Indonesia!

I'll get to the title subject in a little bit, but first I'll start with my Friday night.

On Friday night, I headed to Lau Pa Sat, a market and open-air eating area that is famous for it's satay vendors that open up each night.  In case you don't know, satay consists of thin strips of meat grilled on skewers, which are eaten with a really tasty spicy peanut sauce.  If you're in Singapore, Lau Pa Sat is the place to eat satay, and when my friends heard that I had not gone yet, we decided a trip was necessary.  The architecture of this market is really cool.  Although the structure has been moved several times, it's pretty much looks the same as it did in 1894 when it was built.  Here's a picture (not mine):

According to the website where I found this picture, Lau Pa Sat is "largest Victorian filagree cast-iron structure in Southeast Asia".  The satay vendors actually set up shop on a street behind the main structure.  This is a busy city street during the day but is closed off at 7 or so each night so that the vendors can set up their carts and tables and start cooking delicious satay!

Late Saturday night, I received a fratntic text message from my friend Natasha.  She had had a school break the following week, and she was lamenting that she had done nothing exciting in her week off and now her break was coming to an end.  Natasha wanted to do something exciting with her last day of freedom, so she proposed a trip to Batam on Sunday.  I was game, so we agreed to meet up the next morning to catch the ferry.

Batam is one of two Indonesian islands that are very close to Singapore (the other is Bintan).  Batam is about 20 km south of Singapore; about a 45 minute ferry ride.  It's not very touristy and lots of the island are still pretty undeveloped.  However, we figured it sounded good enough for a day trip.

On our way there, we saw huge numbers of cargo ships floating out at sea.  These ships are cargo ships without cargo, a very visible symbol of the economic recession.  There are huge fleets anchored here and off the coat of Malaysia, just biding their time until shipping picks up again.  I only know this because there was a very interesting article about it in the New York Times (I think it was the Times) about it a couple weeks ago.   
The ferry docked at a port called Sekupang.  Here's a picture as the ferry is pulling in:

 
 I paid $10 US for a visa (this was so silly, I had to convert my Singapore dollars to US dollars, so that I could bring them to Indonesia with me to pay this fee), which they printed out on a really cool machine and stuck in my passport.  We grabbed a taxi and headed to a place called "Waterfront", where we were hopeful we could find a beach to hang out on.  (Funny story, this same taxi driver ended up being our taxi driver all day, he gave us his phone number and told us to call him anytime we wanted to go anywhere.  We figured we were being scammed, but when we asked around it turned out he was actually giving us better rates than other taxis would have.  Guess we got lucky there.)  The Waterfront was in fact a beach park, albeit a very crowded one.   

I'm pretty sure I was the only white person in at least a 10 mile radius, so we got some stares.  The park was pretty old and rundown, but there was a large park in which some kind of event was taking place involving a stage and a speaker.  Maybe a concert?  A company picnic?  A church service?  We had no idea.  We also found a very strange statue.  Here is my friend Natasha with said statue:

After walking around here awhile and baking in the absurdly strong tropical sun, we called our friendly taxi guy and drove to Nagoya, which is pretty much the commerce center of the island.

After eating some lunch of cooked chicken and nasi (rice flavored with coconut milk), we ended up just walking around Nagoya looking at the shops and general scenery.  This lunch was chosen over a huge variety of American fast food options, including KFC, A&W, Pizza Hut and the ubiquitous McDonald's. The McDonald's I expected, but I was pretty surprised that A&W had made it all the way to this podunk Indonesia island!  Everywhere we walked people kept yelling at us.  Initially, I ignored them, assuming they were just yelling to be annoying.  However, once I listened, it turned out they were yelling for two reasons.  One, they kept asking if we wanted a taxi, because they didn't expect us to be voluntarily walking.  Two, they really wanted us to take pictures of them!  Everywhere we went, people would yell and pose and wave and then thank us profusely once we took their picture.Here is one such group:

It was really interesting that the men on the street, for the most part, were quite polite and would either ask us about a taxi, or yell "Welcome to Indonesia!".  Not normally what gets yelled at me on streets of other countries I've travelled to.  The houses, while rundown, were really interesting looking.  They were all painted in bright (albeit faded) colors - reds, pinks, greens, yellows, and blues.  A lot of them had really pretty iron grillwork on the windows and balconies.

At the end of the day, we headed back to the ferry terminal to catch the last boat back to Singapore.  We tried to buy some duty-free alcohol on the way back (it's super expensive here) but apparently duty-free doesn't apply to day-trippers.  All in all, a pretty good day for only making the plans a couple hours beforehand. 

Just now, I ate some grass jelly from one of my flatmates Susan.  Grass jelly looks like dark brown/black Jello and according to Susan tastes either "like nothing at all, or like herbs".  To eat it, you put some honey and maybe a little vinegar on it and then mix it up and eat it.  Yep, pretty much just tastes like honey on Jello.