Upon arrival at the Sukarno Hatta Airport in Jakarta, I was trying to decide how I should proceed to go to Bandung. There are a number of transportation operators at the Airport that can offer to take me by car or passenger van to Bandung. After going through their service packages, I decided to make my first trip to Bandung by bus.
I approached the Prima Jasa counter and purchased a bus ticket to Bandung. The Prima Jasa counter is located next to the Macdonald restaurant. If I can still remember clearly, I paid RP60,000 for a one way trip to Bandung. The journey takes about 3 hours and the bus is air-conditioned. The lady at the counter issued a ticket to me and asked me to wait near the counter for the bus to arrive.
As the bus embarked on a non stop 3 hour journey, I took the liberty to go to the toilet (attending to nature's call) at the airport and also bought a bottle of mineral water before boarding the bus. When the bus arrived, I showed my ticket to the bus attendant and boarded the bus. It was a coach bus, comfortable and spacious enough. At that time, there were only 11 passengers on board. So I have the liberty of choosing any seat I want.
The journey on the bus was smooth and unassuming. When the bus traveled on the toll highways, it was speeding away on the road. You get to see many beautiful hills, landscapes, rice plantations, bridges and houses. The bus also passed through small towns with congested roads. On congested roads, this bus literally had to crawl itself out of the traffic mess.
The final destination for the bus is Bandung SuperMall ( BSM ). When the bus arrived at BSM, it stopped just right in front of the office of the bus operator. I alighted and picked up my luggage. I saw people waiting at the office perhaps to take the bus back to Jakarta. I took a stroll inside BSM and it is a beautiful and spacious mall. There are many food outlets in this mall if you are hungry. However, when I wanted to take a taxi to my hotel, I found out that I have to wait for about 20 minutes to get one. Perhaps it was due to the fact that it was a Sunday afternoon and there were lots of people. When I finally board the taxi, the cab driver initially did not want to use the fare meter. I insisted on it and reluctantly he agreed to it.
Traveling to Bandung by bus in my opinion is economical, fast and comfortable. If you hire a private car for the trip, it would definitely cost much more. However, the disadvantage is that it would not stopped at your desired destination such as at your hotel lobby. To me, alighting at BSM is no problem, as it gave me an opportunity to take my lunch at the mall and do some shopping. However, getting a cab is a slight problem during weekends.
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