March 2

March 2 

Dutch Club, Singapore.

Wednesday.... (happy birthday daddy....)


 This morning started kinda lazy....we got up at about 7.30 and had some breakfast; scrambled egg on toast. Big mistake,....back to pancake tomorrow. There is something about the butter they use that gives the toast a funny taste. Even the scrambled egg was nothing to write home about. The fruit, papaya, ananas and banana were great and so were the kopi Bali. Upon closer inspection, the butter-cups contained only 5% butter and that would leave 95% of some bad tasting "other stuff"...Menno wanted to show me his house, that he owns in partnership with Madeh, a local Balinese fellow that he met here more than 15 years ago. This Madeh, has since moved to Holland and married a Dutch girl there. Now he travels back and forth between Bali and Holland and never really feeling at home in Holland. It seems to be very rare indeed for a Balinese to plant roots in Holland. Sooner or later they all want to come back home, often leaving complete lives back in Holland. I am sure it will be no different with this Madeh (first born).  

Here, the Madeh's of the world hold a certain status, within the kampong and family unit, they hold a certain responsibility towards the parents and in Holland they are just another number, and the money the seek(ed) soon is too hard to come by and the girlfriends, or wives and children that they have now, in both countries, will make demands on them that are hard to live with....

 

menno's house on Bali

We arrived at Menno's house and knocked on the gate. A young lad of about 13 answered the door and let us in. I was super impressed with what I saw. Honestly, this is the first Bali house that I would not mind to live in.....it was clean and well kept..and no big wonder, because in this house lives Madeh's Balinese wive, who's sole responsibility is to keep the place clean, with the help of that young 13 year old, who lives away from the main house in an out building. Khuman the lady of the house, is tall and about 35 years old, but that is only my guess. She was slightly uncomfortable with us being there, probably thinking that Menno came to show the house to a potential renter, which would mean, that she had lost her free digs....
In about an hour she loosened up a bit, when she was convinced that I indeed was Menno's older brother, as claimed. After all, we do not look much alike, and many people would not think us brothers....
I took a lot of pictures from the house and property for Menno, so he may, one day, be able to advertise it as a rental property in Bali. The house and property are certainly nice enough.
 

Living room, Menno's house.

After the visit, we drove west to take a look at the monkey temple known as Puri Pulaki. Half way through we had sore butts and stopped for a rest and some water. As it so happened, the little warung where we sat and had our water, also was in the middle of mise en place for their other side line....making Mie Ajam, well.....I think that you can guess what the next little bit is going to be about?
Of course, we ordered each a bowl of Mie Ajam, and it surely was very tasty. The bowl contained heap of noodles, (finally...not the package variety...my faith in warung cooks has been restored) some delicious broth, something that appeared to be browned, ground beef or ground, browned chicken. It also had a great meatball, some vegetables, a handful of krupuks, in short....pretty great stuff.
When time came to leave we were presented with a bill of 25c each for the Mie Ajam and 2 waters each....wow, what a deal.

Puri Pulaki temple of monkeys

 The monkey temple was impressive, and very quiet. I saw no other tourists, besides us and even the macaque monkeys seems lethargic. I wonder if they were impressed with that large stick that Menno carried. He, on an earlier occasion, was robbed of a bottle of water, when a monkey ripped it from his hands, teeth bare and growling.....
I also noticed that several cars would stop by and feed the critters from mostly closed windows, and I thought that maybe we should not spend too much time "out in the open" and exposed to the moods of these not-so-friendly apes....
At a certain point, we felt that they were beginning to circle us....there were monkeys everywhere, and it became a bit scary....we literally walked backwards to the motorcycles and wasted no time in taking off.....

We drove back to the hotel and decided to look for this German bakery, just around the corner....we did find it, after circling the block a few times. It turned out to be an eclectic place, selling some reasonably good looking pastries, wines, cheeses, in short, all kinds of stuff that the ex-pat may have a hankering for, when he is tired of nasi goreng. They sold a variety of German canned sausages, German Rieslings, etc.
On the Dutch section they sold speculaas, some cheeses including cumin flavored "Leidse" kaas.
In short, is a gourmet shop.
Tomorrow I may treat Menno to some strudel there with a nice cappuccino.

Monkey temple

 


In the evening, we drove to one of the seaside restaurants, that specialize in "ikan bakar", fire grilled fish. The fish was very fresh looking, and we decided to have a type of lubina, which is best fried, so we had fried fish instead of fire roasted. We also had a few cumi-cumi (calamari) and some freshly caught shrimp (udang). 

Waiting for the Ikan Bakar

 the fish was great, we decided that it tasted even better than the fire roasted version, the cumi-cumi (Squid) was okay, but the shrimp blew me away...  

I had long forgotten the taste of freshly caught shrimp, from the sea...not from some sterile farm in fresh water. It was delicious.
We had a couple of Bintangs as well and the total bill came to $15,-- for all that food....amazing, I could live here easily on my pension and eat like a king...

We drove home very satisfied and decided to just crash and I would catch up on my daily blog....

So far, no plans for tomorrow, except for the cappuccino and strudel....  

Macaque Monkey