Mandheling between two earthquakes

Life was pretty (ok, REALLY) crazy through December and January so I got a bit behind on posting about our adventures. I’m doing a bit of catch up now. We managed to fit in a quick weekend trip to Medan, Indonesia at the beginning of December. I flew in on my way back from a work trip in Europe and Marcus traveled for the first time on his own with both of the kids there. Medan is the capital of Sumatra, and is a quick (less than an hour) flight from Penang. Because of the time-zone difference, you actually arrive in Medan before you leave Penang. So, we got to do some time-travel on this trip. Our hotel was luxurious – and we had some fun snapping silly selfies in the big comfy beds. I am very jet-lagged here – but oh-so-happy to be back with my sweeties.

We managed to visit Medan right in-between two earthquakes in Sumatra. Given that Indonesia as a whole, had 483 earthquakes in the past year, I think that the thing that is remarkable here – is that we managed to visit during a tiny window where there weren’t any earthquakes. It is a sprawling city (low density housing), and we don’t have a lot of photos of our time there… because we struggled finding things that we wanted to photograph. It was not a city that won our hearts.

What the trip was about – was coffee. In particular, Sumatran Mandheling and Kopi Luwak. I suppose one of the delightful things about our life right now is that yes – we can pick up and fly to another country… just because of coffee. We visited a fun little coffee house and indulged in treats such as creme brulee coffee.

And rich hot chocolate.

But the highlight of course, was getting to try Kopi Luwak. If you are unfamiliar with Luwak coffee, to describe it tastefully, the coffee goes through a “special process” that allegedly gives it a milder and allegedly better taste. Said another way, the coffee beans are eaten by a cat-like creature who then poops out the beans, and the beans are collected and turned into (very) expensive coffee. It was a bucket list thing for Marcus to try this coffee… and he got to in Medan.

As I said before, Medan did not win our hearts – so we aren’t likely to visit there again. Our weekend there though did make us appreciate how much we love Penang though (we were so glad to get back).