Notes from Stephen, Wan, Kweilin, and Li

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Amed: sunrise; morning market; accident; hotels

We rose at 6:30 and watched the sunrise from the beach. The sun shone through a haze on the horizon as a big red circle. The atmosphere deflected enough of the sun's brightness that I could look straight at it.

Fishing boats lined the horizon at sunrise. Later in the morning they disappeared. I think sunrise and sunset are the best times to fish.

My mom and sister and I rode our scooters to the morning market in the neighboring town of Jemuluk. Vendors sold vegetables, meat, snacks, and fruit. With a couple exceptions, every vendor was a woman.

I discovered a tasty breakfast at the market: green beans in a sweet coconut milk (santan) soup. The green beans look and taste like soya beans. A bowl costs 1000 rupiah (10 cents).

We ate other snacks like peanuts and gooey rice discs with coconut shavings ("laklat" in Balinese). We basically ate breakfast in the market.

One thousand rupiah (10 cents) seems to be a popular price in the market. Most of our snacks cost 1000 rupiah.

I've found that I have to watched a local pay or I have to ask several vendors in order to determine something's true price. A vendor quoted me 5000 rupiah for a bunch of peanuts and I walked 20 steps and found the same peanuts for 1000.

We witnessed a minor car accident in the intersection bordering the market. A small pick-up drove into the side of a motorcycle that crossed its path. The motorcycle fell over but the rider freed himself without injury. Neither side got angry. The motorcyclist looked annoyed and the pick-up driver looked embarrassed. I think the pick-up driver had been inching through the intersection, preoccupied with avoiding the vendors who overflowed onto the street. The two drivers talked after the collision but I don't know how they sorted things out. I doubt they had any insurance information to exchange. The bike might need minor repair, so maybe the pick-up driver gave the motorcyclist some money.

On our ride home, we saw a field full of women harvesting sweet potato leaves. They sat separating roots from leaves, which someone will later boil and eat. Boiled sweet potato leaves is a staple dish at Masakan Padang restaurants.

We rode our scooters along the coast at sunset. We visited a few hotels with good views of the sea.

Amed seems quite overbuilt. We saw more hotels than we saw tourists. The hotels we visited were lucky to have even one room occupied. We're the only guests at the Sunshine Hotel.

Amed does apparently fill up during the peak tourist season: July, August, and December. Hotel prices increase by 25-50% over low season. But how can these businesses survive on just a few months per year of tourists?

My dad got to know Hans, the Dutch owner of Batu Tangga, a scenic, three-bungalow hotel with a pool overlooking the sea. Hans is a retired dentist who lives in Amed most of the year. He says that the local government has no money to build public infrastructure like roads because it has an ineffective or nonexistent tax-collection system. Local kids were walking an hour and a half to get to school for lack of a road, so Hans paid for a road and shortened their commute to 15 minutes. He's now setting up a program at a local hospital to train specialists so that locals can be treated locally instead of making the expensive journey to Denpasar, the capital.

We didn't have much for dinner. I only saw two restaurants within walking distance and we didn't want to drive these steep windy roads in the dark. We ate the tomatoes we bought this morning with salt and lime. My dad had potatoes and eggs at an adjacent restaurant and I had a banana lassi (smoothie).

posted by Unknown at 3:23 AM