Trip to Bandung

 

Bonnie on the Bus

Day 3, January 13

Woke up at 6:30 this morning. Not much of a sleep but then it usually takes a few days to get accustomed to the time change. Had the alarm set for 7:15 but we were both up and moving long before then. We met Arief for breakfast at 8 and had a very delicious meal with a wide variety of foods. I had and omelet, spicy beef, curried chicken, noodles, tater tots, and a mess of other stuff. I should have taken a picture but I forgot.
Went back to the room to get things organized and discovered I had left my headsets on the plane from Tokyo. Spent more than an hour at the airport trying to get some information and all we came up with is a phone number. So will call that later today and see what happens. Hope I can get them back. Bonnie was able to get hers back when she left hers on an Alaska Airlines  flight. Anyway Arief booked us tickets on a minibus to Bandung, Indonesia and we left the airport at about 12:30. We have been in a couple of parking lots called freeways since then but now are moving just fine. Started raining about 1 PM and that should be pretty much a daily occurance. Bonnie is trying to nap as we roll along. It’s supposed to take about 3.5 hours to get to Bandung. We shall see.

Don, Bonnie, & Arief at hotel

It took us four plus hours to get Bandung. Not to bad considering the traffic and that it rained much of the way. Along the way we saw the cone of an extinct volcano, many terraced and non-terraced rice fields, and a whole bunch of tree I had never seen before. So the scenery was very interesting but difficult to photograph because of the rain on the windows. Bandung is quite a bit higher elevation than Jakarta so it should be a little cooler here. But Arief said it rains here more so there are always tradeoffs. We will have a quiet evening at the Tune Hotel (it’s a chain in SE Asia) and Arief will join us for dinner at about 9 PM.

We went to Cafe Halaman-Ho for dinner. They had live music that was too loud to carry on a normal conversation. The music was fine but just too loud. Bonnie had fried rice, I had noodles and chicken, and I’m not sure what Arief had, but he seemed to like it just fine. Dinner and beverages were 165,600 rupiah ($12). Very reasonable and tasty. Went back to the hotel for some rest and decided to meet at 8 AM in the lobby. Good night all.