Strange experiences in Indonesia

I went on a work trip to Indonesia sometime in March, and had typed out most of this blog post during various parts of my trip when I was free and bored. My first opportunity being my second day train and car ride from the city of Medan to the plantation site which took a grand total of 10 hours (6 hours by train and 4 hours by car). It wasn’t my first time to Indonesia, as I’ve been to Jakarta and Kalimantan before, but this is my first time to Medan. Of course, visiting another country is always an interesting experience, and while the people I met in the course of my work in Indonesia were all very nice folks, there are plenty other things there that make me think that while going to Indonesia is good for experiencing new things, it would not be my first choice for a holiday destination. Unless you can afford the 5-star hotel.


Hiccups at the airport
One hiccup I encountered, but half expected, was with the visa officer at the airport. The person who came to pick me up (a representative from our client's company) passed my passport directly to the visa office, thinking that it would get through faster than everyone else. Instead, I ended up being the last person on my plane to go off coz’ the visa officer was checking through my passport a lot while I was waiting outside, and finally when he called me in, he gave me some weird story about how the visa I got was supposed to be a type ‘C’ instead of a type ‘D’, like as if I would know what type I’m supposed to get since the Indonesian Embassy in KL prepared the visa for me. And then he also said that someone from my company is supposed to come pick me up since I’m here for work, but instead we got a driver from the client to pick me up, and that was another ‘problem’. I suspected that the visa officer probably just wanted some kopi ‘O’ money, as is the common practice among these guys in Indonesia, but I just acted dumb and told them that if they wanted, I can wait for someone from my company’s local office to come, which would take some time. The visa officer looked at the clock, complained that he wanted to go home (even though it was only 4pm or so), and proceeded to put the stamp on my visa and let me off. Heh.

I suppose it could have been worse and maybe the guy who came to pick me could have been a fraud out to steal my passport. Thank God that wasn't the case.

Going back home from the trip, I didn't have to contend with troublesome visa officers, but another mistake I made was going into the airport, there were these bunch of guys hanging around the entrance 'helping' people to check in for them while passengers went to sit down and have a drink. At first I thought they were airport staff and gave them my travel docs without much though. Right after that, I realized that wasn't a good idea, so even though they told me I could go sit down somewhere while they checked in at the counter for me, I hovered around right behind to make sure they didn't do anything funny with my documents. And after waiting quite a while for the rather inefficient airport staff to open the counter, I finally decided to just get my documents back from them. They still followed me when I went to the supposed customs office to get to the departure hall, where I had to pay some weird passenger tax of 75,000 Rp (about RM20, I think)... and even I swear I gave the guy the money, it mysteriously disappeared behind the counter and he insisted I did not pay him. So I had to pay the fella again. Grr.

Note to self: When at Indonesian airports, don't let anyone else touch your travel docs, line up like everyone else, and when making payments, make doubly sure it doesn't disappear behind the counter.

Asking for money at the strangest of places
One of the sad things I noticed after I arrived at Polonia Airport, Medan and was picked up by my ride was that there were kids walking around on the road asking people to buy their wares. They just go up to people in their cars waiting at the traffic lights, knock on their windows and ask them to buy stuff. One girl came up to me before I got into my car and begged for donations in this super whiny voice and sad face…hmm, it’s just…sad.

The day after, when I was travelling to my client's site by train, another interesting experience was at one point when the train stopped at one station and a whole bunch of people who were NOT passengers boarded the train. These people were out selling their wares, carrying stuff in the baskets for passengers to buy. Anything from food to flowers to little trinkets. And there was even a bunch of dudes playing music for money... like those fellas on the streets in Malaysia... except these were walking along in the train!

The extra 'passengers' were let off at the next stop, after which, from what the client told me, they board the traing coming in the other direction and do the same thing. Fascinating.


5 star hotel which ain’t too shabby
While Medan city on a whole isn't particularly impressive compared to KL as most of the buildings are rather old (just think Ipoh old-style buildings), I was surprised to find that the hotel I was put up at by the client was a very nice 5-star hotel called Grand Angkasa. Security was so high, I had to swipe my room key card at the lift before I could press my floor button, and I could’t press any other floor except my own. There was a huge flat screen tv in the room (with Astro!) and I also took the opportunity to enjoy a nice bubble bath, although I regret using unnecessarily high amounts of water for one person which is a waste of natural resources. Sorry, Planet Earth and to all the people in the world suffering from lack of water and other basic resources. :P

By the way, my hotel was pretty close to the JW Marriot, which was the hotel that got bombed a few years back. I wonder if they had any memorial there to commemorate the lives lost, but we only passed by the hotel, and I didn’t get the chance to check it out.

Sights of Medan city
My driver took me around Medan city just to show me around and let me see some of their historic buildings, which honestly speaking, aren’t all that great. I was pretty surprised when the driver took me to the sultan’s palace and found that every Ali, Abu and Ahmad can simply go into the palace compound. There were a bunch of hooligan-looking people hanging around within the palace garden itself and totally no security people around. The driver told me they don’t let people in the palace itself so easily… but I didn’t bother to find out as we left after taking a drive around the sultan’s garden. Here's my photographic evidence:


Drama at the plaza
Then we went to one of the local shopping complexes (all called plazas around here) which had Carrefour. Because it was a holiday, there were sooo many people there, it took us almost half an hour to find a parking space! And then when I went to buy some food at KFC, it took me about 25 minutes to reach the end of the line and get my order. Soooo many people. And while walking past Carrefour, there was a commotion going on, so of course I went to check it out, and this guy was being held by a security guard and another guy who was giving the first guy a good beating. As in punched him in the stomach a couple of times, dragged him around a bit, punched him again, dragged him somewhere else, and in between was yelling some stuff in Indonesian. I couldn’t make out why the guy was getting beaten up, but I suppose he was caught stealing something. I thought of whipping out my camera and catching a video, but being alone in a foreign country, not knowing if that would get ME into trouble, I decided to hold that thought. Anyhow, the funny part I noticed was every time the poor guy was dragged off somewhere, most of the bystanders would follow them around just to have a closer look. And I’m not talking about 5 or 10 people here, it was easily about 100 people standing around looking on and following the beaters and beaten guy around. It became more interesting watching the crowd moving around like a school of fish than the drama at one point!

Pizza & White Rice Hut?
Important tip if you ever need to feed an Indonesian. They LOVE their white rice. And this is very evident in their fast food. Most of the KFC sets I could choose from included a packet of rice. And this is not the same as our Malaysian Colonel rice, which tastes like chicken rice. This is just plan boring ol’ white rice. My Indonesian colleague also bought McDonald’s fried chicken for lunch the next day, and the chicken came with…guess what? White rice. And when I asked further, I found out that even McD’s burgers come with white rice, and even stranger… Pizza Hut serves white rice too! Fried chicken and rice is still understandable to me, but I can’t really wrap my head around eating pizza and white rice together. These Indonesians are crazy!

Dangdut, contender for most annoying music ever!
The next day I met up with the rest of my company’s team in Indonesia and we went on the long journey by train and car to the plantation site. They had a tv on the train for entertainment, which is normally a good thing… except that they were playing Indonesian dangdut music videos. Prior to this, I had no problems with dangdut music, but that was because I’ve never been made to sit down and watch and listen to it for prolonged periods of time. All the songs had the same rhythm of about 180 beats per minute, and far as I could tell, every song had the same music but with different lyrics. Some of the lyrics were rather strange, like there was one song with lyrics along the lines of ‘suami pergi berfoya-foya, isteri di rumah menangis’, and I’m watching it wondering how people can dance to this kind of music without feeling depressed over the lyrics. The female singer and dancers in the videos do nothing but shake and girate their bodies to the music against the tackiest disco backgrounds you can imagine. If they had some good choreography, it would not have been so bad to watch… but it was just a bunch of girls shaking around aimlessly like they were at a disco. Every. Single. Song. Just like this one:



That one song alone was SIX minutes long. Now imagine sitting through several songs of that, and you can probably understand my strong desire to throw something heavy at the tv screen. If THAT wasn’t bad enough, the main singer and dancers were wearing the SAME clothes in different music videos! Like seriously, people, if you’re going to make music videos, at least loosen up the purse strings a little on the costumes department.

Fortunately for my sanity, about half an hour or so into the journey, they decided to screen an Indonesian movie instead. The movie was pretty weird as well, but significantly less excruciating than the dangdut music. And apparently, dangdut is very popular music in Indonesia. Good grief.


Conclusion
Actually, there isn't really a conclusion coz' I know I have to go back to Indon for work and most likely I will have more fascinating stories to tell. My apologies to any Indonesians who may not like me griping about their motherland, but I tell it like it is, man. Feel free to visit Malaysia and gripe all you want about it too. :P