James’ World

I went to Medan, Sumatra and Jakarta for the holidays on JAL, transiting in Tokyo.

Since I had an overnite transit stay in Tokyo, the new Japanese foreigner immigration rules that started in November applied to me and I had to be photographed and fingerprinted to enter the country. Not very welcoming. Just before the immigration counter your can stop at the Section “A” airlines help desk and get a free coupon for the JAL shuttle bus (33) and airline information.

Medan

The flight from Jakarta to Medan is only 2:15 hours, but my connecting flight was about 2 hours late.

Sun Plaza is one of my favorite malls in that area. Unfortunately, recently a distraught young woman had a phone argument with her boyfriend and jumped over a rail to her death in the marble courtyard. Now there are signs saying, “Jangan larangan.” – don’t lean. The rails are solid and chest-height on the average woman, so it wasn’t an accident that she fell.

In Carrefoure Mall there is a good photo store, Buana. It has all the latest Nikon and Canon prosumer bodies, and lenses up to 300mm/f4.

In Indonesia, it’s common for insane people to walk the streets naked. Until now I had never seen that, but this time I saw a naked man walking along a major road near YSR mall. Even Indonesian people along the street paused for the spectacle. (What’s funny is that Indonesian people think Westerners are crazy for walking around in the daytime due to the heat, pollution and often rain.)

A Chinese businessman leased the basement of YSR mall and built a 20-lane bowling alley, fitness gym and billiards complex. Quite nice really, though seldom busy.

I rented a Kijang for 350,000 Rp and went to Pantai Cermin (Mirror Beach) for an afternoon and took some photos. It’s 90 minutes from Medan and popular with locals. A small zoo and swimming pool are also adjacent to the beach.

My trip from Medan’s Polonia airport back to Jakarta was one of my toughest. I had a Sriwijaya airline ticket, and since they’re a new low-cost carrier they don’t have a real check-in counter. So I had to fight mobs of people for an hour to check-in without air-conditioning, then more of the same to check my bag. I ended up throwing out the clothes I was wearing that day. And of course they were late a couple hours.

Jakarta

I was fortunate to have quite good weather during my trip as many parts of the country had flooding. It rained only once, while I was sleeping.

A good taxi rate from the airport to much of Jakarta is 120,000 Rp including tolls. (Tolls are almost 20,000 Rp.)

I went to Plaza Semanggi for an evening. There’s a pretty serious RC helicopter shop there. In the cinema I watched the dreadful “Golden Compass.”

I had a 10-hour transit layover in Narita. After sleeping a little, I looked around some of the way over-priced duty-free stores (Akihabara Electronics uses retail prices) and did some web surfing in the Yahoo! lounge.

My seatmate back was a wonderful young Japanese woman who had previously studied at Cal State. For some reason they upgraded me to Executive Class, with 2 seats across, making life comfortable.