Palembang

More bus…We stopped for lunch at a local truck stop. The VIP A/C room had the worst mie goreym we’d had to date…reheated noodles. John decided that pedang food actually comes from the Buddhist/Hindu concept of rebirth. One day, you’re a fried chicken served over and over- the next day, you could come back as nasi goreng. The highest stage (nibana) is beef rendang. It may also apply to the mandi- and the continual resuse of water.

We finally reached Palembang, a port city, known primarily as a “transit town”. We DB&B (drop bags and bolt) heading towards town.

It was so hot and muggy, that we caved and hired a becak (two becak’s) to get us to the local “best hotel”. It was an A/C hotel- filled with local businessmen. A few beers and a chance to see the locals and we checked out the restaurants in the area…mostly pedang. So, in desperation, we headed back to our hotel to join the group “graduation dinner”. Other than the occasional complete power outage and the Chef Boy-ar-di style spaghetti, it was an uneventful dinner. At the end of the meal, John gave the waitress enough rupees to get 30,000 back in change (rather than the miscellaneous coins that accumulate with small change). We got our receipt and no change and kept trying to ask for change. The waitress insisted that we paid the exact amount. After a lengthy discussion, the manager of the restaurant agreed to check his books at the end of the night to see what happened. At this point, we tried to tell him that 30,000 rupees wasn’t really all that important (it’s about $3.00)….but we’d now disrupted the system. At about 11:30 p.m., we got a knock on the door and they proudly handed us our 30,000 rupees. I think that our uninterrupted sleep would have been worth more to us.
Outside our hotel, there was a constant drag race going on. Local kids were racing cars around the lake, screeching tires while around them was a steady stream of bemo’s, becak’s and pedestrians.