Bandung!!

Wow! We’re finally here at our first semi-permanent place in a while. It has been quite the trip. Thursday morning we were picked up just after 7:00 by an MAF guy who had hired a taxi to drive us to Bandung. It took us 3 hours to reach our house. The first two hours were highway driving at insane speeds of up to 140km/hr. We were packed in a Toyota Kijung which is a popular small SUV here. Our stuff had been brought ahead of time by Bob and Johnny from MAF. Once we reached the city of Bandung it took about an hour to reach the top of the hill on which our house is located. This was because it was the Indonesian day of independence so everyone was out and about. We sure were glad to finally be there. Where we live, what can I say. It is unlike anything you could imagine if you haven’t been here before. You know those photos from third world countries where you’ll have a hillside covered with houses, one on top of the other? Well that’s how we live. We have to walk down a very steep path to get to our “street” and then go down it to our house. Our street is about as wide as Hugo can stretch his arms out from side to side. We have no yard whatsoever. There is a small tiled area at the front of the house. Inside there is a small living room with Mikah’s bedroom off of it. Then you enter into a tiny, tiny kitchen. If any of you think that you don’t have enough cupboard space, just wait until I post a photo of my kitchen! Wow, it is puny! Off the kitchen is a dining room and also a washroom. The toilet is not an automatic flush one. We have to pour water down it from out of a water reservoir found in the washroom. There is a shower just hanging off the wall so you could shower and use the toilet at the same time, if you so desire… At this point there is no sink in the bathroom, but we met our landlord today and he assured us that he will come tomorrow morning at 9:00 am and install one in each bathroom. Phew, I was worried that I would have to keep brushing my teeth and washing my face at the kitchen sink… Continuing on with the tour, you go up a flight of carpeted, yes I said carpeted stairs (probably to hide the bad concrete job…) to the upstairs. There we have three bedrooms and one bathroom and an open area in the middle where we have our computer desk and a couch and an area where the kids can play. The upstairs bathroom is almost the same as downstairs except that it actually has an automatic toilet… Yeah!! Then you can go up another flight of stairs, this one tiled, to go up on the roof where we have quite a view. Up there is where our washing machine is, although we can’t use it right now as it doesn’t have power or water yet… There are also laundry lines there.
So that’s our house. I have been doing a lot of shopping to equip our house as it came very, very bare… We have a kompor in the kitchen. It’s a two burner gas stove. For baking you have this thing that’s kind of like an overgrown toaster oven… haven’t tried it yet… We must also drink only bottled water so we have a water dispenser. Anyways, I was talking about shopping. Wow! It’s pretty insane here. Yesterday three of the other MAF wives took me to this brand new store called Carefour. It’s like HomeDepot, Superstore and futureshop all rolled into one. It is bigger than any other store I’ve ever seen, except maybe Costco. But this store sells way more stuff than Costco does. By the time we were done I had about 5 full grocery carts of stuff. I was very thankful for the help of the MAF wives, I don’t know what we would have done without them. Today a single woman who is a pilot almost done her language training, took me to shop by oncot (probably spelled that wrong…). Oncot’s are van’s that have benches along the inside and they have a set route that they normally travel. There are different ones for different routes. You just need to get the right one. So you share your ride with whoever gets picked up along with way. Today we were squished in with about 10 people. Apparently you can get about 21 people (including kids) into one of them…. I wouldn’t want to test that theory… This is the cheapest mode of transportation. $1,000 Rupiah’s will get you quite far. To give you an idea of how much that is in Canadian $, $8300 Rups is one Canadian dollar. Anyways, she showed me some of the local shops like Circle K and tuju satubelas (7/11). She also brought me to a very large mall with a big grocery store that sells a lot of imported items. It is amazing all the stuff you can get here if you are willing to pay the money.
After we came home we had supper together with all the MAF families living here. We ordered pizza from pizza hut again! It’s so cheap here compared to at home…
So now it is the weekend and we have to fend for ourselves as the pembantu’s (house helpers) only come in Monday to Friday. I have two of them, Ibu Mesia and Ibu Tati. They are very nice women who actually speak a little English and are very glad to help you learn Indonesian. They came in and just took over. They shopped for fresh fruit, vegetables and meat for us at the market and prepared lunch. Nasi Goreng from scratch, yummy! I am very thankful for their help as there is so much to do.
One last thing that comes to mind is the call to prayer. This happens a few times a day including 4:30 am… yes you read right, 4:30 am! The speakers are not far from our house and it is LOUD!! The kids thankfully slept right through it all but Hugo and I didn’t…. Hopefully we eventually will…. There are a number of speakers set up around here and you can hear them all wailing. None of them play the same thing and none of them start at the same time.
So that’s the first impressions of Bandung!
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