal for now.
Saturday was a day of adventures. We packed up and had our last breakfast at our five-star hotel. One of Andi's friends is getting married so we tagged along to this wedding. The wedding was really interesting. It's supposed to be a traditional Sundanese wedding. We signed our names in the guest book and walked in. It was held at a huge auditorium with lots and lots of venues for food. There were a lot of guests. There weren't as many chairs so everyone just mingled and walked around.
The ceremony itself was pretty short. There were dancers that led the procession of the bride and groom and relatives. Once they got on stage, there was a speech and prayer. After that, all the guests lined up to shake hands and take pictures with the bride and groom. And then the eating began.
The amount of food was ridiculous. There were tables with different types of foods: Indonesian, dim sum, Dutch, desserts, fruit, etc. There were also people serving the food. And then there were stands with lots and lots of fruit. It looked like they bought out an farm of fruit. So basically we ate a lot. The ceremony started at 11am and everything was done by 1pm. It was pretty quick and fun.
After this, we took a taxi to a nearby mall. Greg met up with some people he met on couchsurfing. I met up with Dian and we chatted about life at Starbucks. Really wish we had more time to hang out. But it turns out that we will be in Singapore at the same time. So we can hang out there as well. Going around places in Southeast Asia is so easy. Really want to come back and spend some time traveling around. I should plan out a trip.
We got back to the five-star hotel to pick up our luggage and check for a package from a company that we met earlier this week. There was no package so Greg and I decided to take a walk around the National Monument. We walked around for about 2 hours looking at buildings when we saw people sitting by a big fountain. It was nearly 7pm so we though there might be a fountain show. But it turns out, people were just there to sit around and eat Pop Mie (a brand of instant noodles) and drink instant coffee. There were lots of families and kids playing so it was kind of a nice spot.
We took a taxi to cheaper hotel and the taxi took us around this neighborhood in the northern part of Jakarta. There were lots of turns and it looked like we were going through Chinatown. We finally got to our hotel and checked in. We had thought that Andi would stay with us so we booked two rooms. He ended up staying with his brother so we each got our own rooms. Turns out, they gave Greg a huge deluxe room called the Maluku Suite. This suite was ridiculously large, with a large bed and lots of sitting space. My room had two beds and was pretty nice as well.
The hotel is in the middle of Chinatown and is run by Chinese people. There was no 4th floor and there were Chinese paintings and furniture everywhere. We went out looking for food and walked around this apartment complex next door only to find convenient stores. We were about to walk out onto the street when we found the food court. There is a courtyard in the middle of the apartment complex and there were a ton of food options. We had shrimp, noodles, and veggies. I remarked that we came to Jakarta to eat Chinese food. We were trying to avoid Padang food, which is a famous cuisine of Indonesia so we ended up eating a lot of Chinese food.
Anyway, this is the end of the Jakarta trip. Might come back to this city but not sure I can handle all the traffic and pollution.
(sorry, totally forgot I wrote this)
Leaving Jakarta and going back to Padang. Really looking forward to going back to the dorm room and chilling there. I think we've had enough of this big city and big spending deal for now.
Saturday was a day of adventures. We packed up and had our last breakfast at our five-star hotel. One of Andi's friends is getting married so we tagged along to this wedding. The wedding was really interesting. It's supposed to be a traditional Sundanese wedding. We signed our names in the guest book and walked in. It was held at a huge auditorium with lots and lots of venues for food. There were a lot of guests. There weren't as many chairs so everyone just mingled and walked around.
The ceremony itself was pretty short. There were dancers that led the procession of the bride and groom and relatives. Once they got on stage, there was a speech and prayer. After that, all the guests lined up to shake hands and take pictures with the bride and groom. And then the eating began.
The amount of food was ridiculous. There were tables with different types of foods: Indonesian, dim sum, Dutch, desserts, fruit, etc. There were also people serving the food. And then there were stands with lots and lots of fruit. It looked like they bought out an farm of fruit. So basically we ate a lot. The ceremony started at 11am and everything was done by 1pm. It was pretty quick and fun.
After this, we took a taxi to a nearby mall. Greg met up with some people he met on couchsurfing. I met up with Dian and we chatted about life at Starbucks. Really wish we had more time to hang out. But it turns out that we will be in Singapore at the same time. So we can hang out there as well. Going around places in Southeast Asia is so easy. Really want to come back and spend some time traveling around. I should plan out a trip.
We got back to the five-star hotel to pick up our luggage and check for a package from a company that we met earlier this week. There was no package so Greg and I decided to take a walk around the National Monument. We walked around for about 2 hours looking at buildings when we saw people sitting by a big fountain. It was nearly 7pm so we though there might be a fountain show. But it turns out, people were just there to sit around and eat Pop Mie (a brand of instant noodles) and drink instant coffee. There were lots of families and kids playing so it was kind of a nice spot.
We took a taxi to cheaper hotel and the taxi took us around this neighborhood in the northern part of Jakarta. There were lots of turns and it looked like we were going through Chinatown. We finally got to our hotel and checked in. We had thought that Andi would stay with us so we booked two rooms. He ended up staying with his brother so we each got our own rooms. Turns out, they gave Greg a huge deluxe room called the Maluku Suite. This suite was ridiculously large, with a large bed and lots of sitting space. My room had two beds and was pretty nice as well.
The hotel is in the middle of Chinatown and is run by Chinese people. There was no 4th floor and there were Chinese paintings and furniture everywhere. We went out looking for food and walked around this apartment complex next door only to find convenient stores. We were about to walk out onto the street when we found the food court. There is a courtyard in the middle of the apartment complex and there were a ton of food options. We had shrimp, noodles, and veggies. I remarked that we came to Jakarta to eat Chinese food. We were trying to avoid Padang food, which is a famous cuisine of Indonesia so we ended up eating a lot of Chinese food.
Anyway, this is the end of the Jakarta trip. Might come back to this city but not sure I can handle all the traffic and pollution.
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