Travel woes

Travel woes

Having finished a one-month trip to Southeast Asia, my wife
and I were very disappointed with regard to our visit to Java.

We have two main reasons for our dissatisfaction, namely:

* It is most disturbing to always be attacked by all kinds of
"service people" when arriving or leaving a railway station or
airport, and above all porters and taxi drivers. It should really
not be very difficult to organize those people in a proper way.
Besides it seems that they take any chance to cheat foreigners
unfamiliar with the country/currency as much as possible.

* When making the trip Bandung-Yogyakarta by train we were badly
food poisoned and that took us several days to cure. Needless to
say, our program in Yogyakarta became just a dream.

We agree as newcomers to Asia you must expect some initial
stomach problems but in our case we had already been on our way
for more than three weeks.

We understand that the train in question which leaves Bandung
at 7:30 in the morning is more or less a "tourist train" which
makes it even more remarkable that we should be exposed to
poisoning. According to Indonesia Magazine your country will be
spending a great deal of effort in order to increase the number
of tourists to Java. In our view this is an uncertain investment
as long as you cannot meet with basic standards.

JAN RUDSTROM

Sodertalje, Sweden