I had an early flight from Kuala Lumpur over to Northern Sumatra early this morning. The flight left around 7:30am, and it the bus ride to get to the airport is an hour, so I had to leave quite early to get to there with enough time to feel comfortable. I was flying out of the LCCT, which is the low-cost budget airline terminal, and you can definitely see where the low cost part comes in. Things were pretty disorganized and checking-in/dropping off bags was a massive free-for-all of people pushing towards the front without much of a queuing system. Luckily I came with time to spare and managed to get through everything without any of the frantic scrambling I try very hard to avoid.
Medan itself isn't much of a tourist destination, but it's the biggest city in the center of quite a few interesting things in North Sumatra part of Indonesia. It's one of those rare cities where the airport is actually near the city center, and I just avoided the swarm of taxis and tuk-tuks and just walked from the airport to my hostel and fortunately he extra weight of the stuff I bought in KL was barely noticeable. It was still early when I got to the hostel and my room wasn't ready, so I left my bags and went off on a lengthy walk without a map or any knowledge of the city at all.
Medan is a bit rough around the edges. It reminds me a bit of some of the more sane cities in India. It's hard to go a few minutes on foot without somebody trying to get you into their tuk-tuk or on the back of their motorbike, as if the only reason you were walking around has to be that nobody else has bothered to offer you a ride yet. I was obviously something of a rarity. All the old men sitting in front of shops would call out and wave to me, and lots of people came up to talk to me. Even though it does get a bit tiring when you can't just have a little peace, I much prefer the ones who just come up and want to talk out of curiousity to the ones always trying to offer you things. At least here people are pretty accepting when you just say no or shake your head, and don't hound after you. The streets all look virtually identical, full of squat little random shops and apartments. I can't think of a single building I saw with more than 3 floors, or a single recognizable brand name other than one McDonalds I came across.
My McDonalds anecdote deserves special mention. After walking around all morning after an early morning flight I was pretty hot and exhausted, so I went into the McDonalds with the intention of buying an ice cream. At the counter they told me there was no ice cream, so I left. I instead bought a cold drink from a shop outside and just sat on the patio in the shade relaxing. About 10 minutes later, a group of 4 Muslim girls who had been in the McDonalds came out with a bag of food. They, having seen but not heard my exchange at the counter thought that I hadn't had enough money, and when they saw me sitting outside had bought a meal for me. I was pretty embarassed, because obviously I do have money - probably a good deal more than they do, and I tried to explain the situation, but they insisted I keep the meal (I suppose there wasn't much else they could do with the food). I should have offered to pay them for it, but I didn't think of it at the time, and in a way I feel it might have cheapened their gesture. Instead, the only gesture I can offer is to mention this story and hopefully help out somebody in genuine need of a meal later in my travels. In the "western world" there's unfortunately a lot of negative feelings towards Muslims these days, but the fact that these girls were so willing to do something like that for a random stranger deserves special consideration.
I finally made it back to the hostel around noon and checked in. There's no AC and no windows, which means the one outlet in the room has to be for the fan when I'm in the room, which makes charging / using my tablet a bit of a problem. My plans in Indonesia are somewhat off the beaten trail, so it's very possible I'll have trouble keeping in touch for the next 10 days. If I stop posting things, don't worry - odds are I won't be dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment