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Medan. Thirty minutes west of Medan's ramshackle airport is a Catholic church that looks more like a Hindu temple, its pyramid-shaped tower painted in shades of blue and green.

Inside, worshippers kneel silently and gaze up at a heavily garlanded statue of Mother Mary.

Construction of the six-year-old church - known as Graha Maria Annai Velangkanni - was spearheaded by its parish priest, Father James Bharataputra.

He came to Medan from southern India some 40 years ago, following a wave of Indian migrants brought into the country by the Dutch in the 1930s to work in oil companies and on plantations.

Today, Medan is teeming with cars and its crammed streets are lined with Dutch colonial buildings, shophouses and several looming malls. Domed mosques and Chinese temples painted in shades of orange and red dot the road to the church.

The Muslim call to prayer mingles with a local patois of Indonesian and the Hokkien dialect, known as Medan Hokkien.

Indeed, Indonesia's third-largest city and the commercial hub of North Sumatra province epitomizes the country's diverse cultural and religious make- up. The majority of its 2.2 million residents are Javanese or indigenous Batak people. Ethnic Chinese make up around 10 per cent, while another 2 per cent are ethnic Indians, mostly of Tamil descent.

The city - a center for trade and business in rubber, palm oil, tea and other agricultural commodities - is strategically linked to the outside world, with over 10 direct flights daily to Singapore and Penang. Its bustling port ships out about 30 per cent of Indonesia's total exports.

Each year, it receives more than 100,000 tourists - about six in 10 are from Malaysia - who fan out to its lush mountains and famous crater-lake, Lake Toba, and indulge in the city's many culinary delights.

It is therefore no surprise that Medan residents feel a greater affinity to Singapore and Penang than to the Indonesian capital Jakarta, a two-hour flight away.

Lina Huwan, the regional centre director of Medan's largest mall, Sun Plaza, points out that it takes less than an hour to get to Penang, and just slightly more to Singapore.

“It is very much our style here to go to Penang even just to get a flu checked out. And then we can spend the weekend there as a holiday, eating and shopping.”

Medan's new mayor, Rahudman Harahap, who was elected a year ago in June, is promising residents that he will create more jobs and make “Singapore-style” improvements to the city, all from his city's annual budget of around one trillion rupiah (S$143 million).

Residents have complained about traffic jams, flooding and a lack of green spaces and sidewalks.

Rahudman says pavements are being built along the main thoroughfare, and adds that he has plans to revitalize traditional markets.

“I'm interested in replicating the markets that Singapore has. They're clean, with multiple floors, escalators and carparks.”

But people need to be more disciplined, he says, and use public facilities well.

“Take for instance our roads. Right now, we have traffic jams because the vehicle population just keeps increasing. Last year, it rose by 24 percent.”

Indeed, Medan's residents seem more financially comfortable - only about 7 percent are in the low-income bracket compared with the national figure of 12.5 per cent - than their counterparts in other cities.

Given the city's rich heritage of trade, the people are more entrepreneurial, says undergraduate Tubagus Baron Hariansyah.

The 25-year-old is doing a degree in economics and management, and works part-time as a radio deejay, earning at least Rp 3 million a month.

“More of my friends are starting their own small businesses, such as setting up cafes,” he says.

Beneath Medan's vibrancy, however, are some tensions.

Indonesia Corruption Watch said earlier this year that North Sumatra was the country's most corrupt province, with 38 graft cases involving regional administration officials recorded in the second half of last year.

The city's 51-year-old mayor is himself a corruption suspect. He is being investigated for allegedly embezzling Rp 1.5 billion from the South Tapanuli regency administration some years back.

Rahudman's mayoral rival, ethnic Chinese politician and social activist Sofyan Tan, says Medan is “truly heterogeneous, compared to other places in Indonesia, with no one dominant culture.”

But Tan, also 51, believes that he failed to win last year's race because “the political elite were not ready for an ethnic Chinese leader, even though the people seemed receptive.”

“Maybe they were also concerned with my tough stance against graft,” says Tan, who garnered 35 percent of votes with his running mate.

For sporting goods merchant Mohinder Singh Dillon, whose family moved from India to Medan 60 years ago, the city is the only home he has known.

Singh, 48, returned to his parents' hometown in Punjab 10 years ago but found it unfamiliar.

“I am an Indonesian citizen. I was born here, I speak the language and I like it here,” he says.

Reprinted courtesy of Straits Times Indonesia. To subscribe to Straits Times Indonesia and/or the Jakarta Globe call 021 2553 5055.