Today was all about two things the people of this Muslim country are supposed to be avoiding this month: food and water. Oh, Lord, my eyelids are dropping already; I hope I have the energy to type this whole thing. I can barely move my fingers to type, so if you see a lot of letters in a row it meant I fell asleep. Sorry.
Well, this morning we had a nice breakfast of pineapple, papaya, passion fruit (really good even if I wish I didn’t have to crunch through the seeds to eat it), and quite a large Indonesian version of a Chinese pau (doughier, but meat was leaner and tastier). Throw in some sugary coffee and I’m sure I had the breakfast of Indonesian champions.
And then we were off because there’s no time to waste if we want to be able to see both the rural village and the waterfall and get home before it’s too dark. We jump on the back of two motorbikes, one driven by Egar and one by Henry, two guys about my age who are friend's of Yudi's family and who work for Yudi as guides when they don't have other jobs. It's a thirty-minute ride to the dirt track leading down to the rural village, and you know I like motorbikes so the ride was great! Smooth road, sunny weather that wasn’t too hot, no mahchet (traffic jams), the boys were good, safe drivers, and the scenery was gorgeous. In fact, the only problem I had was one I created myself: I put down my leg to hold the bike steady when we stopped and burned myself (again!) pretty badly on the exhaust. So now I have a circular scar about the diameter of a ping pong ball on my right calf to match the one the size of a cherry on my left shin. We slathered it in toothpaste and rode on.
It’s absolutely lovely here and I love that after every 3 or 4 colorful houses there’s suddenly rice fields straight up to the road for a hundred meters then there’s another half-dozen houses before a lemongrass field and so on. Views from the road included racks of vertically-sliced bananas set out to dry by the road (mmm—dieselly goodness), a positively gigantic brown falcon perched on someone’s fence, my initials spelled out in glass blocks in the wall of someone’s house, and lots of swastikas, which I like to think were supposed to be Indian prayer symbols that they accidentally painted backwards (except one did say 'Nazie area', so I’m not sure).
The walk along the dirt track to the village started easily enough, and we were all joking and laughing and excited to be out in the countryside. Mario pointed out a plant called ‘shy princess’ that withers as soon as you touch it, so of course we had a blast for about five minutes just making it shrink away from us. Egar pointed out lots of plants, too, including menthol, lemongrass, pineapple, baby pineapple (yes, a separate type of plant), coopa (a tasty sour fruit like a cherry, only you discard the tough skin), some other berry that looks like a hairy blueberry, and, surprisingly, coffee and cacao! I couldn’t believe I got to see cacao and coffee beans still growing on the tree! That’s how I really knew I was in the tropics. These weren’t the best variety, though, because they were red and everybody knows the yellow variety is the better tasting.
Speaking of Egar, he’s a nice guy and very knowledgeable of the languages, plants and customs of the area. Overall, he is an excellent guide, but it does have to be said that he has a very limited repertoire of jokes. As we were climbing the hill, breathing hard and sweating profusely, every twenty minutes he would say, “Just 30 minutes more!” I don’t think he noticed that each time he said it he got less laughter and that about half-way up people just stopped responding. Later, at the top, I said a few words to a woman in Sindhanese and he declared that I was “Almost Indonesian!”, which was quite cute up until about dinnertime when he’d said it for the 8th time. But he is a good guide and very excited to show us around and take us to the store and all of that. However, I’m a tad nervous to go to the floating village with him tomorrow because sometimes I do like to enjoy things quietly.
But back to today. We had a brutal climb for about 90 minutes, through the jungle and up to the top of the hill; it’s one of the best workouts I’ve had in a while. Dripping doesn’t quite describe the rivers of sweat that were running down our temples and creating a trail of salty breadcrumbs back to the start of the hike. But poor Henry had the worst of it: he’s fasting for Ramadan, so he won’t take any food or water until 6pm tonight. Egar’s not exactly helping him and I really wish he’d stop calling him a sissy for falling a little behind. But along the way we stopped to enjoy the incredible views and say hello to the people living on the hill and—hesitantly—sample some treats they had set out to dry in the sun (and dust). Called doedoe (sp?) it’s a squishy, jelly-ish, gooey ‘cake’ about the size of a doughnut hole squished flat and made of rice flour, brown sugar and pumpkin. We took the plunge and found it was really anack (good)!
Finally, after 90 minutes we reached our destination: a surprisingly large thatched house occupied by a couple that look 75 but are probably closer to 55 or 60. Inside it’s wide open and very cool and there are some delicious smells coming in from the large kitchen at the end of the house. We sat in their kitchen with them, talking with Egar as an intermediary (who today I got to teach the words crunchy, pointy and plastic surgery), and watched three women prepare what must have been an absolute feast, especially since they’re fasting, too. I absolutely adored their kitchen: the ceiling was a good 20 feet up and the windows were just slits to the outside world so there was a lovely, soft natural light everywhere. Since the house is built a couple of feet off the ground we got to watch chickens and the family dog prowl underneath us through the thin gaps in the woven mat floor. They had two clay ovens (the larger one was for boiling the brown sugar they sell) and to adjust the temperature you either stick more bamboo sticks underneath or take them away. So what did they make for us? Read on and be very jealous.
Cianjur rice and tea, of course, stir fried veggies (so delish and a bit sweet from the coconut oil), tangy seaweed that must have had some vinegar in it, mie goreng (basically noodles in sauce—the only thing I didn’t have), spring rolls shaped like empanadas, (a vegetable and the only thing I didn’t like because of the terrible, bitter taste), fried potatoes (super soft inside and nice and salty), kueali (think of an amazing mini-donut: rice flour, brown sugar and coconut milk fried in coconut oil), kutu mayung (a rice cake that starts bright pink and super hard then after being fried for 10 seconds is gigantic, crispy, pastel, and ADDICTING), and my absolute favorite item: tempeh that was almost creamy and fried to perfection. It was heaven.
THIS IS ONE OF THE TOP THREE MEALS I HAVE HAD SINCE MOVING TO ASIA. I FREAKING LOVE INDONESIA!!!!!!!!!!!
So after our incredible lunch we hauled our incredibly full bellies back outside and started the equally treacherous walk down the hill. At one point we stopped to poke our heads into a rice 'shelling' room, where the rice grains are dropped into a machine and their protective sheath is spit out the window while the rice drops down a chute to be eaten. It was loud and hot, though, so all we could think about was the waterfall we were going to go to next and how refreshing it would be; I had created this mental picture of a gentle, soothing cascade of water that dropped in a two-foot wide arc into a pool we would swim up to it in. In the end my predictions came out looking more like the fountain outside my condo than anything I’ve actually seen in nature, but that’s what happens when you live in Singapore, where all the waterfalls are artificial.
What I didn’t see coming was a drive and a hike through part of a tea plantation to get there! Talk about idyllic, I felt like I was stepping into a scene from an Ang Lee film. Turns out I was also totally wrong about the waterfall! The real one took my vision, pumped it up with steroids and force-fed it some speed. It thundered over the rocks, tumbled down a hundred feet or more, and kicked up such heavy spray we couldn’t even come close to it on the rocks or in the water without risking being swept over the boulders and down the river. It took approximately 3 minutes for the spray to soak us through and through; we could barely open our eyes and looking up was impossible. I did spend a few minutes wondering what might have been ‘added’ to the water by the villages upstream, but it’s best not to dwell on the potential faecal coliform content and focus on keeping your footing and fighting against the fire hose turned on you.
This is seriously one of the best days I’ve had in a long time. Singapore has really been getting me down this entire year and there’s very little to do there that’s adventurous or even just plain fun, or if there is I wouldn’t know because I don’t have time to look for it with how work has been going. So you can guess how much I’m enjoying riding on the back of a motorbike watching rice paddies fly by, feeling the leftovers from a waterfall drip down the back of my shirt, still tasting the homemade goodness from lunch, looking forward to another day where I’m not responsible for anyone other than myself. I used to think any day I wasn’t more depressed was a good day; now I realize what a crappy outlook that is to have on your life, which is too short to put with shit like that. So I’m quitting and am super excited to do so.
Best surprise of the day: back at Yudi’s we were sitting around drinking hot tea and enjoying our first chance to sit comfortably since lunch when a truck drove by with a soft serve ice cream machine on the back! Oh, I was all over that, so I grabbed $.20 in rupiah and had myself a delicious chocolate ice cream cone. And you know I just happened to stop at the store earlier for a couple of squares of toga, a peanut toffee, for $.05 each so I was pretty well set for a post-hike snack.
At the end of the day Yudi and his wife were out so we all went to what I came to call ‘Hawker’s Lane’. It’s basically a bunch of push carts lined up on the street with a couple tables next to them, all protected from passing cars by a large banner saying the food they’re selling (illustrated, of course). I was so excited to try some real, authentic lontong from the city that is famous for it, but in the end I prefer what I had in Sumatra and even what’s in our school cafeteria. This was less sweet (less coconut milk) and more salty (they add soy sauce and fried onions) and there’s no cabbage, so it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I always like it when they add the yellow and pink crisps, though, because they’re so tasty when you soak them in the broth and get them nice and soggy.
Back at home we all basically settled in as soon as we arrived, trying to ignore the fireworks being set off by the neighbors. As I reflected on the day, I realized that my earlier epiphany about loving Indonesia is totally true. I really think this country is amazing. Inexpensive and good food, friendly people (with a handful of terrorists mixed in to keep things interesting), amazing scenery, gorgeous beaches, beautiful mosques and temples, and I’ve only seen about half of it! If they can just sort out a better bus system and waste management services I’m not sure I would have any complaints. The best thing of all, though, is being so tired from something ENJOYABLE and not sheer exhaustion like at home. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Ministry of Education.
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