Badas, Indonesia

We just sailed away from Badas (not pronounced Bad A...) where we went quickly to the market to fill up on some local fruit and we got some whole goats delivered which we will be cooking in about 10 days, they still have to hang.

I was a bit worried to buy whole goats from a local supplier that I don't know, so I asked them to be slaughtered and gutted. Here in Indonesia one would otherwise get the whole goat.....sometimes still alive! My fear was mainly that the goats would be slaughtered a day or two before we arrive and I had no idea if there was any cooling for the meat. The crew wanted to have the heads and livers, but unfortunately I could only get the heads, the livers were already....let's call it disappeared. The amazing part was actually that the goats were slaughtered just when we arrived, when they delivered them to us I could see some of the nerves still twitching! So now we will hang them in the walk in fridge for 10 days before we use them on our gourmet menu, there will be a blog about it, for sure.

So today we just went quickly out to see what the market had to offer and we were really lucky, the fruit is fantastic! Some of the special fruit we found was of course Mangosteen, Rambutan, Fingerling Bananas, Chico, a lovely fruit tasting a little bit like sweet wine with citrus in it (one can get a little high as when they are ripe there is a little alcohol in the fruit) and a fruit called Salak, or Snake Fruit. It looks like a Fig with snake skin and inside it is a bit like a Mangosteen, just lovely.

The market was exactly as I remembered the Asian markets, kids running around, plenty of flies, especially where they sold fresh fish, and then of course this sweet/sour/foul smell that lingers every where from over ripe fruit and.....Durian. There was plenty of Durian but I resisted (which was easy) to either try or buy some! Been there, done it and got the "smelly" T shirt.

But then there was of course all the other vegetables like Morning Glory, lovely ripe tomatoes, baby eggplant (I had to buy them) zucchini, cucumbers, loads of garlic, onions in all shapes and of course everything is organic, it is just normal here, nobody advertises their produce as organic as it just is!

The fish section, if one can call it a section was just some stands between the rest selling their catch, mostly small fishes from the local sea. Nothing is cooled here and there are plenty of flies.....no I didn't buy anything here. My stomach handels a lot, but I really don't want to risk it! But it was still nice to see the variety here, mostly the fish gets fried an deaten the same day.

Some of the fruits, like the bananas we actually bought from one of the many street stores along the way. They are a little bit more expensive, but are looking better and are a bit cleaner too, so it is worth getting some fruit there, and not to forget, all the fruit must be washed well or better peeled!