Bandung, Indonesia- July 7, 2001
Waiting to get tickets from Jakarta to Bandung is a half-day experience. I went down to the train station at 8:30am and waited in a line without any tellers, and watched about 4-5 trains going from Jakarta to Bandung enter and leave the station. Finally around noon time, a teller came to the window, and I was on my way to Bandung. The wait for tickets took four hours, but the train ride only took three hours. Interesting note too how many shattered windows there were on the train, maybe kids throw rocks as it passed by, not sure? Luckily there is some kind of plexiglass or something on inside windows, so you just have this spiderweb effect of glass to look through for a view. Most windows were fine, but we had two in our subway train.
Made it to Bandung. The people here are SO nice and friendly. I feel very comfortable walking around this city. Its a bit boring though, there aren't that many things to do. I went to a couple expat bars only to see dozens of really old balding white guys being surrounded and chased by many indonesian prostitutes. They seemed to avoid me though, maybe because I look young and they figure they can't get any money from me. Some Indonesian guy told me that if you flash money out there one time, then you'd have them always surrounding you too. I guess its some kind of regular scene. Maybe you'd get use to it. I guess they are just bars where you can drink with your expat buddies, and you just have to alot of working girls to join you.
On a similar note, there are also quite a few billiards places, and each one has many billiards girls, whose sole function is to look pretty and play a great game of pool with you. Its just like a regular billiards place, except they supply you with a pretty partner. Kind of interesting.
Bandung is almost as hot as Jakarta, but not quite as bad. I've been spending just about the same amount of money, which is disappointing. I thought my expenses would be cut in half, but i seem to be spending just about as much money in hotels, food, and everything else.
I still haven't got quite a feel for Bandung yet. As far as I can tell there is a big shopping mall plaza which seems to be kind of the central part, and I also walked along the main roads of Jalan Asia-Africa and Jalan Braga, but both seem kind of dilipitated places. Actually most of Indonesia seems slightly dilipitated. From what I understand, the country was growing tremendously until the economic crisis hit all of Asia, and Indonesia was hit the hardest, so at that point, everything just completely stopped about four years ago. Combine that with all of the riots and looting and such over the last few years, and things will defintely become overly tarnished (can't think of a better word?) Also, about a week ago, gas prices in Indonesia went up, and I heard Bandung went up in flames with protestors and riots and looting. I think I saw some remnants of that from walking around, but hard to tell, because people burn little fires everywhere at night along the road, not sure why exactly? So there are lots of little charcoal spots here and there.
Hmm.. this Indonesian world.. i'm still completely baffled by it, and don't even come close to understanding. I keep debating wether I want to spend significant time here in the future or not. So hard to know at this point.
Next Journal Entry:
July 10, 2001
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