The arts and culinary delights of Bali

Bali is a dream come true. We are immersed in Balinese culture in a little town called Ubud - where traditional arts and amazing cuisine thrive. We have to leave Ubud tomorrow for our dive trip but we plan on returning to this lovely town surrounded by terraced rice fields just before we fly to Singapore.
In the two days we have had here in Ubud we have toured a huge market (food and crafts), explored a small temple (see above), gone to two performances at night (I'll explain these later), and taken an Indonesian cooking class. The performances were incredible! Ubud is, apparently, the place to go to see Balinese dancing. Last night we bought our tickets to see the Legong and Barong dances at a temple in Ubud. Imagine (because I don't think I will get those pics up today) a traditional Balinese dancer. The women are wrapped up in golden fabrics filled with bright colors and golden hats covered in flowers that tower above their heads. They move with sharp flicks of the eyes and wrists that define this form of dancing. We also saw a huge god - half dog and half lion - that is played by two men underneath one big, furry costume. We loved this performance and hope to see another one when we return to Ubud.
The show that we saw tonight is called a wayang kulit - or a shadow puppet play. This is a traditional art form where there is a puppet master behind a screen (with a flame behind the screen) who performs/tells a story using many different puppets. The puppets are flat, and intricately patterned to allow the light to shine through - they are beautiful. Traditionally, Indonesians watch an entire shadow puppet show through the course of an entire night. Yup - they stay up ALL night! We had the abbreviated tourist version, but it was amazing nonetheless. We learned about this part of Indonesian culture when we read the book "The Year of Living Dangerously" by Christopher Koch. This is an amazing novel that also helped us understand the political scene of Indonesia in 1965 when it was under Sukarno's rule. They made a Hollywood movie out of it that we haven't seen, but if you are interested in Indonesian culture - this would probably be the movie to see.On to the brilliant cuisine!
We took an Indonesian cooking class today because Indonesian cooking is simply unreal - a true vegetarian piece of paradise (although Jay, my carnivorous man, is quite happy with his treats too). We toured the large food market in Ubud first, learning about the different rices, exotic fruits, palm sugar, roasting coconuts, and spices. I dreamt of buying a huge package of dried vanilla beans for $4 US! You pay that much for one bean in the states.... *sigh*
Once back at the classroom we were treated to some traditional Balinese cooking before we started cooking ourselves. This included hibiscus tea, green coconut pancakes topped with roasted coconut and palm sugar/syrup, and gado-gado (Indonesian greens, mung bean sprouts, tempeh and tofu topped with the best peanut sauce I've ever had in my life). Then we started our lunch. WOW. I won't explain each dish but I will say that Indonesians really focus their food on fresh and local ingredients. Everything they eat they probably buy from a market that day. The curries and other pastes are actually quite simple to make, the trick for us Americans would be to find the ingredients! Example: they have FOUR kinds of ginger here, including fresh turmeric. We learned how to prepare the pastes using a huge mortar and pestle made from Balinese volcanic rock and then how to simmer the pastes properly. I always thought I could make a darn good peanut sauce, but man, after today I'll never make a peanut sauce the same way again. The final treat was learning how to make my favorite dessert in the world - sweet black rice with coconut milk (fresh mango chunks on it are divine). Not as easy as I thought it would be, plus I don't think I can get palm sugar at home so we will have to substitute brown sugar. Boo hiss! But you have to soak the rice for 6 hours before cooking it and adding the sugar and coconut milk. Amazing treat they was served in a "boat" made from banana leaf. A grand way to end the class. Jay and I both went back to our room and fell dead asleep after lunch.
Ahhh....are you hungry? Well, we can't wait to make a big Indo feast for all our families and friends when we come home.
We leave tomorrow for the island of Flores and the next day we take off on a 4-day dive cruise around Komodo Island! We don't expect to have internet access for the next week - I'm quite happy about that - but that is why you won't be hearing from us. There are pics up in Jay's folder, maybe mine depending on the upload time. It is super SLOWWWWW right now. Indo time. I like Indo time. I love Bali.