Day 01: San Francisco, CA

Captain log, earth (San Francisco) date Oct 9th 2005
At about 8.30AM, earlier than scheduled, we landed at SFO. First impression, well, it's an airport, what did you expect? :-) Anyway, I still think Changi is better. As usual, we first had to line-up for the immigration process. When my turn came, I approached the officer with my wife. Being Indonesian, I was told to wait to do some special registration before I could get an entry-clearance, while my wife had her passport stamped right-away. I waited for only about 5 mins for the interview. The interview went well. The officer asked my personal details, the reason I came, where I'd stay, when I'd leave, etc. He was very nice, he kept telling me, "this won't take long, just a few more questions". I also had my fingerprint and photo taken again here (just like when I applied for the visa at Surabaya's consulate). Anyway, I got only one month of entry, while my wife got 6 months of entry :-). But that was already enough, because we'd only stay for 3 weeks max. At the end, the officer reminded me carefully that since I was given some FIN# number, when I leave US, I should not let the airline officer took my immigration card, and instead I should find and confirm my leave myself. This turned out to be a little (tiny) problematic later, because the airline officer insisted on taking my card and didn't know about this procedure. I'll talk about it more in day 16.

We then immediately proceeded to the arrival hall. It wasn't really as big as I had expected. First thing we'd like to know was what the weather was like outside. There we went, our first breath of SF air :-). It was a really nice weather, cool, but not too cold. Felt like on the mountain. Perhaps you could compare it with Batu, but colder. I think I could survive with just a t-shirt and an ordinary jacket. Later I found out that it was about 20 degree Celcius. Nice, isn't it?

Since we'd be leaving via LAX, we decided to explore SFO first. We first took all available brochures/flyers, lots of them. There was a vending machine which sells electronic gadget, such as iPod. There were also museums, stores. We went to the spacious departure hall and I thought the roof there was nice :-). There was also AirTrain which could take you to all other terminals. Surprisingly, no free internet access :-(.

Before coming here, we'd done lots of research on hotels and available ground transport. In fact, we thought that finding hotels in US is much much easier and faster than finding hotels, say in Bali or Jakarta. We used online services such as Expedia, Orbitz, TripAdvisor, and many others. We could get some good bargain too by making our reservation online. Since the competition would be at 12th, we planned to stay for 2 nights first in downtown SF. And we picked Astoria hotel because of its great location (next to Chinatown) and relatively low price (USD59/night before tax).

We then proceeded to the BART station, bought two tickets to downtown SF, Montgomery Station. BART was nice too, although IMO Singapore's MRT was cleaner. The trip took about 30 mins and it approached the city via subway. So you could imagine, we "popped-up" from underground, right immediately in the middle of San Francisco, on a relatively quiet Sunday morning. From there, we walked about 4 blocks to our hotel. It was not that far actually, except when you brought your luggages (and the road was climbing up, yes, SF is hilly), they became a hassle.

We found our hotel. It is perfectly next to the Chinatown gate. We checked-in, took a brief rest, and went to explore Chinatown. SF Chinatown was about 6 blocks tall and 3 blocks wide. The road was small. Shops were all along the road. We then had lunch there. Our first SF lunch was simply fried rice and fried noodle. We were too hungry and just wanted to satisfy our stomatch. They tasted perfect. The surprise was that the portion was huge. We ended up wrapping-up half of the rice and half of the noddle and brought it back for dinner. The term for this was "food to go" (bungkus, maksude).

Our exploration continued to Union Square. It was about 2 blocks away south of our hotel. It was a, well, huge square with a tall tower in the middle of it. There were lots of branded stores all around the square.

Next to the square was cable-car. It was a "must-ride" for every tourist :-). We bought passports which would allow us unlimited ride for all buses/streetcars/cable-cars for 3 days. I learned later that this was unnecessary as we could have bought bus ticket which could be used for up to 4 hours. Anyway, it was a very nice experience riding the cable-car up and down on the hilly SF. When the road went down, the driver would just do a free-fall :-) and most passengers would yell. It was also interesting to see how they rotated the car once it reaced its end. Btw, at the end of the road (somewhere on the northern part), we found "Barnes and Nobles" bookstore. It was getting cold and colder, and it was warm and nice inside the bookstore.

When we got back to Union Square, it was about 9.00PM already. We went back to our hotel. I contacted my friend, Lego, and my friend's brother, Robert, who both worked there. Robert was going to be free the next day (a Columbus day) so he promised to take us for a tour around SF. Great! Stay tuned for more exciting day.