The Balinese Feast

Food is a major part of ceremonies and festivals throughout Indonesia (I’m not sure we’ll make it to Thailand after all!). The size of the feast depends on the importance of the ceremony. In Bali, at smaller ceremonies, the Balinese will smoke a duck or chicken to accompany a range of delicious spicy salads. Whereas at larger celebrations, no expense is spared and families will also enjoy a spit roast pig (babi guling, my favourite! and a local delicacy – more on this later!).
Several restaurants in Ubud offer these feasts to tourists on a regular basis. Bighead and I have already par-taken in several (surprise!).

Ketut’s Place on Jl Suweta provides these feasts on Sun, Wed and Fri. It costs 135,000Rp per person (about NZ$20) and you can eat as much as you can squeeze in! Drinks are extra and there may be a service charge (Ketut took ours off after asking where we stayed! Go figure).

Before the meal Ketut welcomes all guests into his family compound and shares some interesting info about Balinese culture. Each guest is poured a glass of Balinese rice wine (not unlike dessert wine from home, although unfortunately only 1% alcohol) and a cup of ginger tea. The feast is laid out in buffet style and contains about 15 or so different dishes. Various spicy salads, tofu satay, coconut satay, chicken curry, smoked duck, peanut crisps, fried tempeh, prawn crackers, the list goes on. Samesame’s eyes are bulging as she tries to play it cool. Waiting patiently as the guests before her seem to take an eternity to fill their banana leave baskets… oh so tasty!

However, a better bargain waits at Rumah Roda’s Guesthouse and Restaurant on Jl Kajeng, where a very similar feast can be had for just 30,000Rp (about $4!). The environment isn’t quite so up market but is lovely just the same, which is more our speed anyway. Roda's serves up a delectable array of dishes, where the main item that’s missing is the ubiquitous smoked duck.

The other thing I love about Roda’s, is that he refills water bottles for 20c a pop. Anything to help decrease the ever increasing plastic problem in Bali, is all good as far as I'm concerned!

Market Day

Every morning, before the lazy tourist begins to stir, the local market is in full swing. It's scooter mania! Everything you can imagine is for sale here and the atmosphere is awesome. Locals move from stall to stall with haste, gathering their daily produce. There are baskets and smiles everywhere and not a 'pinky' in sight... Wafting smells of satay lead me downstairs where the maze of stalls seem endless. It's sensory overload and I'm loving it!

Vegetarians be warned.

Food, glorious food!

I remember being really pleasently surprised by the cuisine when we came here in 2007 and I've been dreaming about it ever since.

I love everything there is to love about Balinese food. Not only is it fresh and jam packed full of fruit and veges, it looks delicious, it smells delicious, it tastes delicious, and it's so cheap! Dirt cheap if you eat in the local warung (which if you ask me, taste better anyway!)

My mouth waters just writing this post!

Check out these gorgeous dishes, Nasi Campur, the national dish - made differently each time, depending on what's available in mamasans kitchen. It usually contains a couple of different meaty tidbits, a salad, and rice.


The little side salads are fresh, tasty and perfectly spiced.


Chicken satay... and fish satay (yum!)


I forget the name of this dish, but it's a selection of tasty little salads. Each of these dishes costs about NZ$1.30 and a freshly squeezed watermelon juice (my favourite at the moment) costs about NZ$0.80!

Umm...

They don't make em' like this at home...

Bali – you gotta love it!

The plan was this. Upon arrival in Bali, some guy called Made (pronounced ‘Maa day’ - Balinese name for son number two) was going to pick us up from the airport and take us to his gloriously cheap bungalow in Ubud (food lover’s haven, 20km north of Kuta). Now, we’d communicated with Made by phone a week earlier and had a few giggles over the confusing conversation that had taken place. By the end of the call, we weren’t entirely sure that what we’d asked for was what we’d get, but we went with the flow and trusted that Made would come through for us. As it turned out, we were left high and dry at Denpasar airport (10pm Sunday night) with no Made and no accommodation. Never fair! This was simply a gentle reminder that things don’t always go to plan… especially in Asia!

We ended up grabbing a room for one night in Kuta without any hassle and we are now happily buzzing around Ubud on our wee scooter, eating up a storm! I even managed to drop by Warung Ibu Oka’s (Balinese food stall) on day one and have my all time favourite meal, Babi Guling – Balinese style roast suckling pig, basted with honey goodness and cooked so slowly that the meat melts in your mouth. Served with a delicious green bean chilli concoction and the most heavenly crackling.




We're staying at Kajeng Bungalows, surrounded by lush greenery and right next to the river. How could anyone resist this jungle setting, complete with very romantic room - including Strawberry Shortcake bed linen!

I’m still finding it hard to believe that this is where we are and what we’re doing. Un-winding is the emphasis. After all, it takes a while to really get into the swing of things. We’ll stay here for the next week and then maybe head off to the coast to dive!

Hello Singapore!

How did that happen?

It feels like just yesterday that we were 6 days out from leaving, it was pouring with rain and I was so cold that I was seriously concerned I would loose my fingers and toes to frost bite!

Now, here we are in Singapore! It's hot, it's beautiful and the food is soooooooo good. The flight/s were horrific, it took us about 17 hours in total to get here, but hey, it was cheap! Sometimes I'm too thrifty for my own good.

It's hard to describe the heat here. We're always fooled when exiting the plane because as soon as you get off, you can feel a slight shift in temperature as you wonder through the terminal. It doesn't even feel like there is air conditioning on in the airport. So I'm thinking to myself... this is alright, I can handle this and then the sliding doors open to exit and it's the real deal. I mean, it's hot, it's sticky, and it's all consuming. It closes in around you and threatens to suffocate. I love it and I hate it at the same time.

To make the most of our day here, we rose early this morning and headed straight out in search of food. If you know us well, you know that this is one of our biggest motivations for travel. If you've been following my journey so far, you also know that I've been dreaming about satay sticks for months now (had the first of many last night by the way and it was just as delicious as I remember!).

We jumped in a taxi who recommended we go to a market instead of town because it's Sunday and the city hasn't really woken up yet. So he drops us at this local food court and we wonder around looking at the various offerings. I'm really not too sure what most of it was, but it looked scary. I ended up choosing this little stall that had a delicious llooking array of tasty treats. I watched to see what the person in front of me was doing because I wasn't too sure how it all worked. You have to grab a bowl and fill it with the things you like and then they pour a clear broth over it, whack some noodles in and away you go! It was very tasty and just what I felt like. All for $2.50! Can't complain.

Bighead went for a Nasi Lemak which is rice, fried chicken, and stirfried greens (which we think were garlic stalks with flowers and all, so good). On the side was a very tasty coconut, chilli paste, absolutely devine.

The food was so good that I really wanted to take a photo of it for you but I'm not feeling game enough to pull out my camera just yet. I'm trying NOT to look like a tourist. The ex-pats call themselves 'pinkies' here but I think I'm more of a 'whitie'!

We're off to hit the malls now, check out some technology and buy some jandles! Couldn't find any in Welli before we left!

Six sleeps to go

I'm trying really hard not to get too excited about our departure because it seems to make time stand still (even though it's only six more sleeps, 5 days, 9 hours and... I'm not soooo much of a freak to work out minutes and seconds, nor is my fuzzy brain able to cope with that sort of mathematical equation right now!)

There are loads of things I'll miss about New Zealand but the main one is the comfort of my friends and family. I think this is the thing I will struggle with most.

My only survival strategy at this point is to block it out completely, which seems to work a treat (most of the time). I've been trying super hard not to think about leaving my darling kitties, but as time creeps by, it's becoming quite difficult.

My other plan is to keep busy which shouldn't be a problem, seen as though there still seems to be two hundred and seventy three things left to do on our list and three new things appearing for every one we cross off!

Wish me luck!