Pangandaran

Dadang made sure I got on the right bus for Pangandaran and told me he thought the fair would be between 20,000 and 25,000 Rupiah. I was charged 40,000. It seems in Indonesia when you are a foreigner you will get charged whatever they think they can get from you. I think it is usually about double what the locals pay. This also goes for other things you buy from local shops. It is back to haggling over a bottle of water which I hate. I don’t know how to haggle on busses. When it comes to buying something at a shop if I don’t like the price I just walk away but I don’t know what to do on a bus so I make them stop the bus and get off. I usually just pay what they ask.

I finally made it to Pangandaran and found a hotel. The hotel was quite a bit higher than what was in the guidebook and that was even after a bit of haggling and staying in a fan room rather than one with AC.

The guidebook talked about it being a black beach but I found it sort of a rather gray beach. There were a lot of people on the beach and it seemed to be mostly Indonesians still enjoying the holiday after Ramadan. Here is a picture of the beach.

It was fun to swim at the beach and watch all the people playing in the water. It is a shame that there is so much trash between the water and the road running along the beach. The Indonesians don’t seem to use trashcans and just drop trash were ever they are. This has been the case in a number of countries that I have been to but I guess because of the huge number of people in Java it just seems to standout more to me here than in other places.

I also walked a bit in the area that is a national park and saw monkeys, deer and a few birds. Most of the monkeys were just the macaques which I have gotten to where I don’t really want to see any more. I saw one monkey in a tree but did not get a good enough look at him to tell if he was a macaque. His color seemed different than the macaques. It appeared to be black rather than gray but other than that from the limited view I got he looked like a macaque. I need to do some searches on the internet to see if there are black macaques in Indonesia but it seems like I am always really busy when I do get online.