Mar 7
Bli Komang turns to me and laughs. I am sitting beside him, sweat trickling down my face, inside a dimly lit warung on a main road in Sanur. Outside there is little to distinguish the restaurant from others save a baby blue sign proclaiming “HANDAYANI”, its bolded letters above a photo cutout of babi guling, Balinese suckling pig.
Jan 26
Off in the distance, a lone farmer waded foot-deep in the paddy fields, scattering nutrients over the rows of young shoots. The bucolic scene was but a short distance from Goa Gajah, the ‘Elephant Cave’, down a series of narrow roads lined by red brick walls, past an airy pavilion where local women in kebaya sat preparing food for a ceremony. Read more
Jan 17
The rock-cut gateway stood at the end of a dramatic approach, where the footpath descended through soaring coconut palms and rice terraces now ripe for harvest, before being hemmed in by natural walls of solid rock. Two posts framed the entrance, one with words clearly inscribed in Balinese and Indonesian, and the other in English. Read more
Jan 13
Beneath the crystal clear surface, black clouds sprang from the depths, continuously spreading in small plumes over a sandy bed. The spring bubbled into a rectangular pool enclosed in walls of black volcanic stone, its perimeter fringed with tufts of aquatic moss. Read more
Jan 7
In Bali, magic can unfold on a busy street corner. Raised above the din of passing motorcycles and night traffic, the pavilion stood proudly opposite Ubud Palace, beside a stone wall marking the edge of the main village temple. Read more
Jan 1
In the darkness, Made’s wide grin glowed brightly, a perfect set of teeth bathed by the soft light from a nearby lantern. He had driven us the 90 minutes from the airport to the four-bedroom hotel owned by his brother off Jalan Bisma, a porous boundary between a legion of tiled red roofs and a swath of paddy fields plunging into a steep ravine. Read more
Nov 30
When winter comes to Hong Kong, chapping lips and penetrating homes with no insulation nor central heating, I dream of a faraway tropical island among a chain of more than 17,000 spread like jewels along the equator. It waits in the shadow of its famous sister, separated by nothing more than a deep sea strait. Read more
Aug 17
For if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you can’t quite speak the language, and you don’t know where you’re going, and you’re pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you’re left puzzling over who you are and whom you’ve fallen in love with.
– Pico Iyer, ‘Why We Travel’
Aug 12
Sipping at a young coconut in the shade of a pohon waru, a gnarled tree with spade-shaped leaves, I squeezed the cool white sand between my toes. The smell of grilled fish, freshly caught from the sea, wafted over from the beachside warung – a small trio of shacks in bamboo and alang-alang – while a row of brightly painted outrigger canoes lay lined up on the shore.
Aug 6
From the comfort of my seat I watched as our waitress carried a clear plastic bag of chillies into the kitchen, presumably to be chopped up and used in the sauce for our homemade ayam taliwang. As we came down from our three-day trek on Mount Rinjani, during which we were fed vast quantities of banana pancakes, spaghetti, and even a burger with fries, Bama was excited about the prospect of returning to the rich flavours of Indonesian fare. “I’ve been craving something spicy!”
Plus Ultra 