Hello my dear Steemians and welcome to this episode of my “Bali Diaries”!!!

Yesterday, I went to the Art Festival in Bali’s capital Denpasar. The festival takes place in the middle of the city where westerners very rarely go. Most parts of Denpasar are not worth visiting, they are not anything close to what you imagine when hearing the word “Bali”. I have heard people say “Denpasar is a shit hole”, and even if I can’t agree 100 percent, I cannot disagree completely either. Most of the time, the only reason to go to the city center is the “Kantor Imigrasi” – the immigration office.

However, as I came to realize yesterday, Denpasar does have impressively beautiful areas. The art center is one of them. The festival runs for about two weeks every year. There are traditional dances, plays, comedies, handicraft and – today’s topic – a food market.

A small stream runs through the festival area.

People sell all kinds of stuff from paintings to popcorn.

When I got to the art center with my teachers and friends, we still had to wait for two hours before the next performance would begin. I was hungry and very eager to try all crazy food on the market anyways, so we went to the food court first.

The food court entrance, the gateway to a universe of unknown smells.

I asked my teacher to show me as much food I had never tried as he could, and he took the task more serious than I had expected. I ended up eating four dishes and ice cream, so here is a selection of the unknown food I enjoyed.

Unfortunately, the peanut sauce makes everything look the same, but let me tell you: These three sticks are carrying:

• Snails
• Guinea pig meat
• Lizard meat

Guinea pig was my favorite meat, lizard was nice as well, the snails were a bit tough to eat...

The dark stuff right on top of the rice in this picture is eel, but not any eel as Pewe (my teacher) insisted, eel from Balinese rice patties.

The little things floating in the dark sauce and mixed under the green vegetables are probably the weirdest thing I had: Bees. Not honey, the actual bee bodies. Their texture was a bit strange but they were delicious.

For dessert, me and my friend had a special kind of ice cream. Basically, it is a big portion of crushed ice cubes topped with various sweet syrups. Another word for it: “Diabetes type II to go”.

First, a guy uses a machine to crush a lot of ice cubes.

Then, another one pours syrup after syrup on the ice until it is sweet and colorful.

And this is what it looks like after a while...

Obviously, I also went everywhere on the market and took a lot of pictures of people cooking or selling stuff, kids having fun, families spending time together, and the traditional police taking care of security…

It was a very interesting day at the art festival, especially since it felt like being part of the “real Bali”. There were only a few westerners and even Indonesian people from outside Bali were a rare sight.

In my next post, I will take you to the traditional performances and dances of the festival, so stay tuned and follow me for more adventures!

Till then,
keep wandering and wondering,

Love,

mr.wonderlust

PS: I could tell you about how I felt when I went to the toilet this morning, but you know, I think you can guess yourself…