A tour to a coffee processing plant in Sumatera,

On our last trip to Indonesia, we visited Sumatera... The island where you find the famous Sumatera coffee. I was lucky to be able to tour the processing plant, taste and bring some Opal coffee home.

It was pretty an educational tour. First, coffee beans are actually green... not brown like what most people have seen in the grocery stores. It came in variety of size and quality. This picture to show the beans, right from the farmers, the right one is the selected beans.

Beans were selected by machine and by hands. It went through several stages of machine process and hand picking to separate dusts, debris ( = unwanted items ) to the very selected beans.It then collected in a big jute bags for shipping to the coffee roaster

We toured the roasting room where you can smell a very nice ground coffee smell. This is cute, smiley face machine ( that's my daughter thinks) is a coffee roaster. It takes about 20 min each load.

Then it get cooled and ready to ground to make the best coffee drinks. Yum...

Get a chance to win pour over/ drip coffee from Opal Coffee

Opal Coffee, known in Australia and Asia, will be available in the US at the end of the year. Their specialties are personal drip coffee comes in seven varieties

Each box has 5 packets. It is very convenient as you open the coffee bag, put it on top of your mug, pour hot water and voila... you'll get a cup of a fresh tasting coffee

Fill out their survey and get a chance to win a coffee sample... 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6ZNTPH2

To learn more, please visit their page, https://www.facebook.com/OpalCoffeeUSA or their tumblr page. 

Pantai cermin Sumatera

During our trip to Medan, Indonesia, we decided to visit Pantai Cermin. It's  located about 2-2.5 hours drive from Medan. There is a theme park and there is also a public beach with booths provided for public to rent. For about Rp 450.000, we rented a car from A Phi (0813-5499-6319) which including gas and driver. Yes... you do need local drivers to be able to drive in Medan. 

The weather is hot and humid... plenty of water is recommended. During midday, the temperature could reach in the 90's. If you want to avoid the heat, you may want to plan to arrive after 2-3 ish. The sun usually sets at 6... so you would have a good 2-3 hours to play on the beach. Public bath room and changing rooms are available. 

We went to local seafood restaurant called Inga. We ordered varieties of fresh catch for the day. They gave some recommendation on what to cook... it's either grilled, baked, fried or on a sweet and sour sauce. They all are using local spices. We had sweet and sour flowering crab and that is to die for. We spent about Rp 500.000 for 5 adults and a kid. That is including fresh coconut drinks ( you drink it from a coconut )

I guess the food is the highlights of the trip. Despite the humidity and the heat, the trip was worth going.

What can you do if you have 12 hours in Yogyakarta?

On my last trip to Indonesia, I had about 12 hours I can spend to visit new city. I decided to visit Borobudur in Java.

I booked the plane ticket from tiket.com. I booked the first flight out at around 5 am arrived at about 7 am, and last flight in to Jakarta, at around 8 pm. As for transportation in Yogya, I rented a car including driver and gas for about Rp. 500.000 through Sulistyo (cell phone :081578888168). Driver named is Kresna (081327718700) was waiting for us near BRI booth at Adisucipto airport. 

We had a clean car, I think it's called Avanza?, fits for 4 of us nicely. Our first stop was Kraton. They opened at 8:30 ish so we had to wait for about 30 min. It's OK... while we are waiting, we decided to write a postcard back home and went potty. It's a good idea to bring small change as they charged us to use potty ( around Rp 1000/person).

The ticket to kraton about Rp 15.000/person plus Rp 1000 for each camera you have. If you look Caucasian or from overseas, they charged you more...

We have a tour guide who is pretty fluent in English, Indonesian and Javanese. We spent about 1-1.5 hours at Kraton. Then, we stopped to buy Gudeg ( Yogyakarta authentic food) Mbok Yum to go. We then head to Borobudur, which is about 1.5 drive. We had lunch on the way to Borobodur. For Rp 100.000, you can hire a local guide. 

There are a lot of local vendor who offer you to buy hats, drinks and rent umbrellas. It could get a bit too much if you are not used to it. 

The weather was really hot... if feels like going to Utah in Summer + some humidity. So, do bring a lot of water and sun lotion.

We then decided to go to Prambanan, another temple on the east side of Yogya. The temple is so much smaller compares to Borobudur. There was a guide service offered for Rp. 100.000.

It was already closer to 3-4 pm. We needed to go back to the airport at around 6. On the way back to the airport, we stopped by a batik store, Soga and Ayam Suharti.

We had dinner on the plane... yummy chicken. With some planning, I think we really packed 12 hours in Yogya with new experience...

"Skyscraper" summer program at Friend's School

Skyscrapers... skyscrapers... yes, we are building skyscrapers... These are not ordinary skyscraper models...  They are all build by summer school students grade 5-8 at Friend's School in Boulder.

The program runs by Conny Karman, from IDEA It Lab, July 20-24, 2015. Students explore how to draw front, side and top view of a structure, basic architecture design and then they design and build their own model. 

In addition to that, these models also pass the "mother nature" test... We provided our cutting edge "shake table" and also the new and improved "wind tunnel" for students to test its model. 

Students have the opportunity to show their models during our "show and tell" session. Parents, grand parents are welcome to the event. It's a great way to spend your Summer... 

Wouldn't you agree?

IDEA it lab programs available through schools. We focus on Summer, after school and GT enrichment program. If you are interested to have IDEA It Lab come to your school, please visit www.ideaitlab.com.