Western products

It’s still amazing to me that I’m so far away from home, yet I can find so many Western products. For example… This morning I had breakfast of Ritz crackers with Skippy peanut butter, and Nescafe coffee. I know, not exactly the breakfast of the champions, but it was still tasty.

The Earthquake in Indonesia didn’t affect us

My Mom called this morning.  She was concerned about the earthquake in Indonesia, and wanted to make sure we were ok.  In some of the news articles it says Jakarta (which isn’t very far from Bandung), but it actually happened a long distance from us, in the northeastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, which is roughly 1,000 miles from Bandung.

Just wanted to make sure no one was worried about us. 

Last Sunday – Hindu Temple

After we went to the volcano last Sunday, we went to a Hindu temple called Candi Cangkuang (pron. Chon-dee Chong-kwong). We’d read about it in the lonely planet guidebook, and were looking forward to seeing the ancient stone temple that’s located on a lake… The guidebooks say that it dates back to the 8th century, and is one of the few stone Hindu temples found in Java. Apparently some of the original stones were removed from the temple, and carved into headstones for a nearby Islamic cemetery. The temple’s been restored now, and to get there you have to take a bamboo raft across the lake. The rafts were cool, and the scenery was incredible… but the temple was a bit disappointing. The guidebooks didn’t say anything about the size of the temple. I think it was maybe 10′ x 10′ x 15′ tall. It was still pretty cool, and the surrounding scenery definitely made it a worthwhile thing to check out. Here are some pictures…

               

Sunday – Gunung Papandayan

Sunday we got up at 5:30 and joined our fellow travelers at 6:30 for breakfast (coffee and fried rice), before heading out on the road again.  We traveled to a volcano called Gunung Papandayan.  It’s one of the most active volcanoes in West Java.  On our drive up to the volcano Billy noticed that a big mountain was surrounded by clouds at the bottom, and looked like it was floating in the sky.  We stopped the van, and all got out to take photos.

Not much further up the mountainside we were able to see the steaming crater of Gunung Papandayan.

    

We got to the parking lot, met a guide, and headed out to hike up the volcano.  There were some little streams we had to cross.  Sometimes they were red, sometimes gray, and sometimes they were clear, but so full of sulfur that they left green formations on the rocks and ground surrounding the stream.  Some of the steam vents sounded like fighter jets, and one of them was called Train Vent because it sounded like a train rumbling by.  I was amazed by how close we could get to everything.  There’s no way we’d be allowed to hike along an active volcano in the States…  right up to sulfur vents that make you start choking and coughing.

There were some other tourists on the other side of a ravine.  Russell came up with the idea to put on a show for them, and pretend that we were overtaken by the sulfurous fumes.  We had Osep explain this to our guide, so he would understand what was happening when we started collapsing.  It was pretty funny.  One by one we started coughing, and dropping to the ground.  The guide would come over, shake us a little and say “are you okay?”, before moving to the next person that collapsed.  We stayed on the ground for a couple of minutes giggling.

A little while later as we were walking along a big cloud of sulfur surrounded a few of us.  All I could see was white, and every breath I tried to take made me cough, harder and harder.  I was the last in line, and the person in front of me kept stopping and coughing.  I said “Don’t stop!  Just keep going!”, and I ended up running around her to get out of the cloud.  For a few minutes afterward it felt like I couldn’t get a good breath.  It was a little scary, but added to the sense of adventure.

I guess I should get ready to go to work….  Here are pictures of the volcano.  I’ll post more about the rest of the weekend when I’ve got time again.

              

Saturday – South of Bandung

Saturday morning we set out early with 4 other teachers (Russell from England, Pat from England, Nina from USA, and Osep from Indonesia), a tour guide and a driver. We met at 6:30 am (yawn), and headed South for a couple hours to Kampung Naga.

Kampung Naga is a traditional Sundanese village made up of 110 familes. They live in small thatched-roof houses. They are rice farmers, and they also make traditional handicrafts, like baskets. There were chickens everywhere, and many fish ponds in the village, which was surrounded by rice paddies. Here are some pics from Kampung Naga:

After touring Kampung Naga we went to a hotel. The hotel wasn’t spectacular, but we had a nice balcony with our room. We spent part of the afternoon out on the balcony with our friend Russell, teaching him how to play cribbage. It was fun and relaxing.

In the evening we went to another hotel to swim in their pools. The pools are fed by a natural spring, and there was a warm pool, and a hot pool. Billy was excited to see a big water slide that led into the warm pool, and there wasn’t anyone using it. Before any of us had gotten into the pool Billy was on his way to the slide. The sun had set, and it was pretty quiet in the pools… then Billy came down the slide with arms raised above his head shouting “WOOHOOOO!”, and with a HUGE splash hit the pool. There were a couple of girls wearing jilbabs (Muslim head scarves) talking by the bottom of the slide, and they recoiled when the water splashed up. It was pretty funny. Billy ran to the slide again, and this time had a bunch of kids following him. He really livened things up, and all kinds of people started going down the slide. We even got our friend Osep to try it. Billy and Russell went several times, and kept trying to think of different ways they could go down the slide… It was all really entertaining. And yes, I did go down the slide a few times, too.

After all the excitement of the water slide, we went to the hot pool to relax for a while. The water was the perfect temperature – not too hot, and not too cool… Just incredibly relaxing. After floating around in the pool for a while, we went back to our hotel room for a good night’s sleep.

We slept well for a few hours, until a woman wearing high heels went to look at the room next to ours at about 3:00 in the morning. I’ve never heard anyone wearing high heels make so much noise. The hotel had tile floors throughout, and the sound of her heels click-clacking seemed to echo off the walls. There was also a man talking with her in a loud voice (or maybe it was a man wearing high heels, and talking to himself?). We were glad when they left, and we were able to fall back asleep.

Have I mentioned that Indonesia is a Muslim country? Have I mentioned that there is a call to prayer at 4:30 every morning? From our home in Dago we can hear the call to prayer, but it rarely wakes us up. At the hotel I think the local mosque had their loudspeakers aimed right for our hotel room. I woke up at 4:30, and tossed and turned for what seemed like an hour because the prayer over the loudspeaker just kept going. Ugh! And we had to get up at 5:30 to head out to the volcano. So much for a good night’s sleep.

Pictures of Flowers from our weekend

We went South of Bandung for the weekend, and explored Garut, a volcano, some hot springs, and an old stone Hindu temple.  Here are some pics of flowers from the trip.  I’ll post more pictures of everything else, and tell you about the trip when I get a little more time.

You’ll need to be registered now to post comments

Hey,

Sorry to have to do this, but you’ll need to register with my site and login now to be able to post comments.  I’ve been getting a bunch of bogus comment postings with links to cheap medications and random stuff like that.

Thanks!

D-

Photos from a Hindu Temple

When Billy and I were in Singapore we stopped by a Hindu Temple. It was really colorful and beautiful, and I took some pictures. I’m just finally getting around to posting them. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

A photo for Ren

I have a friend back in Seattle named Ren. I thought of him when I was in Singapore, and I saw this store in Chinatown. )

I finally have internet access!

Yesterday I got a wireless modem that works on the the 3.5G wireless phone system here. It’s way faster than the Wi-Fi hostpots, and I can access the internet wherever I have my laptop. WOOHOO!

Hopefully this means I should be able to stay connected, and actually reply to comments and emails.