Chinatown Bandung
I visited Chinatown Bandung on December 2018 but couldn’t post these photos until today for some reasons. The reason why we visited Chinatown Bandung was simple: my in-law was in town and we wanted to take her to go somewhere new.
It’s been a while since we heard of the recently revamped Chinatown Bandung but we haven’t had a chance to visit it. So to Chinatown Bandung we go.
I didn’t expect too much from the place: i just want to go somewhere new and fun with families. My best guess is it’ll be pretty similar compared to other thematic parks we visited previously, but with “Chinatown” experience. I think it is safe to say that i was 80%-ish correct.
Chinatown Bandung is located on Andir / Ciroyom Area. You’ll see this Chinatown Bandung signage on its gate. The gate doesn’t look big and it has this 80s – 90s china movie vibe.
The Chinatown Bandung Experience
The entrance fee was around IDR 30,000 which is pretty reasonable. The moment I stepped in, it became really clear what this place about. It was basically combination of:
Thematic Park
"For the gram" vibe
90s Chinatown look
There’s a room filled with display of “Life of Peranakan” which tried its best to offer the authentic peranakan life. However it feels no more than display of pottery. The display of artefacts which are located all around the place didn’t feel authentic enough for me to experience the “China Town” life. It is thematic park which use Chinatown theme after all, not an authentic China Town. There was bunch of photo spots, China town artefacts, some “China town” foods, child playground, some live performance. I can safely say that the live performance sorta “saved” our visit to Chinatown Bandung.
If Orchid Forest Cikole offers “orchid” as a theme and Rainbow Garden offers “colorful plantation“, China town offers “China town artefact“.
The Barongsai (Lion Dance) that saved the day
We just done having lunch (which was served in a pretty slow manner) when I heard festive sound. Apparently there was a barongsai show around 13:00. My son haven’t watched any barongsai show ever so we got pretty excited to show him that.
The show was decent (not ultra amazing or below the par) but as a parent of toddler, seeing my son watching new stuff like barongsai is a very exciting experience for us. The barongsai show made us left the China Town with a very happy mood.
Chinatown Bandung
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Photo Gears
All photos and videos are taken using Sony A7 mark 2 + Sony FE 24 f.2 / Sony FE 50 f1.8. Post processed using Adobe lightroom CC and published using WordPress + Divi Theme. Photo gallery is displayed using Sae Gallery for Divi.
Photo Notes
Sony A7ii + Sony FE 24 f.2 / Sony FE 50 f1.8 performs really nicely and processed as usual. What makes it took so long for me to publish this photo is I want to display as much and as hi-res photo as possible which is a double edged sword because it hurts the page load performance. The way i display the photo in multi-column + masonry manner makes standard responsive image’s `scrset` solution not very satisfying. Thus, i wrote a Divi Extension (because most of my post are published using Divi Builder anyway, #blogazinelyfe) called Sae which displays image gallery using Low Quality Image Placeholder (LQIP) approach (load low-res image first, measure required dimension, then load the hi-res version). Check it out here. Suggestion and bug report are welcomed in form of Github issues. If you end up using it, note that it is still under development (v0.1) and I work on it as pet project so no quick fix or response can be guaranteed)