A day In Denpasar
Not every visitor to Bali includes a day in Denpasar in their list of things to do, but we always really enjoy it. It's only a small Asian city (smaller then Canberra), with no high rise, but pretty dirty and undeveloped and crowded and crazy around the central market district. It has a small and quite genteel old Dutch colonial district with wide streets, parks and old colonial buildings now doing service as government offices. We love the huge old food markets in central Denpasar and the amazing textiles along its main shopping street mixed in with the antique and art markets.....and, there are hardly any tourists.
The markets fill an enormous space and are crammed with stalls of every type of fruit and vegetable, spice and flavouring you would expect in a county with such an exotic cuisine.
We had an adventure purchasing 2kg each of mangosteens and mangoes (both from Thailand as it is the wrong season in Bali for these two tropical fruits). John believed the price per kilo was too high and walked away from the bargaining initially. The determined shopkeeper then followed us all the way on our tour of the market, up two floors, around all the spices and nuts and vegetables, pausing with us whenever we stopped to look for something (or take a photo) until she finally got John to agree to pay the "fair" price: 30,000 rupiah per kg (divide that by 8000 for its AUS$ equivalent). I guess she thought she may not get too many more Aussie tourists coming into the Denpasar markets that day who could afford the high prices she had to charge for imported fancy fruit!
After the crowds of the market area it was very nice to return to the old Dutch colonial Inna Hotel in central Denpasar and sit in the breezy open pavillion and enjoy their version of a Rijstaffel lunch. There were no tourists at this hotel. These days the hotel is mainly used as a conference venue. It was very crowded today, with a forestry conference in progress!
I was very impressed with the quality of the beautiful contemporary batiks at Maju's in central Denpasar. I bought this stash of fabrics with no clear idea of what I'll do with them. Only $2.00 per metre, beautiful quality cotton in gorgeous colours and patterns. I met someone from the Canberra Quilters Society there. She was on her third buying trip this year (and will be back for her fourth in 8 weeks time). She is obviously developing a profitable little business out of it. I'm not into patch work though; I lack the skills and the patience.
By the time we got back to the villa late this afternoon the two rice harvesters were working directly beneath our balcony sifting the rice seeds from the bits of stalks and loading the grain into the bags. This would have to be the most back breaking, labour intensive work. There's no way we could sit and drink Bintangs in front of them. They would only have collected about 20 bags of rice so far!
Not every visitor to Bali includes a day in Denpasar in their list of things to do, but we always really enjoy it. It's only a small Asian city (smaller then Canberra), with no high rise, but pretty dirty and undeveloped and crowded and crazy around the central market district. It has a small and quite genteel old Dutch colonial district with wide streets, parks and old colonial buildings now doing service as government offices. We love the huge old food markets in central Denpasar and the amazing textiles along its main shopping street mixed in with the antique and art markets.....and, there are hardly any tourists.
The markets fill an enormous space and are crammed with stalls of every type of fruit and vegetable, spice and flavouring you would expect in a county with such an exotic cuisine.
We had an adventure purchasing 2kg each of mangosteens and mangoes (both from Thailand as it is the wrong season in Bali for these two tropical fruits). John believed the price per kilo was too high and walked away from the bargaining initially. The determined shopkeeper then followed us all the way on our tour of the market, up two floors, around all the spices and nuts and vegetables, pausing with us whenever we stopped to look for something (or take a photo) until she finally got John to agree to pay the "fair" price: 30,000 rupiah per kg (divide that by 8000 for its AUS$ equivalent). I guess she thought she may not get too many more Aussie tourists coming into the Denpasar markets that day who could afford the high prices she had to charge for imported fancy fruit!
After the crowds of the market area it was very nice to return to the old Dutch colonial Inna Hotel in central Denpasar and sit in the breezy open pavillion and enjoy their version of a Rijstaffel lunch. There were no tourists at this hotel. These days the hotel is mainly used as a conference venue. It was very crowded today, with a forestry conference in progress! 
I was very impressed with the quality of the beautiful contemporary batiks at Maju's in central Denpasar. I bought this stash of fabrics with no clear idea of what I'll do with them. Only $2.00 per metre, beautiful quality cotton in gorgeous colours and patterns. I met someone from the Canberra Quilters Society there. She was on her third buying trip this year (and will be back for her fourth in 8 weeks time). She is obviously developing a profitable little business out of it. I'm not into patch work though; I lack the skills and the patience.
By the time we got back to the villa late this afternoon the two rice harvesters were working directly beneath our balcony sifting the rice seeds from the bits of stalks and loading the grain into the bags. This would have to be the most back breaking, labour intensive work. There's no way we could sit and drink Bintangs in front of them. They would only have collected about 20 bags of rice so far!
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