Chapter 1 - Working in a Traditional Balinese Hotel

10 June 2016 - The Toast

Toast, it is a simple enough thing to make, but it has been the bone of my contention for many years. It just rears its ugly head every so often to remind me it is still there.

Toast, yes toast, the bread kind, not the champagne kind. How can you get it so wrong? Oh, yes you can get it sooo wrong.

Let’s go back, way back before electricity. No, I am not talking about the 19th century, I am talking before 2009, in our village where we work, and lived at that time. Now we only live in the north part-time. The rest of the year, we live in the south of Bali, in an area called The Bukit Peninsula (Bukit), where we have electricity, but no running water, but that’s another story. Bukit means hill.

The hotel used to run a generator every night, for two hours, from 7.00 pm when it got dark, till 9.00 pm when the kitchen closed. I charged our laptop and our phones during that time. We lived behind the hotel, back then.

The village got electricity full time on September 12, 2009. I know that date, as it was exactly two weeks after we moved out of the village, as we wanted to live in a village with electricity. Ok, and a village with beer. The marvel of electricity brought excitement to the idea that the hotel could at least, come into the 20th century. A fridge was the first thing that came to my mind, Ibu disagreed.  Ibu and the kitchen staff are the old-fashioned Balinese that do not store food. Food is purchased at the market or picked straight from the garden and is cooked fresh every day. What is not used by the end of the day is given to the pigs. They would never use leftovers.

Me: “Ibu, I meant for the beer!”

Ibu: “Ah, yes, many guests complain that there is no beer. Okay, we will get a fridge!”

So, one day a nice shiny new Coca-Cola fridge arrived, and Ibu had the staff stock it with beer and water. And that night at 9.00 pm, Bapak promptly turned it off. I explained that you need to leave it on…I explained until I went blue…I explained how it would use more electricity to cool down again in the morning.  This is just a perfect example of my challenges. I have let it go, it is still to this day turned off every night, promptly at 9.00 pm.

But the fridge is not my problem…if Ibu wants to waste her money, then who am I to interfere. Toast is my problem.

I do not eat toast myself, as I am allergic to wheat, and there is no gluten-free bread available; however, our guests eat toast.

It all started when we wanted to have toast as an option for our tour guests, toast with butter.  What a foreign concept to Ibu and the kitchen staff. What’s wrong with rice for breakfast?

So, we bought toasters, bread, and butter, and did a demonstration with all the kitchen staff, on ‘how to make toast’. The staff oohed and ahhed as the sugary white bread (that’s all that is available) turned a golden brown and popped up ready to serve. Ibu was amazed by this contraption. Ibu loves buying new things that no one else in the village has.  She had the only fridge in the whole village, and now she has these cook bread things.  Ibu thought it would be an excellent idea for all her Bule hotel guests, to also get toast, if that’s what Bules wanted. That excitement lasted about two minutes and turned into blowing fuses in the hotel every morning, during breakfast service.

On the morning of Day One of Toast on the menu, I walked into the kitchen to see Nengah, the day cook, deep frying a piece of bread, with another piece in her hand that she had put margarine on. I watched her putting jam on the bread and BAM, dropping it into the fry pan, under all the oil. I said calmly. Okay, I admit it, that’s bullshit. I screamed, “Nengah, what are you doing?”

She looked at me and said in the only English she has ever used to this day, “Toast.”

And that was when it all started!

So, after many training sessions in ‘toast’, we seemed to be getting there, well we thought. The toast came out great, but many a time I would walk into the kitchen, to find Nengah standing there with a knife in the toaster trying to pull out some toast she had gotten stuck in there.

Those lovely toasters lasted five weeks before they completely blew up, luckily Nengah did not blow up.

Now, I cannot be too hard on Nengah. Nengah is a lovely lady, she can make a mean Nasi Goreng (Indonesian Fried Rice) with her eyes closed.  She can make the best banana pancakes without disclosing Ibu’s secret recipe, and she knows how to make any Indonesian/Balinese dish.

Nengah cannot read or write and has been in that kitchen since she was twelve years old, helping Doyok, the head cook, who has been in the kitchen for thirty years. And I do mean, they have been in that kitchen, they never have a day off.  Nengah is not sure how old she is, and she does not know how long she has been there.  I would say she is late thirties, maybe twenty-five years in that kitchen. With electricity, came other marvels of the future, and one day Ibu introduced rice cookers. It took Nengah approximately five years to use one.  Mind you, she has never cooked in one.  I see her each morning come in from some mysterious place in the hotel, with a huge cane basket of steaming rice, which she transfers into the rice cookers to keep the rice warm.

That mysterious place Nengah appears from, is somewhere I had always thought ‘I will go and investigate one day.' I generally got too busy and forgot.

Three days ago, I was looking for some unused furniture to borrow, and I stumbled across that mysterious place at the back of the hotel, through a secret passage and a secret door. Nengah has been cooking the rice in old clay pots over an open fire. No wonder it tastes so good.

Now, back to toast. We decided Nengah needed fewer electrical appliances, and the hotel needed fewer fire risks, so, we got a large steel plate to put over gas burners for her to cook toast on.

We seemed to be getting there…so we thought. I just walked through the restaurant to see a guest, not mine, but a hotel guest, holding up her toast and watching it fold over like a limp, greasy dishcloth.  The look on her face of ‘What the?’ was too much.

I walked into the kitchen to see Nengah deep frying the bread again. Me: “Nengah, what are you doing?”

Nengah: “Toast”

Me: “Nengah, no, that’s not correct, you have done this every day for nearly ten years.”

Nengah: “I forgot.”

7 July 2016 - The Cheat Sheet

The Balinese have a calendar of ceremony dates. There are many calendars here. There is the usual Grecian calendar, so we know what day of the week it is, in case you need to send your kids to school, so do not accidentally send them on a Sunday. Or you need to go to a government office. That is about where that calendar stops its function in this village. When you work in hospitality/tourism, every day is a working day.

A very old lady once told me her son was visiting in three days, then she pointed to the moon. She does not need a calendar, it is in the sky, she knew her son was coming on the full moon.

There is a calendar that tells you when it is a good day to do something, and when it is not a good day. Everyone in this village follows that to a tee.

So, today Ibu has me making offerings, and I have no idea what they are for. It is disrespectful to ask, you are supposed to just do what your parents tell you; they know what is best for you. So, I did not ask, I just snuck a look at the ceremony calendar, and it only shows that in two days there is a ceremony to salvage sharp weapons. I don’t own a weapon, do you Ibu?

So, I was making the offerings out the back with the girls from the kitchen (not the usual daily offerings), I had to refer to my notes for every part. After nearly ten years, I really should know what I am doing. I went into the kitchen to find Ibu has a cheat sheet, so after nearly sixty years she still does not know what she is doing...that made me feel much better She looked at mine and told me it was a pathetic attempt, and she will do mine…Seriously, how could I refuse? Oh, and the calendar today says it is not a good day for intercourse, poor Hubby.