Bandung through the eyes of a Malaysian Part 1

There is a saying in Bandung.

"Paginya jalan berlubang-lubang,
Malamnya lubangnya berjalan-jalan"

As crass,uncouth and perverse as it sounds, it aptly, succintly describes what the 'City' of Bandung is all about.She is called the Paris of Java by the Dutch.But its my firm belief that drawing a parallel to Paris in the same line as Bandung is as accurate as drawing a parallel to Vegas with Genting Highlands.

It pales in comparison.Heck, its colourless in comparison.Nevertheless, by Indonesian standards, its a pretty nice town.A brief low-down , down below on my trip

Author's note: Parts, or rather, chunks of the trip has been omitted for fear of spousal reprisal, marital strife, wife attack,girlfriend hysteria, chick's hissy fit and other similar fears of my friends' significant others reading this blog.Such parts may or may not involve conversing, engaging or other varying degrees of mostly consensual, sometimes one sided affection between consenting adults that are above the consenting age.Wives, in reading, remember, I am the youngest in this trip and by extension of that, the most innocent :P

Day 1, 2oth April

Sat in flight to a very interesting Indonesian young girl.Discuss everything from Mie Kocok, the weather, Russell's teapot, Rolls Royce vs Pratt and Whitney and Ibn Rushd.Exchanged phone numbers and promised to get in touch.Touchdown at Hussein Sastranegara airport about 3pm local time. Rush to airport before realizing all money on me is in Ringgit. Count Indonesian coins, which is just enough for a Bintang. Down a 'welcome drink', wait for evil friends that left us behind to change their money first.After one and a half hours of waiting, the company arrives, and we head over 100m from our hotel to have Nasi Padang.

To the uninitiated, Nasi Padang is a showroom display of food items that looked like cooked versions of what we see in Fear Factor.Hey, if I can survive head cheese, buffalo knee cap and fish eyeballs, anything will do :). Abang Megat was piling up stuff onto my plate. There was one item , long and oblongish looking with a squirmy filling, that I asssumed was squid.

Me: Om, ini sotong ya?
Owner: Tidak, itu namanya sapi punya ...
Me: Stop pak, nggak usah dibicara!

So there, if I tagged team with Pravin, I could probably win Fear Factor Malaysia.That is of course as long as no Pedalaman Africans were competing against me la.

The night was pretty quiet, we head off to Braga Walk and walk around looking for clubsto hangout at.Found a few good ones, Caesar's Palace and Classic Rock was quite good. There was this unnamed bar we entered playing good music where many Singaporeans and Malaysians were hanging out.

Tired from the walking, we have an early night in

More to come..