Padang food (11,000 Ruppiah) again in the morning.

Indonesians are a bunch of friendly people,

after eating the shop owners invited me for a chat. My spoken Malay is not that great so it’s a good exercise for me.

The weather in Padang is warmer than Jakarta. Had coconut Padang style coconut water (7000 Ruppiah).
Coconut water seller

Typical local houses

Padang just lies beside the sea

and is an earthquake prone area. There are earthquake happening every few days. The September 2009 earthquake was a big one measuring around 8 ritcher scale.

Buildings destroyed during the 2009 earthquake

Padang Minangkabau architecture

More pictures about the Sumatra earthquake on Boston Globe

Pasar which means market in Indonesian/Malay language, it sounds similar to Bazaar used in the middle east and central asia.

Dried anchovies

Went to a meeting point for cars heading for Bukit Tinggi at 1pm. Waited for 1.5 hours for the mini van (17,000 Ruppiah) to be full before the driver started driving. The mini van managed to cramp 10 people in it plus a boy. Bukit Tinggi is just around 90km away but the trip took 2.5 hours because of traffics and rain.

View Larger Map

Since it’s raining, paid the driver another 15,000 Ruppiah to get me to Hotel Orkid. Got the cheapest room (40,000 Ruppiah).

Bukit Tinggi is a small town located 930m above sea levels and the weather is cooler here than Padang. Both Bukit Tinggi and Padang are very close to the equator.

Jam Gadang, clock tower is located at a square just arcross Ramayana shopping mall and Pasar atas. It’s a popular place for locals to gather around especially during new year. The Muslims around this area are more conservative, Valentine’s day and Christmas celebrations are banned here.

Met an Indonesian Chinese guy and he brought me to try out local street food.

Street food is pretty popular, sometimes it’s hard to walk around because there are street food at most pavements.

Mie Kalimantan.

Met up with Yannuar at Senayan Plaza.

Found out that many of my university friends from Indonesia went back to Indonesia recently and were quite successful in business. Yannuar started his own coal mining business few years ago and expanded to oil digging and owning power plants in just few years. Indonesian Chinese are pretty savvy business people and have good a business network.

Jalan Mangga Besar has a lot of Chinese places, they even sell Shangdong dumplings.

Got on the Damri bus (20,000 Ruppiah, 45 minutes bus ride) from Gambir station to the airport. Luckily it’s Saturday and the traffic was not that bad, managed to arrive at the airport just an hour before my 7pm Lion Air flight to Padang. There is a domestic airport tax of 40,000 that is required. However, the flight was delayed for 1.30 hours.

Sumatera stretched for around 2000km from the northern tip to the south of the island. Padang is at west Sumatera and is frequently hit by earthquake. The last one happened on September 30, 2009, just around 5 months ago and killed over 1100 people. Padang is mostly inhabited by Minangkabau people and Padang cuisine is pretty famous, with hot and spicy as the main flair.

Got to Padang airport at 10pm after the 1.5 hours flight. The airport is 20km away from the city and got on a Damri bus (18,000 Ruppiah)

to Padang city at 10.30pm. Since I got no idea where am I going to stay, got off the last stop and tried searching for a cheap place. Walked around and found nothing that fit into my budget then took an Ojek (motorbike taxi) to Wisma Salleh (75,000 Ruppiah).

Had Padang food (11,000 Ruppiah), Padang food is spicy.

my second meal for the day at 11.45pm.