BANDUNG - MY HOMETOWN

BANDUNG, WEST JAVA, INDONESIA.

MY hometown, Bandung, is the capital of West Java, Indonesia. It is our fourth largest city with almost 3 million population. The city is situated on 768m above sea level and surrounded by volcanic mountains. The temperature was and still cooler than the capital city of Jakarta  and being a resort city for the weekenders from Batavia (Jakarta now), it was given a nickname of ‘Parijs van Java’ with art-deco style hotels and rows of European stores and cafes at Braga street.

Bandung is only  180km from Jakarta if we traveled by the old roads connecting Jakarta and Bandung, but it is now less than 140km with the new toll road connecting the two cities. Less than 3 hours if we travel by train. I prefer to go by train as it will pass beautiful tea plantations and offer scenic routes with tall bridges and tunnel going through the mountains.

Bandung is also famous for holding the first Asian-African Conference in 1955 and the conference is known for Bandung Conference. The venue was Gedung Merdeka (Merdeka/Independence Building), one of the  preserved Dutch colonial architecture.

The city also has quite a number of Dutch colonial architecture, especially the tropical art deco style (combination of western and eastern architecture styles). They tried to adapt colonial buildings with Indonesian architectural elements for adaptation to the tropical climate. If I am not mistaken, Bandung has one of the largest remaining collections of 1920’s art-deco buildings in the world. Examples of these buildings are: Homann hotel , Preanger hotel, Villa Isola (now housed the UPI, Indonesian Education University), ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology where I studied before , the first technical university in the Dutch East Indies that has a Javanese roof style); Gedung Sate (named after small ‘satay’ shaped on the roof of the building that housed the  local government office and its house of representative) and many more scattered throughout the city.

Since early 1990s, Bandung is known as shopping destination as well. Jakartans spend their weekend in the city and do major shopping there. Usually they go to Cihampelas street or better known as jeans street because local designers opened denim clothing stores along the street; or to so many factory outlets (used to sell rejected products or export quality products from factories); or to distros (distribution stores) where locally designed and made products are sold (fashion products, accessories, books, and indie label records).

Other attractions to Bandung are its cuisines! Local Bandung people are very artistic and they come up with new ideas of foods and drinks all the time. Siomay Bandung (similar to Chinese dim sum) is one of them, but Bandung people made another variations of siomay when they came up with Batagor (baso-tahu-goreng or friend tofu-siomay) eaten with peanut paste, sweet soya sauce and lime. Meatballs are also very popular in Bandung and they made so many varieties to be put inside these meatballs, from cheese, vegetables, bone-marrow, and many others. Don’t forget to try their desserts too: es lilin (ice pop), es campur (mixed fruits with shaved ice and sweet milk), es cendol (shaved ice, coconut milk, starch noodles and palm sugar), serabi bandung (very popular Indonesian snacks made from rice flour with coconut milk. In Bandung they have as many as 25 varieties of serabi), or brownies (not only baked brownies but also steamed brownies with many varieties from chocolate brownies, cheese brownies, tiramisu brownies, and many others).

@2008
Rossie Indira

*This article is also posted as comment to Gather Hometowns review.