1 ½ hours later, I was at the international terminal… and it just occurred to me that I had no idea what Prof. Wheeler looked like! Hmmm. Should have thought of that sooner.

We found each other without too much difficulty; I stood outside the baggage claim and looked for any Westerner who looked somewhat scholarly (=

The Conference was organized by the graduate program at UIN (State Islamic University, Bandung), and we were met at the airport by a Conference organizer & driver who took us straight to Bandung. There was one other Indonesian speaker (Salahudin Kafrawi) who flew in from Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and jumped in the van with us for the 4 hour drive.

This was Prof. Wheeler’s first time in Indonesia, so everything was new to him… the sights, sounds, smells… traffic on the left side of the road, Indonesian food…
It’s always interesting to be around folks who are experiencing a new culture for the first time. It’s hard to say that the highway from Jakarta to Bandung doesn’t really represent what Indonesia is like, when it’s the first thing he sees. Anyways,

We stopped for dinner at a Padang restaurant, and had about 10 different dishes to choose from… spicy. I seemed to be the only one a little worried about the sambal though.

It was already late by the time we got to Bandung. We checked-into the Savoy Homann Hotel & went straight to bed.
I wasn’t technically a party to the conference, but the Hotel gave me conference rates because I was attending. That cut $82 a night down to $45. Nice!

Bandung has a special history as the host site of the 1955 Asian-African Conference…
And the Savoy Homann (across the street) was the official hotel of that event. Nice place.