2009-11-16 -6 107

The Place

In an outer suburb of Bandung, Indonesia, in a clump of trees in a field outside someone's house.

Who Went

Felix Dance - by motorbike.

Expedition

Felix Dance

Well on Saturday morning, while I was still in Pangandaran, Java, I checked the internet to see if there'd be any good geohashes in the next couple of days. There was nothing near Pangandaran, but I noticed that there was one quite close to the city of Bandung, which I would be passing through on train on Monday, the day of that hash. I didn't particularly need to go to Bandung, but it was on the way to Jakarta so I thought I'd give it a shot.

In the morning after arriving at my hotel in Bandung, I searched around for somewhere to hire a normal pushbike. Unfortunately, I was met with blank stares as I was told that people don't get around that way here and I'd need to hire a motorbike. I soon resigned myself to that fate, despite its exorbitant cost, and got one for the day. At least it was yellow.

For quite a while I was a bit freaked out with battling Bandung's traffic (a city of two million people, fourth largest in Indonesia), especially as I only had my GPS to navigate and it was constantly threatening if not producing rain. At one point I was stopped by a horde of policemen and I thought, "Uh oh, here we go. Either I'll get carted off to a cop shop or I'll have to pay a ridiculously huge bribe." But no, they were merely, and politely, informing me that I was traveling the wrong way down a one way street and would I please turn around. Sure enough, a wall of traffic was approaching me like a tsunami. I got out of there pretty quick.

After an hour or so of wrong turns, crazy hand gestures, and hurled abuse I started heading in the right sort of direction for a reasonable amount of time. The crazy city and terrible air pollution gave way to fields, mountain views and unsealed roads. I was soon in the suburb/village of the hash.

Within 90m I parked the bike and proceeded on foot...