What is Surabaya like?

So after being here for almost 2 months, I finally got to see more of Surabaya than Supermak, Darmo Permai Seletan (my neighbourhood) and the fitness centre. Jackie (the principal of the school) and Haries (her husband who also works in the administration part of the school) took us (David M., the new intern and I) for a drive around the city.

We started from our house around 10 am and had an action packed day. We drove through some Saturday traffic, typical of Surabaya. Haries and Jackie pointed out some interesting things about the city. There is a lot of Dutch colonial architecture around, but even more has been torn down for new developments before they started preserving buildings as heritage sites.

They told us about the zoo here. Apparently it has a really bad reputation. They have a hard time keeping animals alive because of the pollution in the city and the poor conditions in general. But the zoo also provides some of the only green space in the downtown area..... so what do you do? More on this to come if I make a trip to the zoo soon.

We also went to the port. I wasn't allowed to take pictures because there was a U.S. coast guard ship in the port and there was absolutely no cameras or filming allowed. God Bless America...

Then we checked out the Chinese area and the Arab area of town. Haries' father had an agriculture business in the Chinese area. He showed us his old shop and where he spent a lot of time playing as a child. I thought that was neat. We also stopped at the oldest mosque in surabaya. It is the burial site of one of their saints. Again no pictures, I felt weird about whipping out my camera here. We could really see too much there anyways because Jackie and I didn't have long sleeves, our hair covered or long pants on.....

So this building used to be the Canadian embassy building. Seems like they moved around a few times. It was also a building of a major Indonesian company who manufactures silverware among other things. I think the company starts with an M....


Okay. So then we went to a cigarette factory. I kept thinking Haries was saying "secret" factory, but that was just because of his accent. We went for lunch first at the cafe next door and then we toured around. The whole place smelled great. Like cloves. It reminded me of Christmas. This is a replica of the stand where the founder sold some goods to start out his business. The wife would stash the cash in the hallow bamboo and break it open when they needed money.... like a bamboo bank.


Haries insited on taking pictures of me :) This is a gian kiln where they would dry the tobacco and cloves if it was raining.

This is some furniture from their home. Kinda neat. They guy was a horse nut. He had a bunch of horses that raced and stuff. That's what all of the trophies are about.


This picture is for dad. Here are some old fashion bikes that were in the museum . Pretty spiffy looking.


They apparently had a marching band from 1991 till recently for the company. Many of the workers from the factories were also in this band. They won international competitions and everything.

This is me. Selling out and offering up some cancer sticks. All of the cigarettes from the factories in Indonesia are hand made. The minimum quota for a worker is around 300/hour.

Then we went to this big Buddhist temple on the sea shore. Tide was very out. That's David, Haries and Jackie looking out to sea.

Statue at the temple.
Again, there of course had to be a picture of me.

Giant Buddha statue. It was very big and very awesome.

Then we went to Tunjungan Plaza. This mall is effing big. 6 floors at least I think and everyone is massive!
Outside of the mall they were celebrating something by having a bunch of food stands around and some music and stuff.

This is Haries ordering us some traditional Indonesian food. It was just okay. not my fave.


Then on Sunday we went to the mountains to check out a potential area for a camping trip for the kids at school. But it was really raining hard on there so we didn't stick around. We went to this hotel and they had an awesome water slide octopus thing.

Then we went for a little walk down the street to find the famous barbecued corn. And we also found a lot of bananas too. There are so many varieties here. Its a good thing I love bananas. I am still trying to figure the varieties out. Apparently if there are black ants on them that means they are sweet.

Here is the guy barbecuing our corn.



This is David using his "method" to eat the corn!