Dutch expat in Bandung....

Henk Madrotter

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Joined
Apr 2, 2020
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23
Found this forum today, been living in a small village outside Bandung for the last 18 years after living in Bandung city for 6 years.... Music lover and collector, specially Indonesian and South East Asian music and blogging about it here:

https://madrotter-treasure-hunt.blogspot.com/

Now at home like most of you, normally I'm always out hunting records and cassettes, going to jaipong and wayang shows, recording and uploading music or busy with my wife and kids and reading books :)
 
Hi good to "meet" you, welcome to the forum :)
I also live in a village outside Bandung, my Indonesian hubby is a musician but rock music.
If it involves much bamboo we both run a mile in the opposite direction with ears covered hahaha.You are most welcome to PM & chat if you wish.
 
Hey there :) Yeah I just saw in the music thread that he's playing in a Rolling Stones band?

If it's a lot of bamboo involved then it would be calung music, you know, Darso and those kind of guys, or maybe angklung, like what they play in Pak Udjo's school and theater, a well known tourist attraction not far from Imigrasi....

But I'm into most types of music really, jazz, blues, rock, African, 60's garage, punk/post-punk, you name it :)

Crazy times!!! Was driving around Bandung yesterday night, almost like how it was when I first came here 23 years ago, not much traffic, most of the restaurants still open though, although in Braga most places were closed, even the Nord Sea bar, run by a Dutch friend of mine....
 
Kinda reminds me of '98 when everything went to hell here, the Euro at 18.500 now, back then the dollar went from 2.400 to 18.000 in no time at all. Was lucky to survive the riots in Jakarta, crazy, crazy adventures, you could count the expats that stayed in Bandung on maybe two hands, great times and not half as scary as now....
 
Hey there :) Yeah I just saw in the music thread that he's playing in a Rolling Stones band?

If it's a lot of bamboo involved then it would be calung music, you know, Darso and those kind of guys, or maybe angklung, like what they play in Pak Udjo's school and theater, a well known tourist attraction not far from Imigrasi....

But I'm into most types of music really, jazz, blues, rock, African, 60's garage, punk/post-punk, you name it :)

Crazy times!!! Was driving around Bandung yesterday night, almost like how it was when I first came here 23 years ago, not much traffic, most of the restaurants still open though, although in Braga most places were closed, even the Nord Sea bar, run by a Dutch friend of mine....
Yes, I know the Angklung place- I pass it almost every time I go out :) it is just down the bottom of our road.
 
Kinda reminds me of '98 when everything went to hell here, the Euro at 18.500 now, back then the dollar went from 2.400 to 18.000 in no time at all. Was lucky to survive the riots in Jakarta, crazy, crazy adventures, you could count the expats that stayed in Bandung on maybe two hands, great times and not half as scary as now....
I wasn't here back then. I don't feel particularly scared just yet.
However I had to go out today & the east of the city was rather crowded seems like they didn't get the social distancing/stay at home memo.
Once people end up being pretty much forced to stay at home (if that happens) the mood could very well change.
 
I also live in a village outside Bandung..... a relative newbie, just 3 years living here.

Welcome
 
Thanks Will :)

I'm in Lembang :) Here there's loads of kids playing in groups, quiet a few people still working, walking around without masks.... Bad-azz, you know Herman, the Dutch guy living up where you are?

Back in '98 I had a holiday back home to Rotterdam and on the day that I had my flight, from Jakarta, the riots broke out. The students thought that Suharto would be landing there that day, back from his pilgrimage to Mekkah, he didn't land there after he went to a small military airport... I took the train, the toll road wasn't build yet and got out at Gambir Station. Took a taxi and things went wrong when I got on the jalan toll to the airport, tens of thousands of protesters and we got stuck in the crowd... People started to smash in the windows of my taxi and it is only because of the taxi driver's quick thinking that I got out in one piece... he managed to drive out, crying because his broken windows and he gave me a blanket to hide under.....

He drove me all the way back to Bandung....

On the tv all you saw was Chinese at the airport trying to get out of the country, offering big piles of cash for a ticket out, to anywhere.... Pandemonium....

Next morning I tried to call the Dutch embassy but they had all fled the country, talked to a panicked Indonesian working there who said he had no advice and didn't know what to do himself....

So I took another train to Jakarta and that train didn't go further than Purwakarta becaus the whole train station was on fire... I was sitting in the buses that came to pick up all passengers behind an English couple with a small child, saw them later on tv, being dragged out of a taxi, beaten up and robbed... We were dropped at Gambir station, no taxi's, the whole city was on fire, huge groups of people running everywhere, army guys with tanks shouting at me, a bule all by himself, you must be crazy!!! So I just went walking around, watching all the malls burn. Made my way to Jalan Jaksa which in those times was where all the backpacker hotels were and everything was closed and boarded up. Walking again and I finally saw a taxi. The driver was a giant with a huge afro, looked a bit like Andre The Giant and he started driving. After a while I realized he was driving in a totally wrong direction and now, for the first time I was getting worried, scared I was going to get robbed and maybe worse.... But we started talking in my still bad bahasa Indonesia and at one point I said "Alhamdulillah" and he stopped the car... Are you a Muslim??? Yes, I am a Muslim (I would have been a Muslim, a Hindu, a Christian, a Buddhist, a Mormon, anything at all at that point), and he grabbed me, hugged me and shouted "then you are my brother!!!!!!!!" and he turned around and drove me straight to the airport....

At the airport it was quiet. Dead quiet, not a soul, nothing, nobody which was crazy, the night before it was pandemonium... Got a flight to Amsterdam very quick and was out....

I had planned to go back to Holland for 6 weeks or so but I was back in Bandung in less then two weeks and things were still pretty crazy then...

Ahhh the good old days :)
 
Thanks Will :)

I'm in Lembang :) Here there's loads of kids playing in groups, quiet a few people still working, walking around without masks.... Bad-azz, you know Herman, the Dutch guy living up where you are?

Back in '98 I had a holiday back home to Rotterdam and on the day that I had my flight, from Jakarta, the riots broke out. The students thought that Suharto would be landing there that day, back from his pilgrimage to Mekkah, he didn't land there after he went to a small military airport... I took the train, the toll road wasn't build yet and got out at Gambir Station. Took a taxi and things went wrong when I got on the jalan toll to the airport, tens of thousands of protesters and we got stuck in the crowd... People started to smash in the windows of my taxi and it is only because of the taxi driver's quick thinking that I got out in one piece... he managed to drive out, crying because his broken windows and he gave me a blanket to hide under.....

He drove me all the way back to Bandung....

On the tv all you saw was Chinese at the airport trying to get out of the country, offering big piles of cash for a ticket out, to anywhere.... Pandemonium....

Next morning I tried to call the Dutch embassy but they had all fled the country, talked to a panicked Indonesian working there who said he had no advice and didn't know what to do himself....

So I took another train to Jakarta and that train didn't go further than Purwakarta becaus the whole train station was on fire... I was sitting in the buses that came to pick up all passengers behind an English couple with a small child, saw them later on tv, being dragged out of a taxi, beaten up and robbed... We were dropped at Gambir station, no taxi's, the whole city was on fire, huge groups of people running everywhere, army guys with tanks shouting at me, a bule all by himself, you must be crazy!!! So I just went walking around, watching all the malls burn. Made my way to Jalan Jaksa which in those times was where all the backpacker hotels were and everything was closed and boarded up. Walking again and I finally saw a taxi. The driver was a giant with a huge afro, looked a bit like Andre The Giant and he started driving. After a while I realized he was driving in a totally wrong direction and now, for the first time I was getting worried, scared I was going to get robbed and maybe worse.... But we started talking in my still bad bahasa Indonesia and at one point I said "Alhamdulillah" and he stopped the car... Are you a Muslim??? Yes, I am a Muslim (I would have been a Muslim, a Hindu, a Christian, a Buddhist, a Mormon, anything at all at that point), and he grabbed me, hugged me and shouted "then you are my brother!!!!!!!!" and he turned around and drove me straight to the airport....

At the airport it was quiet. Dead quiet, not a soul, nothing, nobody which was crazy, the night before it was pandemonium... Got a flight to Amsterdam very quick and was out....

I had planned to go back to Holland for 6 weeks or so but I was back in Bandung in less then two weeks and things were still pretty crazy then...

Ahhh the good old days :)
Quite the tale there. Interesting times I am sure.
I am not aware of any people around us other than Indonesians.
I think some "bules" moved in further along our village, but I have never seen them :)
I am a good long distance from Lembang- by road.
 
There was a Dutch guy, Herman and his Indonesian wife (They had both lived in Holland for many years), who lived near us in Pondok Hijau for a few years. He moved when they built a new mosque that was evidently pretty loud at his house.
 
Yeah, there's a Dutch couple up there, quiet far out.... I only come to that area when I'm visiting Pak Udjo or when they have that yearly festival there in the jungle, missed it the last time though :)

And yes, very interesting times, after that there was the Habibi presidency and the campaigning for the first real elections ever, quiet a spectacle, if it was the Golkar day, the "yellow day" people would gather and throw stones at them. Very, very wild scenes but mostly in good fun, I would go out with a camera and into the masses, nothing bad ever happened, all people wanted was for me to take pictures of 'em :) But weird times too... the times of the "ninja killings" in and around Pangandaran, Surabaya, where dukuns were getting slaughtered, were they burned down a whole street outside Pangadaran and killed about everybody, it was a street with hookers and their pimps, I'll spare you the details... The war in Maluku with boats full of Laskar Jihad going there from Java, later they disbanded and rose again as the FPI, backed by mostly the same people....

Bandung was never the same after the economic crisis from '97/'98, everything just changed.... Dada Rosada became the mayor and he started selling building permits, that bastard was already rich but he then became super rich, his specialty was selling building permits for places where it was illegal to build, Dago, Lembang, Puncelut, important water catchment areas that were destroyed, so much of the beautiful forests all around Bandung. It was also the time the police separated from the army, the old dwi-fungsi was stopped and the police, under Rosada became a terror group, specially the underground/punk scene was targeted, many, many kids raped, tortured, murdered so that whole scene moved to Jakarta and East-Java... I know, I was part of that scene and I saw and lived through stuff that I will never, never forget. He, Rosada has been in jail for a number of years, if you can call Sukamiskin a jail that is, for stealing millions of dollars from funds meant for the poorest of the poorest, I'm sure he'll be out soon if he isn't already because of the virus.... I got stories you wouldn't believe, both good and bad....
 
Imagine.... Jl. Cihampelas (Jeans Street) was a two way road back then :) Dago, the part where you could live, where most of the English teachers lived was only up to the angkot terminal, beyond that there were two little complexes and for the rest.... nothing.... just forest and some farms, a true wilderness.... I remember one English woman, an English teacher who rented a house further out and she moved out within a month or so because of the break-ins in her house, it was just not feasible to live there... I lived the first few years in Buah Batu which back then was a lovely area, it stopped at Jl. Sukarno-Hatta, then it was just rice fields..... Becak drivers refused to go there because it was too dark and there just wasn't anything there... There was a HUGE group of English teachers back then, anybody could be an English teacher, if you were say some Italian guy with 10 words of English and even those words you couldn't pronounce right you could be a teacher and the pay was around 50 to 75 dollars AN HOUR, so people would work 10, 15 hours a week and live like kings and queens. Most of those English teachers were burn-outs from Europa and The States, messed up from too many rave parties and xtc, a lot of freaks....

Night life was insane back then, so many discotheques and cafe's.... Polo discotheque at Alun Alun... Owned by the grand kids from Suharto, you had to take an elevator to go up and then you came into a hall way full with posters, t-shirts, stickers etc. that said "no to xtc" and then you went inside and it was a mad house. Every now and then one of those Suharto grand kids would come down from their private floor upstairs and would throw handfuls of xtc pills into the dancing crowd, every discotheque would have cops in front of them and they were the ones selling weed, pills, what ever, nobody got busted, ever, unless you were behaving badly.... The air plane factory was still in full swing employing loads and loads of foreigners and textile was still really booming so there was a huge crowd of foreigners with money to burn, you just can't believe what a city Bandung was in the old days :)
 
Yeah, there's a Dutch couple up there, quiet far out.... I only come to that area when I'm visiting Pak Udjo or when they have that yearly festival there in the jungle, missed it the last time though :)

And yes, very interesting times, after that there was the Habibi presidency and the campaigning for the first real elections ever, quiet a spectacle, if it was the Golkar day, the "yellow day" people would gather and throw stones at them. Very, very wild scenes but mostly in good fun, I would go out with a camera and into the masses, nothing bad ever happened, all people wanted was for me to take pictures of 'em :) But weird times too... the times of the "ninja killings" in and around Pangandaran, Surabaya, where dukuns were getting slaughtered, were they burned down a whole street outside Pangadaran and killed about everybody, it was a street with hookers and their pimps, I'll spare you the details... The war in Maluku with boats full of Laskar Jihad going there from Java, later they disbanded and rose again as the FPI, backed by mostly the same people....

Bandung was never the same after the economic crisis from '97/'98, everything just changed.... Dada Rosada became the mayor and he started selling building permits, that bastard was already rich but he then became super rich, his specialty was selling building permits for places where it was illegal to build, Dago, Lembang, Puncelut, important water catchment areas that were destroyed, so much of the beautiful forests all around Bandung. It was also the time the police separated from the army, the old dwi-fungsi was stopped and the police, under Rosada became a terror group, specially the underground/punk scene was targeted, many, many kids raped, tortured, murdered so that whole scene moved to Jakarta and East-Java... I know, I was part of that scene and I saw and lived through stuff that I will never, never forget. He, Rosada has been in jail for a number of years, if you can call Sukamiskin a jail that is, for stealing millions of dollars from funds meant for the poorest of the poorest, I'm sure he'll be out soon if he isn't already because of the virus.... I got stories you wouldn't believe, both good and bad....
The prisoners in Sukamiskin are, as of yet, not being released. They do not fit the criteria.
Also it is one person 1 cell there so it isn't one of the overcrowded higher risk jails... yet the population is the higher risk age group- it is very much an old man's jail.
 
I imagine poor, poor Dada Rosada will have to miss his monthly wayang shows that they do especially for him there at the moment :) A friend of mine is close to the King of Dangdut, Rhoma Irama. He went with Rhoma when he was performing in Sukamiskin two years ago, yes, they have these kind of concerts there too... He had lunch there, said he never in his life saw a lunch as luxurious as that one....
 
I imagine poor, poor Dada Rosada will have to miss his monthly wayang shows that they do especially for him there at the moment :) A friend of mine is close to the King of Dangdut, Rhoma Irama. He went with Rhoma when he was performing in Sukamiskin two years ago, yes, they have these kind of concerts there too... He had lunch there, said he never in his life saw a lunch as luxurious as that one....
Wait... Isn't Sukamiskin a jail? You mean the guests and performers had a luxurious lunch right? And it's probably luxurious for jail food? I suppose once a year a jail that's not max security could have entertainment, like Johnny Cash once did, or Metallica, Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, Sinatra, Santana, and a few others. But I'm sure it's not a common occurrence.
 
Pretty sure the prisoners at the concerts you mentioned didn't enjoy lobster and caviar :) And no, from what I hear those lunches at Sukamiskin are the normal daily fare.... Ever been to an Indonesian jail? Ever seen the slob they have to eat there? It ain't Sukamiskin food....
 

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