Indonesia, Bandung (Lembang Floating Market)

Yeay.. we're going to visit the north of Bandung on our third day. I was pretty excited at the beginning until I got to know about the entrance fee for Tangkuban Prahu. 

Alas, our decision is to skip Tangkuban Prahu totally. YES!! The reason is because Tangkuban Prahu has become a tourist trap, which the Indonesian government wants to profit from. The sharp rise in the entrance fee from IDR 50,000 to IDR 300,000 is absolutely ridiculous. 300 000 per pax is an awful large amount of money!! Seriously! Grrrrr...

So we headed to a new attraction recommended by our driver - the Lembang Floating Market. Curiosity got the better of me after the disappointment and I was hoping hard that this market will not be an imitation of those in Thailand. 

Flowers seem to bloom really well in the north of Bandung. As the car drove along Cihideung area, flower gardens spread before us. Unfortunately, I couldn't catch even one great photo of those flowers because our car was moving quite fast. Our driver wanted to start our journey early or we would be stuck in a traffic jam.

  















Finally, we're in Lembang Floating Market. It was surprisingly a good place to visit. There was a lake and we walked around the garden. There's also little huts where you can relax and enjoy some family bonding. 

See the blue coin in the background? You need to buy these coins to buy food in the floating market later on.

Some nice architecture around the lake. 

This place is suitable for families. We saw quite a number of families opting to ride on the boat. Looks fun but I think I'm too old for this. My cousin and I went all out to savour the street food of Bandung. The food here were sold in the tiny sampans, aka the Bandung version of a floating market.

And we need to spend all the coins that we bought as they could not be exchanged for cash.

We tried quite a lot of food on that day. Cilok goreng, tahu gembal, batagor, pangsit ayam, singkong keju and banana fritters with chocolate. Yummy.. yummy..

If you happen to buy the food here, it is best to just sit in front of the stall hawker and make sure you are visible to her. We tried to queue and wait for our turn initially but it seemed that the people here did not know the concept of queuing so we did the same as the locals. Or else, you would be waiting till tomorrow for your food!!

I recommend the 2nd street food in the photo - pangsit ayam. We went for second serving because it tasted good.

As you can see, almost all the street food is fried so all the health conscious people, street food may not be your thing. 

Hehe.. we were kind of full so we skipped lunch and cancelled our trip to Kampung Daun. Instead, we need to rush back to Bandung city as we had a performance to attend. I will blog on this in my next post. Until then, ciao.