However, the fact that the name is a bit too mouthful for my taste doesn’t bar my intention in recommending you this event. Even if art is not exactly your thing (and these kinds of events typically require an acquired taste to be enjoyable), you should at the very least try visiting it since for this kind of event being held in Bandung is, as far as I can tell, quite a rarity.

Doppio Sogno Dell’Arte: 2RC – Tra Artista E Artefice is scheduled to be held at the famous Bandung art exhibition venue, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space (located in Jl. Bukit Pakar Timur no. 100) from May 29th to June 13th, 2010. This event is arranged by the Italian Embassy and the Italian Institute of Culture in order to commemorate Festa della Republicca, or Italian National Day.

Aside from exhibiting various famous Italian arts beginning from the 20th Century, this event also features a collection of other internationally-renowned work of arts from all around the world for your enjoyment. The curator for Doppio Sogno Dell’Arte: 2RC – Tra Artista E Artefice (God, I love typing it!) is Achille Bonito Oliva, which according to Wikipedia a highly recognized and respected Italian contemporary art critic, author of essays on mannerism, and a teacher of History of Contemporary Art at La Sapienza University in Rome.

Make sure you’ll be there!

K-Card is certainly a good investment to make, especially if you are a frequent traveler to Bandung (either for business or entertainment). KAGUM Hotels currently commands four Hotels in Bandung–one Hotel in Riau Street with a three-star rating (Grand Serela Boutique Hotel), and three other Hotels with four-star rating each (Grand Seriti Boutique Hotel, Banana Inn Hotel & Spa, and Golden Flower Hotel Bandung.) Not to mention that in the immediate future KAGUM Hotels will also build other Hotel properties in the city, making a valued-membership program proposed by the company even more enticing than ever.

What are the benefits conferred to the people joining K-Card Membership program? To name some of them: guaranteed/priority Check-ins on all KAGUM Hotels’ properties, dedicated Check-in counters in each property (in-room Check-ins are available when preferred), the privilege of late Check-outs up until 3 P.M., as well as the entitlement of receiving vouchers for various services such as spa, massage, fitness, swimming pool, meeting rooms, or even room upgrades.

Not only that, but you are also entitled to enjoy numerous discounts on many of food/beverage outlets in the Hotels owned by KAGUM Hotels, as well as a good number of Factory Outlets in Bandung where you can shop to your heart’s content.

Feel free to contact KAGUM Call Center on (022) 426 3333 for more information about K-Card Membership Program.

One of the more distinguished ones that I want to talk about a little in this post is STAMP Factory Outlet. A small interesting factoid: a rather surprising number of people seem to have mistakenly think that the Factory Outlet’s location is in Riau street since it is practically impossible not to see the Factory Outlet’s huge building when you cross through Riau (how can someone NOT noticing the huge STAMP letters proudly and boldly displayed on the store’s entrance?) The truth of the matter, however, STAMP is located not in Riau but in Banda Street–more specifically Banda Street number 30.

STAMP is unmistakably one of the biggest Factory Outlets in Bandung. Its name is derived from the fact that the Factory Outlet is located in a building owned by PT. Pos Indonesia–Indonesian official postal service. The STAMP folks clearly see this as some sort of a unique gimmick that they can use to make their Factory Outlet unique compared to others… it is evident, for example, by looking at the name they confer to the Cafe made available in their shop: Filateli Cafe. There, you can enjoy a surprisingly good variety of food and beverages to help alleviating hunger and/or thirst should they happen during your shopping spree.

The product selection available is very good, as you can probably imagine from a Factory Outlet this large. Fashion items for children, adults, male, or female are all available in copious amount here. Be cautious however, of the prices: when compared to other Factory Outlets in Bandung, the prices they apply to the products offered here can be relatively higher–although it can be argued that the higher prices are getting off-set by the quality of the merchandises.

In any event, if you are a fashion shopper enthusiast (or if you just want to find fashion-related products), it will not hurt to visit this Factory Outlet to at least just seeing what they have to offer.

430 out of 451… around 95%! The spams just keep on coming! I understand that spams are an unavoidable part of Internet blogs (and a lot of other Internet-related things also, for that matter), and though at the beginning I was really annoyed by the throngs of spams assaulting my blog, for some reason right now I am now pretty much indifferent about it.

In fact, I enjoy delivering spam messages to the spam folder in Wordpress. It’s strangely addicting, hahaha.

This post is dedicated to one of the most famous food that belong to the latter categories of food above–the one that can be prepared quickly and swiftly but addicting to taste nevertheless. The name of the food itself is exquisitely simple: Cireng.

Cireng is short for “Aci Digoreng“, which in English translates closest to “Fried Tapioca Starch.” The name directly implies the basic ingredients of this food as well as the cooking method: it is really just tapioca starch fried with usually a healthy dose of cooking oil. Cireng has a unique feel to it: it is somewhat crunchy and crispy on the outside but also chewy in the inside, making it the kind of food best savored slowly and deliberately in your mouth before you swallow it.

Typically, Cireng is served together with nut sauce, although one can opt to eat it raw or, for flavor, chili/tomato sauce (or pepper.) Nowadays, people are getting more creative in that they are filling Cireng with a variety of things: chicken, beef, meatballs, sausage, etc, which obviously produce a much richer taste than the vanilla variety.

There’s actually not many more that can be said about Cireng unless perhaps the fact that it can be purchased virtually everywhere in Bandung. Coupled with the fact that it is usually (mostly perhaps would be more a more appropriate term) sold at a very approachable price point, there is no reason for you NOT to taste it if you ever had the chance to visit Bandung.

So, for those of you wishing to experience a good 300-pax wedding in a 3 to 4 stars Hotel but do not want to spend a humongous amount of money normally associated with such wishes, have a fun ride with this offer! KAGUM Hotels is now offering you a chance to have a 300 pax wedding in three of its Hotels (Grand Serela Hotel Bandung, Banana Inn Hotel & Spa Bandung, and Golden Flower Hotel Bandung) for only Rp. 25 million! (approximately US$ 2500)

This offer is valid only for April reservation. Please do note that this means that although you have to book for the wedding in April, the wedding itself do not HAVE to necessarily be done in April. In short, only the reservation itself that must be done in April for you to be valid for this promotion, and not the wedding (although if you want to be wed at the same month its okay too.)

Feel free to directly contact +62 22 70603421 for queries and reservation.

Agh…, it is a hard thing to put into words. The best way to understand the people of Bandung is to meet with them on your own, which is why an event like KASKUS Bandung Gathering is a great place to go to.

For those of you in the dark, KASKUS is the largest web community in Indonesia. It has several branching sub-sections, and KASKUS Bandung is one of them. It is a living, breathing community with people originating from many different places of Bandung, so it is a great place to socialize and communicate with the people of Bandung directly (though unfortunately, those of you that cannot speak Indonesian will find it hard to do since there is no English section.)

As for the details of the event, you can go to the KASKUS thread if you want in here. In a nutshell, it is going to be conducted in Saung Angklung Udjo, a place that I have discussed briefly in this blog… in  here. Every participants are requested to pay Rp. 50.000 (approximately US$ 5o)–children above five is considered the same as adults and must also pay full price. The scheduled time frame is from 12 noon to 6 P.M., and the day is May 15th, with the payment must be fully completed one week before it.

Barring any extraordinary, unforeseen development, I will be there So, see you there!

Regardless, it is an extremely important place for not just Bandung but also Indonesia–an importance that is shown by its status as one of the must-protected sites in Indonesia as regulated by the Indonesian government beginning circa 2008. It is just as important place as it is fascinating; a visit to Bosscha should definitely be on the top of your must-do list while in Bandung.

I mentioned the rather-strict rules for visiting Bosscha earlier. It is quite understandable, since Bossca is a scientific facility first tourist destination probably a very distant second (or even third?). Plus there’s also the fact that the observatory was first built in 1928… one can say that it has a very long history and that it has witnessed–survived–many turbulent times. So it’s no wonder that anyone visiting that place must obey a specific guideline.

For information about the rules, you can visit Bosscha’s official website here. Basically, for those of you that cannot read Indonesian, Bosscha typically allows several different sessions for visitations, with each session lasts around two hours or so. Night visits are also available, but they are even more restricted in that they are only available through April to October and only for three days in each month.

Practically all the things you can do here is related to astronomy, with star-gazing–especially when done in the night with starry skies–serves as the main attraction. You can see various kinds of telescopes (the serious kind of telescope), learn astronomy, and other astronomy-related activities. Even if you are not particularly interested in astronomy, a visit to Bosscha is a trip well-worth taking for it is one of the most iconic places not only in Bandung, but also Indonesia as well.

Such name sounded so grandiose, but it is not inappropriate in terms of the context, because the event was just that: very grand. Back then, Bandung was literally swallowed by an ocean of fire when only in seven hours, hundreds of thousands of Bandung citizens burned all their houses, belongings, and everything they could think of so that the only things that the invading occupying foreign force could hope to enjoy as the original citizens left Bandung were ashes and burned stones. The burning began on the Indisch Restaurant in the northern sides of the city square, and the fire soon consumed the whole city as the retreating citizens burned everything they could get their hands on as they escaped the city.

It was an extraordinary event marking the true spirit of Bandung citizens, signaling their unwavering intent of preventing their beloved homes being defiled by the invading forces. Although of course for right now burning down buildings is not the recommended course of action for anyone wishing to state their profound love for Bandung, it is enviable to witness such bravado shown by our predecessor–just how far they were willing to commit action to prove their loyalty and love to their city. Sadly, nowadays, even a simple and hasty look to Bandung surroundings would quick to reveal the sad fact that such strong feelings are only things of the past–small examples: citizens that just do not give a damn about preserving the city’s beauty by not throwing trashes/garbage indiscriminately, or the government officials who do nothing to solve Bandung’s many problems (such as damaged roads, floods, traffic jams, pollutions, and many, many more) as long as they can continue receiving the benefits of tax money……

I am willing to bet that the same heroes that burned down Bandung a long time ago would shake their heads in extreme disappointment when if they ever have the chance to witness what the city has become today…

I still love Bandung, though!

Images were taken from here.

Now I want to discuss a bit about one of the most iconic and well-known representations of  Sundanese culture: The Jaipong Dance.

You can ask practically anyone in Indonesia about whether they know–or at the very least have heard–about Jaipong or not, and I can assure you most, if not all, will answer with a nod on their head. Jaipong is a very famous dance known by almost practically anyone in Indonesia and often picked as one of the main showings for Indonesia in foreign culture shows/exhibitions/promotions. It’s probably on par only with the famous Balinese dance.

The dance once got itself under scrutiny because its movements was perceived as something inappropriately vulgar/erotic, although nowadays the unfortunate stigma has all but long gone from the minds of most people. Its signature movements exude spontaneous cheerfulness, humor, simplicity, and yes, occasionally even (mild) eroticism–I cannot describe it succinctly enough with words but let’s just say that it is fun to watch, especially for dance enthusiasts.

There are actually several subsets of Jaipong dance, although mostly are simply small variations given to the source material. There are places in Bandung where you can study how to perform Jaipong dance if you want, although most of them only for fun/tourism and not for professional purposes.