Seksparti

Medan is kind of shock after coming from more mainland Southeast Asia. It's the third largest city in Indonesia, and is the epitome of what people don't like about Asian cities: full of traffic, smog, too many people, no sidewalks, and of course, blindingly hot and sweaty. It's also a Muslim country.

As Muslim countries go, it wears it's religion pretty lightly. It's very comfortable to be in Indonesia, even though they don't have a huge minority population, as really, they don't seem to be into some of the harder-line policies that the Gulf States love. You can usually find beer, if you want, and everyone is pretty tolerant of foreigners not being good at passing as Muslims.

Which is why it was blind siding to be propositioned for a sex party. By two separate men. In a crappy, dirty, broken down hotel, directly behind a mosque. Indonesia doesn't seem to mind having beer around or foreign ladies swimming on their beaches in bikinis, but it's not exactly Amsterdam.

Uncomfortable? Just a little bit. Imagine the scene: two white boys, trying hard not to culturally offend, having a broken conversation in Indonesian, slowly realizing that the guy they are talking to is propositioning a three-way. TWICE IN A ROW, WITH TWO SEPARATE INDONESIANS. Jesus wept.

Dear Lonely Planet: the Raja Hotel, on Jalan Raja in Medan, is now a gay cruising hotel. You might want to update it's listing.