Medan Trip - Day 1

Sunday Morning(2 Dec), 9.30 am, we (I, DL, SW, HCS) departed from BBPC in a cab to HarbourFront. We took a ferry to Batam, and from there, we took MandalaAir to fly to Medan.

Everything was normal, until when we arrived and I realized that we did not land on the commercial airport. The original airport caught fire the night before and we had to make do with the airforce airfield. We arrived at around 3pm local time.



After waiting for 20 minutes, finally, our contacts at Medan arrived to fetch us. We took the Kijang and were driven to Perkantas office, the Tuition center and also our Hotel (CherryPink) where we would pitch our tent :)

Medan, the Capital City of the Province of North Sumatra. The city where a lot of Medanese Chinese get their bad names from. The province where the Batak people originated from. It is the 3rd biggest city in Indonesia, but it still has many problems such as electricity and water shortages. For a moment, I thought my hometown Tanjung Pinang (Capital of Kepulauan Riau Province) was not too bad :)

In the evening, we joined our friend DBS and had dinner in a local chinese restaurant, the "Acek Botak". Food was good, especially becoz we are hungry. The price? it was around 150k for 6 persons. Expensive for locals, but still reasonable.



After dinner, we took 3 becaks to go to our hotel and stay for the night. The hotel was quite high tech for the wireless hotspot, however, it is very unhygienic and service was so-so. There were cockroaches and towels were dirty, bed were in bad condition also (can feel the spring protruding). But it was good because it was relatively cheap, only 180k pernite for 3 person, or 10 dollars/person/nite.



Well, that's the end of Day 1 in Medan. It was a tiring day, but it was fun.