DRINKS

Drinking water will keep the price of your meals down. Thirsty foreigners are provided, in most cases, with boiled water or tea from their hotel or homestay, so you don't have to be paranoid about drinking unclean water. At a restaurant or shop, order air putih (boiled drinking water), or cold plastic-bottled drinking water. Aqua is the best known brand. Big plastic containers (19 liters) cost around Rp5000 or six-liter ones are Rp2800 (Rp400 per liter). The most common size container is 1,500 miligram; buy these at big grocery stores for Rp800 rather than at your corner warung for as much as Rp1200.
     The Balinese themselves often prefer to take warm or cold tea with meals, just as refreshing without milk or sugar. Tea helps stimulate the appetite and digestion and will keep you awake after a heavy lunch. If you don't want your tea (or coffee) filled with 50% sugar, say teh pahit or tea tawar (unsugared tea) which you shouldn't be charged for; plain iced tea (teh es pahit) should cost only Rp500 or so. Another way to avoid over-sugared drinks is to opt for soda water (botol soda) or beer (bir).
     Powerful Balinese coffee, a crop grown in the highlands as far back as 1880, is served pitch-black (fresh milk not usually available), sweet, thick, and rich, with the grounds still floating on top. This black, unfiltered coffee, made by pouring hot water on top of coffee powder, can be hard on the stomach. Don't drink more than two cups a day as it's like chewing coffee beans. In most restaurants and warung, coffee costs Rp1000-2000 for a tall glass. Stir well to get the grinds to sink. Condensed milk is often the only kind of milk available and is so sweet you don't have to add sugar. If you need to wake up, try spiking your morning coffee with arak or drinking hot ginger tea.
     In Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak's cosmopolitan cafes you can sample not only Bali coffee but gourmet Colombian, Brazilian, and other imported coffees as well, including frothy, piping hot cappucino. Some cafes cater to certain cliques like the rather self-conscious Cafe Luna in Seminyak, a hangout for European and North American jewelry and clothes makers and designers.
     Since there are so many natural fruit juice drinks around, both hot and cold, many derived from fruits found nowhere else in the world, it's insane to drink Fanta or Coca-Cola. Instead, quench your thirst with ice juice (es jus). Such exotic hippie trail items as fruit-flavored lasi goes for Rp1200. Half a dozen juice bars are available in 50 exotic iced-fruit juice blends (papaya-lemon, avocado-pineapple, etc.).
     On the carts lining Bali's streets and at festivals are tubs of a poisonous hue bobbing with ice. These contain delicious (though overly sweetened) drinks like citrus juices (air jeruk), es zirzak, or bright pink drinks of sugar water and fruit flavoring. Sari Temulawak, is a safe, refreshing, not-too-sweet ginger drink popular with Balinese, costs only Rp500 (Rp800 with ice), and is available at warung and restaurants. The usual Western soft drinks like Fanta, Sprite, 7-UP, or Coca-Cola are available everywhere and cost Rp800 in a warung and up to Rp1500 in a restaurant.
     Because fresh milk is unsafe to drink in the tropics, stores all over the island sell sealed cartons of milk (with straw attached), treated to last up to 24 hours after opening. Canned, sweet condensed milk is also available. Coconut milk is a form of sterile water containing potassium and is a superb source of glucose which can help you rehydrate. On a hot day it's not too difficult to persuade someone to clip down a young coconut or two with a bamboo pole knife. Fresh ones are green, old ones are yellow. Its water (yeh nyuh), mixed with ice and sugar water, makes a delicious, thirst-quenching drink.

ALCOHOLIC DRINKS

Beer, Wine, and Hard Stuff
Heineken of Holland taught Indonesians how to brew Bali's ubiquitous Bintang lager beer (620-milliliter or 22-ounce bottles), the best accompaniment to the island's hot, spicy food. Some visitors feel that Anker beer is better, derived from the south-Netherlands and Bavarian breweries. Indonesia also produces the lesser known San Miquel beer. Irish whiskey and Guinness Stout are served in the bars and restaurants of Kuta, Sanur, and Denpasar. The one beverage some Western visitors really crave is a decent bottle of wine for a decent price. Australian wine can be had for around Rp2000 per glass.
High quality mixed drinks and cocktails can be ordered at any hotel or public bar for Rp5000-12,000. The skill of the bartender depends on the place, but as a rule Balinese bartenders use fresh ingredients and follow the recipes exactly without resorting to those obnoxious bottled or artificial mixers found in the West. In other words, a margarita is truly a margarita-built from the bottom up by bartenders trained at bartending school in Ubud (only Mexican restaurants carry good tequila).

Native Alcoholic Drinks
The fancy cocktails and other recreational drinks concocted in the tourist restaurants and hotel bars are totally alien to village Bali, where mellow, homemade, mildly alcoholic native brews are preferred. These are produced in home breweries all over the island: arak (insidiously strong distilled rice spirit or "palm whiskey"), tuak (sweet palm beer or "palm toddy"), and brem (rice wine)-all cheap, plentiful, refreshing, potent. Most villages have special drinking clubs of men (never women) who meet after sundown and sit around on coconut-leaf mats exchanging news and getting stoned. Thousands of Bali's warung and certain stalls in the night markets sell palm or rice toddy. As the day wears on, the brews get stronger and the morning price of Rp2000-3000 per bottle may rise Rp500 or so.
     Tuak is fermented palm tree juice, the same tipple that is enjoyed everywhere in tropical Africa, Central America, and Asia. Imparting a slow-motion high, tuak is made by cutting the flower of an immature coconut tree (punyan nyuh), then allowing the sugar water to ferment for about a month. Tuak is sold by the large beer bottle (botol bir) and can be bought at many warung. Depending upon how long the brew has been allowed to "spoil," there are two kinds of tuak, sweet (nguda) and old (wayah). Tuak manis is newer, musty-smelling, and may cause flatulence; more popular tuak wayah is older, more sour, earthier, and has a higher alcoholic content (the same as beer, around five percent).
     Brem is a wine to be gently sipped like sherry; it's subtle, gentle flavor gives little warning of the warm-hearted kick that follows. Made from black glutinous rice (injin), yeast, and water, old brem (more than three days old) is sour and has more alcohol content (nine percent), while new brem (under three days old) has an extreme sweet taste and seven percent alcohol content. Want to visit a brem brewery? Ask for Perusahaan Brem Bali Cap Dewi Sri in Sanur.
     Colorless, sugarless arak is simply distilled tuak or brem, a cheap (Rp3500 per large beer bottle) and powerful drink (20-50% alcohol, depending on the quality). The best is sold at Talibeng market, between Klungkung and Sideman. Balinese and some tourists drink arak over ice and fruit juice or brem to take the edge off the arak. Arak is an important ingredient in temple offerings.

FRUITS

Discovering the local fruits, delicately crisp and bursting with juices, is one of the delights of Bali. Many of Indonesia's fruits are found nowhere else on Earth. There are pineapples (nanas), melons, guavas, passion fruits (from Kintamani), tangerines, grapefruits, lemons, limes, lychees, grapes, vitamin-rich breadfruit (campedak), papayas, sweet jeruk bali (like a grapefruit, pink ones are best). Also try Bali's large, cheap, delicious oranges (juwuk). A serving of fruit is the customary dessert for most Balinese; fruit vendors and stands are found at almost every step along the busy streets of Bali's towns and villages. The local markets offer an even greater variety. All fresh fruit and vegetables should be peeled and washed before eating. Stands selling fruits and/or juice stay open after most other warung close down, so you can find fruit to snack on until late at night. Along Jl. Legian in Kuta you see fresh fruit stands selling fruit for sky-high prices, and ladies on the beach sell beautifully cut-up pineapples (Rp500 per slice). Prices vary widely depending on supply and demand and how far you are from the growing area. Salak, for example run Rp1000 per kg in the dry Karangasem area but at scalper's prices down on Kuta (Rp500 for two or three).
The largest of all fruit (up to 90 cm long) is the jackfruit (nangka). Sayur nangka muda (young jackfruit) is used in cooking and taste like artichoke hearts. The very best mangoes come from the Singaraja area, the sweetest within the sound of the sea. A cousin, the mangosteen (manggis), is hailed by some as the most perfect of fruits. Its outside is round and purple, its inside is like an orange, but creamy, cool, and melts on the tongue. The mangosteen was enjoyed and lauded by Queen Victoria. Named for its prickles or duri, the smelly, infamous durian (family Sterculiuceae), spiked like a gladiator's weapon, tastes simultaneously like onions and caramel fluff. It's a fruit much enjoyed by those who are not put off by its evil aroma. Believed to be an aphrodisiac, an old Malay expression goes, "When the durians are down, the sarungs are up." The fruit is named for its prickles or duri. Grown from Bangli to Kintamani, when they're in season you'll see them piled in stands along the road. Durian on Bali can cost as much as Rp8000 for select large ones, but it's often difficult to find a good one (sellers seem almost eager to sell you unripe ones!).
The lychee-like rambutan has a prickly rind of a pale rose color. Within, it holds a dark green transparent jelly, somewhat like a grape in taste, but far more luscious. Don't be alarmed by the rambutan's hairy exterior-this is an easy fruit to love. Gently squeeze open the fruit and enjoy the sweet, translucent flesh inside. Salak (best from Rendang) is called the snake-fruit because of the remarkable pattern of its skin; carefully peel and enjoy. It's similar in taste to an apple. The amazing array continues: the succulent zirzak, the tiny, delicious belimbing (starfruit), and the bell-shaped jambu air ("water apple," genus Eugenia) which, though tasteless, is an effective thirst-quencher. There are sweet, gooey, sumptuous fruits like the ceroring. The sabo is shaped like a potato but tastes like a ripe, honey-flavored peach or pear. The unbelievably juicy sweet-sour zirzak, meaning "sour sack" in Dutch (sakaya in Balinese), is unforgettable.

Bananas
The pride of place among Balinese fruits goes to the cheap and ubiquitous banana (biyu). Steamed, deep-fried, or boiled, they are sold everywhere. Bali has, in fact, over 20 varieties in all shapes, flavors, textures, sizes, from the tiny finger-like biyu susu to the biyu raja ("king banana") which comes closest to the size and shape of bananas as we know them in the West. Some bananas are big and fat and red-skinned; others have edible skins. There are seedless ones and ones with big black seeds (biyu batu), wild species, and some varieties that are only edible when cooked. One of the sweetest is the small "milk banana" (biyu susu), with its thin skin, incomparable taste, and perfect size. Biyu gadang are green yet ripe and ready to eat.
Bananas are used frequently as pig food and also to season meats and stews for humans. Plantains are sometimes cut into very small cubes to resemble nasi goreng and prepared in the same way as fried rice. Banana stems boiled with spices (ares) is a widespread side dish. Banana leaves also make handy food wrappers, plates, and umbrellas, functions being usurped by ugly, nonbiodegradable plastic. In the past 10 years rubbish piles have accumulated on Bali for the first time-banana leaves rot away; plastic doesn't.

DESSERTS

The Balinese love their sweetmeats and you'll see them everywhere: lentil pastes, coconut cakes, gaily colored rice pastries, crunchy peanut cookies, sticky banana cakes, mung-bean soups, and other bizarre munchies. Warung offer a great variety of sweets and snacks kept in big glass jars. Help yourself and let the owner know afterwards how many you ate of each item (prices are standard, usually Rp100-200 for each).
     Lak-lak, bendu, giling-giling, culek, and batun cluki are traditional Balinese sweets served with grated coconut and grated sugar. Another local favorite is tape (tapioca) with jaje uli, enjoyed with durian and coffee. Try Balinese dodol, a mixture of flour and pure cane sugar. Considered a delicacy, it's prepared by stirring the concoction constantly for two hours over medium heat.
     Scores of desserts are derived from rice. Lontong, used in gado-gado, is rice cooked in banana leaves and tastes somewhat like cold Cream of Wheat. After cooking rice, what sticks to the bottom of the pot turns brown, crunchy, and sticky. This rice-also considered a dessert-is coveted by the children of an Indonesian family as much as cake icing is in an American family. Ketan is rice pudding cooked in coconut milk and sugar syrup. Among the most popular, most filling, and heartiest native desserts is black rice pudding with coconut milk and melted brown palm sugar on top. Sumping is banana wrapped in rice dough, then steamed in a rice cooker. Irresistible godoh biyu (pisang goreng elsewhere in Indonesia) are peeled bananas dipped in manioc batter, then fried to a golden brown.
     Special holiday desserts are also made of rice flour or glutinous rice; over 70 different types of rice cakes (jaja), cookies, and sweets of every color and shape imaginable (including plant, animal, and human forms). Specially made rice cakes, colored with gaudy artificial dyes, are a required component of the magnificent "high offerings," skewered on a central banana plant stem up to two meters high. Meant for divine consumption, these are carried to temples in processions by identically dressed women. See masses of commercial rice cakes in certain sections of the market, like molten rivers of bright colors cascading over the stalls.
     Another variety of jajan, made from more natural ingredients such as squash, beans, or manioc flour, is meant for human consumption. Served still warm, these sweets are a common Balinese breakfast available early in the morning from foodstalls and street vendors. At breakfast time, women walk down the lanes of Bali's villages carrying a huge selection of jajan on trays on their heads.
     Two kinds of sugar are used for desserts, the white, super-refined gula pasir (same as white sugar available in the West) and the more natural dark brown sugar, gula barak, made from the sugar palm (gula merah, in Indonesian). A syrup derived from gula barak is a favorite topping for rice cakes, fruit, and such ice dishes as es cendol, which is palm sugar, coconut milk, jackfruit and other fruits on a bed of cendol (a sweet green pudding made from rice flour and mung beans).
     Es campur is the Indonesian equivalent of the banana split, and many travelers become real aficionados of this dessert. Es campur are made differently all over Indonesia but a typical one consists of sweetened water, milk, fruit syrup, gelatin, cubes of sweet bread, tape (cassava root or tapioca), gage uli, and other nameless brightly colored coagulated pulpy substances. They run anywhere from Rp500-900. The es kacang that you find on Java is not found here; on Bali it's a strange mixture of other fruits and little doodads.
     In the "tourist dessert" category, ice cream comes in all the usual flavors plus durian, sweet corn, coconut cream, and lychee fruit. Or you can stick with such Indonesian brands as Peters. Kuta's restaurants are known for apple pie with vanilla ice cream.