Reward your kids

Our kids have just recently finished their end of year exam. We thought another Bandung trip would be a fabulous reward for their hard work during the last semester. This time our itinerary included educational aspect for our kids to complement their school activities, hence we planned to take them to Bandung's Museum of Geology.

It was fortunately a sunny morning when we left Jakarta through Cikampek-Cipularang toll, despite of the current rainy season. However the toll road is exceptionally busy and heavy that we managed to arrive in Bandung well over two hours. As it was already lunch time hour, we figured we could not have ample of time for the museum visit. It had to be postponed till the next day.

Geology Museum is owned by Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry and managed by its Geology Agency, it occupies a Dutch Indies building built way back in 1928. Admission fee is free and opens from 9.00 am to 15.30 pm from Monday to Thursday, during the week-end however closes at 13.30 pm. On Friday and any national holiday the museum is closed.

We got to the Museum early in the next morning. There were already three bus-load of school pupils and another two of adults group. Inside on the East Wing, we were dully greeted by a real size T rex replica. The Museum has three main exhibitions ;
1. Indonesian Geology - West Wing
2. Pre-History and Human Evolution - East Wing
3. Geology For Human Life - 2nd Floor

The T rex was surrounded by descriptive posters and fossils, showing other animals which already extincted from the Indonesian earth. One corner was dedicated for fossil findings indicated Bandung's past history, where its carbon dating ranged between 6,000 - 9,000 years old.

Further down the wing, we could see the “Pithecantropus Erectus” a prehistoric human being fossil artifact that was found in Trinil (East Java) around 1893. And it was proposed as hypothetically the answer of “The Missing Link” of evolution theory.

Most of the descriptions on the East Wings were both in English as well as in Indonesian, and they were self explanatory for even a fifth grader. For the rest of the exhibitions though, our seventh grader son were struggling. That's where parent's active participation helped. However for those visiting in group, a guide was available to help!

All in all the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves, particularly we all learned something from such visit. The Museum is located at 57 Diponegoro St., just across the famous landmark of a 1924 built Gedung Sate.