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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Yogyakarta really has a higher population of very talented street buskers than anywhere else I’ve been in Indonesia. These guys, a six piece band, wandered into Via Via Cafe when I was there a few weeks ago (not yesterday as the title implies, that was one of their songs…) and started playing lively renditions of Beatles classics and 1950s rock. They were fantastic… not only musically, but the sight of them wandering the neighborhood with a double bass, two guitars, two ukuleles and percussion equipment was pretty fantastic too.
I love street musicians… sometimes they are not very good at all, but when you find a good group, bam. For example, there’s a group of young guys that always plays outside BBs in Menteng (Jakarta) who are so full of energy you can help but dance and sing along.
In Yogya, there are a number of waria (lady boys) who perform along the streets. One day at Bedhot Resto, one of the waria sung a song in Indonesian about being a widow and losing love that was just so beautiful and sung with so much emotion that I gave her a very generous tip.
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I went to Mount Merapi National Park this week… just to Kaliurang. I didn’t have time to climb the active volcano, and I also rolled my ankle walking around Yogya last week, so that probably wouldn’t have worked well. Not to mention I feel horribly unfit at the moment, even though I have been walking a lot.
But I wandered around the beautiful park at the base of the volcano for quite a while. I began to notice all the patterns. The weather was overcast and the mist highlighted the silhouettes around the park. So here’s some pics.
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I’m currently in Yogyakarta, for the third time during my Indonesia stint, because I’m attending language school where I’m hoping to have my terrible Indonesian grammar whipped into shape by the team of helpful teachers at Realia Language School. The teachers can amazingly write everything upside down on pieces of butchers paper so that a sheet never needs to be turned around as we face each other over a little desk for our one-on-one lessons. Today I had my first six hours of classes and it was good… but intensive! Rather tired tonight!
I really like Yogya. It’s a good place to study, and it is home to some of Indonesia’s top universities. It has great food, which is significantly cheaper than in Jakarta. It’s got an artsy cultural vibe and its just more laid back in general… with much less traffic and pollution.
One of my favorite places to eat in Yogyakarta is Milas Vegetarian Restaurant. An outside lesehan affair, where you sit at low tables on cushions and mats on the floor in outdoor huts, it’s got a beautiful garden, cool music, super friendly staff and best of all — a social conscience.
The restaurant helps train local youth from low socio-economic backgrounds in organic farming. Milas grows a large portion of its own vegetables, as well as training young people in service and in cooking skills too. You can buy homemade museli and biscuits in the shop, as well as fresh vegetables from the Milas garden twice a week.
I spent a good part of Saturday curled up on a mat at Milas, charging through my book. I actually couldn’t leave, because of the heavy rain, which meant I could eat two meals, so it was all good really.
The first picture is the Milas Salad, with a yoghurt dressing and tasty vegetarian cheese made in the Milas kitchen as well as toasted organic cashew nuts. So good and so very healthy-tasting.
The second pic is a vegetable curry, which came served with steamed rice and was also delicious… and had barely a drop of oil on the surface, so once again, very healthy. I also drank a mixed fruit lassi and the Milas coffee, which is a local organic coffee served with local palm sugar and coconut milk… a very unusual taste, but delicious. The grainy coffee had these strong mocha overtones and the dash of coconut milk added another dimension of flavor entirely.
The garden at Milas even gave me the opportunity to see an Indonesian tree frog, a creature that you rarely see around Indonesian cities.
One last thing that I love about Milas is the price… for all the food and drinks I mentioned above, plus some water, plus a big tub of their homemade muesli that will last for weeks and a couple of coconut cookies for later from their shop… the grand total was around Rp 100,000… around AU$11.50.
That only makes me love Milas even more.
Milas Vegetarian Restaurant, Jl. Prawirotaman IV, Yogyakarta
Open Tuesday to Friday from 3pm for dinner. Open for lunch and dinner on weekends, from midday.
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If you thought fried chicken was just an American thing and just another obesity-inducing fast food export from the Yanks for the rest of the world, think again.
Yogyakarta in Indonesia’s Central Java is known for its fried chicken or ayam goreng, and in no way is it just ripping off that colonel from Kentucky.
After reading this WSJ article by Eating Asia’s Robyn Eckhardt (who has also been so lovely on Twitter giving me food tips during my travels) about Yogya’s best ayam goreng pitstops, I decided I better give one of the most famous restaurants a try: Ayam Goreng Ny Suharti.
This restaurant, on the road out to Yogya’s airport, has a very popular local following… so popular, in fact, that Yogya people can be seen buying boxes of the stuff to take on the plane or train to their relatives who live out of the town.
The chicken is pretty damn tasty. Soaked in a bumbu spice mix before being fried, it (like Robyn says in her story) just falls off the bone. On the outside, it’s coated with crispy bits. Much, much, much better than KFC.
I’m not usually a fried chicken fan, personally. I’ve had heaps of fairly crappy bland tasting chunks of ayam goreng at warungs in my time here in Indonesia. But this was something else. Yes, it was greasy and probably really damn unhealthy, but it was deliciously devilish.
I also really enjoyed the sambal that came with the chicken, which in typical Java style was a little sweet, but only a little. The Es Kelapa Muda (young coconut drink pictured above) was truly Java sweet… that means super super sweet. But delicious. I love kelapa muda so much 
The decor of the restaurant itself was basic but varied. There were many different dining rooms, evidence of extension after extension due to the growing popularity of the place. In the room where I sat, there were painted portraits everywhere of Nyonya Suharti, the founder and owner of the restaurant, staring down at us diners from the ceiling with her fried chicken benevolence. It was a little hilarious. They were not too dissimilar from politicians portraits… one of her standing, one of her with the family, all painted in that same dramatic style used for portraits of Yudhoyono and Boediono in town halls and schools across Indonesia.
Anyway, the chicken was awesome, so maybe she does deserve God-status.
Ayam Goreng Ny Suharti has a few outlets around Yogya, and even some in Jakarta. (For Yogya, you don’t really need the address… all the taxi drivers in town know it)
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