Feasting on Bali, the Isle of The Gods

Like the food of other regions in Indonesia, Balinese food is rice as the central dish served with small portions of spicy, pungent vegetables, fish or meat and served almost always with sambal or chili paste. Bali is a few of the regions in Indonesia whose majority of its people are non Muslims, thus babi guling or roasted suckling pig is a specialty, as is bebek betutu, smoked stuffed duck wrapped in bamboo leaves.

In Jimbaran area, for instance, you can sample seafood dishes while sitting on the beach. Visit this place in the evening, the cool atmosphere and caressing breeze will make your dining experience remarkable.

You might want to try these:

KEBAB PALACE
Jl.Kartika Plaza Kuta Center, Kuta - Bali

AYAM BAKAR WONG SOLO
Jl.Raya Kuta no.87, Kuta - Bali
Jl. Merdeka no.18, Denpasar - Bali

RAJA'S BALINESE RESTAURANT
Nusa Dua Beach Hotel&Spa, Nusa Dua - Bali

ANIKA BALINESE COOKING
Jl.Elang No.3, Tuban, Kuta - Bali

DEPOT LA TANSA
Jl.Diponegoro No. 240 A, Sanglah, Denpasar - Bali

BATUR INDAH
Panelokan Kintamani, Bangli

BENGAWAN SOLO & BAR
Jalan Imam Bonjol 386, Denpasar

CAFE DAHANDE
Jalan Raya Seminyak, Kuta

PUALAN INT'L RESTAURANT
Jalan Sanur Beach 37, Sanur

ULAM
Jalan Pantai Mengiat, Nusa Dua

PLAZA BALI SEAFOOD
Jalan By Pass Ngurah Rai, Kuta

BUNGA KELAPA RESTAURANT
Alam Kul Kul
Jl.Pantai Kuta, Legian - Bali

SELERA KURING
Jl.Sunset Road (Dewi Sri) No.88, Seminyak, Kuta - Bali

For Moslem tourists, don't worry or afraid that you cannot get 'halal' food in Bali, because there are also many food stalls and food center that are safe to be consumed by Moslem believers. Start from green beans, ketupat tahu (rice boiled in a rhombus shaped packet plaited young coconut leaves mixed with tofu), bakso (meatball), satay, rujak (spicy mixed fruit), satay lilit (usually fish twisted on a stick), pepes (burned/steamed wrapped fish), ikan bakar (roasted fish), and many others. These kind of food are very suitable to be served with pelecing kangkung (a hot spicy leafy vegetable), and hot sambal. Various kinds of traditional snacks are also tempting to be tested such as bubuh injin, laklak, jaja uli and many others.

The safest tips to choose restaurant, certainly is asking the restaurant officers. Must be noticed for Moslem believers that most restaurant in the hotels serve international menu which are often unavoidable using pork.

Source: www. my-indonesia. com

Pandering for good food? Get yourself to Bandung

One Saturday afternoon young Yeannie Adisubrata, with her three girl friends, drove her car along Jl. Kolonel Masturi, leaving the busy city of Bandung and making for its hinterland, Lembang.

""I want to reach The Peak before sunset,"" said Yeannie, who works in for international bank. During the trip she turned down the air-conditioning and opened a window, letting the cool breeze crossing the Lembang mountain range whip past her face. ""The sunset at The Peak is one of the most beautiful things here,"" she said.

Located at the top of a hill in Parompong, along the route from Bandung to Lembang, The Peak is one of the newest dining areas in Bandung and underlines the cafemania phenomenon that hit the area last year.

The newest cafe is Kampung Daun, which opened two months ago. It is located on Jl. Sersan Bajuri. According to Dwi Budi, the cafe's customer service officer, a spa and another cafe offering Mediterranean food will soon open there.

""For now we have Warung Cadas Gantung which offers local food and Cabanasfor self-cooking dining,"" she explained.

Nested in a secluded lower area and surrounded by a high rocky wall, Warung Daun's interior is traditionally designed to match nature. Each table is placed under a bamboo structure whose roofs are made of sago palm leaf. International cuisine like shabu-shabu or deep-fried calamari is available, but Kampung Daun concentrates mostly on traditional food and beverages such as nasi goreng ikan asin (fried rice with salty fish), bakso campur (mixed meat ball soup), colenak (fried cassava with shreddedcoconut topping), bandrek (a hot ginger drink) and bajigur (coconut milk drink). The dishes cost about Rp 10,000 each. Traditional touches are also found in the bar's architecture, the waiter's uniforms and also the plates and mug which are made from coconut shells.

The Peak, however, is ensconced in a modern three-story building, with glass walls offering guests the best views of the surrounding mountain valley. The Peak also only serves European food and beverages. ""One of the most favorite items on the menu here is steak,"" said Sukirman, master chef at The Peak. Local steak is between Rp 32,000 and Rp 45,000 while imported meat is about Rp 50,000.

Employing 45 people, The Peak has a 160-seat capacity and is open everyday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., according to the cafe's operations manager, Agus Erick, who was recently busy preparing the cafe's first anniversary on Feb. 27.

In Parompong, there is another cafe called Rossan Resto. But cafes with valley views can also be found in the city of Bandung. In the Dago area, there are the Calista and Lalita Cafes, which face each other. Guests of the two cafes can enjoy the scenery of Bandung city from their seats. And the prices are reasonable: only an average of Rp 10,000 per dish from theirIndonesian and international menu -- from satay to lasagna. No wonder the Calista and Lalita Cafes are always crowded.

""Except for the narrow street leading to the cafes, everything is just great. The scenery, the food and also the prices,"" said SF Gunawan, an telecommunications engineer who often dines there.

Besides the new cafes, gourmet safaris in Bandung have long been popular.For example, there is an old jam factory that is still producing on Jl. Veteran 40. This industry is owned by 80-year-old Mrs. Budiana, who startedthe business in the 1920s.

""But the heyday of our business has gone due to the industrial development in Bandung's hinterland over the last two decades, as it made it difficult to find fresh fruit for our jam,"" explained Inge, Mrs. Budiana's niece.

Selling the jam for between Rp 12,000 and Rp 24,000 per kilogram, the factory is trying hard to maintain their mulberry, pineapple, chocolate, peanut and lobi-lobi (edible fruit) jams.

Across the street there is the famous Es Bungsu. Containing avocado, cincau jelly and mixed fruit, this very sweet iced beverage is a favorite choice for local tourists. This ""brand"" was even chosen as an item to be asked in a national quiz, Kata Berkait, on an RCTI program last year.

Warungs, operated by small-scale vendors, are quite modest with old wood benches for customers. But they are always packed with teenagers who buy their favorite beverage, iced fruit, which is available at Rp 3,000 per cup, usually after eating snacks at Batagor Kingsley next door. One of Bandung's most famous foods, batagor or baso tahu goreng (fried tofu and meat balls) is served with peanut sauce with chili. At Batagor Kingsley it costs Rp 5,000.

Those who want a more international taste should try the brownies at Bawean, at one of the oldest bakeries in Bandung. The bakery on Jl. Bawean,built in the 1946s and which used to be called the Sweetheart Bakery, is also famous for its rumtarts. Another popular brownie maker is Primarasa Bakery, which has outlets on Jl. Buahbatu and Jl. Kemuning. Primarasa has four choices of brownies, sold for between Rp 17,500 and Rp 23,000. Bandungalso has a yogurt center on Jl. Cisangkuy. Various yogurt flavors -- from grapes to lychees -- are offered with sausages and baked potatoes.

Day or night, Bandung is always ready to cater for any taste.

Source: The Jakarta Post, Sunday, 03/12/2008

A World Heritage Site

Borobudur temple is located in the district of Magelang, Central Java. It isconsidered one of the world’s wonders and has the largest and most complete ensemble of Buddhist relief in the world. UNESCO has listed the temple as World Heritage Site.

The village of Candirejo is located some 3 km from Borobudur Temple. A traditional Javanese village, Candirejo is being promoted for village tourism, portraying traditional Javanese culture and daily life through traditional houses, art performances, ceremonies, farming and local food.

How to Get There:

The temple of Borobudur and Candirejo Village can be reached from Yogyakarta by public buses that start from Umbulharjo Terminal or by taxisand rental cars. The distance is approximately 42 km from Yogyakarta.

The Best Season to Visit:

Almost anytime during the year, but preferably in the dry season(April to September).

Contact:

Koperasi Desa Wisata CandirejoJl. Raya Borobudur Sendangsono Km3Kabupaten Magelang 56553Telp./Fax. 0293 - 789675Ian : 08175414855

Email : ianmanoreh@yahoo.com

London: The living museum

By: Ying-lan Dann

Unfurling like a sequence of frames in an English television show, think The Vicar of Dibley, the views from our carriage on board the Stanstead Airport Express train into London's Liverpool Street Station seem oddly familiar.

Manors and churches composed picturesquely across the verdant landscape gradually form clusters that thicken until we reach the great brown-brick metropolis of London, about 45 minutes away.

Five years ago, British working visa in hand, I decided not to enter the United Kingdom, worried that the notorious costs of visiting the Monarch would mean reigning in a planned six month trip into two months. But recently, an opportunity to travel to the Western European nation of about 51 million people came to pass, and while the costs of living in the famed capital city, London can be high, there are also countless ways for guests with less to spend to experience the city and its many offerings.

Knotted with villages, historical sites, galleries and museums around the River Thames, London is said to have been founded more than 2,000 years ago by the Roman consul Brutus of Troy. Seeping through accretions of brick and mortar that appear to stretch as far as the low-rise horizon, the city's history is palpable.

Possessing only scant knowledge of the city, we decide that the safest spot to start our visit is on the London Underground, better known as "The Tube", itself an awe-inspiring structure and the world's oldest below ground public transportation system.

"The life of the city flows through these arteries, channels and conduits. Lifting the lid on this subterranean world can be a fascinating insight on what makes a city function", write Jackson Hunt, Andrew Scoones and Meghan Fernandes in their introduction to the 2008 exhibition catalogue Underground: London's Hidden Infrastructure.

Amid vast unseen networks of underground tributaries, catacombs and platform-cum-air-raid shelters among other things, The Tube brings us to London Bridge Station, one of the main terminals for out-of-town train services and the departure point for London's famed south-eastern district, Greenwich.

Twenty minutes along the line, the maritime town's Royal Observatory, the setting of the creation of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) comes into view. Eyeballing skyward from atop the contours of Greenwich Park, the observatory, which was established to assist with Britain's seafaring activities in 1675, has been UNESCO-listed since 1997.
Seen to be of huge historic and scientific value, the monumental time machine -- where days officially begin and the Eastern and Western hemispheres are defined by the Prime Meridian -- also has great cultural value, perhaps even notoriety. "I hadn't realized it was such a colonizing machine," observes our companion, Bianca, referring to the tactical precision and scope of early maritime exploration.
Drawing swarms of onlookers, the English inventor John Harrison's four meticulously engineered and crafted prototype time-keepers tick fastidiously inside their glass cabinets. Winners of the British Government's coveted "Longitude Prize" of 1714, offered for the design of an effective Longitude measuring device, the legendary clocks seem to attest to the urgency of Britain's expansion at the time.
Also the distinguished subjects of American author Dava Sobel's 1995 novel Longitude: The Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, it seems that despite their sometimes touchy subtext, the devices still inspire awe.
Night arrives, London's sky lit like an aurora by the city below, and we head back into The Tube. Emerging soon after, our arrival in Chinatown is signaled by the pulse-raising glow of up-sized fairy lights beaming one another through a chorus of walkers, rickshaws, bicycles and autos; cinema after cinema, entertainment complexes and eateries extending as far as the eye can see.

At once brilliant and a little disconcerting, Chinese imagery spills across several city streets rendering a picture of Hong Kong, the pawn in early Sino-British relations, which was handed back to China at the end of Britain's negotiated 99 year lease on July 1st, 1997. But just another part of the city's complexity, our attention is soon diverted by signage on a Chinese Medicine shop window reading "Massage here". After some well deserved respite from the all-go city, it's time to hit the hay.
Long before arriving, we trawled the internet for low-cost lodgings and among a list too long to count; we stumbled upon The Wardonia Hotel in King's Cross, which had garnered a bunch of great reviews and proved to be spotless, cheap and right in the center of town.
We are roused early the next day by the summoning hum of the city and make our way to Brick Lane, a long time migrant and low-income area of East London that has morphed in recent years to form the setting of innumerable art galleries, bars and cafes.

With its vibrant village atmosphere, it's a great place to grab a coffee before setting out for the day. A little more familiar with the city, following the previous day of Tube rides we continue on foot; our moseying tourist tempo revealing by contrast the quick pace of the city and some of the local rituals; resting on a deck chair in "Green Park", perhaps the most seductive.

Meandering on, we chance upon the River Thames and a bunch of the must-see sights that dot its Northern promenade. Perched, set-like over the waterway; Tower Bridge, seemingly named for its two grand structural towers joined by a delicate fretwork of suspension cable, is perhaps one of the city's most elegant structures. Built in 1894, the crossing is one of dozens bridging the city's North and South banks.

A little further along, we reach the unmistakable Tate Modern Art Gallery, an immense former Power Station, which was reopened as a gallery in 2000 after a refurbishment by the prolific Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. A city within a building, the gallery is laden with education programs, talks and symposia creating unconventionally upbeat qualities for a museum, boasting some of the 20th century's seminal ideas in art, architecture and performance.

Commissioning temporary art installations by some of the world's most adept contemporary artists, the sublime ground level "Turbine Hall" was recently the subject of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo's work. An insidiously snaking fault-line was cut into the gallery's concrete floor, revealing glimpses of the historic building's underbelly; just one more reminder of London's brimming history. Galleries, museums, historical sites and events abounding, London is a living Museum.

Source: The Jakarta Post, Sunday, 04/27/2008