Bogor weekends – bikin’ and hikin’

So we’re into a bit of a lull in the spread of Stat Holidays and long weekends. While Indonesia must have the highest number of stat holidays in the world (last I counted I get 17 stats in 2017), no one thought it would be a good idea to spread them out. Unlike Canadian sensibilities which dictate a stat holiday/long weekend per month (or thereabouts), Indonesians appear to prefer random clustered stats (many of them Thursdays…what do we do with that!?), punctuated by long periods of darkness and a lack of holidays.

The result is that between New Year’s and beginning of April, we have zero stats/long weekends. April….3 in a row. OK, to be fair, I’m pretty sure it’s all based on religious holidays, which if you ask guys like the Pope, shouldn’t be messed with. But really, 3 in a row? C’mon let’s make Mohammad’s birthday a month earlier. And that Hindu Holy Day thing, that can slide a bit into next month I figure. Who’s going to notice? J

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, it means that most standard 2-day weekends end up being “Bogor weekends” for us. While it is entirely possible to jump on a flight to Bali or Singapore for a quick 2-day getaway, it’s a bit of a rushed timeline usually involving an apres-work taxi ride through Jakarta traffic chaos to the airport on Friday, followed by a late-night flight and taxis to wherever. As inviting as that sounds, we usually opt for the more relaxing option of Friday G&T’s on the front patio, followed by a more relaxing R&R weekend schedule, not involving traffic, airports, or taxis.

OK, 2-days off in Bogor. What to do? Our go-to on a fine sunny Bogor Saturday or Sunday, is definitely cycling. It is absolutely what keeps us sane in this endless mass of humanity. As eluded to in previous posts, there is, believe it or not, a decent cycling scene here. And as described back then, it’s all about hardtail mountain bikes with front suspension. That’s definitely the rig of choice. Road bikes just can’t take the beating of Indo roads, which vary from bad to very bad to, wow, is this the road?

After a few months of exploration, equipped with nothing more than google maps and a phone, we have discovered a world of backroads and kampung (Indo for “village”) alleyways. “Kampung mountain biking” we call it. Really fun. The true beauty of it is that we are self-sufficient and mobile. We leave from our door when we feel like it, go where we want, then return to base for an ice-cold Prost (Prost, a new Indo brew – brewed in Bali—has become my new go-to beer. Bintang is out!).

So ya, kampung mtn biking. Could be a new Olympic sport soon. We’ve dialled the routes, and definitely have our favs. The Big Loop, as I call it, is the default, check it out (use street view to see what we see):

https://www.google.co.id/maps/@-6.6141524,106.8545174,13.61z/data=!4m2!6m1!1s1MmlLMxKohn2huVYUBrHPyroDCek?hl=en

It’s a bit of everything: kampungs, hills, rice paddies, and, the best fresh coconuts this side of the equator. About a 35-km loop, with a 700 m climb, takes about 4 hours door to door. Gets us outside, keeps us in shape, and is a very cool cross-section of rural Indonesia to boot. We’re pretty much rock stars as we cruise through the kampungs. “Hello Meester!” is surely among a baby’s first words here J

Off the bikes, we’ve discovered a world of hiking routes right in our backyard – an area called Sentul. It’s on the outskirts of Bogor, within easy biking distance (+/- an hour) for us, and home to THE best Italian restaurant in Indo (well, that we know of). Again, what does that have to do with anything? Well, as it turns out, Giuliani Restaurant E Pizza, is owned and operated by a guy named Mario. He’s an expat who’s been here forever, has an Indonesian wife/kid, and basically drank the kool-aid (i.e., he’s here for good).  And hey, guess what, he’s Italian! Not just Italian, but an Italian chef, who got tired of life in Jakarta, and opened his own restaurant in the backwaters of Sentul, Indonesia. Awesome! OK, gets even better. He’s a hiker/mountaineer, who spends his time scoping out local hiking routes. Guess who is my next best friend? J

So here’s the drill. Meet Mario at his place in Sentul (which is across the street from his restaurant) at about 8 am. Jump in his car, head down to the “trail head” (trail head here means a place where you can start walking). Waking poles, 4 litres of water, snacks, rain jacket, sweat towel, check. We then head into the rice paddies, kampungs, and jungles of West Java. Up and over the ridgelines defining this volcanic landscape. Upon return, quick shower at Mario’s place, then it’s across the street to Giuliani’s for a cool Prost, maybe glass of Bali wine, home-baked bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (literally unheard of anywhere else in Bogor), followed by, oh, I don’t know, pollo valdostana with potato and veggie sautee (my fav). Thumb’s up on that Saturday!!

Next up on the hiking routes is a Gunung (remember, gunung = mountain = volcano) called Gunung Pangrango. It’s an overnighter which should be very cool. We haven’t got to the camping stage yet, so that should be interesting. Like most things here, the logistics are daunting. Nothing is marked. Almost no beta of any kind. The “trails” are not recreational trails as we know them (why would anyone walk somewhere if they didn’t have to?....stupid bules), but rather a series of ancient walking paths and dirt roads linking villages and rice paddies together. Once in a while there could be a trail up to the top of something, usually to access a religious site of some kind. The problem is, you just “have to know”.

Of course, there is always an army of guys willing to “guide” you, for a fee, which can range from almost nothing to ludicrous. In my experience thus far, a “guide” means the guy has lived in the area for a while (or his whole life), but whether or not the guy has actually done the hike you want to do, is anyone’s guess, despite 100% assurances that he walks it every day. Getting lost with the help of a guide is just part of the fun here in Indo! More on the Gunung Pangrango mission in a few weeks.

 

 

 

The food post

Basko (meatball soup)

Sate ayam (chicken sate)

So, I figure we’ve been here long enough to say something about the food. Not that we’re remotely close to being experts on Indonesian fine cuisine, if there is such a thing, but we can give you our 2 cents.

Interestingly, both mine and Amy’s view of Indonesian food is coming primarily from the perspective of lunch. You see, we both eat a “western” breakfast (i.e., not rice), and we cook our own food at home for dinner (while that sounds like a strange comment, one must realize that many expats here have a maid that prepares food for them), so that leaves lunch at the office (me) and school (Amy). My golden rule with Kiki, our receptionist, is for her to get me whatever she’s getting for herself. Hence, it’s a pretty good cross-section of Indonesian cuisine, from the “lunch-takeout-street-food-order-in” perspective.



Mie goreng (fried noodles) -- breakfast of champions

Pepes (steamed chicken in banana leaf)

First and foremost, up front and centre, top of the agenda, numero uno….is RICE. The Asian stereotype of people who eat rice is absolutely true, at least here in Indo. If you were to take rice out of the equation here, the scene would be right out of a post-nuclear-apocalypse movie with nothing left but the cockroaches. Rice really is life itself in Indonesia.

gorengan (deep-fried stuff)

By my estimates (so plus/minus 100%), I would say the average Indonesian’s diet is made up of between 50% to 80% rice (by whatever measure you want to use: volume, weight, size of the bowl, whatever). The Jakarta city slicker who has the odd pizza or Starbucks muffin would probably fall into the 50% category, while the toothless rice farmer in the back forty would hit the 80%+ mark. I am always amazed at how much rice Indonesians eat. Three+ times a day, rain or shine. As the Indonesian adage goes: anything without rice, is a snack. We’re not talking about the mini-dollop we westerners have on the side of our plate. We’re talking about 2 or 3 or 4 cups of rice, and shovelling it in by the spoonful.

Nasi goreng (fried rice) - street version

Bubur ayam (rice porridge with chicken) - breakfast to-go

Soto ayam (chicken noodle soup)

So ya, the ubiquity of rice in Indonesian food cannot be overstated. And, fittingly, the unofficial national dish must be nasi goreng. Nasi = rice, goreng = fried (hence “fried rice”, AKA “nasty goreng” among expats). It’s an everywhere anytime kind of thing. On the street, or in an upscale restaurant, it’s on the menu. Actually, it’s very good, and very tasty, often complimented with chicken and veggies mixed in, and often comes with a fried egg on top, which absolutely makes it. One major drawback: the artery-clogging, heart-stopping usage of palm oil in this country. If it’s “fried”, aka “goreng”, we’re talking palm oil (lots of it). If you aren’t familiar with the horrors of palm oil, google it. You’ll be updated quickly. So in reality, nasi goreng, while tasty and everywhere, gets shoved into the “survival food” category for when there really is nothing else available.

Gado gado ( Indo salad) - deconstructed version

Padang restaurant - everything on the menu

Speaking of palm oil and goreng, there is the ever-present street snacks called gorengan. You guessed it, roughly translates to “things that are fried” (fried in Indonesia means deep fried, in palm oil). This is their french fries and onion rings. The standard items dropped into the boiling cauldron are tofu, tempe, bananas, sweet potatoes, and an interesting batter made from flour/corn/cabbage called bakwan. While extremely tasty and fills that yummy greasy-snack category, we run into the same “heart-attack-waiting-to-happen” problem as with all gorengan in Indonesia (palm oil is not your friend). That said, at 10 cents a pop, it’s hard to walk by a gorengan guy during the mid-afternoon snack time.

Ok, moving along to more healthy options, we have the various dishes that are made with steamed rice, which, obviously, is where Amy and I focus our attention. The standard Indonesian rice dish is a heaping pile of rice (like, heaping), complemented by a small piece of meat (fish, chicken, or beef; not pork due to the Muslim factor), or tempe or tofu – a very popular protein source here – and a smidge of something green and steamed (cassava leaf is common). Typically the meat/tempe/tofu is stewed within a tasty sauce that is among an unlimited variety and variation – all of which, I am assured, have a specific name and origin. To be honest, it all kind of looks the same to me (but I’m a food redneck). All quite tasty, and actually quite healthy if you stay away from the word goreng, so all good.

Higher-end fare

Lunch

Absolutely top of the list among all rationale humans, especially expats, has to be nasi Padang. Ahhh, nasi Padang. Padang is a region in Sumatra where the curry sauce of nasi Padang originates (and hence the name). Various varieties of nasi Padang are available and include fish, chicken, or beef stewed in the delectable sauce, and draped over a heap of rice with some side veggies like stewed cabbage and cassava.  The lunch-time classic, and my all-time favourite “go-to” by far, is nasi Padang rendang “bungkus”. Rendang is beef in an absolutely stupendously delicious sauce, “bungkus” literally means “wrapped” in a banana leaf, in other words “to go”. Just writing this makes me want to go out and get some. Don’t believe the hype?, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McEdn-gf9gs

Lunch with a view

Other lunch fare includes pepes, whereby a piece of chicken or fish is coated in sauce, wrapped in a banana leaf, and steam or grilled – and, of course, eaten with 2 to 4 cups of cooked rice. Bakso (pronounced baso) another Indonesian favourite, and basically their version of meatballs, typically comes in the form of soup with the meatballs floating in it (but it’s not soup, it’s basko…I cannot convince them otherwise). Tasty yes. But “interesting” given the mystery meat component. No one to date has been able to tell me exactly what is in bakso. Hmmm. Not sure about the basko. This is Asia, after all, where anything that moves could end up in a meatball.

Uhhm, not quite sure - it was a gift

Ikan bakar (grilled fish)

If meat is your thing, sate is big. Obviously sate ayam (chicken sate) is the go-to, with the obligatory drowning of peanut sauce. As with most things here, it’s advisable to go with “saus di samping”, or “sauce on the side”. Otherwise, you won’t actually see the chicken, or whatever else is underneath.

Soto ayam, another go-to of mine: soto = soup, ayam = chicken, basically chicken soup, but it comes with rice noodles and other tasty stuff. The side of rice is obligatory, unless of course, you are only having a snack J  Noodles, AKA mie, are also big (not like rice of course, but still pretty big). So you have the mie goreng (fried noodles), mie ayam (chicken with noodles), soto mie (noodle soup), and the hundred or so other things you can do with noodles. Again, all good, all tasty, just follow the golden rule: avoid goreng anything at all costs.

Em...no thanks...I'm really full

High-end gorengan

OK, then there is the Padang restaurant experience. Like nothing else on earth, upon placing your butt in a chair, the table is instantly and completely covered with plates of every imaginable form of food. Organ meat is big. Pass the lung please. Oh, have you tried the skin, it’s divine. And, this intestine, I have to get the recipe. Yep, it’s all there. But not to worry, there’s normal boring stuff like chicken and beef too, for us faint-hearted bules. So ya, you pick and choose what you like, and pay for only what you touched. In an interesting twist, it’s a favourite for foreigners, since you basically get everything on the menu placed in front of you, without having to ask or know anything about anything. Now, if we could only get pizza joints to do that…

 

 

 

Christmas in Oz

Two weeks off for Christmas, and where to go? On a tip from a fellow bule over beers some time ago, we heard tell of a magical kingdom in the land down under where beaches, surf, kangaroos, and wine come together in perfect harmony. Following a bit of internet research to confirm that, yes indeed, there is such a place – and with 4-hr direct flights from Jakarta – we set our sights on Margaret River, Western Australia. And a magical kingdom it is! Here’s the story.

Arriving in Perth International was a bit surreal for us. Could have been Vancouver or Toronto. Usually if we’re flying with bikes and gear, it means we’re going to some godforsaken place where chaos and humidity hit you in the face as you step off the plane. Not this time. No chaos, no humidity, just smiles and “Gidday, welcome to Australia”. Everything is in English, everything is crisp and clean, and wow, we can actually get information from people instantly and easily. Like, we need a taxi that is big enough for 2 bike boxes. “No problem mate, I reckon we’ll have that for you in a jiffy”. Too easy! We got used it real fast J

However, the taxi ride to our Airbnb illustrated the first rule of civilization: you get what you pay for. The 10-mins taxi ride cost the same as a 2-hr Uber ride through Jakarta. Paying for the comforts of western civilization comes at a cost, a big cost, and, to be honest, a cost I never did get used to in our short time. What?! 12 bucks for a beer…Oz is expensive! But hey, it’s a real pint, it’s ice cold, and it has all the flavour a craft wheat beer should have. But really...5 bucks for a coffee? Oh, I see, it’s a “flat white” (for some odd reason, Oz has their own distinctive coffee lingo: flat white, long black…never did figure it out…er, can I just have a normal coffee?). Oh well, that’s what jobs and credit cards are for J

OK, so, the mission was: box up the bikes, fly to Perth (the capital of Western Australia), then head south on the pushies (as they call bicycles down under) towards Margaret River – the small-town hub of SW Australia’s wine region – then slow down and enjoy the good life until we hit Augusta at the Cape. We had an Airbnb suite booked in Margaret River for the 3 days over Christmas, so that was the target. Perth to Margaret River and area is about 350 kms, so it took us a few days to get down there, which was all part of the fun. I’ve always said that the best thing about cycle touring is being in the middle of nowhere, and then having to stop for the night.

So ya, middle of nowhere, small-town, Southwest Australia for the first few days. Crikey! Meat pies, roos, and Blunnies everywhere! A cultural experience for sure. Meat pies, an Aussie speciality, which I already dearly miss, became my go-to cycling energy food. Amy tried one (which I finished), and has now had her lifetime fill of them. To each their own as they say. But, come on, how can you not like a pie made of steak and gravy? What’s not to like? Could be a guy thing.

First night in the caravan park (another iconic Aussie cultural phenomenon) the roos (i.e., kangaroos) popped out of the bush and we got our first up-close-and-personal look them in the setting sun. Amy was like a kid in a candy store. On the plane to Perth she specifically, and repeatedly, proclaimed “I hope we see kangaroos!” And we did! Of course, one must realize that seeing a kangaroo in Australia is like seeing a pigeon at the park. But hey, if you have never seen a pigeon before, it would be a big deal J

Now, the “caravan park” thing. Think Provincial Park campsite blended seamlessly with Trailer Park Boys. It’s definitely a thing there. Being more-or-less budget travellers, caravan parks became our default accom, mostly because it’s the only sub-hundred-dollar option in Australia. For the bargain price of 30 to 50 bucks, we received a very nice 5 x 5 m space to pitch our tent. Shockingly though, no picnic table, which was very strange to us, since, when you think of it, what else is a site in an organized campground, but a piece of ground with a picnic table on it? Could be a Canadian thing. Anyway, I’m over it. The drinking water flowing like water out of a tap (J) and hot showers were, however, much appreciated, as were the ubiquitous outdoor kitchens complete with gas barbies. Gotta have the barbie. The Aussie “put another shrimp on the Barbie” stereotype is absolutely true. Good tradition I reckon (a little Aussie lingo there).

Along with shrimps on the Barbie, roos, and bush, SW Australia is also the land of beaches, surf, and wild ocean. The Indian (west coast) and Southern (south coast) Oceans to be exact. Being a coastal journey for the most part, we were never far from the ocean. That made for interesting days of mostly inland cycling (amazing cycle path system...best we've seen anywhere!), combined with sunset dinners and wine on the beach. Nice combo. The most striking factor was standing in awe of the endless wild beach coastlines stretching out into the horizon as far as we could see. It really hit home, how like Canada, Australia is a wild place virtually empty of people relative to other parts of the world. Since we now live in one of the highest population densities on the planet, it was a near-religious experience to reconnect with wild places.

Arriving in Margaret River was fantastic, mostly because after 5 days or so on the road, we knew we were going to our Airbnb suite where we could spread out and enjoy endless bottles of good wine, good food, and all the comforts western civilization has to offer. Amy may argue that the best thing about the place was the bathtub. Since leaving our bathtub in Nelson, we have been roughing it without (I know, how are we surviving?). So it was indeed a treat to soak our weary bones in a tub of hot water and sip on a smooth bottle of Aussie Shiraz (for the evening bath; the morning bath was coffee; the mid-day bath was a toss-up depending on the way things were progressing).

Margaret River is indeed an area we need to know more about. Our scant 3 days in town was only enough to, as they say, scratch the surface. And, being Christmas, much was shut down for the holidays. But alas, Christmas eve on the patio, followed by a ride to the beach on Christmas day for some shrimp and snags on the Barbie (snags = sausage…why? not sure, ask the Aussies), and then a boxing day ride to enjoy a few wineries…our 3 days was time well spent. We wanted to recon the expanding mountain biking scene, but the ground-zero café where all it all happens was shut down for Chrissie (Chrissie = Christmas). Ah, gotta leave something on the table for next time. Hmmm, a week of mountain biking, wineries, and good food…could be convinced I reckon J