Both Lynda and I have decided that we're already feeling a pretty special affinity for this amazing island and its people. This afternoon we wound our way down another narrow little alley (the place is filled with them!) and discovered a local warung. A warung is a little restaurant that just serves local dishes and based on the cost we found in the menu....at VERY affordable prices!!
But I'm getting ahead of the story....so we're intentionally heading down this little alley to the warung as we'd seen it advertised where the alley pops out onto Monkey Forest Rd. Once there we're met by a very cute little space but....there was no one around. We waited a minute, called hello and as soon as we did that a little old guy materialized from the home that is adjascent to the warung. He greeted us warmly and encouraged us to sit...which we did. He gave us a menu that had one side listed in english and the other in Indonesian. It took no time at all to choose our lunch and we had a plan to share it out so having a selection was a high priority. We ordered 3 dishes in all. One was a vegetarian fried rice, the second was Indonesian fried noodles, and the third was chicken spring rolls. Lynda had a beer and I had a bottle of water. The old guy got our drinks and disappeared into the kitchen where in no time at all amazing aromas began to waft out. Once the sound of cooking and the smells started a little old woman came out of the house too. She said something to her husband and joined him in the kitchen as they prepared our meal. The meals arrived and were stunning in their presentation. Each of the rice and noodle dishes had a mound of the starch with a crispy on the outside runny on the inside fried egg leaning up against it. There were some slices of fresh cucumber and a handful of freshly made crispy shrimp chips. We divided up the meals and tucked into our plates. After the first bite we knew we'd found our new favourite place to eat! Neither of us left a grain of rice on our plates and both of us were filled to overflowing by the time we'd finished our meals. We hadn't seen any sign of either the man or his wife since they'd served our lunch so called out again to get the bill. This time their son and his son came out of the house to get the bill for us. He also explained that they were just on their way to their village temple (about 1 1/2 hours away) to attend a ceremony. He told us that this ceremony happens every 6 months and today is the day that they need to go so he apologized for having to close the warung so early in the day. His dad then re-appeared out of the house and then his mom right behind him. Both of them were dressed for the ceremony in traditional Balinese style and although I'm really not sure....I'm going to guess that the dad is a holy man based on his outfit. The genuine warmth of this family and the way that they didn't leave us feeling rushed at all was really very special. We will definitely go back there again....in fact it feels like our new favourite place. It's hard to imagine that there will be others with as tasty a fare and as warm a welcome as we found at this little warung that is litterally less than 5 minutes from our place but if there are....we're excited to discover them all during our time here.
Oh ya....the total bill for all that food was 80,000 IDR which is almost exactly $8 CAD. Remember thats for the two of us so yep.....$4 each folks. How can we go wrong?!
Another thing we got marked off the 'to do' list today was to get our room here at Rumah Kita booked for an additional 95 days. We also located a room in the norther town of Lovina that we've requested booking for 20 days in December. It's a little more costly but we're thinking of it as a Christmas gift to ourselves. If we get it, it will cost us $40/night each so compared to the amazing long term deal Pasek has given us here it seems very extravagant! We should hear back from the manager in Lovina by tomorrow so....fingers crossed we've got our spot booked for December.
This morning Julie (neighbour) came over with a map for us and to let us know that there is a free event happening at a place in town. We jumped at the chance to share a taxi with her and so tonight at 6:45 we'll be off to see a special performance from Papua New Guinea which promises to be very tribal and quite colourful. I suspect there will be more to report on that tomorrow.
For the rest of today though its gonna be a little down time now that I've gotten caught up on the blog.
Till next time,
L & L
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