Lunch On The Way to Kasongan Village

After flying from Jakarta to Yogjakarta, we took a bus straight to a restaurant that was situated across from a rice paddy. Although they had tables inside, everyone chose to eat at tables set up in front. Not just our group. Everyone.

Our group happened to have over a dozen people, yet they managed to come up with a table we could all sit at. It was very elegantly appointed.

This particular restaurant’s claim to fame is a serving style involving a dozen servers carrying the food around the table and offering a bit to each person.

Personally, it is my leas favorite style. It puts the pressure on you to over eat because you don’t want to hurt the feelings of whoever is bringing the food out and you can’t control how much of it will hit your plate. No matter how much you say, “little” and make diminutive gestures they will glop on what they choose. Some even put things on plates when they were specifically told “No thank you.” Not by me. I’m way too much of a glutton for that.

All the servers were wearing traditional garb in matching fabric. What a great uniform! If I’d been smart I’d have sat on the side of the table facing away from the beautiful scenery so I would have been able to get more than just silhouettes.

When we arrived a local band was playing. They serenaded us for a while and seemed a friendly bunch. The music kept striking me as a little too familiar, as though Western tunes had been altered to local taste. The guide said it was actually Portuguese.

I could easily see myself playing in a band like that. It had the same feel as the Bluegrass I used to play in Madison.

Then we hit one of the biggest bugaboos I consistently run into while traveling. Caffeine. It literally makes my heart beat irregular. Though it’s not an actual heart attack, it’s way too close for comfort. As a result I try very hard to avoid coffee, tea, coke, etc. These three seem to be the only beverages you can count on in places where the water may not be safe.

Worse, many cultures have traditional forms of coffee and or tea. Indonesia is no exception. But I got lucky. This particular tea didn’t have any ingredients I couldn’t drink! Yay! More about that on Monday.

After the meal we were invited to wander around on the estate of the owner, which we accessed through the restaurant. And what a home! This place had “tropical paradise” tattooed all over it.

The grounds were extensive, manicured, gorgeous, and exotic. We wandered for quite some time until finally reaching an area the owner wasn’t willing to share.

Mind you, we never saw the owner. This wasn’t a guided tour like a museum. We simply wandered around going “oooh” and “ahhh”. None of us imposed enough to sit on any loungers or anything. We just looked.

It was about two thirds the way to the back of the estate that I started to get the feeling Indonesians have a different concept of architecture than I do. To me, a house is a building with a collection of rooms inside. There might be some structures built separately. For instance, there might be a bunk house, and out house, or a smoke house. But generally speaking, places like an exercise room will be just that – a room. When my eye finally adjusted enough to tell me this was an exercise room, I found myself looking at the dining room table a little differently.