Pangandaran

Since going the public route had saved us a lot of money, we chose to go to our next stop, Pangandaran, by train. Indonesia had three classes of trains: “Executiff”, “Bisness” and “Ekonomi”. Our train, bound for Bandung was Ekonomi, and at 7,000rp a piece, the name fit. Had the ride been much longer, I might have called it a nightmare, but at just over five hours, I would call it more of a bad dream. The worst part of the ordeal? The smoking – it was unbearable. Just about every male in Indonesia by my count smoked, and the heavier addicts seemed to be in our car. The seats were acutely upright, hard and extremely uncomfortable. The train stopped every 10 or 20 minutes at either a small station or to wait for express trains to pass. One of the most disturbing things was the hawkers that would be constantly walking up and down the aisles like zombies pushing their wares. Imagine one woman-zombie saying in a low, toneless, repetitive voice “rice…..rice…..rice…..” while another zombie says “cola…. cola… cola” and yet another chants “noodles….. noodles…. noodles….” To this day, Beth will occasionally break into a little “nasi goreng” chant for old times sake. It was painful to the point of humorous. When we got to Bandung, we happily hopped off and caught a public bus to the beach town of Pangandaran.

We stayed at three different places during our stay there. Our first night, Mini Tiga was alright at 15,000rp, but after we discovered a swarm of wasps in our bathroom we decided to move up the street to Villa Angela, a slightly upscale place that turned out to be our nicest bungalow stay in Indonesia. We could tell we got a good price at 25,000 because we bargained with the owner’s sister and when she told him of the price he was pretty pissed off. We were forced out after two nights due to a “prior booking” (Read: it was high season and he could get a much better price) but we were happy to move down the street to the owner’s sister’s place called the Vindy at 15,000rp. The Vindy was a set of four bamboo bungalows with “mandi”. Mandi is a traditional Indonesian toilet/shower that everyone shared. We toughed it out for one night!

Indonesian food was great, but very basic. Throughout our time in the country, we all but avoided most of the meat dishes except for the occasional satay. Satay is like Japanese yakitori; meat (usually chicken) on a stick with various sauces, although predominantly peanut sauce was used. My favourite for a couple of weeks was the staple Indonesian food “gado gado”, which is boiled vegetables, sometimes including green potatoes, topped with a great peanut sauce. Nasi goreng (stir fried rice with vegetables) and mie goreng (fried noodles) were good and safe items. A lot of tourist center places had good pizzas and other pseudo Western food, and there was always a Chinese section on the menu, of which I usually had “cap cay” (or “chap chai” – stir fried vegetables in a nice sauce, add in white rice). Drinks were pretty cheap and you could always choose from pop, coffee, tea, bottle mineral water and great pureed fruit juices. “Walls” was a life saver when it got too hot to move. Like Dickee Dee’s back home or any similar popsicle and ice cream vendors at home, Walls was everywhere there, offering cheap popsicles (or “icey poles” as our Aussie friends laughingly informed us) and ice cream. Finally, back to meals, were soups and if you wanted to splurge a little, barbequed food. Pangandaran offered some of the best food we had in Indonesia.

By far, the best restaurant we ate at in Java was the Bunga Laut restaurant. At night, the friendly James Brown look-a-like owner would hop from table to table asking how things were and even toting a photo book of most of the meals, a key to winning over the European (mostly Dutch) non-backpacking customers there. One night, we had the BBQ’ed white fish and it was delicious. Another good place was the oddly named “Skandinavian Restaurant” which served great soups and had huge portions, as a lot of the area’s eateries did. We also discovered, too late, that the upscale Adam’s Homestay run by Germans sold freshly baked whole wheat bread, something Beth and I had been craving after living in Japan, the crustless white bread capital of the world.

Everyone in Pangandaran was trying to sell overpriced tour tickets to nearby attractions; The Green Canyon and the National Park. We found it was easier and much cheaper to do it ourselves. One day, we walked to the western gate of the National Park and waited around for a guide. We were approached about 10 minutes later and negotiated for a 3-hour tour for 10,000rp. We were a little skeptical at first, but he proved an excellent find as he led us through the park and told us of the local legends. He even hunted under some rocks with a little stick and pulled out a 15 centimeter long black scorpion.

The next day was the Green Canyon, which proved to be the highlight of our time in Pangandaran. We set off in the morning to the town bus depot where we caught a public bus to Cijulang, and then another short bus ride to the jetty point for the canyon. Unfortunately, it was Friday and everyone was at the local mosque, so we had to wait two hours until 12:30 when the ticket office opened. We hooked up with four Dutch people and rented a boat for 24,000rp, the standard fee. The boat ride to the canyon was magnificent – it was as if we had dropped into the middle of a jungle along the Amazon River. When we got to the rock canyon, the boats had to stop and we continued on foot. Luckily we were one of the first boats there as it was pretty narrow going. We’d been told that we could swim so we had brought our swimsuits. The water was amazing – totally clear and nice and cool and we swam around the small waterfalls for about an hour. When we got back to the jetty, we counted ourselves lucky – there were at least 200 people waiting on the docks for the chance to go up the river. In all, the day cost us about 12,000rp – the tour would have cost 60,000rp!