My fourth trip to Indonesia, this time to Bandung and Jakarta

Bandung, as I have read in history textbooks, was the place where the Asian-African Conference was held.

This city is 142 kilometers away from Jakarta. It takes 45 minutes to get there by high-speed rail, and then you have to take a shuttle train to get there.

Known as the Little Paris of the East.

The streets are quite beautiful, with tall street trees. The sky is also blue with white clouds.

The hotel we stayed in was on the fifth floor, and clothing was sold on the first to fourth floors. It was very lively---this was the scene before online sales became popular.

I went to the venue where the Asian-African Conference was held, which is now a museum. Because it was Eid al-Fitr, I couldn’t enter.

On the way to the museum, I saw a dozen people in disguise supporting Palestine, and also saw Boy Scouts lining up to raise the flag. Very ceremonial.

Across the road is the Grand Mosque, which is as lively as a market outside. There is a halal food store on the first floor.

I got up for a walk in the morning and arrived at a park in the middle of the street. The greenery here is much better than that in northern Jakarta.

The people I met were also enthusiastic.

I went to the night market in the evening and entered a Chinese-owned restaurant. The proprietress was very old, she looked to be in her seventies. She would doze off when she sat down and she would greet the guests herself.

I went out and continued shopping. When I passed by the restaurant where I was eating, the clerk stopped me and made some gestures. I felt confused. The clerk rushed into the store and came back with a hat in his hand. It turned out that I had forgotten the hat. , I gave him a hug: "TERIMACY". Thank you.

The high-speed rail ticket from Jakarta to Bandung this time is RMB 125, which is usually RMB 75. The occupancy rate is 60%.

The conductor was actually selected from among 5,000 flight attendants.

My neighbor on the road was a young Indonesian man. I chatted with him for three-quarters of an hour and learned that he had two children. His wife’s bride price back then was RMB 5,000. He worked on an offshore oil drilling platform, and every time he worked, he had three children. After worshiping, return to land and rest for ten days.

My neighbor back in Jakarta is a young man who works in a consulting company. His monthly salary is RMB 6,000, which is a very high salary here. He graduated from the Bandung Institute of Technology, which is also a famous local school. He is fluent in English and plans to study in the UK. I asked Why doesn't he consider studying in China? Now so many Chinese companies are investing in Indonesia.

Speaking of which, Chinese-funded companies are now frantically transferring production capacity to Indonesia. This is both a blue ocean and a purple ocean.

The survival rate of Chinese-funded enterprises in Indonesia will not exceed 50%.

It is also said that it is only 10%.

If you don’t know Malay and don’t know Malay, you won’t be able to provide legal services in Indonesia. Translation will cause trouble.

jakarta

I stayed at the Jayakarta Hotel, which was said to be a four-star hotel. The room rate per night was only 133 yuan. There was a swimming pool, but it was not big and the water was not changed frequently. The occupancy rate is not high either, estimated at only 30%.

The hotel staff are very professional. There is a security guard who has been working here for thirty years. It is very close to the old China Town and also very close to the shanty town. Every morning I take a walk to the fruit street in the shanty town and buy two pieces. Mangosteen costs 50 cents a pound, and I buy it one kilogram at a time.

Breakfast was served at the Chinese noodle shop opposite. The owner is an overseas Chinese, surnamed Li, who is not fluent in Chinese. His family has been in Indonesia for almost a hundred years. It's a restaurant during the day and a KTV on the second floor at night.

FEVELhotel claims to be a three-star hotel, but it is actually temporarily built on the roof. It must be illegal in China. Downstairs is the famous Sun City. The foreman of this nightclub has jointly opened Shudi Impression Hot Pot Restaurant, which has opened to the sixth chain Home.

There used to be a lot of Chinese people living here, and most of them would speak Chinese at the hotel's front desk. Now there are still, but it has become less.

There is a Catholic chapel downstairs opposite and a mosque next to it.

On the day I left Jakarta, I passed through the shanty towns again and walked through the narrow alleys. There were fewer people than usual, and fewer shops were open. Occasionally, children appeared, wearing neat new clothes, such as Arab robes. It's quite touching to watch. They usually don't pay attention to these children.

Passing by a street corner, there were five or six boys playing drums made of old gasoline barrels, while three or four eight or nine-year-old girls looked on.

A roadblock was set up at the entrance of the mosque, and the road outside the entrance was filled with women, also dressed in costumes. It looked like they had been watching the New Year's Eve all night. I passed by and didn't know if it was forbidden for people to pass through, so I took a detour when I came back.