Bandung, Indonesia: Shopping – Part I

Bandung is perhaps a women’s paradise. One can actually spend the whole trip shopping. Fortunately, most of our time wasn’t spent on shopping. We manage to see Bandung other than four walls and a rack of cloth.

Nevertheless, shopping in Bandung is quite an eye opener.

First Eye Opener – Channel and Gucci tudongs

Our first destination was Pasar Baru, a 7 storey textile and garment market. The place was so huge and complex that I couldn’t find the exit. Every corner you will find a shop selling textiles and garments. In fact, it was very difficult to find shops that sell other than textiles and garments.

Here you can find a lot of people running around offering to sell you drink and food. Some will be dragging a bucket full of drinks and some will be carrying a tray of donuts. It was quite weird as it was fasting month and more than half of the population was fasting.

Reloading donuts!

zzzz

They have Air Mata Kuching from Malaysia!

Pasar Baru may be a little dodgy to some but this is all worth it if you make a trip up to the roof top to see Bandung.

Most of our shopping was done at Bandung’s designer warehouses. These warehouses are very common in Bandung but the notable ones are Heritage, ForMen (just opposite Heritage), the Secret and Rumah Mode. Unfortunately, these warehouses didn’t appeal to me as most of these warehouses have identical or similar stuff and I didn’t have to patient to sift out unique stuff. Further, I find that some of the branded products quite doubtful – not sure whether it’s really rejected goods.

Fortunately, I managed to roam into 18th Park, a shopping outlet that sells locally designed products a.k.a a Distro. It looked dodgy from outside especially when they have a bunch of kids gathering outside the shop.

They looked like they were about to rob me. But I managed to gather courage to walk into the shop alone and found a treasure trove!

It has many shops selling all sorts of local brands. I got myself some cute tshirts.

To be continued..