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Tuesday, 10 December 2013

28/11/2013 - Cycling SE Asia. Day 23–Just Surrounded by Islamic Kindness and People

Distance cycled: 89.7km from Bandung to Pamoyanan, West Java, Indonesia.
Average speed: 19.4km/h
Moving time: 4h37m
Total distance: 2550km
Border X'ings: 3
Money spent: Roughly $6

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Thinking I had all my stuff packed up I set off southeast to get out of Bandung. I was about 3km from the hostel when I saw that one of my front panniers were open; it was the one with all my valuables. I gave the pannier a quick rummaging and thought I left my laptop at the hostel so I turned around. Arriving there I checked my pannier again it was there... This does not make for a good story but I suppose if someone was pedantic and looked closely at the map above they could ask why I turned around.
Anyways today was full of close encounters with the traffic with many wonderful rice paddies to quickly glance at because looking for too long could have resulted with me in a ditch off the side of the road.
When the skies was getting close to dark and I really needed a place to camp and sleep, I entered a mosque and asked if I could camp there and the head priest? Minister? Or whatever the Muslim equivalent is allowed me to sleep there, it would have been interesting to be woken by the racket of the prayers in the god forbidden hours of the morning however a kind follower of Islam and young local man invited me to his home.
I felt somewhat of a celebrity as pretty much all the town folk came to the house too to watch the bole (white person). I had a a few hours of fame where these locals would crowd the door and house and stare watching me do everything. Of course I entertained the crowd with the little Bahasa that I know and what was on my language cheat-sheet but magic tricks with cards went well, especially for the little ones.
Mamet and his wife Yuyun fed me food and accommodated me for the night however it was extremely hard to communicate, we managed though and because I toughed out some steep hills I was pretty nakard so I gestured that I wanted to sleep . It wouldn't surprise me tomorrow to wake and to see these locals peering through the windows to just get a glance of the 'bule'.

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Monkey Business.

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Local man going about his business… throwing birds to a friend…...

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Some Views of the day on the road

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The town of Pamoyanan coming to see the ‘bule’

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