Bogor is our next stop. The Main Street when you exit from the station is simply crazy. Dozens upon dozens of mini buses, cars, mobile shops. It's all happening in one tight space. After our train journey we opt to walk the 4.4 kilometres to our chosen accommodation, Hostel Bogor.
Hostel Bogor has only been open since November and is owned and run by the lovely Ika Farikah. It is more of a homestay really. We are well and truly welcomed with pots and pots of lovely jasmine tea. Wonderful traditional Indonesian food with cooking demonstrations and recipes. There is also a lovely dog called Doo Doo, he's only 4 months old and immediately in love with Adrian.
Our main purpose for being here is to visit the Bogor Botanical Gardens. Thomas Stamford Raffles started a garden at his country house in Bogor when he was Lieutenant Governor during a brief British hiatus in the Dutch rule. The garden was then extended by the Dutch with help from Kew Gardens and opened as a Botanical Garden in 1817. It is a massive 87 hectares and wonderful. Sadly there is no corpse flower or Rafflesia in flower at the moment but the journey is still young and you've got to be happy with 400 species of Palm trees.
Ika Farikah takes us to see a tofu (tahu) factory near the hostel. It's grimy but as Ika points out the tofu tastes better because of the dirt!! The beans are crushed then boiled, then separated and set. The whole process takes about 30 minutes and the tofu is delicious. It's flavoured with turmeric, Ika fries it and serves it with a beautiful dip of soy sauce, Palm sugar, red and green chilli and red onion - delicious. She also cooks for us a beautiful bamboo curry and tempe (more soya beans).
Breakfast one morning consists of fried cassava (tapioca) topped with grated cheddar cheese and sprinkled with chocolate hundreds and thousands. Ika raved about it, but my very English brain couldn't compute - I couldn't dispute that it was a nice flavour but just not quite right.
It would be easy to stay and sample her whole repertoire but, we have to move on and Adrian is getting far too fond of that dog!!
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