Indonesia
August
11, 2013 - Bandung is a different place, a much larger and
more modern town, filled with shopping centers for Asian
tourists. Westerners come here for the volcanoes and tea
plantations and Easterners come here to shop. The guide we hired
for a day lamented Western tourists were too much work. At least
with the Chinese crowd, he could drop them off at consecutive
malls for a few days and take a nap. I think he was only half
kidding.
After failing to find a motorcycle rental place, we took a bus to a local volcano and hiked the last eight kilometers to the rim. It was certainly worth the effort.
Earlier, we managed to lose ourselves in the depths of Bandung, small communities hidden behind bigger buildings, with impossibly narrow streets through which people maneuver their mopeds.
The highlight of our stay in Bandung was the day we hired a car, driver and guide to take us around to a few places we wanted to visit. Since local transport is byzantine to figure out and sporadic at best, it seemed the best option.
Our first stop was to actually visit a real rice field, during the harvest.
For every hundred kilos of rice harvested, ten kilos goes to the workers, that's how they get paid. Seeing the effort involved, the heat and the methods used, the Western world can thank McDonalds for the availability of hamburger-flipping jobs for those who need them.
The next stop was a tea plantation, much more serene and civilized. It takes ten years or more to grow a plantation before you can harvest and then it's only good for thirty five years before the quality diminishes. There is no decent tea to be had in Indonesia. All the premium stuff ends up in the West.
Our last stop was decidedly local. A small area where locals came to enjoy the heat of the volcano. There were various natural hot springs, some too hot to touch, mud baths and sizzling rocks here and there. It all had an eerie feel.
Bandung was a much better place to be than Bogor. Still, we were not too excited so far about Indonesia. There is no prolific street food culture similar to Thailand, Malaysia or Laos. Although people are very friendly, litter is everywhere and people smoke where they see fit, be it at breakfast in a hotel or anywhere else.
