ASIANOVERLAND.NET SYDNEY TO LONDON DAY 357/36: UBUD, BALI, INDONESIA

The recorded history of Ubud seems to start with an eighth-century legend about a Javanese Hindu priest, Rsi Markendya, who meditated at the confluence of two rivers at Campuhan, Ubud, where he founded the Gunung Lebah Temple in the valley.

Ubud was originally important as a source of medicinal herbs and plants, and gets its name from the Balinese word ubad (medicine).

Balinese Hinduism revered Dewi Sri as an important rice goddess. Her and other deities’ effigies made from colourful sticky rice are often made during religious ceremonies.

Bali is the home of the Subak irrigation system, a water management system for paddy fields developed in the 9th century. For the Balinese, irrigation is not only providing water for the plant's roots, but creates a complex artificial ecosystem. The system consists of five terraced rice fields and water temples covering nearly 20,000 hectares. The Balinese water temples regulate the water allocation for each village's ricefields. 

Balinese cuisine uses  indigenous traditions, as well as influences from other Indonesian regional cuisine, as well as Chinese and Indian.

Steamed rice is consumed in nearly every Balinese meal. Pork, chicken, seafood and vegetables are also widely consumed. As Hindus, Balinese never or rarely consume beef.

Bali is well named as one of the Spice Islands, as spices used in Balinese cuisine include Kaempferia galanga (galangal), shallots, garlic, turmeric, ginger and Kaffir lime. Balinese 8-spice is made with white pepper, black pepper, coriander, cumin, clove, nutmeg, sesame seed, and candlenut. Palm sugar, fish paste, and basa gede (a spice paste) are also used.

Fruits include rambutan, mangoes, mangosteen, bananas, jackfruit, passion fruit, nangka (jackfruit), pineapple, wani (white mango), papaya, melon, oranges, custard-apple, coconut and durian.

In Hindu Balinese traditions, certain foods are served in religious rituals as an offering for the gods. During religious ceremonies, festively decorated fruits and foods are brought to the temple as an offering. Balinese believed that certain foods are an appropriate offering for specific deities. For example, pork is favoured by Batara Kala, while ducks are favoured by Hindu gods such as Brahma. Rare foods such as turtle meat are also used in rituals.

Balinese warungs or restaurants usually specialized solely on serving specific dishes, such as babi guling (suckling pig), bebek betutu (crispy duck), or nasi campur (Balinese mixed rice), which may have grilled tuna, fried tofu, cucumber, spinach, vegetable curry, corn, and chili sauce on a bed of rice. Mixed rice is often sold by street vendors wrapped in a banana leaf.

Basa gede (known as sambal in Java, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore), is a spice paste that is a basic ingredient in many Balinese dishes, made of garlic, red chili peppers,  shallots, nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, palm sugar, cumin, shrimp paste and salam leaves (Indonesian bay leaf).

Some Balinese curry dishes use basa genep, the typical Balinese spice mix used as the base for curry.  Tabia lala manis, a thin soy sauce with chili peppers, and sambal matah are popular condiments.

Balinese foods include Bebek betutu (duck stuffed with spices, wrapped in banana leaves and coconut husks cooked in a pit of embers), Balinese sate known as sate lilit made from spiced mince pressed onto skewers which are often lemongrass sticks, Babi guling (a spit-roasted pig stuffed with chili peppers, turmeric, garlic, and ginger), and Betutu, a roasted poultry dish (chicken or duck) with spices.

↑ Day 35 ↓ Day 37