The ultimate charcoal in Kuta Bali

There's an old saying, 'If you want something done right do it yourself.' There should be an add on to that, 'If you want something made well make sure its made in Germany'. Yesterday I bought a dozen pieces of chicken at Bintang Supermarket in Seminyak for a small bbq. The only people invited were Ika, her mother, brother Brahma and myself. I started the fire using my coconut burning hobo-stove and tipped the coals onto the bbq itself. Realizing I had not enough coal I hopped on the bike and rode down to Ace Hardware in the Kuta Galleria. I was disappointed to see they no longer stocked bags of charcoal from the US, you know the briquettes type. Here in Bali they do make a rectangular block type of charcoal but its total crap, the bricks disintegrate when you take them out of the box. On the grill they fall apart, smoke for a while then become powder.

Ace did have charcoal but the writing on the box was German. Examining the coals I saw the blocks were a space efficient rectangular shape, but were quite small and very hard. 'I can see how these will work' I said to myself. 'They will burn at 500 C, but with no smoke, basically grill not bbq'. I bought 2 of the 3kg boxes for 35,000rp each and zoomed home. Adding some new blocks to my already smoldering heap I got the chicken read and cracked a cold beer. To my surprise the new charcoal started gushing smoke and the heat was intense. The strong consistent smoke lasted for over 3 hours, it was relentless. I was totally impressed, maybe this is the perfect charcoal, bullet hard, compact, hot and smokey. Knowing it was made in Germany why did I ever doubt that?