Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Medan but we were on our way to it, vanishing into FinnAir from Heathrow to Kuala Lumpar, via Helsinki naturally, then a little jump of an hour from KL to Medan with a budget budget airline of Air Asia.
So we landed in a teeming city it was hot sweaty and very exciting. The hotel that Hol had booked was the Hotel Deli River just on the outskirts of the heaving mass, it seemed a simple job of catch a cab for the short ride. Getting a cab was easy the short ride turned into quite a long one. This was due to the huge amount of traffic, not surprising really, the state of the roads and the continual lack of signs to anywhere. This wasn't really a problem as we had no idea where we were going anyway. Eventually we, well the driver did, found the hotel and had the unsettling experience of our bags being whisked away by two total strangers. This we found was standard operating practice and we sank gratefully into an air-conditioned slumber.
The following morning we were woken by the pleasant twittering of small dickie birds, that turned out to be Tree Sparrows in the main. However there were pleasant surprises in the shape of sunbirds, Leafbirds and Ioras. Also whizzing around were a couple of species of Kingfisher, including Collared an almost universal species. The highlight however was a Buffy Fish Owl optimistically trying for dinner in the hotel swimming pool. I have also come to be pretty suspicious of anybody that shouts out Asian Palm Swift or Black nest Swiftlet cos they all look the same except in these two cases one is bigger than the other. It is a funny thing that when you see something flying through the ait you assume that it is a bird, well one of the first things that I saw "flying" turned out to be a lizard and another one was a Plantation Squirell both very cute but at the time baffling. Sorry Ian no bird photos but I'm sure you will enjoy some of the ones I took.
I had had thought that I could access the river but Medan turned out to be rather sprawling and if not intimidating then rather overwhelming.