Bandung Day 1

Setting off for the airport at 11am. Decided to take the MRT cos we were carrying an empty luggage. 

Arrived at the airport and went for lunch. Our flight was at 2.25pm.

We paid more to get onto an earlier flight with Airasia, but they changed the flight schedules at the last minute, so instead of having two flights, they only had one at a much later time. Without compensation some more. So our plans for the first day was like disrupted. Warning you against budget flights.  I mean, this was my first experience with Airasia and I expected them to be better than Tiger Airways with all the rave, but they're not.

This is the view from the airport toilet. Must say its really superb.

Departure hall decoration. Angry birds is getting so popular.

No the weather wasn't bad. I was just testing my new camera and the effects.

This is the view of Bandung before we touched down. You see a lot of little brick houses with tiled roof and very very little high rise buildings.

I didn't take any photos of the airport because I don't know if I was allowed to, but the airport was really damn freaking small that you might not even want to call it one.

In case you didn't know, Visa on arrival costs USD$25 and it's actually quite a fuss-free and simple process.  There's a counter selling it right beside the entrance and all you need to do is fill in some form and pay the cash. They accept other currencies also, but I'm not sure how it's converted. But make sure your notes are crisp and new with no tears otherwise they don't accept it.

There's only two queues, one for Indonesians and one for foreigners, so unless you're one of the first few to reach the checkpoint, the process is painfully slow.

And there are no conveyor belts for your luggage, they're just lined along the wall and you just go and collect yours after passing through the counter.

The traffic jam at Bandung is quite bad, and there are no lines on the floor so the cars and motorbikes (there are a lot of them) just haphazardly lines the road.

The taxi fare was $45 000. It's like a fixed charge cos you HAVE to book a cab via the airport counter, there are no cabs for you to flag. I think.

Going back to the airport only cost us $25 000. It was actually lesser than that with metered fare but there were minimum charges required for the taxis.

Arrived at our hotel - Galeri Ciumbuleuit Hotel & Apartment. You can read about it here because I have too much to say about it, and some of them not so nice things.

They have a channel showing traffic conditions outside the lift.

The view from our room, you can actually see the sun setting.

This was the room (deluxe twin) we got for the first night until we complained. It's okay, looks acceptable right, but the sink is located outside the toilet, so you have no sink in the small toilet, and you have no full length mirror. Whereas the one that we changed to (deluxe king) was better. The sink was in the toilet and there was a full length mirror by the door.

So we went to explore Paris Van Java and had A&Ws for dinner there. Actually there's really no point going there. All the shops that you see there can be found in Singapore. I felt like I was in bugis street because the layout and all was alike. There were Mango, Zara, Marks and Spencers, Billabong, Charles and Keith, Bodyshop, etc etc. You get my drift la.

In the end went to J.Co for donuts and yoghurt.

From our hotel to here should only be roughly around $10 000, or $20 000 if the cab requires a minimum fee. Please beware of ripoffs cos we were quoted $100 000 by the first cab.

And Bandung really has no night life, unlike Bangkok. So at night there's really basically nothing to do. Even clubs and beer houses were limited.