5-8-11 0009h/Arrival in Indonesia/First Night

We arrived in Indonesia in the early morning, and since we landed we haven't stopped moving until now. The flight was pretty uneventful, and the food/service was great! After landing in Jakarta, we got our visas and bags, and were greeted my Uncle Tendy, who I call, Mang Aten, my cousin Faris, my aunt Jane, and my Grandmother, who I call Enin. It was a hug filled event, with my grandmother crying and my aunts and uncles asking if I remembered them. (with a family of nearly 30 plus members it gets a bit hard to remember all the names.)

Landing in Jakarta

We rushed into the car, which was the indonesian equivalent of the Toyota Sienna, getting ready for the drive to Bandung, my mom's home town, which is also where we would be spending the first few days of our vacation. On the way to Bandung we drove through downtown Jakarta, which has now become a collection of high-rises, and malls, a bit different than what I remembered, or maybe it always was like that I just didn't notice when I was younger.

My Grandmother, my aunt Jane, Me and my Uncle Tendy, I think my mom took the picture, and my Cousin was getting my uncle's car for us.

Maybe it was also a bit different since Jakarta was hosting the ASEAN (sp?) conference. Another thing that's pretty crazy is the traffic on the roads in Indonesia, which I will save for another Post, but in any case, it was a pretty uneventful drive. We drove to Bandung on the relatively new highway route, which was a stark contrast to the winding road of the mountain passes that we took nearly 10 years ago, the highway route cut the travel time in half as we got to Bandung in 2 hours.
We arrived at my grandmother's house which has now become a compound of 4 buildings and has potential to increase as 2 of my aunts and uncles have undeveloped plots of land. The land which my grandmother lives has been in our family for a few generations now, and was at one point requisitioned by the Indonesia military and was used as barracks for some officers. However after some land reclamation our family now owns the land and has built up dormitory style rooms (and yes I can use dormitories for this description because they are off campus lol) and they rent out rooms to local college students and the rent that the students pay goes to help support my grandmother.

my grandmother's house :-)

My Aunt Eni's building which has 8 rooms for rent to students

My Mang Aten's Building which has 13 rooms for rent, all the rent from the 21 rooms goes to help my grandmother and maintain the buildings

I must say though that after such a long flight, I was itching to make phone calls/use the internet, unfortunately, Internet access was spotty at best and we didn't have our cell phone yet, so I would have to wait for at least another day to get internet/phone access. I was also surprised to see most of family milling around my Enin's house, which I suppose was normal, my grandmother being the Matriach and all, why wouldn't the family be there?
So that night we stayed at my Mang Aten's house, which was in the hills around Bandung, in an area called Dago, which is the upper class area of Bandung. I didn't realize how upper-class the area was until I saw the houses in the neighborhood. We had to pass 3 guard posts to get to my uncle's house, and the house itself was really boss, I was even more surprised that it wasn't his only house but one of 5 or 6 properties that he owned. I'll spot light my uncle soon, but we'll just leave it that my uncle is a very successful man. I wish I could have gotten more pictures from his house because the view of Bandung at night was breath taking but I also wanted to wait until the morning to see the contrast in the views.

View of Bandung at Night