The great divide

This is my 100th post! I did try to think of something special to write about but it all came to zero. Too many suggestions and ideas but none seems to feel right. And it came to a realisation this morning but I saw the magic number 99. It doesn’t really matter what I post. Every post has a certain story and meaning to it. They are all special

This is one of my favourite cupcake creation from @Sugadeaux of Sugadeaux Cupcakes. I was delighted to be invited to her cupcake tasting recently. I promise to blog about this soon so that I can share all those beautiful cupcakes with you

A large part of this post was written in bits and pieces while I was in Bali. It has gone through many rewrites. I was really angry at one point. In some instances, I felt bad for feeling angry. Was I too spoilt? These people has gone through a lot of hardship. Throughout this whole trip, these feelings were rolling around in my system. I was always wary and at time overly cautious.

This is part 2 of the many other Bali stories to come.

Denpasar Badung Traditional Market is one of the biggest markets around. It has 4 stories of clothes, wood carvings, wet market, bags, art and many many more. After our bad experiences with numerous money changers, we thought that it would be great to make a trip to the market to forgot with the incidents and enjoy our holiday. You can find many more photos from my flickr set.

It took us about 45mins by taxi to get there. There was hardly any tourists at all. The first thing that hit us as we got out of the stench from a nearby drain. The place did not smell good at all. The drains are clogged with all the rubbish from the market. There were street hawkers peddling their wares around the whole area. We not only had to get accustomed to the bad smell, this middle aged woman kept following us and tried to lure us upstairs to buy clothes. We were nice at first and kept saying “No, thank you” and when she got more persistent, we just ignored and walked across the big drain.

The first thing that caught my eye besides the screaming chickens locked up in coops was a spice shop. There were so many spices and dried foods that I have never seen before. How I wish I could buy it back to test and try it. But there was no way some of these odd spices and dried products will be allowed back on Aussie soil. I could not get any answer from the shop keeper as they did to speak any English and I did not speak any Bahasa. Tragic.

Many of the shops here are wholesalers but it is so obvious that we are tourists and were given tourist prices. Hard bargaining is required here but I do not mind it at all. I found it quite frustrating at times but I did get a sense of thrill from it too

Most of the quality of the stuff here is very poor and out of date. It was just fun to walk around and see what they have to offer. What I was really interested in was the food market on the other end where that woman was following us.

We took another route to get back to the food market. The food in the wet market was mostly left sitting in humidity the whole time without any ice or refrigeration. Just imagine the smell. Despite having seen the state of this wet market, we were still keen to try out the food outside the market. Most of the dishes looked foreign to me. We bought some spiced roasted soya bean, fish otak and some vegetarian Nasi Campur. It costs us only 4000 rupiah for the lot! Everything was perfect. Nice spices. Good amount of heat (the way we like it). Well balanced and I guess this was what I was yearning for the last few days.

There was so much to see and that I wanted to try. There was a cart that was selling something that looked by cendol to me. Tapioca made into different colours and shapes, coconut milk and finish off with brown sugar. As we were about to order, another middle aged woman butted in and spoke to us in almost perfect English. She started explaining what each ingredient was and how it was made. Mister could understand a little Bahasa and over heard the stall owner telling her not to cheat our money but she still insisted that we paid 10 000 rupiah for a drink that costs 2000 rupiah. By this time, we were quite fed up and so we paid and left. And she kept following us. Again, we had to leave the market and walked to another area. What is it with these people? We kept reminding ourselves that these people have a hard life but we reached a point that we were beginning NOT to enjoy our holiday. The constant touting and cheating was just too in the face. And it was worse because we understood a little what was said so we know. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to visit this market unless you have a local friend or guide with you.

Our initial plan was to spend a few hours here browsing and taking in the rawness of this area but it was too stressful especially after our bad experience with the money changers, we decided to head back to Seminyak. We were relieve to get back to our room. All was almost forgiven when we dug into the food that we bought at the market. The flavours were mind blowing. Nasty but this is what the locals eat. We just hope that our stomach can hold out

I bought a small pack of roasted spiced soya beans. It was salty, nicely spiced and provided a nice crunch to the vegetarian campur and fish otak that we bought. The fish otak had a rich lemongrass, chilli, tumeric, coconut flavour. The vegetarian campur is super spicy but we love it. It had a mixture of mung beans, string beans, sliced bittergourd, peanuts, potato leaves and drizzled with this spicy dark sauce. What a killer. It costs us 4000 rupiah. The real taste of Indo.

I am sure that many people will disagree with me on this but I love the Babi Guling in this market. The crackling was perfect. So many flavours in one dish but so balanced. After the episode with the nasty woman, the stall owner did not bring the price up and still charge us the same as the local. We knew as we saw what the other woman paid. 10 000 rupiah for a packet of Bali heaven. Cheaper than the one in Ubud and tasted exquisite. More spices, more heat and more memorable. It is too hard to describe perfection. It seems that everywhere we travel, we always find the best food in the worse places and it is always the cheapest. I know that this taste will stick to me forever. Just like the 3 euro pasta I had in Florence. This made us smile again. So if you dare, this is what I will recommend making the trip for. It is the only Babi Guliing stall outside the wet market.

To finish up the meal, we had our hard earned coconut tapioca drink. It is cendol. Nothing special. I guess it would have been better but that experience did leave a bad taste in our mouth.

Totally satisfied from our take away, we decided to head to Ku De Ta to watch the sunset. Ku de ta is a upmarket bar & restaurant in Seminyak. I will write a whole post about it at a later stage. It is such a stark difference from what we had experienced in the day. We were happy to be here. Not trying to be snobby but we felt somewhat safer even though we know that we are paying a lot more. The sunset was gorgeous. Staring into the reds, pink, voilet, blues and sipping on my martini, I thought to myself – Money does buy beauty and peace here for a tourist/foreigner. I am just being very honest in how I felt at that point of time. But I also thought to myself as I looked at the beach hawkers waving their wares and trying to attract our attention – Is this real?

I shall leave this post with a thought – It is a reality that some people are more fortunate than others. And being humble about it is very important.

Was it wrong of me to feel the way I felt? What would you have done?