En route to Manado

Need coffee. Now.

My goodness, my system is not handling this 'getting up in the middle of the night' thingy well. I feel like Methusalem, and probably look accordingly. So thankyouthankyouthankyou Starbucks for putting up shop at our transit airport while 'en route' to Manado. You just made my day, and you made the prospect of hanging around in a transit terminal for 3 hours a whole lot more bearable. Thankyouthankyouthankyou. 

My first time (1974) at Makassar (then Ujung Pandang and now Makassar again) airport, I remember we landed at an airstrip smack in the middle of nowhere, and we walked from the airplane to the one-building terminal (and vice versa, obviously). Now, I'm sitting next to a fancy Polo Ralph Lauren store across from the Oakley store and it feels like I'm in the international terminal of San Francisco airport. Except for the announcements, that is. Still can't make out the language.

Someone told me recently that Indonesia is the fastest growing economy in Asia and that is very obvious as I see the world stroll by. Vuitton handbags are combined with head scarves, and little kids run by in Hilfiger shirts. This is not the image of Ujung Pandang that I left with the last time around. 

Must be our food

The other thing that strikes me again is how tall I am compared to the locals.  Of course this was something I already knew going in, but still. I have a different gene pool than the average Dutch person, so I'm convinced that it's because of our food. Or whatever else we put in our system that makes us so tall. I'm not supposed to be this tall. Especially when I look around me out here. I feel like a giant. A giant Methusalem, that is.

From Drop Box