Singapore is quite a futuristic city...
...But it does have some open areas.
One evening I saw my neighbor getting a haircut from my hostel window.
After exploring Singapore I boarded a ferry to head to the nearby Indonesian island of Batam. The next day I took a much longer ferry ride to the city of Dumai in Sumatra. On my second day there I met a guy named Edi in a restaurant. He was from a town a couple of hours away and he was in Dumai to hand over the last installment of his home mortgage to his bank. He offered to give me a ride to his town to show me around and introduce me to the the kids that he teaches English to in the evenings (he studied English in college). After some deliberation I said 'Sure, thanks!'
The two hour ride on very rough roads with heavy truck traffic while I was clinging onto the back of Edi's motor scooter was quite an experience. When we got to his town he introduced me to his wife (shown below with me and Edi) and two young sons, and he offered to let me stay there for the night. Over the next day and a half he brought me around to his friend's printing shop, his cousin's house, two of his English classes, and even where he works at a huge Chevron oil field at the edge of town. It might be more accurate to say that the town is at the edge of the oil field, as you can see
here.
The kid in the light blue shirt is one of Edi's sons:
Edi brought me to a plot of land outside of town where he has a small palm plantation. Every two weeks he and his sons harvest the ripe fruits to sell to a distributor and eventually be pressed into oil. He described how a few years ago many of his trees were damaged by wild elephants. He also talked about how his cousin has a much larger plantation and has to deal with intimidation from organized crime groups. To counter this, the cousin encouraged his sons to join the police and army, which they did. Part of his encouragement was to pay the large sums of money (bribes, basically) required for someone to join the police or army. Related to this corruption, he warned me about some clashes between students and police (news article
here) that I should steer clear of.
Before I left town on an overnight bus to the major Sumatran city of Medan, Edi put me in touch with his Brother Irwan who lives there. Over the last couple days Irwan has hosted me much like Edi did, although I've been sleeping in a hostel. Tomorrow I plan to say goodbye to the hospitality of Edi's family and head to a town called Bukit Lawang.
A hundred thousand rupiah is equivalent to about ten dollars...
