From Indonesia with love - Night 1

I know a long long time ago (like over 1 month back) I promised pictures from my holiday in Medan & Lake Toba so here they are! (The more interesting sights, that is, together with personalized story snippets. Heh.) There were a lot of photos to look at and sort out (I alone snapped like 800+ pix plus my tripmates pix = over 2,000 pix!) and these are the ones that made the cut. Hmm... I think I'll do a Misha and post many parts of my travel trip. *grin*

Onward ho!



Asian Food Court (AFC) in the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT). Compared to Medan's Polonia Airport, I kinda prefer the LCCT. It was much more spacious and well-lit. And rather clean too! LOL. But still not enough space for the hordes of people swarming all over.



My nasi ayam dinner. Not very nice ohhhh. I think I got suckered by the nice looking photos into ordering it. Ahahaha. Plus I waited for over five minutes for the slow kitchen to dish it out. And, uh, I saw houseflies buzzing about. Yeah. *grin*



Inside the waiting hall. I like the fact that the LCCT has free WiFi service which helped me while away the waiting time. (The AirAsia flight got delayed. Grrrrrrr.) In hindsight, it wasn't such a smart thing to use up the battery juice of my N80 because I later found out that Indonesia power points are different from Malaysia so my charger did not work! (More about that in a later post.) See the television in the picture on the right? One thing I didn't like was why did the televisions there have to be tuned on to our national channels? I'm not a big fan of TV1, TV2 and TV3 (nothing good to watch. LOL). Give me NTV7, 8TV and Channel 9 anyday.



Raindrops on the plane's window. It was drizzling as we took off. I dunno why but some people I showed the pictures to thought I took a picture of the toilet bowl! -_-" It was my first night flight (actually, first flight ever anywhere) and also first time experiencing some air turbulence. Very exciting. LOL. I dunno how some people slept through it. (Or maybe they were experienced travelers so no more feel? *grin*)



Hello Medan Immigration! Compared to LCCT it seems very uh, backwards small. But it didn't take us long to pass thru. Right after we exited Immigration and out into the open, we were surrounded with dozens of taxi drivers all competing for our business. A bit scary considering the fact that it was close to midnight and there were no outdoor lights! (Airport management want to cut costs ah?) Luckily, we found a nice taxi driver uncle who showed us the official taxi booth, which had a nicely displayed price list to all the hotels / guesthouses in Medan. So we didn't feel suckered into paying more than the local rates. Yay!



After a long flight, all you want is to get to your hotel and put your feet up. Uhm, this is what greeted us. Yaloh, who ask us to be so kiamsiap and not want to pay more than backpacker rates? (If you really must know, we only paid RM 14.00 per room, per night - which worked out to RM 7 per person, twin-sharing basis. LOL) I'd show you the toilet, but that would scare you even more. *evil grin* We all didn't dare to say it then, but we were quite depressed at the sight of the so-called hotel room and I'm sure we had second (and also third, and fourth, and fifth) thoughts about the whole trip!

Since we arrived close to midnight (no thanks to the flight delay), we were in no mood to do anything more and turned in for the night. Except for one of my tripmates who went a gallivanting in the streets at 2.00am looking for cable television because Man Utd were playing a match that morning. (He failed to locate a television with international coverage. Haha.)

Next up, Day 1!

Those looking for more private photos *ahem* (like those with my face in it) should go to my Facebook. There are lots there. LOL.