The Sights, Smells, Tastes and Feel of Bandung

A couple of weekends ago, my old group of Indonesian friends from ANU invited me to come on a quick trip to Bandung, a big city not very far from Jakarta. I met this particular group of friends when I joined a Saman dance group back in ANU. Saman is a traditional Acehnese dance that involves rhythmic clapping and movements, all in sync, at increasing speeds, and sometimes requiring involvement with the people next to you. I did a lot of Saman in 2008, and a bit in 2009 (though all my friends had started to move back to Indonesia by that time, and I didn't feel as though I clicked as well with the new kids coming through). Heri told me that they would love it if I came along and also if I joined them in early July for a Saman performance in Jakarta for the Minister of Government Land (or something)'s son's wedding - to which Indonesia's President SBY is rumoured to be attending. Eep. Anyway, feeling a little like I've been a bit flaky and not particularly opportunistic as of late, I decided to go. I booked a train ticket, and when Friday rolled along I embarked on an 8 hour train trip from Jogja to Bandung.

I love train trips. I love looking out the window, I love listening to "train" music, I love reading, drawing, writing, and watching the other people on the train. On the way over I was sitting in the aisle, which was a bit unfortunate, and sitting next to a young guy who seemed pretty keen for chatting (which most Indonesians are when they see a young bule girl on her own...they are at the same time interested in our foreignness and pitying because we're all friendless and alone;nNobody here really ever considers the possibility a girl would choose to go anywhere on her own) which I wasn't particularly so keen on for eight hours solid. Thank you giant Sennheiser headphones once again. Another great thing about the train trip was the food service; I mean, the food wasn't great...but the fact that you could order lunch and have it brought to your seat was pretty cool.

Finally I arrived at Bandung, and met up with Heri, Nurul, Gusti, Wawan, Amri, Desta and another Samaner I'd never met, but at whose incredible house we stayed for both nights.

It was a pretty whirlwind trip. I didn't get into Bandung until after 6pm, and after that we had to navigate around the city, find the others, have dinner, catch up, and finally get to bed after midnight. But, of course, Indonesians being Indonesians, we still had to wake up at (what I consider) the crack of dawn the next morning.

A little side-note here. I am still not sure how most Indonesians manage to survive on so little sleep. I've met plenty who without any problem go to bed at midnight and are up before 5am, every day, without any kind of nap or anything. Now, in terms of getting the most out of each day...I guess it's quite a practical option. In terms of general comfort...I just don't understand it. That weekend I averaged about 5 hours sleep a night, then when I came back had to wake up early several times on little sleep...and after a few days, I was a wreck. As a lifestyle choice, I don't think I could pull it off. I need at least 7 hours a night to really be functioning.

So the next morning (and most of the next day) was spent getting to and from and hanging out at a place called Kawah Putih (White Crater). This volcanic lake (which is the creepy grey presence in the background of my photos) is at the top of a mountain range near Bandung, and was apparently "discovered" by a European scientist last century some time. Before his arrival, locals had allegedly kept away from the lake, fearing that it harboured evil spirits. When you get to the lake, you can begin to understand why they would think that. There is a very strong smell of sulphur which waxes and wanes in intensity, as well as thick, misty clouds that appear and disappear suddenly. In fact, if we hadn't arrived on a public holiday, meaning that the whole crater was full of thousands of young, shouting, photo-taking Indonesians in almost every direction you looked, the crater no doubt would have had quite a spooky, sinister air...and the dead, skeletal trees would only have added to the atmosphere.

Strangely, visiting Kawah Putih made me a little homesick. On the way up the mountain, there was quite a forest of gum trees, and surrounding the lake were bare, rocky cliffs, the barrenness of which made me think of Australian landscapes. I have to say, one thing I miss most about Australia is how easy it is to go somewhere other people aren't. How easy it is to get away. How much space there is.

Anyway, I digress.

The other major interesting thing was later that night once we got back into the city. Wawan suggested we go to this restaurant he knew of, so we all hopped in his car from Jane's and headed over. This particular restaurant was one the likes of which I had never heard of before. The way it worked was this: you enter the restaurant downstairs, order your meal, wait to be called, then you are led up some stairs in your group like a train with each persons hands on the shoulders of the one in front of them by a man in dark glasses. It gets darker and darker until you come to a black curtain, and once you go through, you're surrounded in complete darkness. The guide leads you to your seat, and once your drinks and meals are ready, waiting staff are there to put glasses in your hands and give you your cutlery and show you where your plates are. They used tiny, minuscule lights which made no discernible difference to our untrained eyes, but which surely helped them see where everything was.

There were two extremes to my experience in the restaurant. To begin with, I was very uncomfortable. I have a hearing condition called auditory figure ground discrimination. Interestingly, most people don't even notice I have a hearing problem. I have a few friends back home who swore I was making it up to cover for the fact that I'm just a bit dreamy. Which isn't an unfair assessment. I'm pretty dreamy. But I do have a hearing problem. Pretty much it means that while my ears are perfectly capable of picking up normal range of sounds, my brain sometimes has difficulty processing that sound into correct information when there are a lot of sounds going on. For example, if someone is trying to speak to me, and there's a TV in the background or a crowd or a noisy train or other people talking at the same time, I'll usually only hear bits and pieces of what they're saying, because everything gets distorted by the collective noise. Because it's hard for me to catch everything people say when it's noisy, I'm usually pretty quiet in group situations unless I've got something I really want to say, I always prefer reading information to listening to it and I have trouble in classes where students are noisy. I've noticed it a lot more here in Indonesia, where classes are not only noisier, but based more heavily on dictation than on the personal research and reading style we have back in Australia.

Anyway, I digress again.

So when I first walked into the room, I couldn't see a thing, and all I could hear was talking, screaming and laughing coming from what sounded like at least two groups of people who were already in the restaurant. Holding a conversation in Indonesian is challenging. Holding a conversation in Indonesian with screaming as background noise in complete darkness when I can't even half lip read like I sometimes do is impossible. My friends asked me why I was so quiet, and I tried to explain to them about my hearing. The first part of the dinner was quite stressful for me. I felt like I couldn't see OR hear, and I felt like I couldn't participate in any conversation. Finally though, our drinks came followed by our meals, and that gave me something to focus on until the noisy groups left. After that, I really enjoyed the experience. In a way, I understand why the other groups were so loud; being completely in the dark is quite confronting and being noisy is one way I guess to assure your friends and yourself you're still there and to try to cover up your discomfort.

A lot of people in Indonesia are scared of the dark. There are many girls in my kos who sleep with the lights on lest ghosts come. In fact, that night at the restaurant, one of my friends had to go downstairs because being in the dark was too much. I actually really liked it, once it was quiet. I liked listening to the music they were playing. I liked the challenge of eating my meal in the dark. And I liked the way my senses were invoked in ways that they wouldn't have been normally. For example, when I was eating my spaghetti, I started to notice that I'd rely on the weight of my fork or the resistance on my plate to tell where the pasta was, and whether it was in fact on course to my mouth. I have to say though, the whole experience I think would have been even better if I'd been on a date. Just me and one other person. Being completely in the dark, having only the sound of each other's voices, the sound of music playing, the taste of your meal, the feel of your cutlery and the touch of someone else's hand...that could be quite romantic.

Anyway, that was pretty much the end of my whirlwind trip to Bandung. The next morning I got up early enough to miss my train by only five minutes. Luckily my friend Heri got his negotiating on (which I suspect involved some payments he neglected to tell me about) and wangled me a seat on the train an hour afterwards. Eight hours later I was back in Yogya, feeling ready to do many more short trips next semester.

Thanks for tuning in!