No water & no cutlery

 

No water and no cutlery

 

Today again I get the question from our guests. How did I end up here in the remote heart of Bali?

For the third time this week the electricity goes out without any announcement. And there is no running water either, because the water pump in the village is broken.

And today of all days there is a ceremony again: the celebration of the first anniversary of one of the twenty temples in the village.

This has the painful side effect that half of the staff is off. In the meantime, I try to maintain our 5-star status that we received from our guests on Tripadvisor.

For me the toilets, kitchen and café must always be contamination-proof.

This is incomprehensible to the villagers, and therefore also to the staff at my Farm & Café.

Not all of them have a toilet at home and they do everything in the river.

Toilet paper is unnecessary, that's what they have their left hand for. This makes the left hand unclean, which means that almost everything else is done with the right, such as taking a tip, shaking someone's hand and eating.

You will not find any cutlery in the home of a Balinese. Extremely sharp knives and at most a few spoons, but these are mainly used for stirring a pan or their coffee.

Most local eateries are not equipped with a knife and fork either.

In my village they cook at home on a wood fire in a blackened kitchen with woven bamboo walls.

The staff keeps wondering why everything has to be so spotless and what I'm so concerned about.

 They think that it is an absolute waste of their time