KennethT

You're a better man than I... after an 11 hour drive and a cold house, I'd want to get delivery!!!

Dinner back at the hotel: More menu Non-cake bread with seaweed butter This is the manuk butuk from the "local specialties" section of the menu. The chicken is marinated in a spice paste with turmeric, shallots, etc., then wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed. I definitely need to make this at home - it was delicious. It was served with: and now a shot under the cone: Rice with corn. I've never seen this anywhere else so far in Indonesia - it seems to be a local thing here. Fried duck with mixed vegetables, sambal ijo and sambal merah. This is the other local dessert from the area: Serabe kinca - little puffs of rice flour dough (like a round pancake) with shredded coconut and palm sugar syrup. This reminded me of a street item we had in North Bali years ago - we were visiting a waterfall in the middle of nowhere and on the trail coming up from the bottom was a woman sitting off to the side with a charcoal brazier and a pancake pan (looked like an takoyaki pan) where she made these little pandan flavored pancakes that she covered with some shredded coconut and palm sugar syrup. So simple, but so good.

Breakfast the next morning: Fried noodles, squid stew (really tender) with sambal ijo Beef rendang, sambal ijo, boiled cassava leaves, shrimp chips Really good pineapple After breakfast, we decided to hire a car/guide as we wanted to go to a local market and then a local restaurant to try a non-hotel version of se'i. Since there are no non-motorbike taxis in the area, we would have had to have the hotel call some kind of car for us to take us to one place, then again when we're finished to go to the next place, and then one more time to go back to the hotel - at 150,000IDR each trip. For 600,000 total, we could have a car with guide for a half day. So, for the extra $10, we thought the guide was a great deal, plus we wouldn't have to wait around in between. It turns out that our guide's father has a pork stall in the market and his cousin has a vegetable stall! So he was very happy to give us a tour and he had a ton of information which we were really happy about. Some vendors outside the market: My wife was able to get some video walking through the market - the beginning felt like a horror movie! You can see that a lot of the stalls are empty - our guide was saying that a lot of vendors don't want to pay the market fee and have been setting up outside the market instead. Some more market shots: Fruit - unfortunately, no one had any unripe mango (mangga muda) that the region is known for Above - kaffir limes, below - cabe merah besar (big red chillies). The small chillies don't have a name in Bahasa, only a name in the local language as it's only grown there. They are supposed to be really really spicy and are featured in a sambal called sambal lu'at - which we'll see later. I didn't realize that parrotfish (the blue-ish ones) were edible but I guess they are... also note the lack of ice around anywhere.... Dried fish area Live ayam kampung (village chickens). These chickens have gotten a lot of exercise so they are flavorful but tough... they're commonly stewed for over an hour before either served as is, or drained and then fried, or drained and grilled. Next stop was a local se'i restaurant. Se'i is a local specialty - years ago, it was made with deer meat as they live all over these islands - even the uninhabited ones. Nowadays, it's made with pork since it's considered tastier and juicier, or beef for those who are halal. There are two very popular se'i restaurants - the most famous one was closed that afternoon, so we went to the next best: Se'i babi (pork) Om Bai Some menu shots: There's a sink outdoors by the parking lot to wash your hands.... A common drink there - orange juice on ice - our beloved lime juice is not common in Indonesia. This is the se'i with sambal lu'at. Holy crap that stuff was spicy. Served with boiled papaya leaves and A soup made with kidney beans, pork stock and some of the smoked pork. All in all, this was really good - much better than the hotel's version. Smokier, and a lot less grizzle. Oddly enough, the soup reminded me of my Jewish grandmother's chicken soup - but she used to make her soup with tons of onion and parsnips which gave it quite a bit of sweetness, and this soup was the same - I'm sure they weren't using parsnips, but it could have had a lot of onion and they also could have just added sugar - that would not be surprising. The boiled papaya leaves were also interesting - they had a nice bitterness to them, and it went well with the smoked meat and sweet-ish soup. This was on the table - we couldn't resist.... pork rinds.... We only finished about half of it and wound up taking the rest with us to finish over the next couple of days. Here's a view of the harbor while on the way back to the hotel: Most of the boats in the harbor wouldn't be there normally - most of them are liveaboards that are empty due to the search and rescue.

Early dinner at the hotel: part of the menu, prices are in Indonesian Rupiah (thousands). So the 180 is 180,000 IDR or about $11 at the current rate of exchange (16,700 IDR to 1 USD). So food prices, even at the resort are not expensive. non-cakey bread with seaweed butter This was supposed to be the local baronang fish, but they said that it wasn't very fresh today so they substituted a different fish - I'm not sure what it was but it tasted a little like mackerel. The sambal made with young mango (mangga muda) is traditional from the region and one of the things I had wanted to try while here. This was served with: Cassava leaves in coconut milk with smoked beef and rice with corn in it. Both the corn and cassava leaf dish is typical in the region. The coconut milk dish was so smoky - it was fantastic. This is the se'i babi (pork), another of the traditional foods of the area. These two dishes are basically the majority of the specialties of the region. The se'i here was ok - some had a bit of grizzle and it wasn't really that smoky. Dessert menu A traditional dessert - this is the kelepon gula merah. Gula merah is the name for local palm sugar. Here, the green mochi-like skin (made from sticky rice) is stuffed with palm sugar and steamed. Then coated with fresh shredded coconut, with a palm sugar/coconut sauce. I could have eaten 5 of these!

Back at the hotel for lunch.... Typical cake-bread served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar I thought I asked for a lime juice, but got some iced tea with lime. Grilled garupa with a sliced shallot/tomato sambal and fried sambal merah. There's rice under the leaf cone. Ayam (chicken) betutu typically from Bali, served with sambal matah, tempe cooked in sweet soy sauce and boiled singkong (cassava) leaves. It was pretty good, but I'm sorry to say that the airport version had a lot more flavor.

We were in Labuan Bajo for 2 days. Most tourists use the city as the jumping off point for excursions for snorkeling/diving around the area, going to Komodo or Rinca island to see the dragons (those are the only two places they live in the wild) as well as hiking on Padar island for amazing views and a unique pink sand beach. Our plan was to have a relatively sedate first day - visiting a local market in Labuan Bajo, eating some local food and basically just resting a bit after the long travel to get there so we can be well rested for diving in a few days. The 2nd day was to be excursions to see the dragons and hike Padar island. To get to any of the excursion areas, you need to take a boat - most excursions companies use small speed boats that can take 6-8 people, although the area is frequented by tons of what are called "liveaboards" which are boats that hold about 25 people and are like floating hotels - they go throughout the area and the customers can scuba dive or snorkel 4-5 times a day, so they're constantly changing locations. December is the time when the weather starts to shift from the dry season to the rainy season. The weather isn't usually too bad - just some isolated showers from time to time. So we brought our wet weather hiking gear (be prepared!). Breakfast was included in our hotel room rate. The breakfast buffet at this hotel was pretty good, although there were some funny idiosyncracies.... DIY Soto ayam - chicken soup - station... tempe crackers on top... Pandan kuih Really good pineapple Here's where it gets funny - they made a point to have nasi kunyit - yellow rice - but it's usually served with a bunch of sides like a Malaysian nasi lemak or Indonesian nasi campur but with yellow rice - but there were no typical sides! Just the rice... weird.... anyway, also available were some kind of mashed potato tater-tot type thing, fried noodles, chicken sausage, and shrimp chips. They also had sambal ijo (green) and sambal merah (red) which are typically from the Padang region. My wife has a mild sambal ijo addiction and had tons of it with a plate full of shrimp chips. They also had plenty of options that western travelers typically enjoy - yogurt/cereal/egg station/salad, etc. After breakfast, we decided to talk to the excursion desk about a trip for the next day and found out that all excursions were currently canceled. They didn't mention why at the time, but we found out later that there was a boat accident the evening before and they closed the whole area for search and rescue. It turned out that a coach for the female Valencia football team and his family were on a boat which capsized. The crew of 4, tour guide, his wife and youngest daughter survived, but the coach and 3 other children were missing. This is a huge tragedy - but many of the locals were very unhappy as they said that this kind of thing happens from time to time to locals and the government never shuts anything down for search and rescue, but because it happened to a western tourist (who is somewhat famous), there was a lot of international pressure to make it look like they were doing something about it. One thing to note is that the Komodo area is known for having very strong currents, so the probability of finding anyone after an accident like that is very small. One of the children was found a few days later by a local person near a mostly uninhabited island (there are a lot of small islands that only have one house or a very small village in this area). News reports say another body was found a day or so ago, leaving two still missing. As of now, I gather that the whole area is still shut down as the search continues. While many of the locals we spoke to were saddened by the tragedy, they were also upset at the loss of their livelihood. Tourism is the main economy of the area, and while the waterways are shut down, no tourism can happen - so many tourists who were supposed to stay there for a week or so wound up cutting their trip short, or went to Bali or another area. At the time we were there, there was no visibility as to when the waterways would reopen - everything was changing day by day and hour by hour - so we decided to stay and make the best of it. So, we decided to hang around the resort the first day, and then go to the market area on the second day in Labuan Bajo. Getting around the area is not convenient - there is no real taxi service, Uber, Grab or otherwise. The only Grab they have is motorbike taxis but we are definitely too nervous to ride on the back of a motorbike. So the only option was using the hotel shuttle which drops people off either at the airport or at the marina area of Labuan Bajo. It also turned out that I forgot the underwater housing for my GoPro camera, so we decided to head into Labuan Bajo to a dive store to get a new one. There isn't much to see in the downtown of Labuan Bajo - mostly stores/restaurants geared to tourists - Starbucks, KFC, dive shops, etc. We did take a look around the marina area: view of some of the closer islands and boats parked in the marina - the larger boats in the center of the photo are liveaboard dive boats. This is a strip of night market stalls - most of them selling grilled fish/seafood in the evening. We were only in Labuan Bajo for the first couple of days when we get really tired early, so we never made it to see it at night. Most blogs I've read about it say that it's nothing special - but it still would have been nice to see. This is the back side of the night market area - lots of picnic table seating for the grilled fish.

Hey everybody, happy new year and welcome to yet another KennethT SE Asia foodblog. This time around, we went to an area of Indonesia called Komodo, a collection of small islands that are home to the Komodo Dragon as well as some spectacular scuba diving. Unfortunately, this trip was besieged by bad luck practically from start to finish, so I hope this report won't be too disappointing for you to read... although it was disappointing for us, but I think we made the best of it. The good news is that this was another illness free trip! A Festivus miracle! As usual lately, we flew via Singapore Airlines direct from NYC to Singapore on what is constantly touted as the "world's longest flight" - about 9500 miles. The plane is broken up into only 2 classes - business and premium economy. Since we've racked up a bunch of miles lately, we wound up getting their frequenty flyer program Gold Status, which allowed us entry to the Capital One lounge in NY's JFK airport. We wanted to be in there, primarily, as it would be less crowded than the terminal itself and we've been quarantining for over a month to make sure that we arrived healthy. We found a relatively secluded spot in the lounge and you could order snacks, via your phone and a QR code, that would be delivered to your table: Short rib sliders with meat from Pat LaFrida (a well known butcher here in NYC). Food on the flight to Singapore can be found here, here, here and here. Unfortunately, we didn't have a very long layover, shortened even more as we landed a little late... so we didn't get a chance to get chicken rice while in Terminal 2.... instead, we used the brief opportunity to try something that I've been wanting to try for many years but never had the chance to do so. Bee Cheng Hiang is a well known purveyor of bakkwa (started in 1933 in Singapore and have grown to over 300 locations in 11 countries) - a Malaysian/Singaporean barbequed jerky, typically made from pork, but they had a LOT of options. Here's just a few: The meat is first dried into jerky, then coated with some kind of sweet sauce and then grilled. We only tried the classic, original version, but it was delicious and addictive. If we weren't relatively full from the flight before and knowing we would be fed again on our next flight, and then eat again in the airport, etc, we could have gorged ourselves! But instead, we just got 100g to share while sitting outside the gate for the next flight. It's not so easy to get to the Komodo area - there are very few direct flights - most connect through Bali, which is an island just to the west. The Flores Sea is just to the north of Komodo - named for one of the islands of the area. Here is a map of the kinda-sorta western half of Indonesia: The food on the flight to Bali can be found here. Here's the beginning of our bad luck - our flight from Singapore to Bali landed around 11AM, and we had originally scheduled the connection to the Komodo area (the main city called Labuan Bajo) to leave around 1:30, arriving around 2:30... A few months ago, the local airline decided to cancel the flight to Labuan Bajo and we were bumped to the flight leaving Bali at 5PM, landing at 6:15. So that means that we now have 6 hours in the Bali airport, after already flying for over 20 hours with a couple hour layover in between, plus we were working all day on the day we left... so to say we were tired by the time we got to Bali is understating things. The Bali airport has a capsule style "hotel" - it's basically a couple walls full of pods about the size of coffins that you can rent in 6 hour chunks. I neglected to take photos of it, but it's pretty accurately depicted on their website: https://passgo-digital-airport-hotel-bali.kutahotel.net/en/ It's pretty inexpensive and, while not very comfortable, it's definitely better than nothing. After attempting to take a few hour nap, we went to lunch at a Balinese restaurant in the airport, Made's Warung. A warung is a kind of road-side restaurant. They started in south Bali in 1969 and have now expanded to 8 restaurants - 2 in the airport (one in the domestic terminal, one in the international). This is the location in the international terminal, probably around 3PM, hence why it's not so busy. The basket on the table holds a bunch of kerupuk, or Indonesian crackers, of various kinds. There was a tempe based one, a fish based one and a vegetable based one. Lime juice... A Balinese specialty - ayam (chicken) betutu. For being in the airport, it was quite good. Served with a chicken sate lillet (on the stick) which is a minced chicken sate, fried chicken skin, lawar - which is a kind of cooked vegetable salad made with shredded coconut, peanuts and sambal matah - a "raw" sambal common in Bali. Fried chicken, served with sambal matah and sambal terasi (a fried chilli sauce made with shrimp paste) and was served with Some vegetables on the side. Then, finally, the local airline to Labuan Bajo, food from which can be found here. By the time we landed and collected our bags (which was surprisingly fast), and got to the hotel about 20 minutes away, we were so tired we weren't really hungry so we decided not to bother having dinner.

Last one!!!! About 1.5 hours before landing:

Getting to the end of our eating marathon... Breakfast (it's about 10AM Singapore time): Recently flaky croissant (served warm) and Char sieu with wonton noodles. Unfortunately the Chinese broccoli was mushy which is strange - usually it's pretty good. Their sambal is really good - spicy with a bit of a roasted flavor .

Continuing the million meal march, menus for SIN to Newark, NJ, Prem Economy.... Dinner, just served (1:30AM local time), The shrimp were nicely cooked and the aioli was definitely smoky. The bread actually had bread texture and was stuffed with garlic butter. The cake seemed to be the same mango cake they had in the lounge. Chicken biryani from the Book the Cook menu (ordered in advance). As usual, I wish I could get this in NY - the rice isn't oily at all, tons of whole spices, tender spiced chicken.

Some snacks in the lounge... you can't have tea without snacks... Chocolate muffin, vanilla cream puff, mango mousse cake

In the SilverKris lounge in SIN (we got gold status from our points!), tons of food options - too bad we're still stuffed from dinner - but it's got some nice seating to while away the time, plus they have TWG Tea!!!!! Which is great since we need to stay up for at least another 4 hours... A beautiful, delicate Ti Kuan yin. Also on offer is a dedicated Laksa station, various dim sum, savory dishes, serve yourself cocktails like G&T, plus a bar, various wines, etc...

Not yet... I usually start writing it a few days after I get home and can go through all the photos (mine and my wife's). I'm currently in the Singapore airport waiting for our last flight, so I should be home around 20 hours from now, and will then sleep all day and get ready for work on Monday. Trip report should start around then. Keep an eye out in the SE Asian Dining section.

Also, not shown was lunch in the Bali airport around 1PM....

Next up, Garuda Airlines (Indonesia's national airline), Bali to SIN, 2.5 hour flight departing around 3PM: Trio of melon, some kind of mousse cake which was super light and airy. Choice of chicken with rice or seafood noodle. Stewed chicken (tasted like 5 spice). I didn't eat much of it since we were going to have dinner in one of the hundreds of restaurants in Singapore's airport (including the Jewel which is outside the transit area). This is fine since we needed to collect our luggage and check in with Singapore Airlines so we had to go through immigration anyway (takes 5 seconds with their autogates).