Eating cheap in Kuta Bali

All this talk of food prices got me thinking what is the cheapest you can go when living in Bali.

Probably the cheapest is buying a sack of rice and living off of rice and beans everyday…but that’s no fun. Its also impossible for most visitors as guest houses don’t have cooking facilities and who in his right mind would pay to have a kitchen so he could save 50 cents on food?

While some people are blowing 150,000rp at Ku De Ta and spending 50,000rp on a drink the Balinese locals are spending 2,000rp on ‘nasi bunkus’ which means ‘take away’ (’to go’ for you Yanks).

I’ve had plenty of Indonesian food since I’ve got to Bali in January 2003, but never had nasi bunkus. This afternoon while sitting at Gelati across the street from Internet Outpost on Poppies Lane in Kuta a man pulled past on a motorbike which a big plastic bundle in front of him. He was the nasi bunkus man and Made who works at Gelati asked me if I wanted to buy one. The price is 2,000rp for the regular nasi (rice) which comes with an assortment of meant and vegetable and 1,000rp extra if you want 4 sticks of satay. I went the whole hog and plonked down a whopping tiga ribu rupiah for the nasi and the satay.

The nasi was delivered in a pyramidal brown paper container with the meat, vegetables and a stripe of sauce inside. The satay came separate in a plastic bag. The whole thing was delivered in a black plastic bag.

The recipe for nasi bunkus changes everyday, sometimes its pork, sometimes chicken, sometimes fish so the vendor can hit the same customers everyday.

Made and I went into the back of Gelati to eat the food so as not to make the place look like a taco stand. I devoured mine in a few minutes. It was pretty good, today’s special being the Balinese favourite lawar which includes pork, fat, blood, salt and spices. It was a bit salty but decent.

I’ll hit this again and see how it goes. Its amazing how cheap you can go if you don’t mind rice every meal.

Internet connectivity here in Kuta is never the best, I just lost a whole page of writing because my browser locked up. That’s life and we have to deal with it. I’m in an internet cafe in Kuta and to my right is an American female tourist in her mid 20’s. She wants to download drivers, burn CD’s and is asking if they have a machine with a larger hardrive. She’s getting blank stares. If things aren’t working for you over here don’t stress it, there aren’t any miracle cures.

The mullet lives on in some parts of the world.