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| Detail on a carved doorway |
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| Entrance to Neka Art Museum |
After breakfast, and a look at the Ubud market, a Puri
Saraswati driver took us to the
Neka Museum, about 2.5 km west of Ubud.
The Neka Art Museum was opened in 1982 and is named after a Balinese teacher Suteja Neka who collected paintings as a means of artistic documentation.
Nowadays the museum has a great selection of works from many famous Balinese artists and Expats who have lived here and influenced local artists.It is the largest art museum in Ubud and is well worth a visit. It has a great
collection housed in a number of buildings dating from the beginning of the 20th
Century and includes historic photographs (by Rober A. Koke taken between
1937-41) and modern work as well
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| View from the terrace of the Indus |
We stopped briefly at the Indus
restaurant to take in the impressive building and the view over the valley. Perched on the side of a valley just east of Ubud, it is also run by Janet DeNeefe and is more up-market than Cafe Luna, and has an excellent menu and stunning views.
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Mural on farmhouse commenting on
the sale of the adjacent arm. |
For lunch, T&J offered to take us to one of their favourite warungs (it usually
means shop/eatery) in Shriwidari located in paddy fields surrounding Ubud.
This is also the area where last year there was a massive "
Not For Sale" sign on one of the farms. Well, the farm has since been sold, and now on the adjoining farm there's a mural painted on the farmhouse wall with the caption "Sold Out"!
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| Lunchtime in Warung Jepun |
After a short drive, including over the new bridge (unfinished on my last trip) we arrived at
Warung Jepun on Jalan Shriwidari.
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Gado-Gado, stunning presentation
and flavour for a countryside warung |
A standout dish at Warung Jepun was the Gado-Gado, a common dish and often done quite differently in different restaurants. This was no exception. The vegetables were wrapped in lettuce, steamed and then sliced and presented beautifully. The subtle peanut sauce topped it off.
Although we ordered
4 different meals; Chilli Prawns, Vegetable Curry, Fish in Butter and Chicken in
Banana Leaf. There was a certain sameness to the flavouring, mainly turmeric
& chilli, nevertheless they were delicious and there were no complaints.
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| The fresh tumeric drink |
Frances
took the bold step of ordering a turmeric drink - it was incredibly yellow and
had a slightly carroty flavour and texture, but out there on its own. The straw
stained yellow as the drink was sipped and it was definitely the kind of drink,
and in fact a whole meal, that you would not want to consume wearing anything
white!
I must admit the food photography has suffered a little on
this trip, partly because, by the time we eat, we seem to be really hungry and
eating takes precedence over photographs. Another way of looking at it is that photographing a
partially eaten dish shows the meal stripped of any contrived presentation
techniques and reveals the dish in its natural state. Jury's still out on that
one.
After lunch we adjourned to T&J's new villa for a swim (it's still hot) and a laid-back afternoon.
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| Inside Murni's Warung |
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| Cascading levels into the gorge |
For dinner we decided to
go to
Murni's Warung which is just this side of the bridge to the
east of Ubud.
Although I'd seen it many times I always thought it was a
backpacker hangout. It is in fact an up-market restaurant over four levels
cascading down the gorge towards the river - very smartly decorated with lots
of statues. It dates from 1974 and claims to be Ubud's first real restaurant.
The staff were great.
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| Slow cooked chicken dish |
John & I had fairly typical Balinese food,
with a very nice small vegetables in broth dish, but Tamar & Frances had a Slow Cooked (8 hours) Chicken dish which although quite spicy had excellent
flavours.
Later, as a special
treat, we watched
Road to Bali with Bob
Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour which I'd brough with me for just such an occasion. In the movie, they never actually get to Bali, but had numerous mishaps on the
way, including a start from Melbourne and hopping onto a train full of sheep
to Darwin.
Many wisecracks, Hollywood studio in-jokes, terrible songs, interestingly choreographed dances and implausible plot twists later,
we'd had a pretty good insight into Hollywood's view of the world in the early 50's -but learned nothing about Bali!
