My Own Happiness Project

My Own Happiness Project
because happiness begins inside and flows out...

20080505

travelogue: day 3 - the hunt for luwak - part ii...

I have to break this into 2 parts due to the long upload of pictures in one posting.

Cendol in Indonesia is also called cendol, but served with gula Jawa, and the green also looked more toxic than those we have back home. To see colours, check out my flickr.pro soon.

This is the wife of the cendol man, selling kue (kuih).

After wandering off quite far from the hotel, I decided to try out the Bajay to get back.

I ventured north towards Sunda Kelapa area to get kopi luwak. The journey on a taxi took me more than an hour getting stuck in Jakarta's infamous macet (traffic jam). The things I would do for the love of coffee.

Another form of public transportation in Jakarta is called sampan, actually a raft that shuttles between the two banks of a river running across the older town of Jakarta for Rp500 per person per trip. That's about RM0.15.

I finally found the Kopi Luwak outlet. Here they sell 2 types of luwak coffee, the mixed bag (3% luwak coffee) and the authentic (100% luwak coffee).

People here don't really go for the auntentic luwak, so when I ordered a cup of it, I get first class treatment. I even have my own sumandak to make my coffee, and had to fill up a small form with my particulars. Wow, this is what you get when you pay Rp82,500 for a cuppa.

Meet my personal barista.

The 3% luwak is Rp33,000 per 250g bag, while the authentic one costs Rp495,000 per 200g bag, and comes in a nice hard box and a free cup. This is indeed the most expensive coffee in the world.

I almost didn't get a chance to buy my luwak coffee as one would have to pre-order the coffee 2 weeks in advance. And the outlet don't usually keep any stock since people don't usually buy it off the rack. Fortunately they were keeping a box for a Korean guy, and after calling him, he agreed to sell it off to me first while waiting for new shipment to come.

Would you pay that much to drink cat-poo?
....yummy....
After achieving my mission for the day, I joined the crowd to watch a model search.

Law of nature: craps always end up with the good-stuffs...

And these women's got legs...

Dinner for that night, chicken bakmi...

...and fried siomay... apparently the Indonesians are also crazy about these little dumplings.

ABC is called es campur. I've never tasted any good ABCs over there although I've tried it in like 4 to 5 different places. Malaysia wins 1-0 in the ABC department.

No comments: