Paris van Java
7 - 10th October 2006 - Last weekend, I went to Bandung with Narrrling, Beng and Beng’s partner, Ren. It wasn’t intended to be a double date but somehow, sometime last year, Beng and I turned kiasu and instantly booked 4 Air Asia tickets to Bandung when we found out that it was going for free in one of those anniversary-giving-out-a-million-tickets-free-thingy-kinda-promotion.Where the hell is Bandung anyway? What does one do in Bandung exactly? We didn’t care... The kiasuness side of us told us, it’s free anyway so what the heck... So approximately 10 months later, Beng, Ren, Narrrling and I went a-hopping merrily onto a crazy all year round Chinese New Year-ish mood airplane a.k.a Air Asia en route to this place called Bandung somewhere in the middle of west Java.
At touch down, the first thing we looked out for was the anticipated haze. When we left KL, the morning sun was masked under a thick layer of dark depressing smog. To think that we’re going towards the source of where it all comes from, we expected to see some serious smoky town here. Narrrling brought masks for everyone; I brought my inhaler, Beng was equipped with all sorts of herbal tea, just in case. (talk about a group of people desperate for a holiday).
Well, arriving at the Husain Sastranegara Domestic airport at Bandung, not only was there no haze nor any sign of smoke, the weather was clearer than KL than it ever was, with a light cool breeze blowing gently from the north caressing our faces like it was serenading us with it’s fresh morning quality. At that moment, it dawned upon us that no wonder the Indonesians aren’t half as worried about the haze as us Malaysians. What haze u cakep about? As far as I see, over here it’s blue skies, fresh breeze and good times..
After some haggling with a taxi man to bring us to the hotel for an alarming amount of fifty thousand rupiahs (which only SOUNDS alarming but in actual fact only translates to about USD7), we launched our drive through the city of Bandung to get to our hotel destination.
Bandung was once a dutch colony and at some point in history was called Paris van Java (Paris of Java). As we drove down those old battered roads of Bandung, Narrrling immediately recognized some of his roots. He fell quiet as he started to take in the beautiful old Dutch structures along the roads. You’ll see a huge expensive house lavishly decorated and right next to it, an old battered shack that is almost falling apart. My first thought of this town was that there is a significant gap between the rich and the poor. Not a socialistic society for sure.
Whilst Narrrling was silently enjoying the reminiscence of his old country in a foreign land, Beng and I, being the crazy pair that we are, was joking loudly all the way through the taxi ride. At one point, the taxi stopped in front of a red light. Suddenly right outside our rear window, a young local chap appeared, standing in the middle of the busy road of motorcycles zooming past. We were a bit surprised by his sudden appearance right outside our window and we wondered what he was up to. Suddenly, the local chap picked up a guitar and started playing, and singing to us. Beng and I were 2nd time caught surprised because we didn’t expect that and we weren’t sure what to do. The guy was standing right outside our window, singing at the top of his voice, strumming away like there was no tomorrow. We stared for a while and the taxi moved on, leaving the guy behind in the middle of a busy moving traffic. We looked back and realized, that’s what this guy does for a living. In Europe, we have the buskers who sings in subways to earn some loose change from the busy passer bys, in the east we have these local young chaps, singing to taxis and vans in the middle of the road, hoping we’ll throw them a dollar. Or in their context, a thousand rupiahs.
As we made more stops, we’ve had multiple of these surprises at our window, some were guitar strumming, some were violin stringing, some were just plain begging and sad to say, these are always the young children who probably haven’t had a chance to learn to play an instrument. Yet at the same time, we were driving past huge majestic mansions. There are those with the large Romanian pillars, the ones with the modern Zen designs and most of all, the huge Art-Deco houses or should I say, mansions.
Most of the people in Bandung did not speak English. Beng, Ren and I spoke Malay. But even that, it was quite difficult to get around as we’ve discovered the hard way, that some Malay words and Indonesian words can be very very different. For eg. Rabbits in Malay was called, “Arnab”.. In Indonesian, rabbits were called, “Kelinci”… Now now.. who would have thought we were referring to rabbits when we said “Arnab” when the Indonesians called it something as different as ‘Kelinci’?
Bandung is a heaven of Factory Outlets. They have streets and streets of them. And as you and I know, Factory Outlets are famous for selling goods of branded names or designer names for cheap. And yes, I have to say the things are cheap. Whether the branded goods are genuine or not, I wouldn’t pledge for that but in general, quality of the clothes are pretty up to standard. So if you’re into shopping for cheap designer clothes, bags and shoes, Bandung is the place for you..
On the 2nd day of our trip, we went to the volcanoes. Now to me, that was the best part of the trip. I’ve never seen a real active volcano before close up. As our van was driving up to the volcano, the air was cool, the view was beautiful, there were tea plantations on our left and right with fiery red flame of the forest trees amongst them. Simply breathtaking.
The moment we stepped down from the van, two things surprised us. One was the strong pungent sulfuric smell coming from the volcano and the 2nd was the sudden ambush by about 20 locals trying to sell us something all at once. They crowded around us so aggressively that it was almost difficult to move further. They were selling strawberries, bookmarks, pens, postcards, musical instruments, necklaces, fruits, keychains.. you name it… We bought some fruits and subsequently forced our way out of the circle of peddlers. They followed us. Yes, they followed us wherever we went. We spent about an hour in the volcano site and the peddlers never gave up. Although some dropped out eventually, there will still always be one or two persistent ones who followed us. When this 2 got tired, another 2 would appear, almost like they were doing a shift job following the tourists around. Towards the last part of the trip, it really irritated me to find out that they were not haunting the other tourists as much as they were haunting us. And what was the factor behind their aggressiveness on us particularly? Yes, you got it right. It was because of the existence of the one-lost-mat salleh amongst us, namely Narrrling.
But regardless of that, the volcano site was breath-taking, the active boiling hot crater was simply amazing. There were other tourists boiling eggs in the hot crater. I found a little pond that has somewhat lukewarm sulfuric water from the crater and dipped both my hands inside. Yes, apparently sulfur is good for the skin and heals skin surface problems. And boy are they right.. those lil’ bumps I had on my palm prior to the trip have completely disappeared after that 10 minute soak in real life hot volcano sulfur water and still today, remains healed. Amazing…
Not forgetting to mention that Bandung is famous for Sundanese food. Ikan Gurame Goreng, Sambal terasik, Gado-gado, Sayur Asem, Jagung Bakar.. we had all of these on the first 2 nights of our trip…While we were there, our group made it a conscious effort to be careful of what and where we ate.. So we mainly ate at the hotel or at respectable looking Sundanese restaurants.
Unfortunately, still, on the 3rd day of our trip, Beng and Narrrling had food poisoning. We spent the 3rd day of our holiday in the hotel rooms where Narrrling and Beng were having a temperature, purging and vomiting… while I spent the day attending to Narrrling, watching re-runs of National Geographic and Animal Planet while I ate up all the snacks I could find in the room because it doesn’t look like we’ll be going out for another Sundanese treat anytime soon.. Whatever it was that hit them, it was bad because they were still purging and feverish the following day when we made our way home to Kuala Lumpur.
Overlooking the hiccups on the last day, going to Bandung was a good break for all of us. It was the first time I saw an active volcano site upfront, the first time I shopped at 20 factory outlets in half a day, the first time I bought myself a pair of Gucci shoes (apparently genuine), and last but not least, the first time I had strange men serenading me personally with love songs on a guitar every 5 minutes in a taxi ride. Not an experience you get everywhere..
posted by Miki-C @ 6:41 PM
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