Spain!

Trip planned in November.

Meanwhile, I am trying to pick up some Spanish using Duolingo, and I am finding that while it helps to know a bit "here and there" of the the sentence structure, vocabs, and a little grammar..., I really need to learn how to listen to Spanish, so what to do?

Start by listening to songs!

I chanced upon this channel which posted quite a lot about Enrique Iglesias with nicely made MV with English and Spanish subtitles.

And the music produced by Enrique are seriously nice. :D Nice finding (for me!)

Back to listening for more...

Bandung a Second Time!

Been a week since I came back from a short trip to Bandung! Feels great for a short getaway after burying my head at work everyday.

So! Just to recap a bit so that I may come back and revisit my trip to Bandung, the second time! I had upped our itinerary using WishBeen (its a good planner in terms of the interface, and you get to download your itinerary for offline view! But the only thing that doesn't work so well is the offline map - which is actually, just an image. :/) Oh well, just download Maps.me app for your mobile, or use Google offline maps for overseas trip. :P Though you don't get your itinerary locations directly there, it still works better than having no map in a foreign country. :D

With that all packed, we set off!

Day 1 - 

We did a wrong booking, and landed ourselves in Jakarta airport instead of Bandung's airport. :p So no choice, we got ourselves tickets to Bandung via a mini bus. Guys please, don't try it. Lol, that bumpy ride in a small car, wee bit of aircon for 3-4 hours on a jammed-pack road between Jakarta-Bandung is seriously *sweats*. My butt aches. :P I don't blame the bus, but its not an exhilarating nor a comfortable ride. 4 hours...

And we were also famished. 

W nearly lost her purse on bus while napping on-and-off on the bus. Just in luck, YH, out of randomness got curious and asked her to calculate pool money during a small break on the road. Purse missing, and we searched. Luck is with us, found it.

So, long way ahead still, we peek out of the window hoping to see signs of "Bandung". Lol, the difference between Jakarta and Bandung on road seems to be the number of motorbikes??? Idk, but we didn't see much of the motorbikes in Jakarta. In Bandung, they are always swarming about. xD

Reached Bandung at 3pm (one hour later, many hours due for lunch)

Hurried into hotel room, dropped our bags and freshen up a little! Now, heading off to The Kiosk - which we didn't manage to find, and we found ourselves in Ci-Walk already. (Note, the Kiosk is actually in Ci-Walk :P, so much for the misleading map location).

We land ourselves in..."one of the cafe", can't remember which one but it was the one besides the "chinese-indo" restaurant selling dimsum which we hurried out after looking at the menu. xD. 

Big feast for us:

-3 Mee Goreng

-2 Tea (plus 1 super sweet tea that was abandoned)

-1 Avocado Juice (me! SUPPPPER REAL AVOCADO JUICE!!)

-Fried Fish (W & YH sososososo anticipated the crispy fried fish like our first trip at restaurant up near Kawah Putih) 

- Satay

- Popiah

- Fried Prawns on-stick

Lol...that was a huge meal, and at 3pm... and I was worried about my plan for D-Cost Seafood (read about the cheap cheap cheap seafood resto planned at 7pm...)

So, after the huge meal, we headed out on to Rumah Mode

- About 1 hour or so we were done - didn't manage to find much stuff like our first trip. I think I bought about 2 pieces of tee here.

Next, Fashion World which is just right beside.

- Was much looking forward to find some Banana Republic tops. Love their cotton knits stuff. But they didn't have much this time as well...still I managed to grab a blue Banana Republic. 

Hm, seems like we were done with this region...went for a small drink in the cafe back at Rumah Mode... Sigh..the drinks were sucky ;p. Ice-filled-small-cup-of-fruit-juice ;P

Next, it was supposedly time for dinner, but as we had our lunch late...we headed on to Tomodachi...and the stuff there were...awesomely-party-style-and-bloody-expensive. xD. Well over budget for our planned expense. You can find really expensive gowns, party dresses, pretty clothes, and branded stuff (seems pretty real) in the quiet boutique. But yes, expect the prices to be up SGD$200. We went there reading that you might find USD$15-20 stuff.. xD

Less than 15 mins, we were out. Now, our itinerary for the day was completed except for dinner...which the girls are actually still feeling too stuffed :/ AND SO MUCH FOR PLANNING FOR A SEAFOOD FEAST! lolol...we gave D'Cost Seafood the miss :/ - and took an angkok back to Ci-Walk.

On one of the angkok (we had to change angkok), we met a really nice girl. Cause the driver seems very busy driving and didn't answer our questions, this girl explained to us how to change and where to change to the other angkok. W was like <3333 for her! A really nice mei mei!

As our hotel is nearby Ci-Walk, we could almost walk there everyday and shop there everyday. Chill and stuff, which is why the our itinerary has Ci-walk as the ending everyday.

So, headed back to Ci-walk, did a small walk. And somehow, we went up and down many wrong ways and found ourselves the place to chill, The Kiosk! WOOHOO, one item down! Seriously, the service here sucks, but the food wasn't that bad. The style is very much like Pasar Cisanguy, there are many small stalls there. There are servers taking your order, sending order to the corresponding stores, and then they will serve your food when it is ready. Just to caution cause it seems like they don't seem to know when is the food ready. Or maybe it just too overly busy..We waited quite a while before we got a menu (and we were super thirsty) The menu is huge. Finally, made our orders. 

- The mango juice is nice! Like those man-guo-si-mi-lu kinda taste at Ah Chew's dessert

- Satay (again!) came with 2 dish of sauce - the dark brown sauce (only in Indonesia-Bandung they serve this! but we usually seen it swirled in the peanut sauce) and the peanut sauce. It got kinda overly saltish as we eat on.

- A small ice-kachang/chendol. Ain't too bad. 

Small walk in the supermarket - lol, the toiletries is seriously cheap. Wayyyyy cheaper than what you see in Singapore. I had half-a-mind to bring back some, but brought a too small luggage. :P. Yeah! W and YH were lugging some shampoos back xD.

-This ends our Day 1 :D

Day 2 -

...Free Breakfast at hotel. :D

Planned to make it to The Valley, which is actually a well-raved spot for nice ambiance, and scenic restaurant. Well, change of plans since we thought it will increase the spending on just booking a driver up half the mountains. Kind of a waste. So we skipped that!

Today! Is the day for Paris van Java! The spot we missed in our first trip.

Over here, its all those slightly costly fashion: Zara, Bershka, Stradivarius (WAHH THEY HAVE THIS TOO), Mango, Top Shop/Top Man, Miss Selfridge, New Look, and so on. It also have a very nice departmental store with nice clothes, quite unlike Singapore's Metro ;P  This took us to about 3pm or later. We didn't buy much here because, all these stores were higher priced than what we have in Singapore. :P. 

We had a small tea break at First Love Patisserie about 10am, in this cake shop. The shop is pretty, and we order 2 slice of crepe cakes to share. It was unexpectedly heavenly! Instead of just plain cream, it was ice-cream between the crepe layers, and the layers were thinnn! Unlike what I had in Paris Baguette, this was really good! Woahwoahwoahwoah!

Lunch approximately after 12.30pm. We actually only wandered the resto first floor. And we picked a japanese resto for sushi. Sigh...sushi were nice but super expensive. We sorta over-exceed our budget - 400k rupiah. We were planning around 300k and lesser. :P. Wasn't a full meal, but oh well. We shall move on. Btw, those sushi listed as hot, were really hot. They nearly killed my throat (and I was still down with a sore throat and bad flu)

Paris van Java is still nice to shop. :D Don't have much people too for a nice stroll in the mall. Oh just one thing, people here seems to smoke everywhere - even in air-conditioned malls. Oh well.

Aftewards, we got ourselves a taxi to Kartika (not sure which one, our taxi-driver picked a nice location for us). Picked up bunch of local cookies and cashed out approximate SGD$50.

- 6 boxes of Almond Cookies. (favourite!) We shall eat eat eat

- 2 boxes of cheese sticks (nothing much)

- 1 box of toast bread - this is nice!

- 1 box of choco toast bread - just okok only

Only thing is...not all their stuff were displayed with price. And I forgot to estimate how much were the cookies in my basket worth xD. These were heavy too!

Cabbed back to hotel, dropped all the cookies, and finally head out back to the Ci-Walk for dinner. 

We went back to one of the restaurant where this really nice waiter was introducing his menu to us, yesterday night. He's really one of the most polite waiter I have ever seen: lots of smiles, very patient with orders and so on. :D. But right back at the food, we had...

- 1x Beef ribs on hot plate.

- 1x Nasi Goreng with Beef (mine!)

- Can't rmb what YH ordered

- Tom Yum  Mee for W. Lool she said it was yummy but its just instant noodles with tom yum MSG haha.

- 1 hot tea

- 1 Chocolate Banana (W said it was nice!)

- 1 Avocado Juice (Me!)

Awesome meal. 

Lols, we walked a little and try to locate YH's favourite Korean boutique. Found that it was gone, and we didn't get to do our 4D ride (store was closed?!). Walk on a little and finally found YH store was relocated. xD But she wasn't too happy with the stuff she saw. Prolly too big sizes left. We shop on for a little longer, and somehow, we went back to the one of our favourite restaurant in Ci-Walk. I like the staffs here too! They are all uber smiley :D and theres free WIFI,

We had been here before in our first trip and we always remembered our favourite dish, the Spinach Pasta! But nah, this is like small supper - wanted to order beer... but sold out.

So we had spritzer and idk, some fruit juice and tuna bruschettas, which W and YH didn't like. Lol, I had to eat them lol. We chilled here a little, and finally make our way back to hotel, and concludes our day 2. :D

We had 5 meals for today...such gluttons!

I think, we decided to take an angkok back the short walk from Ci-Walk to hotel...and the driver made us wait cause he wanted to ferry more people. That was about 15-20 mins of wait. Oh well, next time tsk tsk, lets just walk! But he was very nice and chatty. xD Of course we let W chat, since hehe W is the only one who could understand Java slightly :D

Day 3 -

Again we started with a hearty meal at our Hotel's buffet breakfast. The beehoon is nicenicenicenice!

Then we headed off to Nanny's Pavillion and The Black Market. Lools. We couldn't find The Black Market, but we found Nanny's Pavillion. Turns out that it had closed down already. :P. Since we were at N.P, which is a cafe...a pretty pretty cafe...looks like we shall settle for our lunch. Lawls, at approximately 10.30am. xD

<<snapsnap for photos>> xD

Head to Trans Studio...which was disappointing. We were looking forward for big brands - which were too big. The mall was very big, but not a lot of shops. Or rather, shops that we would like to shop in. :P. We were done in about 1 hour. The Trans Studio would be nice for a cheap rides but sheesh, W and YH were all very scared of those rides ><; I didn't get to play ;p Oh what fun is it with without someone to go screaming with :P. Pfft.

So in the end..we sat on a bench thinking about what to do for the rest of the day. Lets revisit some of the factory outlets in Jalan Riau! Lol some of those which we found nothing to buy in our first trip. I mean, well, its a day to spend and better than wasting it doing nothing! 

We were just entering some of these and other factory outlets on Jalan Riau. :D found a piece of Tee for my brother. I can't remember most outlets we were in... but yeah, lots of these places you really have to work your shopping to dig out nice stuff. They have it, you just need to find it.

We were about done with Riau, and since we were nearby Vio Hotel from our first trip, I made us all walked back to Pasar Cisangkuy to revisit the first eatery in our first trip. It was a nice long walk, and we saw many of our favourite restos. :D Approximately 15mins, we reached our destination amidst the crazy screaming on streets to run/cross the streets that were busy with cars. xD

This meal was satisfactory. But I feel that my first ever awesome-impression of it was somewhat...broken. :P. I don't think I will return here haha. But cheap food! Less than 200k rupiah!

Oh yeah, we removed the following from itinerary

- Paskal Food Market - a cabbie says it takes 30mins from wherever we were... the much-anticipated 1000 food items... was rejected by us all.

- Braga Citywalk - did a bit more research and it was said the mall have nothing much there. Though the streets are worth walking if you are into something historical about Bandunga

So we cab to Amanda Brownie @ Dago. :D bought 3 brownies (original - chocolate, tiramisu, and pandan flavour) but regrettably - please choose chocolate only next time.

Right at Dago, it was actually about 5-6pm. And the sky was turning dark. But we found some really nice outlets. We spent some time digging through stuff in those outlets. I came out with additional stuff for my brother and mummy. These outlets were not mentioned on many blogs, and sadly I couldn't remember the names. But hey, you really have to work your worth to find good stuff. I think YH got slightly frustrated without much clothes bought, and she was like "heyyy that one (outlet) looks nice to go!" and we just went into random shops. :D

Approximately 7-8pm, we reached Ci-Walk, again! This time, again, shop a bit, and landed ourselves right back at our favourite resto with the Spinach Pasta. Again, they are out of beer (why!!! My $2 beer...). And we had the Spinach Pasta, wedges. I got myself a cinnamon latte for me - and I couldn't sleep at night. :P

Much satisfied with a happy tummy, we walked back to our hotel. Haha, along the way, since it is our last night, and YH seems pretty reluctant to leave without having flipped through many and tons of clothes...we walk into some of the ulu shops along the street and flip the stuff to hunt for stuff haha. Surprisingly we found some nice stuff lurking about. A suspicious H&M/Zara item peeking out here and there. Lol xD. Spent small amount and the shops were beginning to close. 

We shall be back!

Day 4 - 

Again breakfast at hotel. Our flight is at 1.50pm. So we had some time before flying...we went back to outlet that was closing the night before. It was actually a huge store. Quiet, not much people. The staff were standing around watching us flip here and there haha.

And we stayed on for about 1 hour. Imagine in this one outlet - 1hour plus is actually quite an achievement lols. We each came out with something.

We found Espirit, some Armani, a Uniqlo item(!!!), some Indonesia brand which are really nice quality, Gap, and many more... xD Happy with our final purchases (SGD$300+10 extra spent and borrowed), we headed back to hotel, and began packing. :D

Took a cab to the airport...YH saw and repeated the words "Welcome to Bandung" in which the driver tried to start a conversation hahaha about Bandung being nice and stuff, the places to go. Teehee. xD But he got us confused about the cab fare. lols.

Reached airport, and yay! No more airport tax! We found ourselves 75000X3 richer, and this calls for a meal! 

This cafe was confusing in terms of bill and don't have everything available on the menu. We had chicken wings, which was tiny but I guess very real? Too skinny to look like it was injected with stuff, wedges, rendang with rice.

We ended our meal, and waited patiently for our flight. Looking at the Polo shop right in front of us...ehhh 199k for a Polo tee!? Cheap!? Oh well, I got no money left haha. Not much of a fan for Polo too. xD

Board and flew. Reached finally in Singapore.

I think some of the really nice memories

- We learn how to board angkok, and it is really the cheaper way to travel!

- During one of the angkok, a guy with a guitar, hopped on and sat at the door. Then he started strumming and singing "When you say nothing at all". Imagine, us only in an angkok, and then it was all quiet, listening to this really nice voice and guitar strumming to the chord. Woahhhhh romantic ride waha!! We were like "oooohwahhhgahhh<3" really nice voice...when it ends, he turns and said something along "....if you can gimme some money..." xD! Of course hahah what were we expecting. I couldn't find small changes lol and in the end W gave him 2000. Lawls xD. It was kinda funny, but haha a really nice and romantic atmosphere in a cheap bus ride. what we couldn't have more enjoyed.

- Some nice outlet we found :D nice digging into clothes. Oh though, I think lower our expectations to find more tees than dresses. You could be easily satisfied with the stuff you can find. :D

- Seriously nice and friendly people. The one waiter that got me ga-ga-ing over his really nice service attitude.

- The laid-back lifestyle and the traffic jam at night. The scary driveway where you have to walk and go running across with a hand up waving for safety

- Cheap food, as long as you don't over indulge in non-indonesian stuff.

I am still quite hopeful to return if any one wanna travel there (someone needs to speaks Java/Malay lol). 

If I can remember to return to update this blogpost with video (of the guy singing) and with food photos...