Medan

There is a city called Medan on the island of Sumatra. There is absolutely no fucking a thing to do here, however, tourists often come to the city. Medan is a transit point on the way to the national park, where orangutans and other tropical bastards are found.

As many as 2 million people live in Medan. What they all do is impossible to imagine, because there is simply nothing in the city.

The city center is just endless rows of identical houses and the highway between them.

Everything is covered with some kind of social advertising, or political agitation.

I found a cool lamppost.

And the coolest water tower.

Right in the very center there is a decent shopping center, which houses the only currency exchange for the whole city and you can eat delicious food.

Luxury housing was attached to the shopping center. In the Asian sense, luxury housing is any house over 25 floors with access to shopping directly from the elevator.

There are exactly two attractions in Medan. The first is the city mosque in the Moorish style.

An object of colossal importance for the residents of Medan. Even the passage next door was decorated in the style of a mosque.

The second is the Maimun Palace, where the Sultan of Delhi once sat. It’s cool to be a Delhi sultan. You can have your own huge wasteland right in front of the house.

I really like the description of the palace on tourist dumps: “Both Indonesians themselves and travelers from other countries are eager to see it.” Seriously? Yes, I barely forced myself to walk to it, even though my hotel was five minutes away on foot.

The palace, of course, is terribly primitive by our royal standards.

Faded portraits of local nobility hang inside.

Spontaneous trade is broken up in the former living room.

I got on an excursion for schoolchildren.

People in Medan are not scared. There are very few tourists here, so a white man is literally mobbed and asked to take a picture. Only “Senk yu” and “Salam alaikum” know English.

Due to inexperience, I booked a hotel in Medan for as many as 7 days. I thought that after a trip to the jungle to the orangutans, my legs would hurt for several days. The trip turned out to be much less difficult than I thought, and Medan was much more difficult. So the rest of the days I sat in the hotel and worked.

Fortunately, there was a very interesting hotel in a historic house in the city. The rooms smelled damp, but it was the smell of elite dampness.

There were antique vases, paintings and statues in the foyer. The wallpaper was peeling off, and the leather on the chairs had cracked for a long time, but this only added charm.

There was an absolutely fantastic temperature controller in the room, originally from the 70s. The temperature is set by a handle similar to the gearbox in the car. If the handle is not fixed at the desired cooling level, it smoothly crawls up to the “off” state.

It is a pity that the regulator has not worked for a long time and remained only for beauty. The usual air conditioner is now engaged in cooling.