Medan Trip Day 4 – Medan

Is last day in Medan and we take things very relaxly. We start off with swimming and enjoying steam room in the hotel. Then we went to have brunch at some place recommended by David. I really cant recall where are we, but we have chicken noodles.
Then I ask David to send me to post office as I need to send postcard back. I end up buying some stamp collection for myself. Sam and Steven also buy a lot of stamp from the post office. I think we spent almost 500,000 rp in post office.
When we arrive hotel, our driver is ready waiting for us. We take our luggage and bid bye bye to David and Medan.
Journey to airport take another one hour and we arrive early at Airport. As the airport is new, we have not much choice of food.
Airasia flight was supposed to be delayed but they manage to touch down on time. Another great experience with AirAsia.
That all for now….More trip coming up, and meanwhile….happy working and accumulating travel fund….

Medan Trip Day 3 – Parapat - Medan

I woke up 7.30am and bath. Have a light breakfast as my fever and flu is yet to recover. I hate been sick during trip.
At 9am we depart to Tomok for ferry to Parapat. This round the ferry is huge enough to carry over 30 vehicles including buses and truck. The ferry is extremely slow. The journey that take 20 minutes yesterday now took 1 hour.
Upon arrive at parapat, we straight head to Medan town leaving no trace in parapat. I am happy that I make decision to skip parapat as there is nothing special about the town.

As all of us is tired, we sleep during the journey to Siantar although sometime I wake up due to sharp cornering. The road in outskirt medan generally is quite bad with potholes here and there and some dirt road. Car have to overtake each other as there is only one lane for each direction.

We arrive Siantar at 12.30 noon and visit the Kuan Inn Temple. I was quite surprise that there is such a huge temple in the middle of Islam majority town. I was told that Chinese who stay in Siantar is very rich and with the donation received, the temple could be build. It was really huge area that it even come with a Buddhist educational institution.
We are so hungry and we ask our driver to bring us to some place to eat. He suggested Nasi Padang which I say OK immediately. See how grand the food presentation in front of us is!!! Do left the food unwanted a side and they will only charge on food you have consume.

We then headed to Paten shop for the famous Ting Ting, Teng Teng, Tang Tang and the list go on. Actually all this product is available in normal Chinese pastry shop but the name is different.
The journey to Medan took another one and half hours. By the time we are at the town, it was about 4.30pm and traffic start to build up as it was a working day. We inform the driver to call it a day after visiting Meranti Swiss roll shop which is famous for swiss roll. We didn’t go to Bika Embun @ Zulaikha as we are not really a fan of layer cake.
We check into Grand Angkasa Hotel, a business suite hotel in medan ranking 5 star…or 4 star, as I cant recall. The security is tight and all the item taken into the hotel requires scanning.
We rest and shower while waiting for David to pick us out for dinner.
David brought us to Sun Plaza to see experience where the rich shop. Verdict: Is just a normal shopping mall like what we have in KL. Then we eat near the China town, Jalan Semarang. To my surprise, food in Medan is extremely expensive especially if we are Chinese. Apparently some shop have different charges based on race. Bebek meehoon is a good try here.
We also went to Merdeka Walk where I bought some postcard. Then we headed to some outskirt area to drink jamu, Indonesia traditional drink. There is many type of Jamu and I have one to cure my fever and flu….and it works!