Bandung

Day 1 – Shell Under the Weather

Poor Shell had been up for most of the night with some sort of fever, with cold sweats and shivers, so it was left to me to eat both pancakes for breakfast!!

We were moving on again so once packed we were picked up for our transfer to the nearest train station.  The journey was only around ½ and so and when we were dropped off we were shown to a VIP area on the platform (Basically a room with some air-conditioning and a decent toilet in it!) where we were told we could wait for the train that was due in 1 ½ hour’s time.

 

Instead of waiting there we thought we would find a café to get a coffee and something to eat, so we ended up wandering up and down the street in the boiling heat until we found a local warung (local café/food stall).  We ordered a couple of coffee (which turned out to be the really gritty variety) and after prompting from Shell I ordered a noodle dish off of the stall (Shell was still ill and not up to eating). The food was pretty good and extremely cheap, about 50p I think.

We headed back to the station ’VIP Area’ and waited until the train turned up. I must admit we are impressed with the Java trains as they appear to be pretty much on time and even though this time we had opted for economy tickets the seats and comfort was very good.

 

The journey was only 2 – 3 hours long but gave us a chance to do some blogging and reading whilst watching the countryside go by.

 

 

Arriving at Bandung in the late afternoon we then had a problem looking for a taxi as there appeared to be nothing outside the station.  After wandering around for about 20minutes trying to ask locals where to get taxi’s from we found ourselves at the other side of the train station where I spotted a cab coming out of the station car park.  I hailed him down but was a bit surprised when he wanted paying for the parking fee before setting off, however it was only about 20p and we just wanted to get to our hotel so reluctantly we paid it.

The taxi journey took quite a while as the hotel appeared to be though the other side of the city and there is a serious amount of traffic congestion there.  Eventually we arrived at our destination and was surprised when the driver entered an underground car park in a shopping mall, then we found that our hotel was located within the shopping mall. The hotel itself was quite functional but as it was in the shopping centre it had no windows, but we were only here for two nights so were not that fussed.

Unfortunately Shell was still not feeling that great but she wanted to go out anyway.  Our first stop was at a Wendy’s (you don’t get these in the UK anymore) burger joint in side the shopping mall, where we had some naughty western food before hitting the street.

Walking down the road I suddenly spotted a rock bar which looked good but as it was still early it was pretty much empty so we thought we would visit it later.  We carried on for a bit and found a motorcycle bar so we stopped there for a quick drink as at least there were a couple of people in this bar.

Still there was not much atmosphere so we first of all went and found an ATM as we had to get enough money out to pay for our up-coming Orangutan adventure after which we walked to an ‘Irish Bar’ of sorts that we had spotted on our drive to the hotel.

To be fair this bar was pretty soulless the only interesting thing was that you just had a row of fridge cabinets along wall that were stocked with beers that you just helped yourself with and paid for them at the counter.

As Shell was still not feeling great after one beer we left and went back to the hotel for her to rest and watch a bit of t.v. before having an early night.

Day 2 – Organising Day

Breakfast was not included in this hotel price but fortunately there was a Starbucks within the shopping mall so I popped down there and picked us up two nice coffee’s (with not bits in them!) and a couple of sweet pastries to have in the room.

Next we had a few things to do, book a train ticket to Jarkata, pull out some more money for Orangutan trip and make a bank deposit/transfer at a local bank for the trip.

Shell was feeling ill and after walking around in a long circle trying to look for a specific bank to make the trip payment at in the boiling heat she was not feeling great, I offered to sort this out myself whilst she went back to the hotel but she declined – I don’t think she trusts me!! 

Eventually we found the bank and a helpful bank clerk helped us fill in the deposit slip and then we took a bit of a walk to the train station to book our train ticket to Jakarta for the next day.  After this we headed back to the hotel but on the way we picked up some toiletries and a new sim card (our one had stopped working and we needed it for internet connections in remote places).

Instead of going back to the hotel we found a nearby restaurant/bar where we decided to have a couple of cold beers.  Whilst we were sat there once again we were approached by some students that wanted to interview us (this time filming us) for their school project and to practice their English.  It took quite a while and I was very impressed by one of the boys who wanted to talk to me about English football and then giving me a rendition of ‘I’m Forever blowing Bubbles’!!

We stayed there for a few drinks and whilst Shell caught up with some E-Mail (possibly to do with re-renting her flat) I had a play on an electronic darts game.  After I had finished I noticed a small local kid (about 4 – 5) trying to play the game, so I paid the money for him to have a proper game, helping him on my shoulders and moving him nearer to the board so he could hit it, his mum thanked me for entertaining him afterwards (I must be mellowing to kids in my old age!).

It was now later in the afternoon and the beers had not made Shell feel any better so we decided to go back to the hotel for the rest of the day so we could both relax.

On our way back through reception we had noticed the day before that  they did  something named a ‘Goliath Burger’ so thought we (Glenn not Shelley)  would order one of these to eat in the room for dinner.  The advert in reception was a model of this burger that was about the size of a dinner plate, so when we tried to order it with the receptionist she informed us that the model was actually the size of this burger and asked us how many pieces we wanted to split it into, eight was our response, like a pizza!

 

 

Getting back to our room we watched some TV and then the ‘Goliath Burger’ turned up and it was indeed the size of a plate (the biggest burger  I have ever seen), I polished of half of it whilst Shell only managed 2 pieces of it.  We continued to watch TV for the rest of the evening until I could manage to force myself to finish the rest, #fatbastard!