bandung

we got up this morning (monday) and got ready to go to the train station in jakarta. thankfully, john, who we were staying with recommended that we not leave for the station as early as we thought we'd need to. so we didn't have to wait forever at the station.

we boarded our eksekutiv class car and commenced the slow-moving process of riding the train to bandung. honestly, i don't know how fast we were going, but it felt pretty slow. but it was gorgeous scenery on the way: very green and lush with lots of terraced rice paddies. we climbed up the mountains and hills and arrived in bandung in about three hours.

we took a taxi to our hotel--only to find out that wasn't our hotel. some how in reserving our room, we ended up with a different hotel than we had thought we'd booked. so we got another taxi and made our way to our real hotel and got checked in. it's not as fancy as the hotel we thought we'd booked, but it's plenty nice.

we went out and got some lunch and then made our way to jeans street here. this street, actually called cilampelas, has lots of knock-off clothing stores, cheap t-shirts, etc. at first we weren't seeing much, but we made it out with some goodies.

we dropped off our stuff at the hotel when we were done and then had some more indonesian food for dinner. we had an avocado jus (my favorite) at the hotel's restaurant but were disappointed when it wasn't very green (ie, not enough avocado) and didn't have chocolate. sadly, not all avocado juices are equal.

 me with my favorite drink here: avocado juice (alpukat jus). these ones were perfect: lots of avocado and chocolate. don't worry--one was b's. 

 a view of the mountains and greenery (and a mosque) on our train ride up to bandung. 

 one of the beautiful views we saw from the train. 

 another of the beautiful views we saw. 

 a great children's outfit we saw on jeans street. cold war challenges 1919. 

 me with a kachina found, strangely, on jeans street. indonesians have a surprising fascination with native american culture. 

 they were actually selling full-size headdresses on jeans street. i'm not really sure what people do with these when they buy them. do they wear them, or use them to decorate?

 a bakery we saw called cushy. the sign says "Cushy. Pancake & Friends. Sweet food for sweetening your heart."

 there were several really large statue-things on top of the stores on jeans street. this one is an army helicopter and a really large rambo. apparently, they love their kitsch here.