This was my first visit to mainland Sumatera. Many years ago I visited Batam, an island on on the province of Riau on the eastern part of Sumatera, as a transit point for several visits to Singapore.
I left Jakarta at 9.40 am with two of my old law school friends i.e Arief and Phillip, flying on Lion Air, and arrived at Jambi City airport at 10.50 am. We were picked at the airport by a driver of Chairul, another old friend at law school.
Chairul held a wedding ceremony for his eldest daughter i.e. Mirna on Saturday at 4 pm, and he arranged that we stay at the Ratu Hotel next to the Ratu Convention Center where the wedding party was held on Sunday 11 am - 3 pm.
As soon as we have put our luggage at the hotel, we took a taxi to Jamtos (Jambi Town Square) shopping mall for lunch. Later in afternoon we took a taxi to a place on the side of the Batanghari River which seems to be a place where people of the city of Jambi entertained themselves. We ate roasted Corn cob and Padang Satay.
In the evening we walked to nearby Ramayana Shopping mall which looked like malls in Jakarta with Hypermart, Kentucky Fried Chicken, A&W, etc.
We returned to the hotel using three Ojek i.e. motor-cycle taxi, one for each of us. It was still early so we spent 3 hours at hotel's Karaoke until 2 am.
On Sunday morning we have breakfast at the hotel after that we went to the wedding party at 11.30 am. Chairul was happy when we shook hands with him, his wife, the bride and groom and parents.
The party itself was a big fat wedding party with a whole lots of guests, organizing committee, delicious food, etc.
At 1.30 pm, we returned to the hotel, packed our bags, took a car taxi to look for souvenirs on our way to the airport. Our plane departed at around 6 pm and arrived in Jakarta at 7 pm.
The trip was enjoyable, but it would be much better if better public transportation are available i.e, argo-metered taxi and minibuses with better routes. Besides, more arts and souvenir shops should also be available in the city. This are important if Jambi wants to attract more tourists from other provinces and other countries.
