With the best friend, AO, in February 2024.
Of Pasar Cihapit, Summarecon Bandung, and traffic jams.
We got up bright and early on the second day to head down to Pasar Cihapit, a market for the locals and home to what seemed like some upcoming indie cafes and food stalls meant for the locals.
(Travel tip for Indonesia: Do not follow the guides made by the influencer bules, but find the ones by local travel vloggers.)
The first stop was Surabi Cihapit, surabi being the name of a traditional Indonesian kueh similar to a pancake, made of a rice flour-based batter with coconut milk and shredded coconut. I believe originally, it is a sweet kueh topped with brown sugar, but as all things modern, the stall that we went to gave a multitude of options for toppings ranging from savoury – like the oncom – to sweet – like banana, cheese and chocolate.
Who could say no to banana, cheese and chocolate?
Happy after chomping down our surabis by the roadside watching the morning bustle pass us by, AO and I then went into the bowels of the market. The outermost diameter of the market is as per your typical local market; local vendors hawking their wares, from vegetables to fruits to chicken. But if you venture further in, beyond the market market, you’ll find another labyrinth of alleys lined with food stalls of a variety of cuisines from Indonesian to Japanese, as well as coffee and tea houses. All run by young passionate locals.
(Yes I know I mentioned on Day One that I hated Braga Walk with its hipster cafes and youths… but the vibe at Pasar Cihapit was totally different! Less touristy and more… chill.)
As we were still full from the hotel breakfast buffet and surabis, AO and I decided to just pop in the only tea house in the market run by a sweet couple whom we spent some time having a conversation with. I have always bought local tea or coffee as souvenirs whenever I travel, so stumbling into this tea house was like hitting the jackpot. To be honest, I do not know much about teas except that I love to drink it, but the passion that the couple had for their tea made me want to support their business heh. We ended up purchasing quite a number of their sample tea packs to give as gifts, and I even went on to order another entire parcel a week or so from Singapore!
After finding our way out of Pasar Cihapit and stopping by other cafes in the area, AO and I boarded a Gojek and made our way to Summarecon Bandung, a new mall that was trending, as we wanted to check out the biggest Timezone in Bandung. The Timezone was ok (we had a fun time on the VR ride but after three minutes we were both dizzy and had enough) and the mall was meh; malls in Singapore are bigger and better and even in Singapore AO and I don’t spend time in malls haha so what made us think we would enjoy this mall? Haha.
Summarecon was situated not far off from a huge mosque, Masjid Agung al-Jabar, which we wanted to swing by. Although we found a Gojek driver who was willing to make the extra stop, turns out that the same issues mentioned by the Gojek driver from the night before were still prevalent on that day… with the bonus of it being the time after Friday prayers. Due to the massive gridlock, we could not get off the car and into the masjid as per intended, and instead had to make do with photos taken from the car window. Kheyr, inshaAllah.
For all of my fights with my country, I am actually tremendously grateful for our urban planners’ foresight in planning our tiny island’s roads and infrastructure years ahead. The roads that lead to this mega mosque (the picture above doesn’t do it justice) are tinier than the roads I have right now outside my HDB apartment (which probably has 1% of the mosque’s traffic), while the courtyard surrounding the mosque is expansive. As AO pointed out, why not take away some of the courtyard, turn them into just one or two more lanes of roads so that everyone can go on their merry way without having to be stuck in the massive jam of humans and vehicles for more than two hours?
But then again, perhaps it is things like this that make the Indonesians people of sabr and redha (our driver didn’t make a single complaint despite being stuck for close to three hours with us with a fixed fee meant for a thirty minute ride… though of course we tipped appropriately when we dropped off) and people like us Singaporeans more and more impatient.
After a late lunch and some rest, we went to the Alfa-Mart opposite Hotel Santika to grab some late night snacks, checked out, and got into a Gojek to head towards the mountains to my second favourite part of this trip and something I was looking forward to since day one: The Hotel Gaia Bandung.
And MashaAllah, did it deliver my expectations and so much more…