Since you need to drive or hire a car in Bandung, the hotel’s location doesn’t matter.

We stayed at Padma Hotel, the most famous hotel in Bandung. It is on a hill, and you can see verdant slopes. Comparing to Petanu River Villa in Bali which has an infinity pool to the slopes, the pool at Padma is disappointing. Lots of kids.

Have you seen a lift with ascending numbers?

A spacious room with a gigantic bed, enough for 4 adults. It doesn’t have a tub. All resort hotels should have tubs. Seeing the modern Indonesian-styled room, my friend, who paid about S$200 for it, said it wasn’t worth it. But I thought it was quite ok value, if we compare it to 5-star hotels in Singapore.

But the hotel service was good and the restaurant was fantastic.

Overlooking the hill, Padma’s restaurant, simply named The Restaurant, has seafood buffet (265K rp) and Australian Black Angus Ribs buffet (275K rp) on Fridays and Saturdays respectively. Huccalily, who had been to Padma, said the steak buffet was awesome.

The breakfast buffet, that came with the room charges, was a marvelous spread of Western hot food and Indonesian food. Their Indonesian food was very, very good, and I tried new things that I didn’t know Indonesian food had, such as the Indonesian porridge (pictured above).

Indonesian soup beehoon:

The pastries were exceptional, tasty and innovative, with things like kaya croissant:

Padma is comparable to any 4- or even 5-star hotels in Singapore. I recommend it if you don’t mind a family hotel with lots of children.

Written by A. Nathanael Ho.