Day 15. Medan. Had a pretty lazy day inside shopping centres in the cool today. We went to Sun Plaza & Palladium Plaza & the cinema and saw Teenage Ninja Turtles 4. It was….as you would expect it to be. The audience is really funny & different to a cinema audience at home. They laugh so loudly at the jokes and yell things at the actors on screen.
The red traffic lights in Medan have a countdown to when they will turn green, starting from 40. Five, four, three, two, one GO! While we were sitting in traffic, a one-legged beggar in dirty rags shuffled into the road on his hands and bum begging from the cars.
We have our photos taken by a lot of stunned Indonesians, mostly teenagers. They see us, have a look of shock & surprise on their faces, grab their friend’s arm and point at us. Some are blatant and just snap a photo of us. A lot of them will chat to us first and then ask to take a picture. The funniest people are the ones who pretend they are not taking a photo of us and position their phone under their arm, trying to hide it and then take a picture & quickly walk away, with a second glance at us over their shoulder. We always smile and wave. For 15 days now we have had our photo taken dozens of times a day. We think it’s quite funny because it’s pretty novel to us. But imagine being a celebrity and enduring the paparazzi for years….
