Bandung is the capital city of West Java province in Indonesia, a city of more than 2.393 million inhabitantsas of 2010. In ancient times it was reportedly a village which consisted of only 25 to 30 houses. This tiny village itself was then part of the Sundanese Hindu Padjajaran Kingdom.
The Kingdom's territories once reached as far as the seaport of Sunda Kelapa, now part of a district in Jakarta, and was attacked and conquered by Muslim troops from Banten (in the northern part of West Java) in 1579. The attack also ended the two hundred year old Sundanese kingdom in West Java.
The "Groote Postweg" (Great Post Road, now Jalan Asia Afrika) was also built as the main road across Bandung. Herman Willem Daendels, the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), expanded further by building the Great Trans Java post road, connecting the town with Batavia in 1808.
The town was nicknamed "Parijs van Java" (Paris of Java), with about 150,000 multi-ethnic dwellers in early 1900. Today there are still hundreds of tropical art deco buildings in Bandung, such as Hotel Savoy Homann, Villa Isola and so forth, similar to those seen in Brazil, Cuba, and Miami.
Local people speak their own dialect called Sundanese language, which is spoken by more than 20 million people, mostly in West Java. Bandung is approximately 165 sq.kilometer in size (63.7 sq.miles). The city's highest point is to the North, where many great cafés and restaurants are located. Tangkuban Perahu, where tourists usually flock to see an active volcano's crater from a very close distance lies also to the north of town, approximately 30 kilometers away.
Bandung is also famous as an education city in Indonesia, where hundreds of educational institutions are available. The first technical college (Technische Hogeschool) was founded by the Dutch in 1920. Later named Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), it ranked 15th in the Asia Pacific in 1999 in the Science and Technology Schools category by Asiaweek magazine. It was also in ITB where the first Indonesian Art Academy was established in 1947, initially for training art teachers. Soekarno, the first president of the Republic of Indonesia, graduated from the school of civil engineering in this university in the 1920’s. Bandung strengthened its name as a technology related city when Dr. B.J. Habibie, the third Indonesian president, then the Minister of Science and Technology, built an Indonesian aerospace company, named IPTN, on 26 April 1976. Located in the Bandung suburban area, IPTN has sold numbers of turbo-props aircraft and helicopters, such as the CN 235 and NC-212, in Indonesia and overseas, as well as built parts for major international aircraft manufacturers, including for the latest airplane Airbus A380. Apart from aerospace, many other technological industries also set their head offices in Bandung, such as Indonesian Telecommunications, the National Armaments company, and the Indonesian Railways.
Afternoon temperature is around 30°C (86°F) and drops to about 17°C (62°F) in the evening and early morning. Although certain areas in Bandung can be polluted and very dusty, such as Jalan Jenderal Sudirman, there are many interesting places to visit within the city and nearby, and the city is still famous for a wide range of considerably cheap bargainable goods. Where to shop in Bandung? Click here!. Last but not least, the people are generally very helpful and friendly.
