The owner of our guesthouse in Penang brings us to the airport. We are actually a bit early since we only took our hand luggage. The time at the airport passes quickly, and before we know it we are on the plane.

Our Plane to Indonesia

The ride is very short, after completing our immigration papers, it's time to land. We are the first to leave the plane and we pass through immigration in no time. We take the bus to Medan and walk the final part to our hotel. Almost everyone on the street greets us and asks us for a picture. We stop at a bakery and buy some delicious pastries. The ladies of the bakery are very happy with our visit and ask us for a picture…lots of them.

Photoshoot at the Bakery

We arrive at the hotel we booked on booking.com and it appears that we didn’t see that it comes with a shared bathroom, how did this happen? We go for a walk around Medan and in the meanwhile we look for another hotel, but they are dirty and smelly. Then we prefer our hotel, at least it’s clean. There's really nothing to see in Medan. As in Malaysia, we see many restaurants along the way that serve their food cold, oh no. We order fried rice, at least this is warm. In the evening, we go to McDonalds, located at the Merdeka Walk, which is the only nice place in Medan.

Merdeka Walk

On the way to our hotel, a passenger on a scooter grabs the camera around Kitty's neck and drives off.
On Monday we rent a scooter in our guesthouse, a real rip-off: 20 euros for a day! Unfortunately, we have no other option to get to Belawan (see shipping Mickey). As soon as we have the bike we drive to an IMI office, here we want to apply for an extension of our Carnet. Once there, we notice that there are some things missing from the baggage: a pair of clasps, our pocket knife, batteries, a karabiner, memory cards and our cruise control. Apparently, we will have to be more careful in Indonesia. At the IMI office, we receive bad news, they say that only their office in Jakarta has the authority to extend our Carnet. This is especially bad news because we only have three days left to cover 2,000 kilometres and a ferry. We have to get the extension four weeks before the expiry date. Back at our hotel, we set the alarm clock at 5 am...

Indonesia, Here We Come

More info on www.wijzijnweg.org