From: messiah
endah parahiangan (dalam kaum road, bandung, java)
this place rocks! if you're ever in bandung, you must go. first thing
you'll notice is the decor: grubby bamboo weave walls, not-so-intricate
ironwork seating and tables, dim colored lights in 30-year-old fittings:
a total southeast-asian dive bar, basically. then the crowd: taxi
drivers and construction workers in their friday night out best,
outnumbering the women 4-1. and the women, wow. 3/4 of them work
there, and wear these sequined traditional costumes, complete with fake
bee-hive hairdo's with little tiara things sitting on top. and when
they all get up to dance the jaypongan (every third song or so?), it's
just too cool: jaypongan dance is kinda in this "move your body like a
snake" style, all slithery arms and gyrating hips and delicate finger
gestures, which if you're good are perfectly timed with the (to me
completely unpredictable) accents from the drums...
ahh the drums... the band... basically you have one gamelan xylophone
thing, one set of gongs, two drummers, a rebab (which is sort of this
violin thing that sounds like a woman crying in javanese tuning) and two
50 year old women vocalists, also in beehives and sequins. it's a
typically indonesian blend of the styles of indonesia, middle east,
indochina and the planet saturn. the gamelan is totally indonesian
instrument, so is the kendang drum but you can hear shades of marakesh
in it, the gongs chinese and the vocals are pure middle eastern wailing.
i just sorta, i dunno, drips down the walls, like - the whole effect is
a bit like smoking some sort of hashish/opium/clove cigarette blend.
and of course the atmoshpere is a well decadent , it's a sure bet for
beer in a town where it's occasionally hard to find alcohol, and they
don't mind if you top up your beer glass with a cheap flask of whisky
you snuck in either. and then there's those beehive girls. indonesia's
muslim morals just seem to make the place that much sleazier, they have
about as many words for "prostitute" as the eskimos do for "snow". in
the case of the endah parahiangan nightclub, the girls will sit with you
for about $3/hour, but they'll only rub up on you if they think you're
cute. you can *almost* touch them when they move their bodies like
snakes next to yours, but actual contact is frowned upon. apparently if
you keep coming back 2-3 times and "booking" the same girl, she may (or
may not) go home with you, where she may (or may not) do the wild thing
with you, and may (or may not) charge you money for it (there's a
special word just for these girls, but it's about 20 letters long and i
forgot it)
anyway the dancing is easy to fake, beers are cheap, the girls are fun
and the music is out of this world. one of those night out that makes
the lack of good mp3 downloads worth it...
-messiah
