Indonesian "Cuisine"

It seems that Indonesian ‘cuisine’ really boils down to a few simple concepts, and you will soon see why that statement is a lame attempt at a pun…

Foods stuffed with other Foods: All of the other VSO volunteers will know what I’m talking about here. It’s highly unusual to locate a bun, roll, pastry, or any kind of baked product that doesn’t have some kind of ‘surprise’ inside it. This surprise could be ridiculously sweet, painfully spicy, or completely tasteless. It could be meat, fruit, vegetable, or some kind of gelatin. Either way, one finds oneself trying to locate a place to get rid of the offending ‘cuisine.’ I encountered the strangest example of this just today, when I was served a small pastry product that had the consistency of a honey glazed donut, minus the sweetness. This pastry was drizzled with chocolate sauce and grated cheese. (Chocolate and cheese go surprisingly well together as I discovered in Jogja as I ordered fried bananas with chocolate and cheese as a dessert one night – delicious!) When I attempted to lift this pastry I realized that it was split, and appeared to have some kind of custard inside. I managed to lift it up without too much of the custard coming out, and took a bite. I immediately regretted this as it turns out that concealed within the custard was a piece of sausage not unlike those little wiener units you can get in a can. Yes, this one little piece of food contained:
- Pastry
- Cheese
- Chocolate
- Custard
- And of all things, SAUSAGE
I cannot over-emphasize how strange this was; I don’t know if it was a dessert, appetizer, some kind of composite designed for efficient consumption of both, or something designed for Russian cosmonauts. I managed to ‘squeeze out’ the piece of sausage and finish the rest of the pastry, but only because I was REALLY hungry.

Boiling: Contrary to popular belief I am a huge fan of vegetables. I will eat almost any veggie provided that it’s a) raw and b) not an onion. I lose quite a bit of interest once most of them are cooked. Unfortunately this doesn’t really fly in Indonesia. Vegetables are never – repeat, NEVER – eaten raw here. Instead they are boiled until they are almost non-existent. Once a veggie is deemed edible in Indonesia, it would be something I would throw out at home. Carrots are soft; slimy and sweet, cauliflower is basically destroyed; spinach becomes essentially green water. But wait, it gets worse. In Solo, veggies are boiled with – and I am not making this up, despite my predilection to exaggerate – SUGAR. Yes, again with the sugar. I can’t believe this isn’t an entire nation of diabetics. As a result I have found myself eating far fewer veggies than at home, and choosing to eat by myself in my room more often than I would otherwise. I imagine an Indonesian would try to boil my peanut butter & jam sandwich before letting me eat it; I have to eat alone or I will starve to death.

Frying, Frying and more Frying: Not exactly healthy, and I never dreamed in a million years that I would complain about this, but anything that isn’t boiled in Indonesia is fried. In palm oil. For a very long time. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the fried foods at home, despite the shame spiral I enter after eating them. But for some reason, in Indonesia fried foods just feel much less healthy. Perhaps it’s the strange ‘batter’ that most foods are surrounded by. I managed to eat a fried egg the other night that appeared to be battered. I can’t imagine it was particularly good for me but the other items available to me were so foreign (or completely over-boiled or had so much chilli they were literally on fire) that I was left with few options.

Rice: I think I have adequately covered this particular topic, but fear I will be arrested if the Indonesian blog authorities (you think I’m kidding but I have no doubt they exist) somehow discover I created an entry on cuisine without mentioning it. Ah yes, rice glorious rice and all that…

Drinks with Gelatin: In North America we have ‘bubble tea’ which I’m kind of hoping is a trend that has died and gone away while I’ve been in Asia. This is basically a small chunk of spherical gelatin inside a sweet beverage. At least if I remember correctly from the single time I tried it that is what it is. Well in Indonesia there are random gelatinous chunks of material in many drinks (and foods for that matter). I assume this is some uber-scientific means of getting a hyper-concentrated dose of sugar as quickly as possible – kind of like an Advil LiquiGel, but not for a headache. They tend to be bright pink, and hang out menacingly in the bottom of any random beverage container. Oh by the way – these containers are often clear plastic bags, not unlike Ziplocs. I once ordered a Coke which came in, not surprisingly, a Coke bottle – but the clerk poured it into one of these Ziplocs, inserted a straw and handed it to me. Destroying the carbonation of the beverage was bad enough, but how was I supposed to put this drink down anywhere? I was stunned.

Utensils: In most places in Indonesia if I’m not mistaken, they don’t use knives… or forks, actually. And on the island of Java, they use none. For the most part, in a traditional Javanese restaurant, food is eaten with your hands. Or rather, your right hand, which presents a challenge for a leftie like me. Your left hand is reserved for more, ahem …sanitary… activities. Yes the fork (if any) is used only to push food onto a spoon (if any). Even noodles. Everything with a spoon. It can make for a very messy meal, especially when one attempts to do this with a hand that happens to not be your dominant hand. I feel like Forrest Gump at every single meal. You try eating a stringy piece of boiled spinach with a spoon!

So, in closing, I have lost about 15 pounds since arriving in Indonesia (that’s about 7 kilos for you metric-type readers) and I proudly thought it was because of my dedication to the gym. I think in hindsight it’s really just because the food ain’t that great! Now I know why there are no Indonesian restaurants in Toronto.

Ubud and the Close Call

This was my last weekend in Bali before I go off to Solo for my placement. Jenny (a co-volunteer and world traveler extraordinaire from the Netherlands) and I decided to go to Ubud for the weekend. We packed our bags and Friday headed off for our last adventure together.

Our trip got off to a rocky start as the ‘bus’ we were supposed to catch didn’t really appear to exist. We were given fairly detailed instructions on where and how to catch this phantom bus – these instructions included asking police to help us flag it down, which, as I write it, seems ludicrous, but at the time seemed perfectly normal, and did strike me as typically “Indonesian.” There is no actual bus-stop and if the driver doesn’t notice you standing there he simply whizzes by. The police seemed disinterested in helping us – as they absolutely should have been! We waited at a busy corner where we were told this bus might arrive. After about 10 minutes in the sun, we decided this was a bit much for us and were worn down by the constant offers of “transport? taxi?” by the locals hanging about. We finally managed to bargain a taxi for what we felt was a fair price and off we went to Ubud.

Within 5 minutes we were stuck in a traffic jam that you could see stretched forever. It turns out that the local desa (a village within the city) was celebrating something important as there was a parade of people walking down the bypass road (equivalent to a highway) in full ceremonial costume, with drums, music, and elaborate decorations. There were probably 300 people. This is Bali, so they were given preference over the traffic. The driver simply shrugged; “ceremony” was all he said. We finally managed to get past them and on our way.
We arrived in Ubud about an hour later and went to a homestay (Sania’s guesthouse – I highly recommend it) that had been recommended to us by another volunteer. We paid extra for a room that featured a fan and hot water. Much to our chagrin, however, the hot water only existed in the sink and not the shower. I could write for days about how many things are wrong with that but really just have to get over it. Sania’s does however have a pool, and it’s quite nice, so we were placated.

The next morning, off Jenny and I went to one of Ubud’s most famous landmarks, the Monkey Forest. I dutifully purchased a bunch of bananas (incidentally, a bunch of bananas is called a “comb” of bananas in Indonesian, as they feel that is what it resembles) to feed to the monkeys and went into the forest. Within 5 minutes, an aggressive male macaque had my “comb” of bananas and one of the guides advised me sternly that you don’t mess with an aggressive male macaque – good advice, I decided. I seem to be continually outsmarted by ‘less intelligent’ creatures. The monkeys in the Monkey Forest are somewhat more aggressive than those we encountered at Uluwatu. They have no qualms about climbing up your clothes, going through your pockets, trying to steal your bag (as Jenny soon found out) or just sitting on your shoulder and hanging out. Another monkey eventually got my water bottle as well, though he was much smaller, and I technically ‘let’ him have it.

The next day, Jenny and I decided to rent bicycles to explore the outlying areas of Ubud – and yes, despite the fact that we clearly had 2 large bicycles, the locals still helpfully offered us “transport? taxi?” at every chance they could. Jenny and I toured around the countryside, stopping occasionally to snap a few pics. As Jenny is from Holland, Land of the Bicycle, it was natural for her to lead the way. However at one point, she suggested I lead…

And that is when it happened.

I found a particularly pretty rice paddy off to the left and decided to pull over to take a few pictures. I tried to put my bike on its kickstand, but the space between the road and the canal running alongside it was narrow and at a precarious angle, so I leaned the bike against a tree instead. As I was straightening from leaning over to rest the bike against a tree, I caught a glimpse of spider web, just to my left, probably about 6 inches from my shoulder. I was still in the motion of straightening out and was conscious that this web was a little close, and my nerves took over. I turned my head quickly, searching for the creator of this web, still straightening out, and there it was.

It was the biggest spider I have ever seen outside of a zoo, and it was approximately 4 inches from my face. “OH MY GOD” I gasped and tried to back away, as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, my bike, along with Jenny’s, was directly behind me and I could not maintain balance. Down I went, onto the road, so lucky that there was no traffic at that moment. It was like my life was passing before my eyes; every thought clear and detailed. The whole way down I was thinking how lucky I was that I was not any closer to that thing, and that it hadn’t ended up on my face. I couldn’t have cared less that I was falling, as it just meant I was getting further away from the Spider of Death more quickly.

Jenny still hadn’t spotted it, and was frantically saying, “what? What is it?” I have discovered that we all go to our own dark place when someone around us is scared – Jenny assumed I had seen a snake (her equivalent to the spider I had just encountered) and was looking around the ground in a panic trying to ascertain what had scared me. I finally composed myself and pointed to it, and then I think she got it. No snakes, therefore no danger. I, however, was on the verge of a breakdown. My heart was beating so hard I could feel my pulse in my neck; I could actually hear it!

I managed to get back up, and get a closer look at this spider. I had heard about them, giant orb spiders that spin their webs between telephone poles, trees, and even across rivers. This particular spider’s leg span was about 5 inches, and made those Dock Spiders one encounters in Cottage Country (another of my mortal enemies) look like amoebas. I can only imagine what a spider like this would catch in its web – birds? Those giant Indonesian bats? Perhaps a small Cessna?

Jenny finally managed to calm me down and we attempted to get on our way, at which point I realized that I had knocked the chain off my bike in the fall. There was no way I was putting my back to the thing on the web so we moved across the street to a little driveway to put the chain back on. As Jenny bent down to help me, she knocked her bike and down it went, along with the basket in the front where she had stored her purse and a couple of water bottles. The bike fell in such a way that the contents of the basket spilled out into one of the little canals of water that runs along most Balinese roads. Luckily the only thing that actually went into the canal was a bottle of water; her purse and wallet were OK. As she straightened her bike out, she noticed that her camera was hanging precariously from the basket by its wrist strap; we are not sure how it stuck there, but it did, or it would have gone into the canal too.

Always the optimist, Jenny made note that a few bad things had happened and that we were OK, so the karma for the rest of the day should be good. I simply said, “see what happens when I lead?”

For the remainder of our bike adventure in Ubud, Jenny was in front.

Facing My Nemesis - the Motorcycle

The main method of transport in Indonesia is “sepeda motor” (motorcycle) which includes three categories of vehicle, scooters, as we would call them in Canada, full-fledged motorcycles, usually in the 1000 – 1400 CC range of power, and something in the middle, which is a semi-automatic motorcycle with manually-changed gears, but no clutch. When I first accepted this placement in Indonesia, the Disability Program Manager helpfully pointed out that it would be ‘advantageous’ if I were able to ride a motorcycle as it makes getting around easier. It sort of made sense to me at the time as I didn’t want to have my freedom limited by transport issues, so off I went to Florida (the only place in North America, and possibly the world, I could obtain training in January without a US Social Security Number) for three days of intensive motorcycle training.

To call this training session a disaster would be an understatement. I was taking the class with about 12 other people, most of whom were Cuban-Americans who were there only because they were suddenly legally required to be there under new Florida law, but had driven motorcycles for years. I do not drive a manual-transmission car, which gave me the added challenge of learning to control a powerful machine, while learning the coordination of hands, feet, clutch vs. throttle, etc. I also managed to wipe out, not once, but twice, during the training. Luckily, I was uninjured, unless you count pride. The instructor informed me, minutes before my final driving test, that if I fell a third time, it would mean an automatic fail. I went into the test extremely nervous, but did manage to pass it. To their credit, the rest of the class applauded enthusiastically when my name was called and I picked up my new Florida motorcycle license endorsement.

When I arrived in Indonesia a week later, the full impact of the Program Manager’s advice became apparent. There are probably about 100 motorcycles here for every car, and they drive with a ‘style’ that I can only call CHAOS. In Indonesia you drive on the left, and this includes motorcycles – unless you are either turning onto a road, turning off of a road, have live chickens hanging by their feet from a bamboo pole perched precariously on your shoulders, have more than 3 passengers, or just don’t feel like driving on the left side of the road – at least I think those are the rules.

So it was with equal parts joy and trepidation that I learned we would receive additional motorcycle training here in Bali. I learned that the motorcycle I would be using in placement was of the semi-automatic variety (which, incidentally, is known locally as a sepeda perempuan, or ‘girl bike’). No more worries about clutch, and less power than the machine on which I learned in Florida – I was ready for my training!

I am proud to say that I did not fall, and I managed to make a 2-hour trip to Ubud (a beautiful area of Bali with rice fields, arts & handicrafts, lush rain forest) with confidence, and yes, even using some of the Indonesian ‘rules’ of the road.

While in Ubud, we visited one of VSO’s partners, Senang Hati (which means “Happy Hearts”) for lunch and a tour. This is a facility for people with disabilities that 5 years ago did not exist and today counts over 200 participants. It offers physiotherapy, rehabilitation, English classes, drama classes, aquatherapy, computer classes and more to people with disabilities living throughout Bali. About 35 of its participants live onsite as travel to and from the facility over great distances is difficult. One of the innovations of this facility is to offer computer classes to local able-bodied children – the goal of which is to help integrate the disabled children into the community by helping them make friends with the local children. It is a beautiful place, nestled between a patch of rain forest and rice fields, and the local community is extremely proud that Senang Hati finds its home there.

Back home we went, happy that we got to experience this place. The traffic was much busier on the way home, but we were prepared, we persevered, and we made it. The only injury sustained by our hearty crew was too much sun, and as I am Canadian and it’s early March, that is something I am not going to complain about.

This is my first attempt at a Blog so please have mercy! This is the first of what will become many entries.

I am creating this site to record my adventures through a 6-month volunteer assignment in Solo, Indonesia, starting in February 2009. I am traveling to Indonesia through CUSO-VSO (www.cuso-vso.org).

VSO is an international development agency that works through volunteers. They promote volunteering to fight global poverty, by supporting people to share skills, creativity and learning with communities around the world. Through personal commitment and practical action, volunteers help build a fairer world. CUSO-VSO contributes to VSO's vision, purpose and values by recruiting, training and matching volunteers from North America to placements that meet the requests of their overseas partners.

I have had a wonderful experience with VSO thus far, and encourage anyone with the desire to go abroad to volunteer to visit their website and learn more.