Zen Inn, Padangbai, Bali
I’ve been backpacking around Indonesia and Malaysia for 2.5 months now, so I’ve stayed in my fair share of cheap but clean guesthouses, dirty losmen, flashpacker hostels and wherever else one can rest your head for (ideally) less than $10 a night (no airports or train stations though, like I did on my Europe trip in 2006).
Most of them are very basic affairs. Bare walls, creaky old beds, a mandi or cold shower in the bathroom and a Western-style toilet if I’m lucky. However, some of them have a fair bit more colour or panache than others.
So here’s some recommendations and photos of some of the cooler places I have stayed so far on this journey…
[keep reading…]
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Contrary to popular belief, I am doing some freelancing on the road. It’s the type of freelancing I would class as “hardly investigative”, but it’s been keeping me occupied and badly paid, just like if I had a real journalism job.
So here’s a few links to some recent writings.
1. Remember, ages ago, I alluded to actually telling you all about how much I enjoyed attending the Casa Luna cooking school in Ubud, Bali? Well, I ended up writing about it for the Jakarta Globe, so you can read about it all over there. The picture on the left shows some of the dishes that we made in class… so yummy!
2. I wrote a (according to some commentators) rather humorous piece for the Jakarta Globe called “I love you Indonesia, but please stop trying to kill me.” It’s written in the style of a monologue to a slightly abusive lover. You can read it here.
3. During my stint at language school in Yogyakarta, I wrote a piece of mind article about the rewards of studying Bahasa Indonesia. You can also read that one over here at the Jakarta Globe.
The main project I’ve been working on over the last fortnight isn’t live yet, but when it is… I’ll let you all know. All five of you that read the blog.
On an entirely different note, does anyone have any pointers for boosting my blog traffic? Because this is not a niche blog and is more of a “whatever” blog, it’s hard to promote… and I love writing posts and taking photos for it, but the traffic numbers and comments are so few 
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Nasi Campur at Warung Melati in Legian
No… I’m not back in Bali. But a story I wrote while I was there just got published in the Jakarta Globe. You should hop on over and read it…
Here’s a sample:
“Something about being in Ubud seems to flick my switch to “hippie mode” on. It takes a good five minutes before I’m chasing down organic juices and wanting to paint pictures of the ducks in the rice fields, despite having the artistic abilities of a preschooler. When I feel a bit silly because of it, I just think to myself “at least I’m not here to just relive ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ ” and then I go buy another pair of fisherman’s pants without shame.
Bali Buddha is a sparkling purple upholstered wonderland of organics with more of those fisherman’s pants per capita than any Thai fishing village I’ve ever heard about.”
I also manage to criticize bogans, yuppies and flamboyant expats all in the one food story. You know you want to read it. :p
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At the Ubud market, what’s on offer depends on the time of day that you attend. In the morning, it’s the market for the locals, with fresh vegetables, fruits, spices and local snacks served out of the baskets that women carry into town balanced on their heads, weighing as much as 40 or 50 kg.
Women making offerings to sell at the market
If you come back after 10am, it’s tourist central. You’re lucky if you can find anything except batik scarves, sarongs, wooden penis shaped beer bottle openers and other such cultural items to take back as oleh-oleh (souvenirs).
I went to the markets on a tour early on Tuesday before taking a rather excellent cooking class at Casa Luna, which I will write alllllll about later. Here’s some pics. By ’some pics’, I mean lots and lots and lots.
More pictures from Ubud’s morning market…
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