Immigration Day

Our outing today involved a trip to Pekanbaru to the Immigration office to get our fingerprints taken. This will allow us to get our proper work visas and the paperwork we will need in order to get our shipment out of customs. We were very glad to get this over with because our appointment there had been rescheduled about 4 times. This was due to the constant power outages they are having in Pekanbaru. They tell us the outages are due to low water levels in rivers. In fact our scheduled appointment today was at 9:30 AM but as we were on our way we received a cell phone call that our appointment had been changed to 1:30.

This change gave us a chance to get a few things done in the city which we needed to do. We were able to pick up a few groceries as well as a cable in order to get cable TV here. We actually get some decent channels including Disney, Nickelodeon, Discovery, and Animal Planet.

Anyway after we picked up a few things we met up with the other teaching couple, Joe and Aroma and family, to have some good old fashion Original Recipe from the Colonel at KFC. They had a small playland that we knew the kids would enjoy so that got the vote for lunch. Now I am not all that certain that here in Indonesia they didn't take some creative liberties with the Colonel's 11 herbs and spices. I am guessing that they bumped it up to about 14 or so with one of them being cayenne pepper. Now I love the hot stuff, so for me this was great. The kids and Kathi on the other hand were trying to get copious amounts of water consumed. After the first few bites they stuck to the sticky rice and fries which came with the meals. I however ate like a king.

After lunch, since most of the crew was still al little hungry from the lack of food, Kathi sent me across the hall to a great little coffee and doughnut place called J-Co. I picked up a doughnut for everyone, an iced coffee for me and on Kathi's orders, an iced tea for her. They had four types of tea and so I decided to go with the Thai Tea, assuming it was somewhat like Chai Tea. Well let's just say the only thing those two drinks had in common was the hai tea. I thought I could be in trouble when they handed me a drink with 3 levels. Black on the bottom, white in the middle, and orange on the top. Kathi's face upon first taste was awesome. Picture someone's first taste of mud pie. Not the Cheese Cake Factory Mud Pie, but the one you made in your back yard when you were 6 years old. Upon my sampling of it I was able to detect a strong creme flavor, paired with a tea taste trumped by the aftertaste of carrot juice. Yum!

This picture was one of the many Mosques we passed by but was by far the most decorative. I hope to next time we get into Pekanbaru take some pictures of some of the government buildings which are pretty cool. They have a beautiful building for their library but we couldn't stop in the middle of the road to get a picture. We will get to it next time.