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SUNDA |
 Travelling
from Jakarta, Sunda proper begins in the rain-drenched
town of Bogor, 50 kilometers south of the capital,
where the first big volcano, Salak, begins to rise.
The area has a long history of civilization. Fifteen
hundred years ago it was part of Tarumanegara, Java's
first Hindu kingdom. Fifteen kilometers west of the
town, near Ciampea, the footprints of a 5th-century
king and a miraculously clear inscription adorn the
great riverside boulder of Batutulis Ciampea. Three
kilometers southeast of town, another batutulis (inscribed
stone) is the only surviving reminder that 15th-century
Pajajaran had its capital here; but, Bogor's kings
had already vanished into legend before Gustaaf Willem
Baron van Imhoff founded a country estate here in
1745. Bogor began its rise to renown as Buitenzorg
("Carefree"), retreat and later official
residence of the governor-general of Dutch East India.
The present Istana Bogor (Bogor Palace), elegant and
white on its undulating green lawns, dates from 1856,
and has seen many a lavish gathering of both Batavia's
and Jakarta's elite. Its pre-war furnishings were
looted by the Japanese; the present contents are owed
to the acquisitive zeal of the late President Sukarno
and the generosity of his many benefactors. They include
paintings and sculptures, erotic and otherwise, by
many of Indonesia's foremost artists. Sukarno was
under de facto house arrest here from 1967 until his
death in 1970.
The real pride of Bogor is the Kebun Raya, or Bogor
Botanical Garden, which covers a beautiful 87 hectares
next to the palace compound. It was founded in 1817,
by the Prussian-bom, Dutch government naturalist Caspar
Reinwardt, with the help of two Englishmen from Kew
Gardens. This institution was in the forefront of
the Victorian colonial enterprise of documenting,
classifying, taming and transforming tropical nature.
And harries ing it for profit; the cultuurstelsel
crops were tested and improved here, and the oil palm
from Africa (1848) and Hevea rubber from Brazil (1883)
were introduced. Plantation magnates showered the
gardens with funds to keep their money trees pest-free.
Bogor is still one of the world's foremost botanical
institutions, with 17,000 living specimens from all
over Indonesia and the world. The Museum Herbarium
Bogoriensis and Bogor Zoological Museum, as well as
extensive library and laboratory facilities, are located
on the same site. The gardens, with their ponds and
quiet groves, are also favorite venues for picnickers
and lovers. The busy, muddy town of Bogor itself has
simply sprouted up around the Kebun Raya, and it is
the home of one of the few remaining gamelan gongsmiths
on Java.
Beyond Bogor is the Tatar Sunda, the rugged plateau
of the Sundanese heartland and the home of the Sundanese
arts. The elements are those of Java, but the balance
is different. The Sundanese have their own gamelan,
but they are better known for the more rustic tones
of the kecapi (a type of lute), angk1ung (a device
of bamboo tubes suspended in a frame and shaken, with
an almost metallic hollow sound) and suling (a soft-toned
flute), often accompanying a dreamy female voice.
The wayang golek, a prosaic but charming three-dimensional
wooden version of the wayang Wit shadow play, is also
known further east, but it is closest to the Sundanese
heart. In performance, the romance of the Ramayana
is preferred here over the philosophy of the Mahabharata.
The jaipongan is a popular Sundanese dance event in
which men pay to dance opposite a professional woman
performer, very suggestively, but without touching
her.
This area was formerly famous for its coffee, which
became "Java coffee" to Europe and America.
As early as the 1720s, the VOC forced the Sundanese
peasantry to pay tax in coffee beans; this archaic
imposition was not completely abolished until 1917.
In the 20th century, the place of coffee was largely
taken by tea. At Puncak ("Peak"), the highest
part of the dizzy road from Bogor to the plateau,
the hillsides are fragrant with tea. Women pickers
still sweat to harvest this valuable crop, sometimes
with their children on their backs. Incredibly, another
important source of income in this 1900 meter-high
mountain pass is fish: ikan mas (big carp) are kept
in countless fishponds and smaller fish are kept in
the shallow water of seasonally empty ricefields.
At Cipanas there is a famous volcanic spa where the
mountains disgorge sulfureous water at a hot 43' C.
Many governors-general have sworn by its restorative
powers and their country house still stands here.
Not far away is the Cibodas Botanical Garden, a high-altitude
extension of the gardens at Bogor, and beyond that
are the forested peaks of two volcanoes that comprise
the magnificent Mt. Gede Pangrango National Park.
The most isolated and unchanged part of the Sundalands
is the westernmost massif, straddling the kabupaten
of Banten and Priangan Barat. At its center is the
vast, rarely visited, Mt. Halimun Reserve, with its
many trails to various tea plantations. On the western
slopes is a cluster of settlements inhabited by the
intriguing Badui people, a remnant of old Sunda which
resisted Islamization by the drastic expedient of
isolating itself almost completely from the outside
world, both by distance and a series of strict taboos
against travel and contact with strangers. The 40
families - never more of white-robed "Inner Badui"
acquired a cultish aura of secrecy and magic which
kept outsiders in awe, while the more numerous black-clad
"Outer Badui" acted as their ambassadors
to the profane world - truly an astonishing piece
of social history. The Badui area is usually reached
from Rangkasbitung in the north, via the little town
of Lebak where Multatuli was stationed and sacked,
and where his great novel Max Havelaar was consequently
set. Part of the journey to the Badui must be made
on foot. No one may stay in the inner "forbidden
area," for although the cult of the Badui is
under heavy pressure from education, population growth
and tourism, its days are not yet over. A far cry
from the Badui is the Halimun massif's eastern window
on ''civilization;" the seaside resort of Pelabuhan
Ratu. When Sukarno stayed here, fresh bread rolls
were flown in by helicopter from Bandung. At the Samudra
Beach Hotel, which the late president built, one room
is always kept vacant for the Queen of the South Sea,
a goddess who lures swimmers to their deaths in the
crashing waves of this stormy coast. |
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BANDUNG |
 In
Bandung, the Dutch gave Sunda the capital it had not
had since the fall of Pajajaran. The original fiefdoM
of Bandung was established in 1641, by decree of Sultan
Agung of Mataram, but its center was further south;
the present city grew up around a Dutch administrative
center established on the Great Post Road in 1811.
In 1864, it became the capital of the Priangan plateau.
Soon conveniently linked to Batavia by railway, it
was favored by the colonials for its cool climate
and fine location on the mountain-girdled bed of an
ancient lake, and became a center for all kinds of
Dutch activities not directly tied to the big ports.
In 1916, the command of the colonial army was transfer-red
here from Batavia, and Indonesia's officers are still
trained here. The Bandung Institute of Technology
(IBT) was opened in 1920. It is still one of Indonesia's
most prestigious universities. With its comfortable
bungalows and boulevards lined with flowers, Bandung
was Java's most European city - even, some said, the
"Paris of the East." In 1942, it was to
have been the mountain stronghold which would defy
Japan's onslaught; but its defenses crumbled even
as the last planes took off for Australia. Today,
reclaimed by the Sundanese, but contested by more
than the usual mix of immigrants from other regions,
it is a busy, shabby city of almost two million, that
thrives on the light industries which came here in
the 1970s. Bandung is the site of one of the New Order's
most spectacular and controversial industrial projects,
the IPTN Aircraft plant, and while the old atmosphere
has succumbed to the smog, and the newer soubriquet
of "City of Flowers" has not been earned,
Bandung has managed to retain its historic and architectural
interest, its intellectual dynamism and the institutions
which make it the seat of Sundanese culture.
The ITB campus is in the north of town on J1. Ganeca;
it was an out-of-town location when it was built in
1920. Architect Maclaine Pont used the traditional
houses of the Mandailing Batak in North Sumatra as
the model for his beautiful and functional design.
Sukarno received his engineer's degree here in 1926,
but not before helping to found the study club which
would grow into the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI).
To this day, ITB students have a reputation for outspokenness;
unapproved political publications have led to trials
of student leaders. Not purely a technical university,
ITB has an art gallery which is open to the public.
Other 1920s buildings include the venerable Gedung
Sate (1920) on JI. Diponegoro as well as the Geological
Museum, opened by the Dutch in 1929, across the street.
Nearby is Bandung's tallest and most striking postwar
building, the new local government headquarters, that
many think looks like some kind of futuristic water
tower.
building, is the Gedung Merdeka on the same street
- not for its crude, inter-war, civic architecture,
but because it was the venue for a grand diplomatic
event: the first Asia-Africa Conference, in 1955.
Here Sukarno played host to Nehru, Nasser and Ho Chi
Minh, and laid the foundations of today's Non-Alligned
Movement amid the euphoria of that seemingly distant
time of falling empires. "Bandung spirit builds
the world anew," blazed a giant slogan from the
building's eaves, while the armed Darul Islam rebels
watched from the hills and the country lurched towards
bankruptcy. Also known as the Asia-Africa Building,
Gedung Merdeka houses an interesting museum of photos
and other memorabilia from the conference.
Just west of Bandung is the prewar army town of Cimahi;
nearby, the Tarum river, Sunda's largest, passes over
spectacular falls. About 50 kilometers down river,
the Tarurn flows into the huge Jatiluhur Reservoir,
where a Frenchbuilt dam and hydroelectric station
feed Jakarta's and West Java's ever-growing demand
for water and power.
North of Bandung, Dutcb-style flower gardens, vegetable
plots and even dairy farms grace the slopes of some
of Java's highest volcanoes in homely defiance of
the wild tropical backdrop. A very Asian use has been
found here for fancy European livestock: the locals
have discovered that ram-fighting is even more exciting
than cockfighting. Here, too, are the famous spa resorts
of Ciater, with almost Roman-looking hot baths, and
Maribaya. Lembang's Grand Hotel opened its doors in
1926. The best-known summit of this massif is the
readily accessible Tangkuban Prahu, with its three
craters of blasted boulders and boiling mud.
Even more dramatic landscapes lie on the opposite,
southern side of Bandung, though at a greater distance.
Thirty kilometers southwest of Ciwidey, is a beautiful
cold mountain lake that resembles a Scottish loch.
The town itself is a living center of blacksmithing
(agricultural tools, as well as decorative knives),
something of a rarity even in tribal Sumatra. Mt.
Papandayan, about 60 kilometers southeast of Bandung
via the tea town of Pengalengan, is a bigger, angrier
Tangkuban Prahu.
There are two routes from Bandung to the east: the
old Great Post Road, which returns to the north coast,
and a quieter southern route which ultimately winds
its way to Yogyakarta. The first town on the southern
road is Garut, a favorite mountain resort in colonial
times, now a quintessentially Sundanese country town
which features some of the last pile houses in Java.
Sunda retained the old pre-Hindu, Malay-like design
long after the houses of Java proper came down to
earth, but "Javanization," snobbery and
the price of timber are putting an end to now. North
of Garut, at Lake Cangkuang, near Leles, is West Java's
only significant Hindu temple, imaginatively restored
in the 1970s. Perversely (or perhaps appropriately,
in syncretic Indonesia), next to the temple is the
grave of Arif Muhammad, the pioneer of Islam in the
area. The Garut region is even more volcanically active
than points west. In 1982, it suffered badly from
a series of major eruptions from Mt. Galunggung, east
of Garut, which covered the countryside in a searing,
black blizzard of ash. In Kawah Talagabodas, the crater
of Galunggung's less deadly twin, a spectacular green
sulfereous lake can be seen. After Garut, the next
major stop is Tasikmalaya, famous for its woven craft
products in rattan, pandanus and bamboo. Tasikmalaya
also has a batik industry; the traditional designs
are similar to those of Central Java.
Tasikmalaya's Tanduy river roughly marks the linguistic
border between Sunda and Java; 40 kilometers further
on is the administrative boundary where Central Java
officially begins. Just before the latter is the turn-off
to one of Java's most accessible nature reserves,
Pangandaran, like Ujong Kulon, a narrownecked peninsula.
Pangandaran is also a popular, cheap beach resort.
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