The wife and I were in Bandung these last four days. With Kak Long Izan and 3 daughters and grandson. And Balkis. The ladies had planned for this without me, but when I found out about it, I forced myself in. But it was Kak Long's show all the way. I just watched. I think she's ok.
I was here in 1996, for golf. That's 22 years ago! I don't remember the traffic being bad then. But the weather is just as cool now as it was then. Every day in the early morning it was 21 degrees C this time around. When we went up to Kawah Putih it was a fingers-numbing 14 degrees!
It was four hectic days, and I enjoyed it. Food was good, the sights were enjoyable, the people friendly, and even with rain, the weather was refreshingly pleasant. I took morning walks each day after breakfast, and enjoyed them because of the cool temperature, and the guest-house we stayed at is in an up-scale area fronted with a well-kept quiet street, with security. Once you step out to the public roads at both ends of the short street, it was the scene common to all of the city - a truly maddenning vehicle-choked mess.
"Macet" is the common term used to describe the continuously jammed traffic. I've been to Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Mumbai, Delhi (both Old and New) and Johannesberg. We're forever complaining about KL traffic. But I don't think I've seen worse traffic chaos than Bandung. It's literally bumper-to-bumper. You can't even see the pavement. And 90% of the roads are too small even for two cars to pass each other.
The great thing is, the 4 days I was there, even with the 2-hour trip up Kawah Putih, with the steady drizzle, the mist, and the thousands of motorcycles, bicycles, and horse-carts, I didn't see a SINGLE accident! Our van driver even made a U-turn in the middle of the congested street, even having to make a 3-point turn because of the narrowness of the road, the other road users tolerated it and not a sound of irritation came from the other vehicles or their occupants. It was truly amazing.
I got to see the local scenery, tasted the local food (very much like our own, only somehow tastier because of the ambient temperature), chatted with a few of the citizens, and waited patiently for the ladies who spent too much time shopping, especially at Pasar Baru. It was a nice break from my eternal golf, and I didn't even miss it.
We speak the same language, the Indonesians and Malaysians. It's a different dialect of the Malay Language. Even the spelling is the same now, when decades ago they used the Dutch spelling. Still Bal learned a few rather strange words for common things. Like "pangkas rambut" (gunting rambut), "dorong"(tolak), and of course "macet"(traffic jam). And, commonly, all the sales girls at Pasar Baru were crying out "bole, bole, bole, blanja lagi!"
We told Kak Long to plan for the next trip. Maybe Hanoi?
...............................................................................
No comments:
Post a Comment