Set high above sea level, and protected by a fortress of sullen volcanoes 190km southeast of Jakarta, BANDUNG is the third largest city in Indonesia and a centre of industry and traditional Sundanese arts - with plenty of cultural performances for tourists - though it suffers from traffic pollution and uninteresting modern developments. Sundanese culture has remained intact here since the fifth century when the first Hindu Sundanese settled in this part of West Java. Modern Bandung's main tourist attraction is nearby Tangkbuhan Prahu volcano , and there's a very pleasant two-hour forest walk down to the city too.

The Dutch spotted the potential of this lush cool plateau and its fertile volcanic slopes in the mid-seventeenth century, and set about cultivating coffee and rice here. But it wasn't until the early nineteenth century that the planters decided to settle in the area, at Bandung, rather than commute from Batavia. Several relics from the city's colonial era remain, including some of the elegant shops along Jalan Braga, and some fine buildings on Jalan Asia-Afrika

The City
Heading east down Jalan Asia-Afrika, along the northern edge of the alun-alun, you come to the Gedung Merdeka building , which hosted the first Asia-Afrika Conference in 1955 and is known as the Asia-Afrika or Liberty building. Inside, a small...
read more >>