Enjoying a slither of sunshine

The husband can't quite walk yet so in the meantime the balcony is really where he can enjoy his bit of the outside world without actually going outside. I bought some flowers to cheer the balcony up but it seems like I as soon as I take them home, they just start to die.

Chicken sate

The husband was feeling a little down that he missed out on the Indonesian trip so I decided to cook up a simple Indonesian meal for lunch. This is so easy to make that I feel rather embarrassed to put a recipe up. It's something that my mum used to cook for us when she couldn't be bothered doing anything else but I love it nonetheless. He was over the moon!

Homemade nutella

So since being back in Germany I haven't really been that much of a fruit eater. I don't normally eat fruits anyway unless it is with some sort of a chilli sauce (Indonesian rujak or asinan) of some kind. Since rujak sauces are quite difficult to replicate, I've recently been eating peaches and strawberries with Nutella and the other day I've come to realised that I managed to eat a quarter of a Nutella jar in one sitting. So I thought I might try out at making my own Nutella (from this recipe) just so that I would feel alot better about eating that much chocolate.

Sauerkirschkuchen

Souvenirs left behind from the Tsunami

This mosque is located at the centre of town. It was built by the Dutch a while ago and the locals say that when the Tsunami hit, the wave curled over the mosque which left it completely untouched. During the Tsunami, the locals sought refuge here. 

This is what the locals called "the ship ontop of the house" and it's really just that. During the Tsunami, this boat flung right ontop of a house, completely shaved off the ceiling and roof and stayed there. The weird thing was, the the fishing boat only chipped the edge of the next door neighbour's roof corner.

This is an electric generator tank of a ship that was flung 5 km to land. I couldn't take a picture of the whole thing because it was just that massive. The Indonesian government promised to try and drag this back to see just because this thing is placed right in town and takes quite some space...but of course, they never delivered on their promise (insert shock, horror) so now it's just kind of stuck there. The locals tried at one stage to try and pull it out to see themselves but it didn't work due to...no resources.

Nearby the Tsunami Museum is this plaque which shows flags of all the countries that contributed to rebuilding Aceh after the Tsunami. The size of the flag shows how much they contributed, in terms of man-power and money donations. Of course the Indonesian government didn't like this concept because they contributed nothing so it was agreed that this plaque could be hung up if the Indonesian flag was 20 times bigger than the rest of the flags. The locals kind of laugh at this because they say that the Indonesian flag is the biggest and they contributed the least.

Must try foods in Aceh

Teh tarik

Grilled corn

Mie Aceh

Freshly grounded Toraja coffee beans

Inside out martabak

Hasan Restaurant

This restaurant has been newly renovated with an elevated floor so that I guess if there ever was another big flood, they are quite safe.

My all time favourite food, pregedel (kartoffeln Frikadellen)

Ayam goreng dada (fried chicken breasts with lime leaves) is a must to try. This is what I dream about eating all the time!

This place is actually called Warung Nasi Hasan but it's not really a warung (street stall) as it is more of a restaurant. I'm guessing this is quite a famous restaurant here in Aceh because it looks more sturdy as other restaurants and it is painted in this flouro green colour which is, to me, a colour that the big city-slickers in Jakarta like. I cannot fault the food, it was everything I liked in an Indonesian food; fried, spicy and with a teh botol nearby.


Warung Nasi Hasan
Jalan Laksamana Malahayati
Kajhu, Banda Aceh

Aceh close up

The monument ahead is pretty much the centre of town and this was where the people gathered shortly after the Tsunami to find missing people and kids. Later on, the strip of land that divides the street (on the right of the picture) was where the people would line up all the dead bodies that they found around them so that others can identify their loved ones who didn't survive.

It's amazing how blue this water is (it really is that aqua blue colour in real life). The airport and the way into town is divided by this river. During the Tsunami this was littered with wreckage and dead bodies as high as this water was.

Driving through the town of Aceh and hearing the Tsunami stories from my aunt and uncle makes me wonder how they (and my little cousins) ever survived it. There are countless stories, I mean - just countless of stories.

Aceh from afar

So yesterday was quite an uneventful birthday but I didn't mind because today was my real birthday treat. When I was preparing for this trip, I managed to convinced my mother to fly out to Aceh to visit my uncle. And she agreed to come if I organised the flight tickets (which was anyway easy because I bought them online hah!) - ahh yes I'm so lucky to have a mother who is game to do some crazy things with me. We left for the airport rather early (6am) to get to Aceh in the morning and this is what I took from the plane ride there. As you can see even thought the Tsunamis hit Aceh in 2004, parts of Aceh are still submerged and when you hear someone say that earthquakes changes the way a country looks, it became really evident to me in these pictures.

Kepiting Asap

I love the menu boards here!

Fresh seafood is really fresh here

The best thing on the menu, smoked crab in 17 spices paste

I think I may have mentioned this restaurant in Kebon Jeruk before but I thought I might just quickly write something about it again. So as it is my birthday (without the husband...grrr this is like three years in a row already!) I wanted to have some crabs. I know there are plenty of street stalls selling these but I'm a bit picky with my sea crustaceans when in Jakarta (I know I'm weird because I eat beef tongue from the street stalls all the time). This place is really as fresh as you can get with seafood and I just cannot get enough of this place.

Rasane Kepiting Asap
Jl. Raya Greenville Block AS no. 35
Kebon Jeruk
Jakarta Barat

Tel: +6221 5696 1144

Sate Padang Ajo Ramon

This carpark at Pasar Santa turns into one of the most popular hangouts for Jakartans at night time. In fact, this area is more famous for its food stalls at night than the pasar itself - one of them being the Sate Padang Ajo Ramon stall. Now I've eaten enough sate padangs in my lifetime to know which I like and which I don't like, and I've got to say, this particular sate really kicks it out of the park for me. It's a bit spicy for my liking but I don't mind as long as there are a couple of teh botols handy. And I like the fact that I can come here as late as I want and there would still be stacks of people in their pyjamas queuing to eat here, especially during Ramadhan.

Food stalls at the Pasar Santa carpark

The cooked sate is then left in the gravy so it intensifies the taste of the gravy and keeps the beef tongue tenderised

spicy crackers to eat with the gravy(kerupuk singkong pedas)

The complete dish

The chef in his semi-formal batik attire

Sate Padang Ajo Ramon
Jl Cipaku 1
Pasar Santa
Kebayoran Baru
Jakarta Selatan

A quick trip to Anomali

While it is absolutely pouring outside, I made a quick stopover to Anomali to pick up some coffee and to get a bit of shelter from the rain. Got to love the smell of warm coffee on a rainy day!

The things we do for beauty

As you may (or may not) be aware, it is rain season in Jakarta at the moment and one of my favourite waxing/ beauty places here (Salon Narsih) is a little flooded. The water was not so high, maybe between my knees and my ankles (I've had worse)

So I was wondering, hmm how am I going to get to the darn place because this puddle isn't exactly the kind that you can just leap over. Out of nowhere a middle-aged man came up behind me and handed me over a pair of gumboots.

 At least the salon was empty enough that I didn't have to wait so long.

 So I guess the gumboots were a good idea, well at least it didn't ruin my pedicure.

Excuse the crappy pictures, I took them with my mobile phone because I didn't want to ruin my camera in this rain.

A rawa bening visit

Kleine Pause mit Teh Botol (small break with a Teh Botol)

Den habe ich gekauft (I bought these)

I managed to coax my mother to come with me to Rawa Bening, just because...well just because and she took the bait. I don't know why but whenever I go to this place, the time just gets sucked right out of the day for some reason. We got here just before it opened (8:30am) and like good old Indonesia, it actually opened at 9:30-10:00am hmm yah nonetheless we managed to pull ourselves away from this black hole of a time at around 3pm...so yep 6.5 hours...terrible. Ok so the earrings in the middle picture are the ones I actually bought, it was around the 2.9juta mark (220Eur)...ouch yah I know..but ok so my birthday is in a couple of days and seeing as the husband had to cancel his entire Indonesian trip (he broke his achilles tendon two days before his flight) he will not be here for my birthday AND on top of that I have to organise an earlier return flight back to Deutschland...in high season. So umm ok these were just the reasons floating around in my head to justify my purchase (as we all do from time to time) so anyways, I've bought them, too late to take them back..and plus I don't want to.

Pondok Ikan Bakar khas Kalimantan

Yesterday's trip back from Bogor was painful, I mean 5.5 hours painful. In between, we had to even leave the highway to take a lunch/dinner break. My aunty knew of a very popular place amongst Jakartans where you can get the best smoked fish in town (or ikan pepes). The fish are coated with a golden paste of spices and herbs and put in side bamboo shoots where they are slowly cooked ontop of coals. When we got here, the queue was long but the people here eat and leave so the change-over was rather quick. We ordered a couple of fish and here is what they looked like.

The fish is served on the bamboos

It comes with three types of sauces; a watery sweet and sour sauce, freshly cooked chilli and chilli and sour mango sauce.

At the carpark, a couple of guys were preparing the bamboo shoots for cooking