Surabaya, Indonesia

Surabaya is Indonesia’s second largest city – and it is huge! In some ways it’s very much like other large cities – lots of traffic, large roads, and huge shopping malls. The traffic is so bad that there are times that people will hire a cab – to go across the street! There’s also a huge contrast between the poor and the rich – and it really doesn’t seem to take much to be counted on the rich side. Every place we visited had guards at the parking entrance as well as at the doors – even the school gave us visitor badges at the gated entrance. The picture is the entrance area to the Somerset Hotel. The hotel entrance is fabulously rich! Do wish there had been more time to explore more of the area!

Surabaya School

Here are a few pictures of the school.

Surabaya International School

The school is huge – a result of all of the industry that is located in the city. You realize how fragile it is because the population is half of what it could be; the result of 10 years of financial and political strife in the country. Nevertheless, the school is an extremely busy place with many programs (including an Olympic size pool and a swim team). The library is humongous! It’s easily three times the size of Chinook. The 2nd picture is the entrance "hall".

MerLion of Surabaya

The school is located in an area of the town called “Singapore of Surabaya”. It’s a very posh section of town with many “mansion” areas (gated, of course) leading up to it. It even sports a replica of the “MerLion” of Singapore in a pond as you arrive.

Surabaya School Housing

The housing connected to the school is HUGE – the front room of the house we saw was almost as big as the footpad of the house we have in Japan. They have white marble floors and balconies that are large enough to sit in – and LOTS of flowers, green plants and tiny gardens. There are also lots of opportunities for employment here - all of the people have maids, drivers and nannies - some even have more than one nanny if they have more children!!!