Indonesia: Lunch after Borobudur
We basically had two goals in Yogyakarta: Borobudur and Prambanan. We managed to fit both into one day. Our game plan was to get in, take a bunch of pictures, and then skedaddle once it started raining. And rain it did. Like clockwork.
Our first stop was Borobudur:
There were a couple foreign tourists, but the vast majority were Indonesian school children on field trips. I wish we had field trips like that back in school.
The weather was clear and sunny until we got to the top. Then suddenly, it started pouring. People with no umbrellas whipped off their sarongs (which everyone is required to wear to enter the temple) and held them over their heads. The Borobudur sarongs were very pretty and we all wanted to take them home with us. We tried to see if they were for sale when we got to the exit, but alas, they weren't.
We met Dedy, our driver for the day, in the parking lot and he took us directly to lunch. I don't know the name of the restaurant, but it was designed kind of like a cafeteria:
You grab a plate on a tray and then move down the line, spooning yourself a bit of whatever catches your fancy:
At the end, you're charged based on the number of different dishes you pick.
You can also add either tea or what's essentially lemon water. We went with the lemon water:
Mine had an ant in it. Extra protein.
Here's what's my plate looked like:
It looked quite similar to CL's, T's, AND my sister's. Guess we all have similar tastes. (Maybe that's why we get along so well, eh?) Anyway, we really should have planned this out better. If we'd each gotten different dishes and just more of each to share family style, we could have gotten away with paying much less.
Not that we paid a lot in the first place.
There were a couple extra goodies displayed in a separate cases. CL picked up this one:
It looked yummy and it probably was supposed to be too, except that the one we got had gone sour.
I was the first one to take a bite:
Being a nice person, I warned everyone else about the seemingly innocent roll and spared them the unpleasantness.
On our way to our next stop, Prambanan Temple, Dedy pulled over at a fruit stand by the side of the road and came back with a large bag of this stuff:
It looks like a hairy strawberry with snake-like skin. We'd actually had some before back in Bali when we went to the market in Karangasem. The vendor there gave us a taste test of the strange fruit and while we were really excited at first, its spoiled onion taste quickly killed that excitement. Blech.
We didn't know what it was called in English, so we jokingly called it snakeskin fruit. Once peeled, it looks like this:
The flesh itself is crunchy, almost like raw garlic mixed with crisp apple. The taste...like spoiled onions.
Apparently, Indonesians love this stuff. We gave the fruit yet another try when we arrived in Jakarta the next day. CL's aunt told us that the fruit is called salak, literally "snake fruit". Heh. We weren't too far off.
While CL and T still weren't fans, the third time was the charm for me. The nasty little bugger actually grew on me. Maybe by the time we reached Jakarta, I'd have spent enough time in Indonesia to develop the taste buds of an Indonesian?
Our first stop was Borobudur:
There were a couple foreign tourists, but the vast majority were Indonesian school children on field trips. I wish we had field trips like that back in school.
The weather was clear and sunny until we got to the top. Then suddenly, it started pouring. People with no umbrellas whipped off their sarongs (which everyone is required to wear to enter the temple) and held them over their heads. The Borobudur sarongs were very pretty and we all wanted to take them home with us. We tried to see if they were for sale when we got to the exit, but alas, they weren't.
We met Dedy, our driver for the day, in the parking lot and he took us directly to lunch. I don't know the name of the restaurant, but it was designed kind of like a cafeteria:
At the end, you're charged based on the number of different dishes you pick.
You can also add either tea or what's essentially lemon water. We went with the lemon water:
Mine had an ant in it. Extra protein.
Here's what's my plate looked like:
It looked quite similar to CL's, T's, AND my sister's. Guess we all have similar tastes. (Maybe that's why we get along so well, eh?) Anyway, we really should have planned this out better. If we'd each gotten different dishes and just more of each to share family style, we could have gotten away with paying much less.
Not that we paid a lot in the first place.
There were a couple extra goodies displayed in a separate cases. CL picked up this one:
It looked yummy and it probably was supposed to be too, except that the one we got had gone sour.
I was the first one to take a bite:
Being a nice person, I warned everyone else about the seemingly innocent roll and spared them the unpleasantness.
On our way to our next stop, Prambanan Temple, Dedy pulled over at a fruit stand by the side of the road and came back with a large bag of this stuff:
It looks like a hairy strawberry with snake-like skin. We'd actually had some before back in Bali when we went to the market in Karangasem. The vendor there gave us a taste test of the strange fruit and while we were really excited at first, its spoiled onion taste quickly killed that excitement. Blech.
We didn't know what it was called in English, so we jokingly called it snakeskin fruit. Once peeled, it looks like this:
The flesh itself is crunchy, almost like raw garlic mixed with crisp apple. The taste...like spoiled onions.
Apparently, Indonesians love this stuff. We gave the fruit yet another try when we arrived in Jakarta the next day. CL's aunt told us that the fruit is called salak, literally "snake fruit". Heh. We weren't too far off.
While CL and T still weren't fans, the third time was the charm for me. The nasty little bugger actually grew on me. Maybe by the time we reached Jakarta, I'd have spent enough time in Indonesia to develop the taste buds of an Indonesian?
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