Culinary map

Culinary map on the way to please domestic tourists
Dicky Christanto, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

A comprehensive culinary road map pointing out famous eateries in Bali’s tourist spots of Kuta, Denpasar, Sanur and Ubud is currently in the works.

The map is being prepared by the Bali Tourism Board, in cooperation with free culinary magazine ChefUs and Bali Village, an association of tourism promotion agencies.

Titled Warung Lipat (folded eateries), the map will feature a brief history of each restaurant as well as their location and popular menu items. About 40 such restaurants have been documented so far and the organizers are awaiting input from others.

The map’s publication is set to coincide with the school holidays which run from June to July.

“This map is designed especially for domestic tourists to explore our culinary spots for themselves,” tourism board chairman I Gusti Ngurah Wijaya said Wednesday.

The coordinator of the Warung Lipat production committee, Sri Dian Ekawaty, said the list of restaurants was drawn up by a team of independent food lovers made up of tourism board staffers and local journalists. The team spent months reviewing the food and interviewing the restaurants’ owners and customers.

“We also asked people who’d never visited the restaurants what their impressions were, just to get an idea of the place’s reputation. We’ve had to drop many restaurants from our list simply because their reputations weren’t very good,” she said.

Perry Markus of the Association of Bali Hotels and Restaurants said renowned chefs from the Bali chapter of the Indonesian Chefs Association’s would also be involved in checking the restaurants’ merits.

“We will ask these chefs to help increase the quality of the food served,” he said.

Komang Adi Arsana of the chefs’ association said a team of chefs had been tasked to regularly visit the restaurants and give advice on increasing food quality and maintaining cleanliness.will not only provide them with information but also some useful tips on topics such as how to preserve the food without losing the flavor so customers can savor it longer,” he said.

Besides providing information about popular restaurants, Wijaya said, it was hoped the map could positively contribute to the local economy because of its free advertising for restaurants.

“We’re not charging these local restaurant owners at all and that’s why it will be a free advertisement for them as well,” he said.

He said the tourism board planned to print about 100,000 maps to distribute at Ngurah Rai International Airport and in every hotel and shopping mall in the four tourist spots.

Ekawaty said up to Rp 195 million had been invested in the project with funding from the tourism board and several other tourism associations.

To cover the production costs, she said, the production committee was also selling advertising space in the map, with prices starting at Rp 4 million.

Art and Uniques

Art and Uniques in Denpasar

How weird is weird? Well, nobody could answer that for sure including Tjia Jie Hong, the owner of Art and Uniques in Denpasar. There is no certain limitation to the meaning of the word aneh (weird). This was why he picked the name Aneh-aneh for his business. Aneh-aneh is a workshop providing various kinds of artworks with extraordinary designs, mostly made from wood and roots. It is located next to the busy Ngurah Rai express highway.

On the day, there were two big roots of litchi leaned against the side of the bridge connecting the workshop to the highway according to Irawaty Wardany.

One of which had an image of Medusa’s face, a monstrous snake-haired female character from Greek mythology, carved on its surface. The other was still in its original condition. Four workers were busy cleaning the root’s surface and preparing it for the carvers who would give the root a new existence. Doni, one of workers, said it would take them two weeks to a month to clean the root before it was ready to be carved.

Entering the workshop we found more artworks made of wood and stone, and some home decors made of glasses.

“Ninety percent of our products are made of woods — teak wood, litchi wood and suar wood (rain tree wood), which are mostly brought from Java,” he said.

However, he said, he did not want to restrict himself to certain mediums.

“Aneh-aneh also means we do not focus our work on a single material,” he said.

He said the ideas for his artworks mostly came from his or his customers’ imagination. He established Aneh-aneh five years ago after retiring from his previous job.

“I was jobless and I had no idea about how to start a business.
“I just called it Aneh-aneh,” he said. “We prioritize design rarities.”
Most of his artworks are sold abroad.

“I have sold my artworks all throughout the world. Eighty percent of them were sold abroad,” he said.

Currently 60 artists work for him in the workshop, he said.
The name Tjia Jie Hong and his Aneh-aneh Arts and Uniques entered the public’s consciousness in 2007 when the Indonesian Record Museum recorded that he had made the largest baby cart.

The cart was displayed at an exhibition conducted during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December last year.

Visit the website in www.rajacraft.com

Elephant Safari Park

Elephant Safari Park in Taro

“There is never a surviving (rescued) baby in the camps. They are not adequately provided with enough medicines, foods, milk … there is simply not enough funding going into the camps,” said Nigel, who from 2002 until 2005 attempted to transport a group of Sumatran elephants from Minas camp in Riau province to the elephant park in Bali.

The park is an eco-tourism center that aims to conserve the Sumatran elephant according to Trisha Sertori.

Changes in law thwarted a 2002 effort to transport and save the animals, which included two baby elephants orphaned when their parents fled farmers.

“The 2002 transfer went on hold until 2004. The baby elephants died within months of the failed transfer. We had left milk and medical supplies, but maybe workers took the milk home for their own families,” said Nigel of the hardship faced by the elephants and their human protectors in the underfunded camps.

He said since the successful transfer of ten elephants in 2005, the park has repeatedly offered to take abandoned baby elephants, raise them and return them to Sumatra for release or camp life.

“We have offered to take any babies, bring them here, raise them and send them back as adults. Never has one been sent,” said Nigel, who became involved in elephant conservation quite accidentally in 1997.

“An Australian guy came to my office and asked if I wanted to take on some elephants. This was something I had never given thought too. Elephants are not native to Bali, but I went out to Taro to have a look. There were nine adult elephants in the middle of a dried out paddy field. It was the most horrible environment for elephants I’d ever seen. I had to do something for these animals. That’s how the Elephant Safari Park was born,” said Nigel.

It is almost impossible to compare that dried paddy field of ten years ago with the lush new jungle of the park. More than US$1 million has been spent recreating a shaded jungle habitat needed by elephants.

Nigel said when he took on the nine elephants already in Bali, he knew he was taking on a workload that would continue for the rest of his life. But he said recreating a healthy environment was essential if the animals were to survive away from their Sumatran jungle home.

“This area was ideal. It’s mountainous and cooler than the coast. Elephants do not do well near the coast and in dry climates. They get cataracts and skin complaints and need to live in humid cool mountain areas. They don’t like the full sun and are happy in the jungle. We have tried to replicate that here.

“That’s why we chose this area, which is a long way off the tourist track, but we figured tourists need to come to the elephants’ habitat rather than moving elephants to the tourists,” said Nigel.

He added that any idea of establishing an elephant park in Sumatra, home of the elephants, was almost an impossibility given the costs involved.

“This is a business. We receive no funding. People would not go to Sumatra … it’s hard enough to do it here,” he said, adding the cost of housing and feeding 27 elephants around 250 kilograms of food each day meant the park needed to be run as a business.

And while business may at times seem to be a dirty word, Nigel points out that it is through business that the 27 elephants at the park live healthy and happy lives. So successful and happy are the elephants that one, Fatima, is pregnant.

“We have been trying to breed here for some time, but it is extremely difficult. But we have now managed to get one female pregnant. She is due in 2009 after a 22 month gestation period.”
Unlike many captive breeding programs, the Elephant Safari Park does not use artificial insemination (AI), allowing the elephants to breed naturally in a secluded area of the park, closed to tourists.

“We don’t use AI. We have a honeymoon area north of the park. When the male comes into musth (heat) he chooses his female and they are moved to the honeymoon area. It is a huge success for us that the elephants are breeding,” said Nigel.

In the future, the park aims to develop a full research area. A lab has already been built, according to Nigel, but hospital grade equipment — such as ultrasound machines — is expensive and so far out of the park’s financial reach.

“With the lab we can do blood and urine tests here, rather than sending them to Jakarta. With an ultrasound we can monitor a baby elephant’s development. We can have ongoing research done here.

“There is very little information on elephants in Indonesia at this time and I believe we can have far more success with our breeding program with good research. If there are any hospitals out there with an old ultrasound machine, we’d love it,” Nigel said.

With the rate of destruction of Sumatra’s remaining forests, and the ongoing battle for land between elephants and farmers on the island, there are grave fears that parks, such as the Elephant Safari Park at Taro may be the only places left with living Sumatran elephants and their precious DNA.

“When people look at Sumatra’s jungles, they believe there is still plenty of jungle for the elephants. But this is simply not true. There are isolated patches of jungle between palm oil plantations, farms and towns, but they are not linked and the areas are not adequate to sustain elephant populations.

“Even if there were corridors linking these jungles, there would still be battles between farmers and elephants. In a perfect world these animals would live wild in the jungle, but this is not a perfect world,” Nigel said.

“The alternative is that these elephants remain in the dusty, underfunded camps in Sumatra where too many are dying.”

He stressed the park did not own the elephants, saying they were on loan from the Indonesian government.

“We have an obligation to care for these animals for the rest of their lives.

“This is a really sensitive issue, but if things continue as they are, the Sumatran elephant will be extinct within 20 to 50 years,” said Nigel pointing out that around half of Sumatra’s remaining wild elephant population are in camps, where breeding is unlikely.

The other half that represent a breeding population are still in the wild and constantly at risk of death at the hands of farmers, or starvation as forests are lost.

It seems that only parks like the one at Taro are able to offer these animals salvation.

“I think the park is a good example of how business can care for the environment and build a stronger economy for the local people here,” said Nigel.

Most staff members at the park have been recruited directly form Taro village.

One elderly local said the park was a critical development for the area, offering many young people work.

“This is very important to our village and we are happy to have the elephant park here,” said the elderly Balinese man.

The park pays royalties to the village for allowing the elephants to be ridden through a community jungle.