A mammoth day of travel on Wedesday brought me home round 1a. I went to bed after washing the travel away and sending the cockroaches scurrying down my drain. I evicted five more of the buggers today upon returning from work. The A/C crapped out in my room too. Perfect time to return to a darn hot place.
The conference I went to was good. The big names in the business were there and I dutifully went to all the plenary sessions despite the throes of gut wrenching spasms. Yes, I got sick. It didn’t really hit until the last day. After Salatiga was one night in Semarang, where it was all I could do to hang out at the hotel bar until 10p. I needed sleep.
Then there were 24 hours in Jakarta aka the big durian. I didn’t go out and try to find trouble this time. I had dinner with my colleagues from UIN who were also going to Medan the next day on a separate flight. We had some Japanese food and they dropped me off at my hotel for another early night in. Rest.
The two hour flight to Medan wasn’t too bad. The Fellow contingent arrived and made it to the two-star hotel in one piece. Medan is the third largest city in the country and the largest on Sumatra. It clearly has a metropolitan feel with the traffic choked streets and its own branch of Starbucks. Medan is the connection point in all those going to Banda Aceh, the area the tsumani struck. Two solid days of colloquium related meetings later, we all scrambled into cars and went sightseeing. We were first taken to the famous food store which sells Medan delicacies. I sat by while the others packed their boxes full of oleh-oleh. Next, we went to the Maimoon Palace built by the sultan of Deli. After that, the Grand Mosque of the city and back to our hotels. A working vacation.
After all that, I made it back in two flights and late at night. I’m battling sleepiness now and can’t wait to succumb to it. I’m behind on emails and I promise I’ll get to y’all by this weekend at the latest. Photos from the trips are in the Dec 06 area.