Day 7 - Race Around Surabaya

After a full day at Lapindo the day before, and dinner at the large Sujo shopping centre near our hotel, everyone enjoyed a good nights sleep ready for our Race Around Surabaya.  Our group assembled at 8:00am in the morning ready to get our instructions. 

The idea was that we were to break up into our school groups, with each group being given a local traditional market to head off to.  We were not told what type of market that they were.  We were also given 100 000 rupiah each, (au$10) with the challenge of purchasing something that could be used as a teaching resource in the classroom. 

Our group Miss Cooper, Judy Rose (from the Hume region) and I headed off to our market in a taxi, excited to see what type of market we were going to visit and also wondering what it was that we could bring back as a resource. 

When we arrived at our market at 8:30pm we found out that our particular market did not open for another hour and a half.  There were a couple of stalls who were open and we were able to figure out that this particular market had some food stalls - mostly dried bulk foods, but the majority of the stalls were clothing stalls.  The couple of stalls that were open specialised in wedding clothing, which was very ornate and intricate in it's design.  Miss Cooper decided that traditional head wear would be great teaching resources, so we set about purchasing  one for both the boys and girls.

We bargained for each of the head pieces, with Miss Cooper being a very uncompromising customer.  She bought the first head piece for 21 000 rupiah, down from 50 000 rupiah. 

We then explored the market further taking a look at some of the fresh food stalls, which were not like the types of stalls that we might find in an Australian farmers market.  There were baskets of sardines, whole chickens, vegetables - many of them asian greens and meat (not identifiable).  There were also other clothing stalls that were begining to open - which had mostly western style clothing, not traditional Indonesian. There was also a tailor and stalls selling shoes.  We soon located another stall which sold traditional dance head wear, which we purchased as well. 

With our challenge completed we headed back out to find a taxi to take us to the shopping centre for some shopping, lunch and some r and r.