Sumatra - first day

---

After a 30 hour journey including 2 flights and a 12 hours stay at Kuala Lumpur International Airport we finally arrived in Medan on Sumatra, Indonesia. We queued up to get our Visa on arrival what took us quite a while as the guy at the counter was putting some visas into other passports which vanished in his pockets later. He was having a cigarette while doing that and didn't seemed to be in a hurry at all. Once we had the visas in our passports we went through immigration and our bags were already waiting for us. No losses so far. Yay!

As soon as we left the airport building some Indonesian guys were surrounding us and wanted to take us to 1000s of different places. We picked one, who turned out to be just the sales person for another guy. But anyway he brought us to the place where we planned to stay. Unfortunately, the place was full and the one next door as well. But SE Asia wouldn't be SE Asia if not another guy would already wait to show us "great hotel - not far". It really was not far but instead of great he should have just described it as green. Green from the outside, various shades of green on the walls in our room, a different green in our bathroom, green sheets, green towels and a green based picture. Lovely. After an amazing cold (no irony) shower we went to get some food. The food was great and afterwards we went to get some flip-flops as they are going to be the absolute must have for me in the next months, years. Who knows? Once we were all sorted we went back to the green room in the green hotel and fell asleep on the green sheets. We slept for about 5 hours and there wasn't anything that could have possibly woken us up - not even the prayers that came through the speakers of the Great Mosque next door nor the screaming children. After another wonderful cold shower we went to Medaka Walk to grab some food. Afterwards we made a very brave decision - getting into a Becak which is a little cabin attached to a moped. We squeezed onto the little bench (Ryan shouldn't have had all the wild boar in Germany) and off we went. The driver made his way through the traffic and nothing could stop him apart from the train tracks in which we almost got stuck. I was clinging onto Ryan and hoped not to fall out and I forced myself not to think about whether these little things can actually fall over. Eventually, we arrived at the Great Mosque safely and Ryan was ready for a drink. We headed back to the nice little corner cafe where we had food earlier. This time we didn't come for food but as food - mosquito food. They started feasting at me immediately - even though I was covered into mosquito repellent. They didn't bite Ryan though as it's more effective hanging around with me than putting on mosquito repellent.

And now I am sitting on the bed in the green room in the green hotel and will have a nice cold shower once again for today. Afterwards we will fall asleep on the green sheets before we head to Bukit Lawang tomorrow to see the orang utans.

Oh, by the way, it's about 30 degrees here. Almost forgot to mention that ;-)

---