Java’s rival to Paris is the city of Bandung, filled with fashionable uni students, and as it is only 150kms from the capital, it makes for a perfect weekend escape for Jakarta locals. We coincided our visit with a weekend, which wasn’t well planned on our part, and our initial Airbnb accommodation was not very clean 😬 So we ended up moving to a hotel which had a great view over the city (& of the thunderstorms as well 🌩️).

On our first full day, we found a tour bus which takes about 45 mins to loop around the city (exact timing is traffic dependent of course). There are two tricks to these tours – first is that different-coloured buses do different loops. We didn’t really mind which one – we knew it was all going to be in Indonesian anyway, we just wanted to not walk around and get photos taken of us😁. The second challenge was how to buy tickets. You couldn’t do it online and there was no ticket booth or signs. After about ten minutes or so we figure out that there’s a guy with a little book who you need to talk to to get your name on the list. After that, you just wait for your name to get called – easy! No idea how this works with the bus colours, as they seemed to just appear in any order and you just got on the next one 🤷 Luckily we didn’t care!

The woman providing the commentary chatted to us in quite good English, apologised for not being able to give the tour in English and then introduced “the Australians” to the whole bus 😆

One of the streets we drove past had several people dressed as superheroes or something from a horror movie. For a small fee, you can have your picture taken with them but for some reason the kids weren’t keen…

We strolled down the mall (Braga Street) which had a shop dedicated to capybaras and anime. Esti tried to blend in, but I am not sure if it really worked…

Food in Java wasn’t the greatest and, much to my shame, I did have a meal at Maccas. I survived, not just the burger, but the guy cleaning his rifle nearby. No one batted an eyelid as he dissembled and reassembled it. Then he left (presumably for the toilet) and left it there unattended. Maybe it wasn’t real but it looked pretty real to me (though I have no idea about guns!). This was in the same shopping complex as a heap of cosplay folks so maybe it was just a costume…

We had pizza a lot in Java, and it was not always good, but there was one place in Bandung that stood out. Probably more because of the Alice in Wonderland/Space theme of the restaurant and the fact that it was hidden in another place, rather than the food. And super sweet drinks in pretty cages. Very random.

From Bandung, we caught the new high-speed train called Whoosh to the capital for our flight to (actual) Paris. Only a half hour journey but extremely smooth – even more so than the Japanese trains. Just a pity it was such a short ride!