5-10-11 Bandung Adventures

Tomorrow we go to Yogyakarta at 7AM but first a small tour around Bandung. We stayed at my uncle's house again last night in the hills around Bandung, still no steady internet, thinking I should invest in a mobile modem but its just a passing thought. 

At this moment I'm writing this entry at a Restaurant front drinking a strawberry Fanta, on Jalan Braga (or Braga Street), one of the last remaining streets of old Colonial Indonesia. My mom says it used to be like the Rodeo Drive of Bandung, but now it's just falling into disrepair. 

Old Colonial building re-purposed as a Bank

The once cobblestone paved streets are now filled with potholes as the stones have become dislodged and cracked, and the building fronts are stained black. I feel like part of the reason why the old buildings are falling into disrepair is Indonesians are lashing out against Neo-Colonialism, as the bitterness of Colonial Indonesia is still fresh in the minds of Indonesians, despite the Dutch being kicked out in the late 40's/Early 50's. My mom has much fonder memories of Braga street as we passed by artist stalls with paintings of Braga street during colonial times, as my mom would stop and point at the paintings depicting colonial times as she would say that she remembered when Braga street looked closer to the paintings than the current day. 

She pointed out a central market that was open when she was younger, but is now being over grown by various plant life. We wanted to go visit some museums today, but as with most shops and buildings, they close for about an hour from noon to one, for lunch and mid-day prayers. We also went to museums so that we could pass the time until my cousin Faris was done with his exams, he's probably been one of my favorite people on this trip, he's really easy to talk to and is eternally helpful. Will write more in after we get back from the museums.

Part 2- Just finished the excursion around Bandung and visited two museums, both of which were in woeful disrepair, we visited the museum which commemorated the 1956 Asia-Africa summit which basically was the beginnings of the “Non-Aligned Movement” which is a pretty landmark historical moment, and it was pretty cool to see except for the fact that museum seemed ill maintained, but it still clung to its legitimacy as a museum by the exhibits it had. 

I was surprised that the museum didn't charge for admission, and my mother and I were both wondering how the museum could be maintained if it didn't build income from admissions, even a thousand rupiah or so per person would probably help. The same things applied to the next museum we visited, Bandung's Geological Museum, it was also in a state of disrepair as exhibits were tampered with and it must have been under-going renovations because there was the sound of construction echoing through the old halls. 

Me in front of some fossiles at Bandung's Geological museum

But many of the Indonesians must not mind because throngs of school children entered the museum as my mother and I were leaving. Luckily the geological museum is walking distance from my grandmother's house, so we walked home, stopping at a book store to look for magazines, but I ended up buying a computerized dictionary, which had english and indonesian on it, so that should prove helpful for the rest of my stay. I've also been using an infantry school as a point of reference as it's not that far from my grandmother's house, I was going to try to take a picture, the guard seemed willing but the guard's CO photoblocked us, no worries though I'll take a snapshot as I pass by in a car soon enough. I was also pleasantly surprised to see my cousin Faris had put some minutes on our phone so I was really happy about that, we would go shopping for groceries with my cousin and then we would have dinner with my uncle at a nice restaurant in Bandung, called The Point or was it The View... or maybe The Peak lol, I don't quite remember but it lived upto it's name sake as it gave a wonderful view of Bandung at night. Had a great dinner with my uncle, my grandmother, mom and cousin. Yoygakarta by train tomorrow.