Being a weekend tourist in Banda Aceh

So I walked around Banda Aceh last Saturday for several hours. I must have said hello like 800 times. The city is about the size of Eugene I'd say. It's fairly big, but it's possible to get pretty far by foot. The mosque was built in the 1800's by the Dutch. It remains  the center of Banda Aceh. I couldn't enter the premises however because I didn't have anything to cover my hair with. I was hoping to find some postcards in the area, but there just isn't a tourist market here. There were a couple of cut fruit stands by the mosque though so I had some pineapple and papaya. 

I have noticed a few modern buildings under or newly constructed. The picture of the building with the red front is close to the main mosque. It was a three story building before the tsunami and when the tsunami came, it wiped out the first floor, taking the whole building down. The mosque wasn't damaged much. I guess it's all in the construction techniques and quality.

There is a lot of fresh fish available here. The fish is so fresh that there weren't even very many flies in the fish market.

I walked to the grocery store last night from the house in the dark using my nifty head lamp. I started walking on the "sidewalk" and then suddenly came to a spot that was missing the cover so that it was a giant black sewage pit. These random black holes, large and small, are quite common.

Well, I've eaten all of my Trader Joes miso soup packages and Lara bars. Really, that's the big news for me. I've been listening to my ipod at night quite a bit simply because going out isn't a great option and there's only so much tv I want to watch. Actually the storms have caused problems for the satellite so that's been out for a couple of days. There's no house cleaning to do which is nice, no laundry to do. I don't have a car or motorcycle, but even if I did, there's not really anywhere to go in the evenings. On Friday, a bunch of people from work did karaoke. It should be noted that alcohol is not available anywhere except at "special" Chinese stores. I went to a dinner event instead.

Good news from home from Christina: p:ear won a design award and her and D are engaged. Pretty cool!