Bandung love story?

A few years ago I joined a website called Interpals. I joined the site looking for friends to practice my Indonesian with while I was still living in Australia. It seemed like a good place to meet people who were interested in understanding other people’s cultures. In reality, it is a place to meet a lot of weirdos (Though, I did actually meet one legitimate good friend on there). Anyway, I met this one guy. His name is Angga (not his real name) and he's from Bandung. He’s a little younger than me. He has tattoos. We used to talk sometimes.

Just an example of the type of people you'll meet on Interpals.

When I moved to Indonesia, Angga contacted me. He invited me to spend Christmas in Bandung (Side note: Bandung is not a great place to spend your first Christmas away from your family). I had moved to Surabaya in November 2012 and had no plans for Christmas. So I went to Bandung. 

When we met, Angga seemed pretty cool. He actually invited me to stay at his house but I declined. In the end, he helped me find a budget hotel to stay in. He was really helpful and good to me. He took me around Bandung and I spent the 4 days with him and his friends doing typical Bandung stuff- hanging out in malls, cafes and bars, doing some clothes shoping, and of course eating batagor and drinking bandrek. He also introduced me to his ex-girlfriend who was a local D-list celebrity. He seemed to know a lot of other famous people too. His life seemed very exciting and the side of Bandung he showed me seemed so much shinier than Surabaya.

One of my favourite memories from that trip was when I asked Angga where he got his tattoos. I explained that I wanted to get a tattoo of the map of Indonesia. The next day he showed up at my hotel with 3 friends. One of them turned out the be a tattoo artist. I never imagined getting a tattoo in a cheap hotel with some guy I had just met but I just went with it. As the tattoo artist started preparing to tattoo me, Angga announced that he was going to go pray and he and his other friend left the room. Several minutes later, after my tattoo had already started, the two boys returned and said that there was no prayer room in the hotel. They asked instead to use my room to pray in which I didn’t mind about at all. I assumed that they wanted me to leave but they told the tattoo artist to keep going. So they prayed in the corner of the room, using their jackets as prayer mats. The tattoo artist went on tattooing while they prayed and part of it (Sumatra to be exact) really hurt. I wanted to scream in pain but I didn’t really know the etiquette of being tattooed in a room also being used for prayer. I stayed silent until they finished praying. I have to say that it was one of the strangest things I had experienced, seeing an $8 a night hotel room used as a prayer room and a tattoo studio at the same time. And despite how dodgy it sounds to say that you got a $30 tattoo in a shitty Bandung hotel room, it actually turned out alright.

All in all, that trip to Bandung was a success. I had a great time with Angga and was glad that he showed me so many of the cool parts of Bandung I could have never found on my own. That was why I promised to visit again and finally nine months later, I spent a long weekend in Bandung.

When I arrived in Bandung, Angga was waiting for me at the airport. He had organised a homestay for me and he took me there. From the beginning, Angga seemed different. The before mentioned D-list celebrity had just gotten married and he told me he was heartbroken. I felt really sorry for him. We did do some fun stuff, ate some good food and went to Trans Studio. It was quite fun. One thing that had changed about him was he seemed to not have as much money as before. The first time I visited he had driving around in a nice car and seemed to be made of money. During the second visit, he traveled by motorbike and seemed not to want to pay for anything at all. He asked me to pay for his food, which I didn’t care about so much at the start. It was more the difference in his demeanor that shocked me. He just didn’t seem like that same relaxed person I had met a few months before.

On my second night in Bandung, Angga told me he wanted to go to a bar. I didn’t really feel like drinking but I told him I’d go for a beer with him. We went to a trendy bar (no idea what it was called). When we arrived, I reminded him that I didn’t want too much to drink and hinted that he shouldn’t drink much either as he had driven there. Immediately, after sitting down he ordered a tower of beer. I was confused. A tower is quite a lot for 2 people who didn’t want to drink much.

The night was okay, the bar had a good atmosphere and we ate some delicious buffalo wings. Later in the night, Angga’s friend showed up with his girlfriend. The friend was actually really nice and he had a really cool tattoo of a cat in a bird cage. Luckily for me, he drank some of our beer. When our tower was finished, we asked for the bill.

The waitress came out with our bill and Angga sat completely still like he expected me to pay. I was having nothing of that as I only wanted one beer and it was him that had ordered an excessive amount of beer. Eventually I threw in a small amount of cash, as did Angga’s friend. It was quite an awkward moment though. 

I seem to have only taken photos of tattoos in Bandung...

On the way back to my homestay, I noticed Angga was a little drunk (though he denied it). In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have gotten on the back of that motorbike. Angga lived quite far away from where I was staying and I felt really worried. I told him he should sleep at my homestay rather than riding home.

I was pretty tired so I got ready to sleep. It was kind of weird I guess that I was sharing a bed with Angga but I was worried about him driving home. I said “good night” to him and closed my eyes. Only, he didn’t seem to feel like sleeping. He kept touching me. I asked him to stop and explained that I was tired. He apologised and I tried to sleep again. Five minutes later and he was tickling me.  Again, I told him to stop and that I was tired. The tickling stopped. A few minutes later it started again. The pattern continued until I lost my patience and yelled at him to either go to sleep or go home. He went to sleep.

The next morning we woke up and I decided to just let it go. I blamed his behaviour on alcohol and him feeling bad about his ex-girlfriend getting married. I didn’t mention anything. Angga and I had plans to visit the hot springs that day and I was looking forward to it so I didn’t want what happened the night before to ruin it.

Angga said that he wanted to stop at the mall for breakfast first so we went to this random mall. I didn’t even know where we were. He seemed to be in a bad mood, but I didn’t think much of it. We were walking along when suddenly he disappeared. I looked around but couldn’t see him. I tried messaging and calling him but he didn’t answer. After about 30 minutes of trying to contact him I gave up and went to Starbucks. I sat there almost crying at that point not really knowing what to do. Not only did I not know which mall I was at, but I also had no idea what my homestay was called, where it was or how to get back there.

After giving up on getting through to Angga, and calming down over a cheesecake and chocolatey drink, I decided I needed to try to get back to my homestay. I got into a taxi and the taxi driver asked me where I wanted to go. I tried to explain my situation to him and he wasn’t impressed. I didn’t know even the name of the area the homestay was in and instead started describing the area. I told him about the college I had seen nearby, the café I had eaten breakfast at and some other random landmarks from the area. The taxi driver seemed very frustrated but eventually after a very long and uncomfortable drive we found the homestay.

I didn’t hear from Angga until 2:00 AM when he messaged to say “sorry, I wasn’t feeling well. Where are you now?” I left Bandung the next morning and haven’t seen Angga since.