Assalamualaikum. Peace be upon you all. A new series based on my trip to Aceh end of January 2010 has been started in the Malay blogspot BERPETUALANG KE ACEH and as usual supporting articles would be made in this blogspot starting with this...
This trip is my third to Aceh. This time I took a hotel within short walking distance to Masjid Baiturrahman, the main mosque in the whole of Aceh.
So I took the opportunity to visit it at night, something I did not do in previous trips. For the record I have been to Aceh four times.
Anyway, I didn't reach this part of Aceh in my first trip January 2004. Aceh then was under emergency rule due to war raging between the Indonesian military and GAM separatist group and I only managed to reach Langsa, some 45 km inside Aceh's south-eastern border before being shooed away. I first got to Banda Aceh in my second trip June 2009. By then Aceh has been opened to foreigners as the Tsunami of 26th December 2006 has forced warring factions to sit together in peace and find solutions to rebuilt Aceh.
In that second trip, I stayed at a hotel 3.5 km away. It is a distance I could have walked through without much problem but our 8 days 7 night trip then (I went with the wife who was 6 months pregnant) was so full of activity that I was practically floored after dinners.
In the third trip our hotel was less than 300 metres away. It's so easy to reach the mosque at any time even late at night. Here is the tower in front of the compound of Masjid Baiturrahman. It is the tallest building in Banda Aceh.
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