Museum Geology Bandung

There are many things to do in Bandung, Shop, drink, get tattoos, eat, shop for food, visit the volcanoes, attend music concerts, chill out and wear jumpers at night. However you can also go visit museums and other interesting places er, like the Satay building....

We walked from a mall through streets with outlet shops dotted about past the satay building and then to the museum of Geology, a building about rocks and things from the ground.

First. The Satay building. It is names such as it looks a like a chicken satay stick. No it does not, but I am not Javanese however it is still very impressive and is home to the Govenor of West Java which is nice.

From there a look at the again very impressive and colonial Post Office building and onward to the Museum

It has some fossil skeletons which are nice. This is my first Tyrannosaurus Rex I have seen and also Mammoth which was good.
The museum is on 2 floors and dedicated to the history of all things earth and whilst it looks good and has some interesting exhibits, it does as with most Indonesian museums just fail to shine. It all looked a bit old and sparse and limited. For a geology museum it was not very interactive and stones whilst interesting are quite simply stones.

I guess the fact that there were at least 400 kids from schools all shouting and walking and taking photos of themselves in front of everything also kind of ruined my ever so English perception of what a museum is full. It was full of noise and things but I do wonder if the students actually get anything from these tours.

The human stuff was interesting and a fine display of skulls to boot. That and the fossils were the most interesting for me.

The maps of the country and the huge building the exhibits are in are also impressive and the scale models helped to understand the size and energy of the earth. The rocks and crystals and bottles or ash and the old colour photos of volcanoes were disappointing but there were many to look at. Again considering 75% of all active volcanoes are in Indonesia, this part of geology seemed lacking and also with 3 major tsunamis in the past 20 years here (see it taught me something) again there was little space and material given over to this area.
This museum could be fantastic with the right support. I was looking for a working model of a volcano and a working seismograph but alas no.

However, the museum was free and the staff were very helpful. There were enough reasons to visit it and despite the overcrowding of school students it was worth a visit. I might go back to see it again but I am happy to have been there.