Wedding, Palm Oil Plantations, and Durian

Recently, several of our staff members have married, which has given me an excuse to learn more about Indonesian culture. For wedding parties, parents of the bride and groom organize separate events and invite all their acquaintances. Mingling with other guests is not encouraged, as party goers are expected to eat quickly, take a picture, and vacate for the next round of visitors. In the background, women in headscarves sang Karaoke and danced, while the bride and groom repeatedly change outfits that represented their ethnic makeup. As Zaya commented, I look like a normal person within a postcard.

On the wedding trip, we traveled several hours outside of Medan, which allowed me to digest the vast palm oil and rubber plantations of Sumatra. For some time, I have read about the vast expanses of jungle that has been converted to plantations. In the Indonesian newspapers, there are weekly reports of tigers and elephants coming down to loot villages for food, because their native habitat is being destroyed. Seeing the vastness of plantations is quite sad. Besides growing corn or grazing a few animals between smaller palm trees, there is no other agriculture activity within these thousand acre plantations.

During the trip, I had the unfortunate experience of tasting my first durian fruit. Quite unlike anything I have ever tasted, Durian tastes like sweetened rotten garlic. Not only is the taste awful, but the Durian also has incredibly high levels of cholesterol. If given a choice, I would choose mutton fat and mare’s milk.