First real meal, and in a night market, no less!

I have to tell you, I am not immediately high on this Sanur place. Picked because it is less crazy tourists everywhere compared to other places in south Bali (I'm talking to you, Kuta), it feels like there are, well, crazy tourists everywhere. Exhibit A, food wise, is the bizarre, not too tasty, and oh-so-American pizza concoction I have for lunch (unable, as of yet, to find the real stuff). It is called the Volcano Vesuvio, supposedly because it has lots of chillies in addition to the salami and other ingredients. Here is a pic of the pie:

Weird, right? And it turns out not to be (a) spicy at all nor (b) delicious at all. And this, this food, this town, this is not the scene I'm aiming for at this particular time. So I'm pretty excited for my plan to head to Ubud, the cultural capital of Bali, tomorrow.

All that said, I have a great night. I meet up with my sister's friends Aimee and Sascha, and we head to the night market. I had developed a steady addiction to night markets, born from my time in Chiang Rai in northern Thailand in the mid 00s. This night market is on the money. Lots of vendors selling lots of cheap plastic things. A bit of wandering and we find the food section. The awnings are all; about 5 ft 6 tall, giving me a nice hunch as we look for dinner. Good looking fried chicken there, rice with coconut milk over here. We settle on a padang vendor, with a cart that has ~15 or so different dishes on it, all already cooked. You order a dish, they give you some rice, and your choice of small amounts of 4 or 5 of the dishes. It was all cooked this morning. (I don't have a photo yet of the padang stand, but watch this space!)

Following Aimee and Sascha's lead, I just start pointing to the ones that look interesting. Some water spinach, some little green veggies that sort of taste like eggplant, some chicken slathered in sauce. It's all pretty tasty - I think the water spinach took home my prize for the night. Oh, and it's HOT. Like spicy hot. And that's before I used any of the extra sambal (diced red chilies) that came on the side. This was lip-tingling hot, persistently hot, how-am-I-gonna-cool-down-my-mouth hot. And the heat was invigorating - yet another abrupt change from Japan. The heat awakens my palate and cools me down in the tropical climate. I can, oddly enough, feel my blood pressure go down. It's lovely to be eating simple, tasty, hot food in a night market again.