Hotel Santika Bandung

... left!!!! and on my way to Bogor.... So I really don't know what happenned but the important thing is that I will get in Bogor before dark so that if the hotel I have in mind is booked I can find another one!!!! The ride is fine and arrive in Bogor on time and get dropped off at the hotel. I find the hotel is definitely overpriced but again because of time of day I just take the room and will decide tomorrow if I will stay another night here.

... and as it gets dark at 6 pm I was a little concerned. Also I could not find anyone that could speak english but I finally got on a angkot and hoped that the driver understood where I wanted to go. The only word that seemed to be understood by both was "station" (pronounced in french). It is now dark, and I am slightly worried. We stop and the driver just says ...

... and started hunting for a decent hotel. Being that today is Friday, many hotels are booked or they are asking a week-end price which is at least 100,000 higher than during the week. After searching for a couple of hours, I finally get a room at Vue Palace Hotel for 455,000 incld. breakfast and it is the only hotel with wifi in the room. The room ...

Learned about the earthquake on Sumatra via email from the US. We didn't feel a thing and the locals don't complain to their guests, I guess.

We;re off to Bandung today. Very slow day, waiting for our ride. The route takes us thru Puncak Pass, a resort area for the locals. Its elevation makes it refreshing, but the traffic is a horror. On weekends it is so bad that commercial transport, like our mini bus, has to bypas it and take a long way around.

... out of my freetime. It was nice to talk to the teenagers and feel like a rockstar. I think maybe a couple of less days would have been perfect as the ricefields and tea plantations weren't my cup of tea (sorry about the pun!). If it was proper volunteering, where they were in dire need of help, short staffed etc I would have been compelled to stay longer, but it seems like they have westerners visit often and have good facilities and teachers. Overall though a great time was had.

... in every aspect of my life, both personal and professional. One of the reasons I left the job to do this was I was truly not liking myself and who I had become, and thought being a Wandering_man could help me unclog my pipes, so to speak. (Now friends, I had bargained a discount rate (100,000 rupiah) that made me think that maybe the alley room was all to which I was entitled, and that these three days of sleep deprivation would be ...

... kattomaan miten paastaan alas takas. Kavellen mentiin, ja matkalla paikallinen perhe halus meista kuvia niitten lasten kanssa..hehe. Tuttu juttu jo. Ja loppujen lopuks alamaki menee aina sutjakammin kun ylamaki. Alhaalla piti viel odottaa bemokyytia jonkun aikaa mut kaiken kaikkiaan saastettiin paljon pelkastaan silla et lahettiin omin nokkinemme sinne. Varattiin meian hotellilta minibussi kohti Bogoria seuraavalle aamulle. Ja oltiin ilosia et paastais taas pikku ...

... to win your business. You can find Spiderman, Superman, Rambo... They're all here, and they're all hilarious. I could have quite easily spent another week in Bandung, but unfortunately we had to leave early so as to miss the traffic jams that were sure to eventuate when everyone returned to Jakarta. Unfortunately they all seemed to have the same idea, at one stage I think we moved less than 500m in 30mins. Remember that stress I told you about earlier? It was back...

We've kind of settled into a form of normalcy now. We have settled into our "home base", and have met most of the people that we are going to meet around Cipanas. And we don't have any big ticket trips planned in the next few days, we're just kind of living life here. But we keep busy. Today, we went to a town called Cianjur, and met with some people about doing something for an orphanage. We are going to do something...not sure what yet...for the kids. We're thinking we'll ...

... finally found a nice man who told us what we needed to do and arrived at a guesthouse not too long later where I ended up helping the owner fill in his Australian tax rebate form! Would you trust me with anything to do with tax??????? We actually ended up staying in Bandung for 2 nights - moving to a very nice hotel for the second night - one so we would have a phone in the room and two as we spent the rest of the time in Bandung using the toilet roll as a relay ...