A Tour Guide Talent 3

Me and Jessica

The Night in Bandung

That evening when I got home from the trip with the two bules (westerners) Robin and Cedric. I met Jessica. I thought She was a Chinese tourist from China, coz she spoke in English. She does look like common Indonesian Chinese, but why Indonesian Chinese would do that if they can just speak in Bahasa Indonesia. 

I was talking to Cedric on the hostel's lobby, when the receptionist guy gave me this "need help" eyes. He didn't say anything, but looking at me like a cat looking at a person with food, you can imagine that, can't you? I knew that he is having problems with English, that the girl standing next to the receptionist table could only speak in English. So I just responded quickly and start to talk to the girl.

More or less, she was wondering if she could get a bus from Bandung going to Jogjakarta for the next day. So I told to the receptionist guy to find the bus for her, or at least the contact and the address of that particular bus so that she could buy ticket for herself. 

Me and Jessica started to talk about other things. She said she is going to the Kawah Putih (White Crater) in the south of Bandung city. I replied that I would go there too. Only that I planned to go alone, coz nobody is with me that time. Then we agreed to go together for the next morning. We also agreed to hang out that night, just to get a fresh air.

After I had dinner with Robin and Cedric, I met Jessica at the Hostel's Lobby. So I took her for dinner. She ordered "Sate", a barbecued chicken in sticks with peanut sauce. She said "Wow, it is delicious". So I said "I'm glad that you like it Jessica". I thought she wouldn't like the food, but she said that she already heard of some delicious Indonesian food from her friends before. And I started to tell her some of other  food that she should try while in Indonesia.

Then we walked on the street towards the Asia Africa Building, a historic building where our first President, Mr.Sukarno gathered many Asia and Africa nation leaders, which just gained their independence from the colonial power an to go against the colonialism and imperialism that lead to the formation of a Non-Aligned Movement. Which an organization of Asia and Africa countries that did not aligned to any Super Power countries which were the Soviet Union on the East and the USA on the west during the cold war era.

We talked a lot during our night walk, she told me that she was wondering why the muslims in arab countries are fighting to each other, while here the muslims, which is the majority, could live side by side even with the non-muslims. So I answered in a simple way, I told her that it is because the nations characteristic. We, Indonesian, could live peacefully regarding our differences, whether you are muslim or not, whether you are Javanese or Sundanese, it doesn't matter. Our founding father had set the base of the nation as the Unity in Diversity. I said " I am a Javanese by etnic, maybe you are Sundanese and the other guy is from other sub-etnic group, but still, we are all Indonesian". "I have a lot of non-muslim friends, and we actually can be a best friends"

About the Arab countries that have been fighting to each other, it is because they still have tribal way of thinking. That the tribe is above everything. And they are common with violence. That is why our Prophet Muhammad SAW was sent down among them. Because they use to be the worst people in terms of morality. Muhammad SAW was nothing like them, he was pious and considered as a role model of a good person, and he was sent down to fix the morality of human being. 

The street was so crowd, we saw a lot of guys in a creepy costumes and make up. They are the cosplay artist who dressed like the ghost characters in some horror movies. The most attracted people to have picture with is the one with Valac costume in the Conjuring 2 movie. There was food stall too in the nearby alley, we agreed to checked it out, maybe there's something that we could buy. So there was actually nothing we would wanna buy. Then we move back to the hostel to get some rest.