Indonesian food is terrible! Or not...

I have to admit it, initially we chose to go to Indonesia not for its spectacular food but rather for its nature and adventure potential. When we were trying to choose which island to focus our travels on, we wanted the path less traveled and Sumatra became a candidate.

Sumatra, beautiful, wild and delicious!

We finally settled on it not just because of adventure but because contrary to all popular belief, Sumatra was supposed to have the best food in all of Indonesia. Could it be true? We figured there's only one way to find out so we booked our ferry and plane tickets to our first destination in Sumatra: Padang.


As a city, Padang is just "meh" and surprisingly expensive. Like $30 dollars for a shared room expensive. Turns out Padang is the launching point to the surfing mecca at the Mentawai islands and prices are hyper inflated. The saving grace for the city is that supposedly, it has the spiciest food in Indonesia. That's definitely something to get really excited about! But wait, it's Ramadan, will there even be anything to eat? Yes. Oh yes there was.

We got the impression that Muslims in Padang are pretty chill about the whole Ramadan thing as we saw hoards of them 'cheating' and eating throughout the day. Good news for us! Our first stop was a coconut stand on the side of the road prior to arriving at our hotel. After a long flight, a nice juicy coconut was exactly what we needed.

Pile on the goodies please!

We then walked over to one of the best restaurants in Padang (according to our guesthouse) and just drooled as the waitstaff piled plate after plate of all sorts of dishes all smothered in bright red hot chilies: braised tofu, beef, potatoes, fish, dry beef, curry beef, yellow chicken, saucy chicken, silken tofu, eggplant and boiled eggs among many, many others. This amazing dish pile is apparently called Nasi Padang. YUM!

Similar to Ethiopia, the custom in Padang is just to dig in with your hands and enjoy. We didn't realize that you don't really get to "order" your food, instead they just pile it on and you ask them to take away the reject plates. Naturally, we just tried eating everything on the table until we were stuffed beyond belief. The favorite was definitely the Beef Rendang, tender chunks of beef cooked in a toasted coconut sauce. We tried ordering more of it but they had just run out and the three of us nearly fought over the last little piece. A close second was a deep fried spicy fish that felt more like fish jerky but was so crisp that you could even eat all the bones.

Roll up your sleeves, and scoop it all up (crispy fish @ 10 o'clock, the last of the beef Rendang at 5 o'clock)

We only ended up staying in Padang for a short day and decided to hit up the dinner spot once more for lunch before heading out to the airport. At 1pm, the place was packed with locals and there was even a live band playing. You wouldn't have known it because the whole city looks like it shuts down between sunrise and sunset but luckily for us, the restaurant was definitely open, you just had to know to pull away the curtain and slip in through the very narrow entrance. Apparently in Padang, not even Ramadan stops people from eating and given how delightful the food was, it's no wonder!!

Got chilies?

So Padang was kind of a bust but from a foodie perspective, it was definitely worth the visit! Plus I was able to find a fruit I thought only Colombians had, tomate de arbol. I ordered it as a fresh fruit juice from this little old lady who couldn't believe I didn't want any sugar in my juice. It was delicious, just like the Colombian version and I was in heaven! I was also very glad I didn't get any sugar in it: apparently Indonesians have one of the highest per capita consumption of sugar in all of Asia. Watch out for spikes in diabetes, Indonesia!  [China, by the way, is the #1 in Asia and India is the top consumer in the world]

[Note: I found this nice blog where you can read much more about Padang cuisine. This blogger had a bit more time to explore the food options than we did: http://afastar.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/west-sumatera-cuisine/]

Best way to end a meal: fresh fruit and coconut

While Padang was quite the exciting food city, we were shocked to discover one of Sumatra's best kept culinary secrets: the Batak people in Lake Toba are food geniuses!! One of my good travel buddies from Spain even commented how she does not like Indonesian food at all but Batak food was really good!

I think one of the tricks to this simple but delicious food is the lake itself. Lake Toba, a few hours west of Medan, is a gem of a place. The depth of the lake (almost 1 kilometer!) helps to keep the water clean and is home to delicious fish. We walked into a small hole-in-the wall restaurant for a late lunch, hoping they would serve us food. They were happy to have us and we all decided to order their fried fish. As is typical in most developing countries, our fish was deep fried whole and served with some veggie garnishes. We weren't expecting much but as soon as we took the first bite, we looked at each other all wide-eyed and almost simultaneously went "mmmmmmm!!!!!!!!"

One word: succulent!

The fish had definitely just been caught that morning and our hosts clearly knew what they were doing because it wasn't that greasy, which probably means they heat up the oil just right: even the tail was crunchy enough to eat it all! As a Colombian, deep fried whole fish is just one of those things you grow up with and the ability to eat the tail of the fish so that it feels like a potato chip is a true sign of excellence in the kitchen (my dad taught me this when I was probably 5 years old).

Best BBQ fish in town

Anyway, "Shugary Restaurant" is a must if you ever find yourself in Tuk Tuk. The fried fish was topped by our chef's dinner the next day: slow cooked whole fish on the barbecue. The chef made a little BBQ brush out of lemongrass he used to keep the fish moist with home-made marinade as it cooked for almost an hour. His wife fixes a great veggie salad (with cheese!) and she makes toasted coconut from scratch, which she then uses to top off a fruit salad with passion fruit.

Shredding coconut is a very laborious process and actually a great arm work out. My friend Jamie and I took a cooking class in Tuk Tuk and we had a first hand experience on how tiring this process is! But, regardless, making things from scratch is probably the other secret to Batak cuisine.

A coconut grinder really helps to get all that meat out

We learned to make sambal (like a chili paste) from scratch without the use of any electronic devices: we used a good ol' round stone and stone tablet to grind chili, garlic and shallot into a deliciously spicy paste. I learned to wrap fish in banana leaves to trap all the flavor and moisture as it steams. We also used heaps of the ground coconut to make our own coconut milk and used a mortar and pestle to make a coconut paste we used for a chicken Rendang. Similar to beef Rendang, we coated pieces of chicken in a toasted coconut paste and slowly cooked them until tender perfection!

Banana leaves keep the fish nice and moist

All in all, Batak cuisine was simple, yet flavorful, fresh and cooked with tender loving care. As an added bonus, the Batak eat a lot of pork and although it wasn't the best pork I had ever had, my tastebuds happily welcomed the change and made me long for bacon...

TLC @ Shugary

Shugary's delicious toasted coconut fruit and home-made muesli with passion fruit

What do you do with all that ground coconut? Make coconut milk, of course!

Mortar and pestle for Rendang dishes

Making chili sambal like a cavewoman

Tropical intrigue

Hard at work in paradise

Our first mistake was to fly from Colombo to Maldives on the first Friday of Ramadan. Maldivians take their religion seriously and not only is there no food for sale anywhere during the day but no ferries run between the islands either. For a country made up of thousands of tiny coral atolls that's a serious transportation challenge. We were forced to stay in the capital city of Male, a tiny island where skyscrapers appear to jut straight out of the sea.

Going fishing

Gone fishing

Luckily we met a friendly local who invited us to join his family on a night fishing trip to celebrate the first Friday of Ramadan. We cruised out under cover of darkness and fished by throwing hooked lines over the side of the boat and hauling them back in with gloved hands. Everyone caught a number of fish and we even dragged up a few eels (don't worry, we threw them back). For our first time fishing, we were amazed we managed to catch anything!

Our local friend has political ambitions to become the senator for island where he was born. Recent Maldivian political history is a veritable soap opera of tropical intrigue. A very popular young opposition candidate ousted the longtime incumbent from the presidency a couple of years ago. He had big ideas for changing the country, opening up the tourism sector and developing the outlying atolls. But the incumbent wasn't happy losing his throne and organized a coup with the help of the Male police. Our friend was actually alongside the young president during the coup and was on the front-lines of the subsequent riots between police and angry constituents.

No sex scandals for this little guy

A new election was about to take place when we were there and tensions were running high. A non-stop series of incidents have rattled the political scene, from complex corruption schemes to high justices involved in sex scandals (especially big news during Ramadan!).

Luckily we were able to escape the embroiled capital unscathed to the beautiful island of Maafushi. Maldives is best known for its massive, five star, all inclusive resorts. But those were far beyond the reaches of our modest pocketbook. Luckily over the past few years the country legalized 'local guest houses' (thanks to the ousted young president). These are the equivalent of a nice budget hotel in the US. They had relatively spacious rooms with AC and all the amenities but without the attached resort.

We both felt like this after the Maldives

We spent our week there relaxing on the snow white beaches (a different shade of white compared to Zanzibar), swimming in the perfect turquoise water and diving pristine coral reefs. The marine life is in exquisite condition and residents are very aware of its importance to the local economy so they keep it well protected. There was no shortage of sharks, turtles, napoleon fish, sweetlips, eels and of course, plenty of Nemos. We munched on fresh seafood in the evenings and slurped down coconuts throughout the day (well hidden from the prying eyes of Ramadan of course). Though the coconuts were sub-par compared to Sri Lanka's King Coconuts, they still did the job and kept us well hydrated throughout the hot, hot days.

It was a wonderful week, all the more so because a week is the perfect amount of time to spend there. It's a great place for a short-term holiday. But our ambitions ran beyond the scope of a short-term holiday, we had our sights set on the smoldering volcanoes, verdant jungles and deserted beaches of Sumatra...


Co-posted on www.dreacastillo.com

Can't complain

Island life

On our way to unspoiled reefs

Shade on the Indian Ocean

Our home for a week

Bus rides through mine fields

Enjoying coconuts on the train

We chugged out of Colombo on one of Sri Lanka's British colonial era trains. The track wound its way North through bright green rice paddies and coconut plantations. The leg space was generous as Asian transportation options go. We were serenaded by vocal toddlers and lulled into semi-consciousness by the potent nasal onslaught of cow shit and locomotive exhaust.

After a few hot, humid hours we arrived at the next destination of our sabbatical: the unpronounceable city of Anuradhapura. A tuk-tuk driver ferried us through the unremarkable town to our guest house for the night. The old couple who owned the place explained that the famous temple complex in the old town had extraordinarily high entry fees for foreign tourists (on the order of ~$30 per person vs. ~$1 per person for locals). Instead we elected to take his suggestion to support the local economy and hired the same tuk-tuk driver to smuggle us into the various sites. 

Drea experiments with surf yoga

Our valiant driver took us through the various secret routes to avoid the ever-watchful gaze of the tourist police and park attendants. Once inside we were blown away by the scale of the temple complex. Anuradhapura is one of the less-talked-about stops on Sri Lanka's cultural tourism circuit but the Buddhist stupas, statues and carvings there rival anything in Asia. Make sure to check it out if you get the chance to visit. 

The next morning we caught a bus to the Northern tip of Sri Lanka, a city called Jaffna. Jaffna was the center of the long-running civil war and the home base of the Tamil Tigers. 

The war ended violently a few years ago in the midst of some complex geopolitical posturing. After quietly supporting the Sri Lankan government for years, the US withdrew its support just as they were mounting their last major offensive against the rebels. Obama is quite unpopular in Sri Lanka because he also tried to sway the EU and other international parties to push for a diplomatic resolution with the Tamil Tigers due to (well-grounded) concerns about human rights violations perpetrated by government troops. Luckily for the government, China stepped in to take up the slack. India sat back, worried about its huge Tamil population getting upset over any action.

Elephants are the national animal

China actually has a long history of international support for Sri Lanka. When we arrived in Colombo we both wrongly assumed that Sri Lanka and India must be close allies. Their actual relationship is far more complex, and far less friendly, than we thought. The straight is fraught with tension and constant political bickering. China supported Sri Lanka for centuries as a strategic trade hub and came to the rescue with funding and military supplies when Colombo decided to wipe the Tigers off the map. Many Sri Lankans saw this as the only viable solution because of the singularly failure-ridden track record of peace negotiations. They saw Obama and the US as trying to subvert a final resolution to their civil war by claiming to support peace when their actual (secret) goal was protracted conflict that benefited US weapons manufacturers. 

And you thought the Eiffel Tower was big

Our experience of Jaffna was surprisingly mundane. We had to stop at a few military checkpoints. Burnt out, bullet-ridden shells of ancient trucks occasionally marred the landscape. "CAUTION, LAND MINES" signs were common. But the city of Jaffna was a slow-paced, laid back place. There wasn't a lot to see but the town was in good repair and the infrastructure was better than in many other parts of the country. We visited the sights that did exist: a remote island with wild horses, an ancient colonial dutch fort built out of coral, a colorful cemetery overlooking the coastline where the 2004 Tsunami hit hardest. But we were quickly ready to move on.

That next move turned out to be the longest bus ride of our lives. The crowded vehicle bumped along from Jaffna to the beach town of Trincomalee on the Northeast coast. Mind-numbing Indian pop music blared through the speakers at volumes they weren't designed to handle. We quickly muted it out by listening to our default road trip soundtrack: The Heist. Road construction slowed our pace to a crawl. The driver's constant extended bathroom breaks hinted that we weren't the only ones suffering from Sri Lankan indigestion. The mix of dust and heat was enough to break the strongest soul. Objectively the drive took about eleven hours. Subjectively it took exactly four and a half months.

Eliot takes up a new profession

Lucky for us our next two designations, Trinco and Arugam Bay farther south, were the most laid-back beach towns we had visited yet. We spent the next few weeks swimming, snorkeling, and sipping on fresh king coconuts. We caught up a little on our writing. Drea surfed the best wave of her life and experimented with surf yoga. We watched Wimbledon and chilled out to the constant background hum of reggae. Arugam Bay oozed soul. Local tailors made us ~$10 custom bikinis/board shorts from high quality local textile. Resident chefs whipped up delicious local rice and curries. We relaxed and were able to let loose after our rather harried tour of the North. Hell, we even had some fun nights of Jenga along with Sri Lankan beer on tap, the first good beer on tap we had had since leaving California!

Eventually we realized we were at serious risk of succumbing to the East Coast's chill vibe completely and missing the rest of the country. It was time for our next adventure: the mist shrouded peaks of Sri Lanka's famous tea country...

Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

So THAT's how you wear a sarong!

Gettin' jiggy with it at the temple

Yum!

Yum 2!

Hindu temple in Jaffna (we didn't bother going in but it was cool to look at anyway)

Tsunami cemetery at Point Pedro, in the norther-most area of Sri Lanka

The unfortunately named Tsunami hotel @ Arugam Bay

A day at the office...

Why Colombo is a food (and shopping [gasp!]) heaven

Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka may not have the best reputation. We were told by many to just fly in and get the hell out as it was supposed to be a noisy, boring, "whatever" city. We considered this for a brief second but as soon as we arrived, we completely dismissed this advice.

King Coconut, the Best Coconut!

Colombo is a foodie paradise. We explored sections of city center brimming with street hawkers selling fresh king coconuts (Eliot's favorite), savory fried snacks and Sri Lankan chai.

The cafe at the Dutch Burgher Union serves mouth-watering lampreis, chicken, curried vegetables and beef croquettes baked in a wrapped banana leaf. Burghers are an ethnic group of mixed Sri Lankan/Dutch heritage dating back to colonial times (think Spice Islands).

They have their own micro-culture and sophisticated cuisine and their community is thriving in Colombo. Oh, and Drea discovered delicious cinnamon iced tea soda which she plans on bringing back to the U.S.!

Lampreis, a Colombo delicacy

From there we went on to explore the culinary delights available at an open farmer's market on a lake in the city. They do it every Thursday and we were lucky to have arrived on a Thursday morning. We had brown rice served with five amazing curries on a giant lotus leaf instead of a plate and devoured it in seconds. They had at least 30 different fresh fruit juices at the next stand so we got two and then made sure to try Sri Lankan hoppers: a crepe-esque snack with an egg on top with chili sambal.

Sambal is a delicious mixture of fresh red chili peppers and ground coconut meat and other spices that vary according to the chef. The feast that day ended with a delicious rooibos lemon iced tea and a homemade passionfruit yogurt made by a British/Sri Lankan couple.

The amazingly refreshing cinnamon iced tea soda

Our days continued with a lot of sampling and eating and we became big fans of kottu: a seriously loud dish of chopped up rotti, loads of veggies and usually egg and chicken all wrapped up in plastic and then newspaper.

Kottu dinner

Cutlery options are either a plastic spoon (for the foreigners) or your hands (local style).

In spite of its carb-heavy nature, kottu was delicious and we ate it almost every single night while in Sri Lanka -- Colombo's version was better than any other city we visited in the country.

To top it all off, we came right during mangosteen (the queen of fruit!) and rambutan season so we bought them by the kilo and snacked on fruit throughout the day. 

One of Sri Lanka's fashion houses

Colombo also turned out to be a fashion hub. In between meals and snacks, we'd usually go to various shops. Most of you will know how much we both hate shopping but we actually had a ton of fun exploring the textile markets. Local designers do wonders with hand loomed fabric and the results are extraordinary. Drea actually found her wedding dress and Eliot also picked up wedding attire plus very cheap custom-made clothing!

As far as capital cities are concerned, we usually opt to jet out as soon as is humanly possible. Colombo definitely broke that mold and turned into one of our favorite places. If you're headed to Sri Lanka any time soon, let us know and we'll hook you up with the most honest and nicest tuk tuk driver around so that you can savor and explore this cool city!

What do you think? Colombo: love it or hate it?
Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

Yucca snacks on the streets of Colombo

Mangosteen and rambutan season!

Coconut sambal (left) with string hoppers and dal (right) for breakfast