A Tour Guide Talent 2

The Bules and The Asians

The Braga Street

In the next morning, there was nothing to do but to move to the hostel I booked last night. Since it was Hari Raya which is a public holiday, there would be less people staying in the city, shops closed and it was hard to find food around. Luckily on the Braga street there were few shops and mini market were open. So I just ate there after I checked in at the hostel.

I thought, "where should I go after this". There were some options to do, first is to walk around the city, second, find some tourist attractions in Bandung which the thing is they are quite far from the city, or third I would go to sleep all day long. No, it's a vacation, I should not go to sleep all day during my holiday, especially when I'm in different city.

I decided to walk around, hoping to find some nice places to hang out. But it's already hot outside. That's weird, coz I heard that Bandung is a chill city like Malang in East Java. It was only 09.00 am and it's already hot. Anyway, it didn't stop me from doing what I was doing. I just walked around through Braga street, it was quite nice though. All the colonial buildings reflected the sun ray, makes it look strong and firm and shaped beautifully. Some of them having the Art Deco style of architecture which gain it's fame during the early 20th century.

 Of course I didn't forget to get some pictures of mine. I was like a tourist, I dressed like a tourist, I walked like tourist and I took pictures like them. I'm a local that having vacation in another city in the country. But totally feel like strangers. Here the people speaks mostly in Sundanese, coz unlike in other regions of Java island, the people here is not called the Javanese, they are called Sundanese. A sub-etnic group that mostly live on the western part of the Island, West Java and Banten provinces. They have their own local language that's far different from both Javanese and Indonesian language.

Once I get back to the hostel, I met this two Dutch boys, they are both Dutch but from different countries, Robin is from Netherland and Cedric is from Belgium. They said they were going for Saung Angklung Udjo, the famous Angklung Performance in Bandung. Angklung is a traditional Sundanese music instrument made of bamboo. Each has its own tone. So that if you play a music using Angklung. You have to play it in group like an orchestra.

Just in seconds I decided to join them, only that I didn't know it's closed that day due to the public holiday, so disappointing though. Then we decided to go to other place, the choice was Gedung Sate, the icon of Bandung City. We couldn't enter the building yard. So we decided to circle around the building and took some pictures. I started to talk with the guys about Indonesia during the Dutch colonial era, they said they are glad that we have common history. I told them how Indonesian gained their Independence, and how it differs from Malaysia in gaining their independence. They were amazed by my story.

It was almost dark when we return to our hostel, Cedric was ready to go to Jogjakarta. He was going to stay and work part time there as he told me, and when the night fall I went around the Braga street again to enjoy the nightlife of Bandung.