Sleeping through an earthquake in Java

[Travel Newsletter: 3 May 2024] Traveling at the speed of the soul, walking the Wicklow Way, travel to all 50 states as a Lyft driver, living on a train, and more travel reads

May 03, 2024

Welcome to the Nomadic Notes Travel Newsletter, where I curate the best travel reads of the week.

I have been making my way across Java by rail, starting with the high-speed railway from Jakarta to Bandung, then regular trains to Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

This week has been one of the busiest travel weeks I have had in a while. I am collecting information about transport and urban development stories in the big cities of Java. I have been to all these cities before, otherwise I would not recommend just skimming over them.

Sometimes when I’m travelling at a fast pace I will wake up in a new hotel room and wonder where I am for a few seconds. On my first night in Bandung I woke up doubly confused because I wondered where I was and wondered if I was dreaming that my room was shaking. I remembered that I was in Bandung and fell back to sleep.

The next day I looked at Google Maps and saw there was an Earthquake alert for around the time I woke up. I had forgotten about that, and maybe I would never have known that I slept through an earthquake if I hadn’t seen that alert.

I saw that my friend Ayngelina was in Bandung during the earthquake. She did the sensible thing of getting out of the building! Unfortunately, I didn’t know we were in Bandung at the same time until I left. It’s been a month of missed connections as I have two friends who have been through HCMC while I wasn’t there.

I have a long travel day coming up that will be the hardest section of this Indonesia transport research trip. I will then be in Bali for a week, where I will meet some friends who live there. I will also be looking into the proposed Bali light rail system.