Fruiti Tutti

If you know me - you know I LOVE fruits.  Especially anything with bananas! Living in a tropical country is a perfect place for a fruit lover because they have so many fruits all year long :) And thank goodness Alo decided to "splurge" months ago and buy us a blender since non of our electronics from the US would work here so I can make constant smoothies!

I will have to say that before we moved here, my old landlord in DC constantly talked about the Mangos in Indonesia and how amazing they were supposed to be. I'll have to say they don't knock me over, but maybe I'm just not a Mango lover at heart. But they do have a couple different kinds here and they are offered on most dessert menus at restaurants.

The best part of all is that the grocery store KemChicks (which reminds me alot of a whole foods but in Indonesia) will cut any fruit and package it for you with no additional cost.  So I can pick up a large watermelon and take it to the counter and tell them i'd like to buy half of it chopped up.  How amazing is that? I guess if you are like me and HATE to cut up any fruits then you'd be just as excited. I've decided Whole Foods or Trader Joe's really needs to adopt this idea.  Granted I will say there are always at least 3 people behind the counter cutting up a storm so it does take some man power to have this kind of operation.  Anyways - brilliant idea in my opinion. Quick, healthy, cheap fruits cut up everyday for lunch - yes please!

Back to bananas - they have so many different types of Indonesian bananas but I can't keep up with the names.  They are huge, regular ones like in the states, medium ones, and tiny ones.  A popular street food dessert is Pisang Goreng. (pisang means banana, goreng means fried).  Indonesians love to fry up anything so it's no surprise that take a healthy yummy banana and fry it up in oil. So much of the street food is either fried noodles or a meat or vegetable fried up! (are you arteries hurting yet??).

Dragon fruit, Salak (Snake fruit), Starfruit and cocunuts are probably my favorite fruits from Indonesia. You can see what they all look like below:

Dragon fruit (there is also a kind that is the same but bright pink inside)

Salak (They call is Snake Fruit because of the scaley skin)

Belimbing or Carambola (Starfruit)

Here are some others I've tried :

Mangosteen- "Queen of all fruits" (good but the purple/red outter skin dyes your fingers and gets everywhere)

Rambutan (the name in Indonesian literally means "hairy" - hints the look and feel of the fruit)

Durian is my LEAST favorite fruit. Durian is the "King of Fruit" in Indonesia and is known for it's stinging scent, spiny skin and soft fruit. It has the fowlest smell ever (in my opinion!). I don't really know how to describe it other than gross. Indonesians just love it though, but you always know when someones eating it or it's around because it stinks up the whole area.

I almost forgot to mention the fruit juices. In almost any restuarant they offer all kinds of fresh fruit juices. My favorite is the watermelon juice or melon juice.  It's served cold and tastes like a million bucks. So simple - it's just watermelon put in the blender and served cold - trust me you want to try it!  They have so many drink choices from juices to smoothies to iced coffees, etc. This is always available in most restaurants since it's a Muslim country and most people don't drink alcohol so they offer lots of other options.

There are SO many more fruits but these are just a few. I'm not a fan of Indonesian food (haven't you wondered why i've never wrote about it? ha) but I do love their fruits!

Borobudur Temple

I am going to go back a couple months and catch up on many places/experiences in Indonesia that I always wanted to write about but never got to yet!

I went to Yogykarta over the Chinese New Year since I had a long weekend to see the Borobudur Temple as well as other places in the area.  I flew into Yogyakarta and met Alo there because he had been working there earlier in the week.  We just loved our weekend there. Everything is so green and lush and it's so peaceful compared to Jakarta.  

Borobudur is said to be the largest Buddhist Temple in the world. There were originally 504 Buddha statues on the temple.  It's always ranked as one of the top places to see in Indonesia so of course it's one destination I didn't want to miss visiting.  It was first built in the 9th century and abandoned in the 14th century when there was a significant decrease in Buddhists and Hindus in Java and a large conversion to Islam on Java.  It wasn't until 1814 that Borobudur was discovered again by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the British ruler of Java who was advised of the monument by native Indonesians.  The monument has since been preserved through several restorations, the largest in 1975 and 1982 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO.  Borobudur is still used for pilgrimage and once a year Buddhists in Indonesia celebrate Vesak at the monument.  

Borobudur is about 40 minutes from the Hyatt in Yogykarta.  We stayed there and I would certainly recommend it. It's a little pricier for the area but was great and relaxing and they had good service.  When we arrived we quickly got our tickets and headed up to the temple.  It's up on a hill and you have to walk up tons of stairs to reach the top. It was also a beautiful HOT sunny day when we went so we were immediately sweating our buns off (nothing new in Indonesia!).  You can see the temple up high, its really tiny behind me in the picture below...

Like I mentioned earlier, we chose a holiday weekend to visit Borobudur. I'm going to go ahead an mention maybe it wasn't the best idea. As soon as we hiked up to the bottom part of the temple a couple Indonesians asked for me to take a photo with them. Others saw this and then it was all over - you would have thought we were Brad and Angelina! We were literally swarmed by everyone visiting the temple asking for photos and interviews. There was a group of Indonesian students studying English so they ALL wanted an interview and a photo from each of us! ha.  It was quite the day - but pretty funny! Some of the Paparazzi pictures below...

As we left the temple and were down at the bottom where tons of vendors are selling things we saw this little Indonesian man climbing these trees with just a rope wrapped around him and the tree to get Coconuts! And you thought your job was hard!

Holy huge tree! Yikes! 

We visited an area with tons of local crafts and art and I just LOVED it. I think it was called Kasongan. It's a long street filled with tons of tiny shops full of hand crafted local goods. Certain areas in Yogykarta also have tons of furniture stores which are fun to shop in.  Everything was much cheaper than things you can find in Jakarta. And the shipping to Jakarta was only about 15 dollars(it's a 2 hour flight away so i'd say that's a pretty good deal). We each bought our first pieces from Indonesia here - a small hand carved multi-colored cabinet and an old Indonesian boat made into a shelf. 

We went to the beach one day and rode through the countryside for hours to get there. It was a fun trip and always interesting to see the local neighborhoods but the trip took us almost all day to get there and back so if you have limited time I might not recommend it.  On the trip we had great views of Mount Merapi, the world's most active volcano that Alo hiked up back in September.  On the way back from the beach we stopped at a cliffside restaurant to get a snack and a Bintang(the local beer).

I loved our weekend in Yogykarta and wished we could have gone back! It's a great close getaway from Jakarta and flights are usually really cheap!