Sanur cookery and a meeting!

Today i met up with Franzi again as we had booked a Balinese cookery course. We were whisked off to the morning market and spent an hour discovering some amazing (and not so) foodstuffs.  The market was a mix of indoor and outdoor stalls selling everything from dragonfruit to sandals.  Butchers deftly chopped chicken hardly even looking as they chatted to their neighbours, mums with babies strapped to them sold their spices and treats in the morning sun.  We discovered many new things, snake fruit, mangosteen (i knew this one) and a load of fresh leaves, spinach and bay leaves different to ours, galangal, sweet ginger, snake beans, long green cucumber like veg and many more.  After the shop, we headed a few streets away to the cookery school. There were four of us so it was nice and friendly, we were taught how to roast spices and combine ingredients using a huge pestle and mortar to make wonderful smelling pastes ready for a vegetable curry, mushroom satay griddled on sticks, a wonderful peanut sauce and veggie spring rolls.  Making the spring roll casing was an education in itself i never knew it was so simple! We laughed and learned a heap of interesting skills and ended up with a wonderful plate of food.  I loved the use of banana leaves as plates too. Dessert was a coconut mil and banana vanilla pudding.
After this i visited Bottle for Botol, id approached this NGO before i left UK as i wanted to find out about single-use plastic and what some Indonesians were doing about trying to solve the ever growing problem. They talked about their schools project where they try to show better ways to avoid using plastics and also measures they are taking to help provide simple yet effective de-salination equipment on the many islands to try to curtail all the plastic-encased water that is shipped in at an alarming rate.  Very interesting stuff.
I decided to walk the 5k back to my digs after the meeting, this was about rush hour time, the ornate home temples at every corner decorated with small trays of offering, kites flying so high seemingly ownerless in the warm blue skies and the roads ohh they are chaotic with masked riders scooters mainly Toyota cars and small trucks all trying to get somewhere, if they get stuck they simply drive on the pavement areas (when there is a pavement!) the traffic is always bad in main areas and you can easily escape it by dashing down a side street and relaxing in warung with a Balinese coffee, iced tea or Bintang beer. 

The Balinese people are generally smiley entrepreneurs and kind humans, I see no displays of testosterone, anger and shouting. The ladies are graceful and the children love to wave at us b.... or rich tourists as we are known.