palembang

i arrived at palembang around 7 pm. at the airport's exit, taxi drivers swarmed around me, so i decided to go back to the airport and book a taxi from there. i was upset coz i thought i gave 100,000 rupiah to the lady, but she was insisting that i only gave her 10,000. both bills were of the same color. or so i thought. anyway, since we couldn't understand each other, i boarded the taxi that would bring me to novotel palembang. i haven't had dinner yet and i was in 2 flights the same day and had trouble getting a taxi. at the hotel, they put me in a room that would make me walk all the way half through the entire floor area of the hotel. when i reached my room, i dropped everything, got a glass for drinking water. to my horror, i dropped the glass and broke it. what a first 2 hours in palembang!

anyway, i told myself to get a nice dinner instead... all the bad luck were already taken by the broken glass. i had nice seafood nasi goreng and fried noodles. thursday morning, novotel staff got me a regular taxi for my first meeting. but i didn't get the taxi to wait for me to go back to the hotel, so i didn't have any choice but to take becak (pedicab). i met with 2 more respondents, both of them were very nice. for dinner, i met with hp's dewi, who was very nice to accompany me to palembang's tourist spots such as the musi bridge, kuto besak, palembang grand mosque and the palembang fountain. dewi, together with her brothers, also talked to a lot of people so that i can enter the grand mosque, and i did! that was my first time inside a mosque. they were trying to get me inside the mosque's center prayer hall but it was closed for a feast of muhammad's birthday the following day.

the night ended with a nice meal of local delicacies - pempek and tekwan! nice! friday was all about meetings and checking out IT outlets and mall-based PC fair. at 6 pm, i took my flight back to jakarta.