Thursday, May 10, 2007

Through Singapore and Medan to Aceh!

I spent two days in Singapore to get a business visa to enter Indonesia, purchase some computer equipment, meet up with some old (and new friends, and to go to the US Embassy to add blank visa pages to my passport. At left was my home in Singapore: the Copthorne King's Hotel.

The trip to the US Embassy represented a sad sign of the times. Instead of being a relatively friendly building in the middle of town, as it was in the early 1990's, it is now at the edge of town. It is a huge, fortress-like building, huddled for mutual protection (it seems) with its two neighbors, the British and Australian High Commissions (embassies). Submachinegun-total Ghurka guards patrol the outside of the embassies (mainly the British one), and presumably the US marine guards are on the inside, ever watchful for intruders. (Many, many US embassies are like that these days: built for security, not for open-ness.)

Anyway, enough text. Below is a pictorial of my two days in Singapore, and my overnight in Medan, Indonesia, on the way to Aceh.

Early morning traffic outside the King's Hotel. Across the street is the Singapore River, district once full of dinghy warehouses but now transformed into a trendy, yuppie restaurant and entertainment district.


Near the hotel is the Jalan Besar HDB Estate (one of the numerous public housing facilities in which the majority of Singaporeans live).


At the base of the hi-rise buildings are the shops and play facilities for children. Being one of the older facilities, the relatively small Jalan Besar estate is populated predominantly by an older population. Other, mammoth, housing estates are located away from the central business district of Singapore. They are, in themselves, bustling residential and commercial centers.


Grocery stores, butchers, all kinds of businesses, and restaurants line the ground floor level of the housing estate buildings.


A peek inside one of the restaurant areas reveals a food court with numerous indivdual stalls serving up an incredible variety of, in this case, Chinese regional cooking.


Fans of duck and chicken dishes won't be disappointed! ("Aaaflaack! "--- Joe Walker)


Prep work is the same in commercial kitchens everywhere!


This stall's menu board shows a huge variety of potsticker and noodle dishes.


And then I smelled them! DURIANS! The King of Fruits, the Fruit of Kings. Learn more at Durian On-line and at the Wikepedia. The Durian On-line site captures the enthusiasm of real durian fans. It's an acquired taste; once acquired, it will seize you and will not let you go. Yes, I love durians. (My Michigan license plate is Durian.)


As it turns out, the Jalan Besar HDB Housing Estate is right next to what was my office when I worked for a couple of years as construction manager for the Burger King Corp.'s Asia Pacific Office in Singapore. We bought many of our electrical things (transformers, adaptors, etc.) from Mr. Lim and Miss Gu of the small electrial shop near the office. I dropped in for a visit, my first in, oh, 12 years or so. Yes, they remembered me! From them, I bought a bunch of plug adaptors to use in Indonesia. They poured me a cup of coffee and we had a nice visit.


I then proceeded to the Chinatown MRT (subway) station a couple of blocks away.. Singapore has a very nice subway system to take you around.


The interior is nice, clean and spic-n-span. It's usually very crowded during rush hour, but in off-hours, it's very comfortable. It's airconditioned, fast, and, of course, no chewing gum (<--- click on link) !!! I took the MRT to the City Hall stop (after one transfer), and walked to the Funan Centre computer mall. I bought some spare parts and an external hard disk for my laptop to take to Indonesia. This is one of two main computer malls in Singapore. This one is more consumer-oriented, while the other is more hobbyist-oriented.


Then on to one of the fine American dining establishments in the city... to meet up for lunch with a couple of old friends and colleagues from my Burger King Asia Pacific days. (No, we just met here --- didn't eat here!)


Dennis Koh and Joyce Ying worked with me in the Burger King regional office. Dennis was our training manager. He recently left the BK Corp. and is now a free-lance trainer. Joyce is still with BKC and helps franchisees straighten out their supply chain problems. ("Where are those ##@@!!?? whopper patties we ordered from Australia!?!")


After a short nap at the hotel to prepare the more gruelling meet-up at night, SC Leong ("Jaguar" --- front right) and his wife (the only lady in the photo) picked me up for drinks and food with the Singapore crew of the Malsingmaps mapping enthusiasts. (Mrs. Leong is a graduate of Western Michigan U in Kalamazoo!) These folks and their counterparts in Malaysia are all users of Garmin GPS units. Because Garmin had no maps of either country when they started selling their products in Malaysia and Singapore, the Malsingmaps members took matters in their own hands and created the maps themselves, with volunteers sending in tracks and mappers using them to make the maps. The maps are updated fortnightly, and are posted at their website for the Garmin (and now Mapking)-using public. They are an incredible bunch, and I am honored to be associated with them. Go visit their website and look around! If you're a Garmin user, they will be happy to help you if you post a question in the forums there. We went to the BrewWerkz brew pub, and had me a last bit of boutique beer before going off to Banda Aceh!


The next day, after getting my extra passport pages at the fortress that is the US Embassy, I went to Singapore's Changi airport to fly out to Medan, Indonesia. I whiled away the hours at the laptop station with free hi-speed internet. The one next to the coke can is mine.


It was already dark when we got into Medan, Indonesia. But in the morning, from the hotel room, I could see the provincial mosque (see the minaret and the dome), the government buildings with Dutch-style roofs, and the white shopping mall that dwarfs the mosque. The mall has the logo of Sogo, a Japanese department store chain.


This old "Dutch colonial"-style mansion was also visible from my hotel room window.


A quick trip after breakfast to the airport and into the domestic terminal waiting room, sitting around for the Aceh flight to be called. Medan is a major terminal in the island of Sumatra, which is about the size of California.


The Boeing 737 that flew us from Medan to the Indian Ocean side of Sumatra, plopping us down in Banda Aceh.


And waiting there at the Aceh airport was the smiling face of old Peace Corps buddy Juan Gonzalez, who's the deputy director of the project I'm on, and my direct supervisor. I had arrived!

4 comments:

Justin said...

Remember the old Cockpit Hotel? Do you remember?

Howard said...

Ah, the home away from home! I know you LOVED it Justin! (Admit it!) But it was too expensive this time around...

Rich W said...

Yes, the change in Embassy atmosphere has been a downer.

Glad you got to meet up with old friends and new - I haven't always kept up with my former co-workers/colleagues as well as I might.

As to the durian, Teresa enjoys it, and I can do a durian shake, but straight up is beyond me.

Take care

Howard said...

Durian shake? eeeewww! It's funny. I like durian (the fruit), but I don't like durian-flavored things.