Glued To CNN

Tuesday, October 30. We spent the first part of this day glued to our room's TV watching CNN report on the storm. Marty has a co-op on 24th Street on Manhattan and learned on TV that there's no electricity below 39th. His place is dark.

Once we pulled ourselves away from CNN, we wandered around in our section of Medan. The shopping mall photo with this post tells the story of the modernization of the city. It's not entirely a good story in a city now choked with pollution and traffic, each vehicle fighting for an extra inch of space on crumbling city streets.

At 4pm we headed to the Medan Airport for a one-hour flight to Penang in Malaysia. Arriving in Penang is like arriving on any of the world's fully developed resort islands. Wide boulevards, massive condo buildings, clean, orderly, sea views, and lots of light after dark. A real shocker after Sumatra. For the next two nights we are at the restored E & O Hotel (in the British Colonial days it was called the Eastern & Oriental) in George Town (a World Heritage site) on Penang. We are very, very comfortable, as you can see.