Day 127 – Raindrops on my helmet

Leaving Cilacap was not hard though the breakfast was surprisingly good. Also, we didn’t get onto the road as early as I wanted to but then, my mood seems a bit erratic because of Christmas. I’m much more prone to homesickness and missing friends terribly.

We managed to get a chunk of our task done which was get to Bandung today. Bandung is about 270km from Cilacap; not a challenge with good roads but a stretch in Indonesia. At 11am, it started raining. Getting soaked on the way into Malang wasn’t fun so we stopped for an early lunch and waited till the rain stopped. It didn’t rain much.

So we were back on the road. Thirty minutes later, it started raining for real. A bit fed up with stopping again, we instead pulled on our rain gear, tapped the panniers (heavy rain has a way of pushing in through the gap between lid and pannier) and kept going. It rained quite hard. And long. We did not get nearly as soaked as before with all our gear but it still was not the best riding experience.

Basically, we ducked down our heads and endured the rain until we were in Bandung. The thing with the rain this time was that if we had tried to avoid it, we wouldn’t have gotten very far at all.

In Bandung, we found a tiny place for the night…so tiny, that we had trouble getting all our gear in. It was cheap though. But my mood was not the best and I was quite exhausted from a hard day’s ride. Going out for food seemed like the last thing I wanted to do. I just wanted to sleep.

The only picture of the day, thanks to the rain

The only picture of the day, thanks to the rain

Flo convinced me that I needed food though so we stepped outside. Right next door was a design place that also made decals for motorcycles. Having failed so far, we asked about a sticker with the Indonesian flag. They didn’t have one but were more than happy to customize it for us. Flo went back to the hotel to grab the pannier that it was supposed to go on and we had it attached in no time. The word “Indonesia” is even made up of individual letters all sticking to the pannier. And the best thing: The owner gave it to us for free after seeing our pannier with the world map on it. Thanks so much, mangele.com!

From there, we turned one corner to get to the main street were we found a whole alley with food stalls in the more hipster street food style. It was delicious. Also I managed to get a dessert which was fried dough filled with chocolate. Cities are just the best. Not for traffic but everything else. Then I fell into bed and slept from 7pm onwards. 🙂