The coffee served to us every morning at Spice Homestay is served Turkish/cowboy style, they pour hot water into a cup full of coffee grounds and the only way to filter it is with your teeth. It tends to settle at the bottom, but the coffee is left dark and strong. One of the surfers we met brought his own French press, but so far I’m digging it Padang style. To my surprise, our first morning the coffee beans were from Starbucks, but it was Sumatra blend, so I guess that’s legit.
Exchanging money here is a lot more difficult than we expected. Most of the banks won’t exchange dollars for rupiah. In Padang we discovered the best exchange rate in town comes from a Chinese-Indonesian man who owns a small street level jewelry store, where the value of our $100 bills depends on their condition and the year they were printed. This seems to hold true across Indonesia, as at a bank at the Bandung train station Kelly discovered that her $100 bills couldn’t be exchanged because they had been folded in a wallet and therefore “broken”.
The summer in Padang is considered the dry season, according to Veronica, and the locals. Veronica told us not to bring a jacket or umbrella. What she didn’t tell us, is that by dry season, they mean it only rains 50% of the time. Luckily it’s always hot in Padang, and we don’t mind getting a little wet.
In Padang you can eat anything you want, so long as it’s either Padang style Indonesian food, Pizza Hut, or KFC.
We keep running into Australian surfers who are headed out to the Mentawai islands. They’re an interesting breed, they obviously speak English, but I can’t understand a word they’re saying.
Mosquitoes love ankles, not toes. They should be called mosquitankles.
You need to get use to the differences here, and accept them in lieu of spending too much time thinking about them. The occasional bugs crawling around the dining table, a cockroach running up your leg and chest, mosquitoes sleeping with you on the floor, it’s all par for the course.
Veronica is, without question, the most popular person in Padang. Within our first 2 days in Padang we’ve run into a dozen people who giggle with excitement at the site of Veronica’s return. Taxi drives, travel agents, café staff, hotel owners, she knows them all.
The girls get a lot of attention in Padang (I’m pretty sure it’s not all for me). Cars constantly honking, people on motorcycles slowing down to cat call, men on the street practicing their English charm, kids shouting “hello mister!”, women giggling. I’ve seen an entire construction site stop their work to holla’ at the girls as they walk by, on more than one occasion. They take the attention very well, always returning it with polite salamat siangs and sores.
Jakarta has Dunkin’ Donuts. Even California doesn’t have dunkin’ donuts. Unfortunately Padang isn’t so lucky.
- Scott
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