Father walking outside the post office

While mother led her dancing group in the park, father and I took a walk along the museum grounds.

We walked along Central Padang all the way to the waterfront. Along the way, we walked in front of the General Post Office with its colonial style archway. This post office sits across the street from my mother's old office, from when she used to work for the education office back in the day.

He showed me the newest addition to the waterfront, overlooking the Sarawak River onto the Astana, and old colonial style building, and the new parliament building, which is so big that it dwarfs everything on BOTH sides of the river.

The new waterfront addition now sits where the old docks and fresh meat market used to be. This was a part of town I was never frequented as a child because the old meat marketplace smelled so bad of fish and animal innards.

I did see some old shophouses that have been preserved, including the old Ah Chew Hotel where my father and grandfather stayed when he was an infant. Grandpa took him to town because he had a fever that would not subside. After multiple visits to the doctor, a friend told grandpa that my father had malaria. A dose of quinine and he immediately recovered.

That hotel is still there, re-emerging from its hiding place after all these years.