Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine February 2015 | Page 108

106

Travel | Bandung
© Mark Eveleigh

‘This City Would Eat You
Alive’ says a big piece of streetart on what used to be known
as the most sophisticated road
in the Dutch East Indies. I’ve
only been here three days, and
already I’m beginning to feel
like it’s me who’s eaten the city.

‘This City Would Eat You Alive’
– street art on Jalan Braga.

It’s hard to stop eating in Bandung. For
example, within a stone’s throw of the spot
where I stand looking at the sign, there are
at least three of the best bakeries that you’ll
find in the whole country. Two of them have
been here since Braga Street was the pride
of the Dutch colonies. The governor’s
wife would buy cookies at Sumber
Hidangan, where, almost a century later,
the handmade delicacies are still labelled
in Dutch: Kaasstengel, Bitterkoek,
Pindakaas, Palmsuiker…
On the terrace outside Maison Bogerijen
(now Braga Permai), landowners would sit
and sip the tea that might well have come
down in the last consignment from their
plantations in the hills. Although the word
would not come into notoriously common
use for another 50 years, there was a strict
‘apartheid’ in this Javanese ‘Paris’ that meant
that Indonesians were only allowed into this
hallowed area as cleaners and servants and by
night had to return to their townships to the
south. Things have improved immeasurably
and, while Braga Permai is as busy as ever,
Suga Rush (the new cake shop across the