ONE WEEK IN BANDUNG – PARIJS VAN JAVA

On my last visit to my parent’s house in Bandung,West Java in December 2008 I promised my self I should go back visiting this city, where I was born and grew up, every 3 or 4 months (my wish!), as I always miss my niece & nephew soon after I landed in Bali and so exactly on My dad’s birthday, 2nd of June’09 a ‘direct flight’ of Merpati Airlines Denpasar – Bandung flew me away from the sea,sun,surf island to the flower city or people in the past called it: Parijs van Java.

I called it a ‘direct flight’ even though there was one transit in Surabaya just for 30 minutes, because I usually took a flight of Denpasar – Jakarta as it is much cheaper then continue the trip to Bandung by land with a travel van for another 2,5 hours. But this time I got a great deal from Merpati Airlines I grabbed it right away after I spotted a promo air fare for Jun’09 only on their website.

You might wonder where that Parijs van Java name came from for Bandung. Well, Indonesia was colonized by Dutch for 3,5 ages (woww that long??!), and with the fact that Bandung has a beautiful landscape for plantation and known as the most prosperous plantation area of the province was one of the reason why dutch men and dutch ladies liked to hang out in this cool breeze of Bandung air. And flowers were blooming as if you were in Versailles Palace of Paris. And this is why people back then called my hometown : a Parijs van Java, Paris from Java…Check out more about the history of Bandung here and log on to www.visitbandung.net if you’re planning to see what Bandung has to offer soon during this Summer time!

But nowadays, all you can see mostly are factory outlets (GOOD quality of cloth at very affordable prices! Bring MONEY when you go to Bandung!), tons of restaurants and other eating places. YUP! Bandung is the city of shop and eat till you drop and full :p And that’s litteraly my main agenda whilst in this city : good sleep, good eat, and good shopping! I’m not thinking about jobs, or anything else beside totally relax and enjoying being with family. Sometimes I wish I could live in a same city again with them, but hey, we all have our choice of life and respective direction of where we want to go in or life…

My little niece, Dede, was one of the main thing that makes my Bandung visit happy. She lovvves hanging out with me because sitting on my lap, touching my laptop keyboard and get to choose any card she likes on this Dress up and Dance card online game like on www.loveandberry.com is her fun activity with me beside, off course getting photographed again and again, over and over again. She just never stop posing, wishing she’ll becoming a supermodel one day. So all my camera shots were just about her and her hundreds ‘belle’ poses and her brother, Ecal. That’s all!! And I never get bored taking her pics neither!

A good friend of mine, Gita, with her magical photoshop hands made this cute collage on Dede’s pic, how cute is that!! I’ll make sure I’ll give this pic to Dede,Thanks Gita!

Oh one more thing, Arma, yes, Arma is my BEST friend ever since we were in a kindergarden. She has three little kids that sometimes drove me mad with their ‘over-excitement’ in the malls..arggghhh…And what both of us lovvve to do beside shopping is : EAT!!MAKAN!! So in the middle of a windy day,feeling week from 2 days of diarrhea, a bit fever, here we were at RASA Bakery, an old restaurant in Jalan Tamblong, Arma took a picture of me sipping hot tea, my comfort drink ever…

Bee, Arma & The Three Musketeers

Now, at last..in Bali again…one week visit to Bandung was just never enough…But for now, here comes Bali sunshine that I desperately needed after 21-22 degree celcius too cold for my ‘surfer girl’ temperature…WELCOME BACK TO BALI,BEE!!

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