Farewell Flavours

This morning's breakfast was a celebration of Indonesian ingredients and flavours. I suppose it could be classed as kwetiau goreng, as it was technically fried kwetiau noodles.

Kwetiau goreng with kemangi

I fried chunks of tempeh with noodles and garlic, combining them with a sauce of tamarind, mushroom sauce, soy sauce (sweet and regular), and sambal. The crowing glory was handfuls of zesty kemangi (lemon basil). Lip-smackingly good.

We packed, soaked up the sunshine at the pool and went for a walk. Unfortunately, while we have seen some singularly beautiful areas of the island, our initial of impression of a paved paradise was not undone by the short walk we took around the local area. The traffic seemed worse than when we arrived and we haven't grown any more accustomed to bellowing to another over the din. K quickly developed a headache, which turned into a migraine, although the blame for this can't all be put on the motorists.

"If you can't beat them join them" is not at all a sustainable solution, but one that is selfishly tempting to satisfy one's own needs to the detriment or all. We guiltily followed this maxim, and joined our host in his car for a slow chug through Denpasar's already saturated streets.

The destination was an excellent choice, however - the city's own franchise of Loving Hut, a vegetarian restaurant that we also visited in Ho Chi Minh City.

The choice was overwhelming, but haste was called for as the waitress returned, expectantly tapping her order pad. After a couple of false starts on items that were no longer available, I settled on mie ketoprak. A deeply savoury and peppery sauce contained fried tofu, triangular dumplings filled with minced beef, tempeh, and chewy noodles.

Mie ketoprak

K went with soto betawi, a soup which contained tofu, 'meat' balls and noodles. She declared it not as good as the soto ayam prepared at our local vegetarian restaurant, Looi Bazaar.

Also on the table were fuyunghai, a kind of Chinese omelette, covered in a sweet tomato chilli sauce and peas, as well as sate. The latter was convincing to the point that the meat-eaters couldn't tell the difference. As a long-term meat-dodger, however, I could taste the distinctive presence of soy.

On the way back, our host insisted that we stop for terang bulan. We relented, having had our arms thoroughly twisted (not really). The unique selling point of this terang bulan was that the sponge itself came in many flavours, from pandan to chocolate and orange.

Terang bulan pandan

We selected pandan and ended up with a bright green sponge, with an aromatic taste reminiscent of subtle mint.