Running in Medan

It's Sunday again - my favourite day of relaxing by running through desa (village) after village, finding out that every little nook and cranny of the Polonia (the Medan airport) area extends to the road leading to Brastagi.... Hmmm, maybe that's the local equivalent of the adage 'Every road leads to Rome'....

Everytime I run, I take a slightly different route from the last one. Today's sojourn led to more surprises. A different turn brought me to a narrow wooden bridge with gaps (what's new?) that can swallow an elephant's foot. The largest vehicle it can take is the becak (motorised tricycle), so I traipsed gingerly across it, holding up the numerous motorcycles that converge mysteriously from nowhere. Mistakenly thinking it will be a dead end, what a surprise when the slope brought me to the busy main street with the sign 'Kebun Binatang Medan - 5 km' (zoo). Ambitiously I attempted to find the place which Lonely Planet dismisses as 'well worth avoiding' but alas, the legs were starting to flood with lactic acid, so i wisely decide to save my energy for another day...

So the fauna-watching has to wait again.... after the Bukit Lawang postponement...