Chris' Travels

Medan - Sumatra

The problem with reading spy thrillers late at night is the make you have funny dreams. I had a dream that a man was coming through a back door with a gun going to kill me and I was holding the door shut and was trying to scream but could only "HMMMMM". I woke up realizing it was very likely I had indeed been "hmmmmm-ing" in real life and in a cheap hotel with thin walls my neighbors must have been wondering what i was up to. (Why didn't he just shoot through the door??)
Slept pretty roughly the rest of the night. Through heat more than anything else.



Woke up and jumped in a taxi to the Airport. I was going to fly to the northern Sumatra city of Medan. (The original plan had been to go over ground but I balked at the idea of 50+ hours on a bus and decided flying was a better option!)

Flying Air asia as I had to Bali (without incident) I assumed the flight from Jakarta to Medan would be equally normal, and to most extents it was except the passenger.
I can't decide if it's an Indonesian phenomenon, or just something a bout flying but it appeared I was flying in a plane jammed fly of school children. Not literally. They weren't all under the age of 15 (in fact most seemed to be pushing 50 for the record) but they were the most immature bunch of grown adults I've ever been in the presence of. They wouldn't sit in their allocated seats, wouldn't fasten their seat belts, wouldn't put their chair upright, squabbled over who would sit in the window seat (hilarious). Once the insanely patient air stewards/stewardesses had finally sat them down and stuck a dummy in their corporate mouths we took off. So, what would landing be like? Well, exactly the same. The moment the pilot told us we were on final approach - to sit down fasten seat belts etc 70% of passengers were up and about straight away getting their hand luggage out of the lockers. I've never seen anything like it.
They got their comeuppance, oh yes they did. As the pilot made another slightly stronger appeal for calm, this time citing turbulence as the cause to place bums on seats. maybe 40% remained defiantly standing, when, as the pilot had predicted the plane went through the worst turbulence I have ever experienced. The plane jumped up and down, as the standing were treated to a good shaking up they'll never forget as they raced for their seats. I had to smile. I nearly laughed. I just smirked to myself. Silly people.
As we got off the plane realised the reason for the turbulence, we had landed in a great big thunderstorm which had sent the (small) airport into chaos.
The children were equally ill-behaved when it came to baggage reclaim, and this was compounded by the baggage conveyor being 15 meters long, straight, and at the end of which baggage simply drops in a big pile on the floor. Being polite, I got pushed around my an assortment of gentlemen, and oversized ladies, i got annoyed (and nasty) and clobbered some of them back with my 17kg big back pack and marched out of the airport feeling as gloomy as the weather.
Outside the airport was no better where the torrential rain, and I do mean torrential, had started to leak the the airport roof in numerous places. Likewise their was a scrum for taxis, umbrellas everywhere, and silliness as far as the eye could see. I know from Bangkok what to do in situations like this: find a restaurant and sit the storm out.
45 minutes later a relative calm was descending hoped in a taxi and went to a hotel.
Dinner and internet checked: treated myself to an Air con room for the first time in two weeks. Got in the room. Hardly a whiff of cool air. money well wasted I thought. however as I slept that night I found the cumulative effect of a weak but cold A/C unit can result in a room reaching sub zero temperatures, and with a thin thin sheet keeping me "warm" I had an uncomfortable night, in which incidentaly a mosquito decided to bite me once on my left ear, and for good measure, once on the right one too. Woken up at 4.50 by nearby Mosque and couldn't get back to sleep.

posted by Chris @ 1:41 pm