This past weekend I was fortunate enough to travel to
Bandung. Bandung is a 3ish-hour train ride southeast of Jakarta. It is at a higher
elevation and is traditionally cooler (temperature-wise) than Jakarta.
I was accompanied to Bandung by my lady friend, Cherry. She
is an incredible young woman and I’m very lucky to have her. A quick briefing
on Cherry: beautiful on the outside, even more beautiful on the inside, and she
eats really gross things. To elaborate on that last point, her birthday was
about a month ago and I bought her the ingredients to make one of her favorite
snacks – mayonnaise sandwiches. Bread. Mayonnaise. Bread. She also enjoys balot
(see Philippines blog post).
Despite those nasty eating habits, she is a keeper (see below).
6 June
We took the train to Bandung. The train takes approximately
3 hours and 15 minutes each way.
The train station in Jakarta is right next to Monas (the
national monument). We went and walked around that area before getting to our
train which left just after 6 pm.
(not officially licensed Minnie !!)
We arrived in Bandung and ended up grabbing some grub before
checking in at the hotel. We stumbled upon the Mandarin Café which had
delicious kung po chicken (Matt likes his chicken spicy) and nasi goreng (fried
rice).
7 June
This was just a regular weekend – no holiday on either end.
This left us with 45ish hours in Bandung. Saturday was a very busy day and we
rented a driver for the day (roughly $40 for everything included: his food,
gas, etc.) to take us around to the various sites.
After the breakfast buffet (solid, not spectacular), we
started driving to Tangkuban Perahu. I think one of my favorite moments of the
weekend was when we rolled down the windows in the car and I breathed in fresh
air. It sounds like a silly thing, but I think the last time I had the windows
rolled down in a car when I felt fresh breeze on my face was with Nate on Great Ocean Road over 6 months ago. There will be no A/C utilized in vehicles
when I’m home next week. Windows down, baby.
Tangkuban Perahu is an old, not active volcano.
I’ve been asked for photographs quite a bit since moving to
Asia, but this was easily the most requests I’ve gotten in a short period of
time. Poor Cherry had to take photos for a bunch of locals that wanted their
picture taken with me.
From the volcano, we went to one of the many tea plantations
in Bandung. It is a great spot to take pictures.
From there, we headed to Sari Ater. This was a combination
of a water park and a hot spring. The way it was designed was that the natural
hot spring winds throughout the park. It wasn’t nearly as hot as the hot spring
I entered in Northern Thailand, but it felt like a hot tub that had been turned off
for 10 minutes. We were there for about 2 hours*. It was nice.
*Cherry is much better at speaking Bahasa than I am. But don’t
be mistaken, she is nowhere near fluent. Sometimes she forgets this and will
nod and pretend to know exactly what locals are saying. This drives me crazy. Before
getting to the hot spring, our driver pulled to the side of the road next to a
convenience store. He was hinting that we wanted to get something to drink or eat. We declined. We had no idea why he would do that. As we get out near
Sari Ater, he says that we should spend about 2-3 hours there and he will be
waiting for us outside. Ahhh….that is why he asked if we wanted to get
something. We ended up walking up a hill and grabbing some water. Not a big
deal and I realize this is an awful tangent**, but I thought it was worth
sharing.
**I stared at my computer for a good 5 minutes wondering if
I should delete that “*” but I have decided to keep it. It is terrible writing***,
but I feel it needs to pointed out that she is actually pretty good with the local
language and that she pretends to be fluent.
***Who am I kidding? I’ve been doing awful writing for a
year and you are still coming back. Your fault, not mine.
The next stop was the Floating Market Lembang. This area was
really cool.
There was a giant lake in the middle of the floating market
and there were tons of shops and food stalls surrounding it. We got some baked
goods for friends back in Jakarta and a quick snack for us.
I made a rookie mistake, though. The currency at the market
is in their coins (similar to the Wingnuts card for concessions*) which are
pictured above (those are not the actual size of the currency).
*Do they still do that?
They were so cheap that I should have bought a couple coins
just as souvenirs. It hit me right as we got back into the car. No excuses,
Matt. Play like a champion.
It was already 2pm, but we still had to stop by Vhara
Vipassana Graha before going to lunch. This place was a Buddhist temple. Eh. I’m
gonna sound like an arrogant prick for saying this, but I’ve been to Bangkok
and seen those temples. I’m going to Tibet in August. The Buddhist temple in
Bandung didn’t really do a whole lot for me. Sorry I’m not sorry.
Lunch came at the recommendation of a good friend of ours
from school, Ms. Tet (also mentioned in the Philippines blog). We ate at
Kampung Daun. It was a lovely area with pretty solid food. We had a really cool
pizza that had a doughy dome on top of the pie. Tough to explain and there is
no picture*.
*We were so hungry by 3pm that we demolished our lunch.
Should have taken a picture, it was pretty cool. Sorry, Cherry. Thas me.
One of the people that is universally liked in the BBS
family is Trevor in Bandung. He is Canadian and one of the few people at any
BBS campus that can keep up in a sports conversation with me. His birthday was
the following Monday; some other teachers were in Bandung that weekend to hang
with him, so we met up with them for dinner and entertainment. Dinner was
pretty average, but it was with great people and that is all that matters.
After dinner, we all headed to a local bar to watch one of
Trevor’s friends that sings in a cover band. After about 4 tries, they finally
convinced Trevor to get on stage and sing. His song was TSwift’s “I Knew You
Were Trouble.”
Cheering on my boy and gettin into the song, I started
singing along with Trevor and having a good time. This drew the “you know the
lyrics to a Taylor Swift song??” look from Cherry. I looked around and noticed
that I was the only one in our group of 6 that knew the lyrics. Sorry for
partying.
Trevor did great. He is a man of many talents. When he sat
back down, we bonded over our knowledge/love of TSwift. Apparently she was in
Jakarta the previous week. Trevor said tickets were roughly $300 a pop,
though. We agreed that it isn’t worth it at that price…but just barely.
8 June
Bandung is famous for cheap shopping, so Cherry and I
shopped until we dropped on Sunday.
There are a ton of factory outlets in Bandung. My haul for
the day was: a pair of black slacks, a purple dress shirt, a black sweater
vest, a cologne (Cherry’s choice), a Netherlands soccer jersey, 2 ties, and a
partridge in a pear tree.
(as you can tell I love shopping)
Our train home was scheduled to leave Bandung at 7:50pm but it
was about 45 minutes late. I was very tired and probably a little cranky while
we were waiting for the train. Then I looked up and realized how lucky I was to
be with such an amazing young woman.
It was a great weekend getaway. Work was kind of painful on
Monday, but isn’t work always kind of painful on Mondays?
Thanks for reading, as always.
I’ll be in Wichita late the night of the 16th.
Will be there through Ian and Hillary’s wedding. Then off to San Antonio to see
a lot of family and meet Ellie. My time back home will finish with 2 (I assume
to be) epic nights in KC.
I will not have a cell phone while home so the best way to
hit me up will be on Facebook or email. If you ever need to get a hold of me,
please email me at
mattsphillips@cox.net
God bless !!
