Some of you who have been on Canadian Rail find Amtrak, for lack of a better word, bad. After all, its not as clean, fast, pretty, or comfortable. It's just not worth the time when you can fly. However, if you rode Indonesian rail, you might rethink Amtrak. "A train in Indonesia is almost like a train in India" Agung told me days before I took economy class to Gunung Padang. Although I've never been on a train in India, I can imagine Agung is right (although no one was riding on the roof). When I boarded at the Ciroyom Station, it was still empty enough to grab a seat on a bench. Two little girls were singing for money, a man was selling snake fruit out of a cart, and a woman wearing bright make up was selling bread out of a basket on her head. The benches were narrow, unpadded, and only lined side on the train. The windows were small and high, which didn't really didn't affect us at the time, but did so later while snapping high-speed photos.
Then came the crowds. I few stops in, people poured in. The benches filled up, and people started standing, sitting on the floor, and just trying their best to occupy what free space there was. There was smoking, sleeping and guitar-playing. There were so many people blocking windows that our car got dark. I also got a sense we were with a lower social class than I usually meet at school or in the malls. Train tickets are very cheap, cheap enough to give poorer people a chance to travel.
About halfway through the trip, we hit some beautiful scenery--rice paddies and mountains--all the green was quite a change from the rusty-red roofs seen all over Bandung. I had to get some photos of this, so I stuck part of my camera out the window to get a few shots...I will attempt to post them here.
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