Alila Villas Soori: City Girl Meets Mother Nature
You know you’ve been living in a city for much too long when you start looking for the volume control on the nature soundtrack only to realize that it was the sound of actual birds chirping outside. That was me – a few hours post my arrival at the Alila Villas Soori, on the Western coast of Bali.
Right about now I should probably confess that in high school, I was voted “least likely to survive in the wilderness”. And so it took a while to trust that nature was on my side. But in July, Bali’s dry season, all seemed right. The wind alone sufficed in lieu of air conditioning, the ebb and flow of waves became a soothing lullaby for bed, and despite flung-opened windows and no bug repellent, there were no mosquitoes in sight. It was mother nature serving up a dose of 5-star treatment.
You’d expect us to have been a tad moody at 7am the next morning, when Chef Made met us for a tour of the local market. But I’m now convinced that the sun as a natural alarm clock somehow adjusted our circadian rhythms appropriately.
The Bali Kerambitan Traditional Market was just a short 5-minute drive away, and by noon, the chef tells us, the street vendors would have sold out of the day’s supplies and packed up for home. Almost everyone here – from vendor to shopper – were women. Some squatted near the sidewalks with their hands furiously at work, braiding leaves into decorative pouches that carried petit tokens of food for the morning offerings. Others walked upright with their daily provisions in baskets balanced steadily on their heads. Everyone smiled; everyone generously offered samplings of their handiwork for curious visitors.
There was none of the frustrated bustle or uncomfortable crowdedness typical of usual wet markets. Just the relaxed pace of Chef Made, walking a few steps in front, as he pointed out the local specialties. A package of red rice – the most prized of the rice varieties for its high nutritional value. The snake skin fruit – a small, nectarine-sized ball with a deep purple skin and flesh that tasted like a hybrid of pineapple and lychee. The faint scent of kaffir lime wafted through the air. But the most popular items were the smattering of rice cakes, some made with palm sugar, others steamed and brightly colored – many of which end up on the offering table of the market’s temple. In every market, the chef said, there is a temple.
With our bounty of rice cake and fresh herbs in hand, we returned to the hotel for breakfast. And a few hours later, Chef Made had set up the outdoor open kitchen so we could try our hand at making lunch. We made our spice rubs, wrapped local butterfish in banana leaves, skewered chicken satays and watched them sizzle over the grill – all the while with an ice cold glass of Bintang beer in hand.
Chef Made told us how he grew up in a village not far from the resort, where there was once nothing but opened land. He reminisced about his love of cooking, and we compared places around the world in our mutual travel checklists. In the not-too-far distance, the famous black sands along Alila Villas Soori’s beachside sparkled like black glitter strewn across the floor.
It seemed surreal. I’ve cooked in kitchens – hot flames, dirty dishes – it wasn’t usually this nice. I’ve seen markets – funky smells, hackling prices – it was never that serene. But all it took was half a day for me to change my jaded urbanite habits, and believe that once in a while, the right time in the right place brings you back to nature again.
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