Bandung, West Java

Bandung is a medium to large city (4 million) in the mountains of West Java. It has all the modern conveniences for an international traveller: ATMs, public transportation, and bottled water. The train ride up from Jakarta through rice paddies and tea plantations is beautiful.

The climate is milder than Jakarta, which is usually very hot. During my stay in the rainy season, the temperatures were low 80s during the day and into the 60s at night. Since it is a Muslim country, I dressed modestly, mostly long-sleeve T-shirts and capris or khakis was comfortable. The only time I was hot was when we were hiking on the volcano.

I stayed with friends and spent my best times visiting with them. We travelled to the local volcano and (boiling) hot springs. Lots of shopping and eating.

Quick Tips:

A little Bahasa Indonesia will help a lot with the vendors that swarm at any market or tourist location. No -- "Tidak;" No, thanks -- "Terimah kasih."

Best Way To Get Around:

Do. Not. Drive. Taxis are available around the train station and main parts of town. Discuss the fare before getting in, or insist on using the meter.

The public transportation are angkots, which my friends referred to as "rolling ovens." It sounds worse than they are. Each one has a route into the districts of town and costs a dime or two.

For a big day of shopping or a trip out of town, hiring a car and driver is a good option and won't be much expense for someone changing U.S. dollars.

Translated, the name would be Fried Chicken Suharti. Suharti is the wife of former dictator Suharto. She is apparently beloved in the country and famous for her Ayam Goreng.

We had an order of fried chicken, gado-gado (vegetables in sauce), and chicken soup. I also had an Es Apokat (avocado juice).

The fried chicken was not great, and the food, on a whole, was just average. We had much better meals at home with my friend’s cook preparing local meals.

Toko 49 is a shop of handcrafts and souvenirs, particularly batik and carved wood. Most of this type of thing is available from other markets at negotiable prices, but here, the prices were posted and generally lower than other places. The quality seemed very good, more artisan than the stuff in the outlet stores.

Tangkuban Perahu is an active volcano about 20 miles out of Bandung. We hired a taxi for the day, drove up to the crater, and looked around. It was stark and sulfur-smelling.

Then we hiked a kilometer or so down through the forest to the hot springs. These were wild.

The main spring was a pool about 25 feet across and at a full boil. All around the crater, steam vents were opening and closing for little spurts of steam or boiling water. Another pool was only boiling in half of it, so we were able to put our feet in on the other half for a refreshing soak. A stand at the edge of the crater area sold eggs and baskets for boiling, and we made and snacked on hard-boiled eggs.

My hosts in Bandung wanted to give me some tourist experiences, so we looked through an old list of cultural activities and found Kampung Seni, an artist neighborhood (kampong is something between a block and a neighborhood).

Hoping it was an area with shops or a market of local handcrafts, we took a taxi down to the street listed and asked around for this kampung, which most people did not know. Finally, we were directed to a house and invited to come in and sit. The front room was spacious and full of art -- it could have been a gallery.

My friend is a language student, but I don't know more than a dozen words of Bahasa Indonesia, so my understanding of the conversation was very sketchy. We asked about Kampung Seni, and the man who lived in the house pulled out some clippings from the 1980s about murals on the gang (alley) walls in this kampung. But by 2004, it was impossible to tell that the bits of blue paint here and there on the wall were once a mural, or even intentional.

The man brought us coffee and snacks and had us sign a guestbook. My friend spent sometime trying to understand if he was an artist, a dealer, or what. Since I couldn't understand the conversation, I looked a little more closely around the room and saw that it was pretty dusty and had some cheap gag gifts that might have been for sale, but no other evidence that it was a gallery. It began to seem like we were just in this guy's home.

He and my friend seemed to be talking about an idea he had for an artist market that never got any investors or government support. I wondered if we were being asked to buy into his project. After 10 or 15 minutes (maybe more - certainly it seemed like more), we started trying to end the conversation and got out of there without having to drink any more coffee (the java on java is awful).

When we tried to work out what had happened there, we concluded that a couple of foreign women dropped in on a complete stranger and asked about the good old days. Fortunately, our visit was in the late afternoon, a time when it is customary to visit and accept visitors, probably a very natural thing in that culture. I was lost because I had no sense of what our role was. Going down there, I thought we would be shoppers. But when I realized that there was no Kampung Seni and no artists. I couldn't figure out why we were so welcome and what he thought we were doing there.