Bandung Day 2 Part 1

Bandung has so many factory outlets, they have so much fake goods mimicking brands like Armani, Zara, H&M, Hugo Boss, this place must be a heaven for shopping!

No. This is not true.

Yes, I'm debunking a myth here. You know how some people say that this place is great for shopping because they have so much fake goods that looks like the real thing. They lied.

I speak from experience because my friend told me this place, Bandung, has whatever you want, it's even better than Bangkok. And I being gullible, believed her without doing my own research, because it was my exam period. So I left her in charge of planning the whole itinerary. Imagine my regret coming here.

And no, this is not because I don't know what to shop, I don't know how to hunt for hidden gems. I pride myself in being a smart and avid shopper so if I say this place sucks, believe me it sucks.

Our first stop was at Rumah Mode, the supposedly most comprehensive and most worthy FO to visit in Bandung. So imagine my disappointment when I scouted out the whole place and went out carrying only four pieces of clothes. And they are not even exceptionally nice, they're just mediocre and acceptable. I bought it because I didn't want to leave empty handed.

After that we went to a few others, like Cascade, The Secret, Heritage, and so on. And I did not buy a single thing from there. And they are supposed to be the famous FOs. The clothes were like, from another era altogether. I don't understand their "fashion" because the clothes are even worse than the ones you find in This Fashion in Singapore. It's like something my ahma would wear and you know what, they're not even cheap.

Every piece of clothing was like at least SGD$10 to SGD$30. I can get much nicer clothes in Bangkok for less than $10 please. We covered each shop in like 5 minutes because the selection was so pathetic looking.

If you have to shop, look for smaller shops, like Lily and Rose.

Not saying that the clothes are much better (just slightly). But the accessories were okay. Note that they are all stuff that you can find from Singapore, and they're in Singapore prices. As in, each piece will cost you probably SGD$7 for the cheapest, and can cost as much as SGD$40.

And after we finished walking around the place, it started pouring so we had to stay in the shop. K and I went to get a foot massage, cost us $55 000 per person. It wasn't anything fantastic but still acceptable la. And Bandung has electricity trips when it rains. It happened like at least in three different FOs that day.

 There's a shop directly opposite Lily and Rose sells bags and accessories like Cath Kidston bags. I find that this shop is the best one I went to already seriously.

We couldn't take the horrible and hopeless shopping anymore so we left our friends, who continued to try their luck (but in vain in the end), and we went to Paris Van Java again to ice-skate.

That was my first time ice-skating. Yeah I damn noob la. But the place was really nice. All the white smoke make the place look so nice and magical and the instructors there were really pro. They were like doing the twirling thing with one leg on ice. K fell down three times and now has two cuts on his palm and a really painful blue black on his butt. But don't know why both our skates made our ankle hurt like hell so we stopped after like, an hour plus. Then we went to the arcade to play the dance machine thing. Damn a lot of exercise for one day.

Once again, do not go to Bandung for shopping. It will be a complete waste of your time and you will regret going there.

So what do you go there for?

Sight-seeing.