Very late post...

Here is a blog post that I wanted to write I-don't-remember-exactly-how-many days ago and I'm not keen to want to remember it -Ok, now I just thought about it; it was last Sunday. It's going to be about our excursion to a traditional village themed quite isolated, just-okay restaurant. Wow, ok, that just explains everything about the restaurant!

Oh, well, it doesn't feel so exciting now to write about the restaurant and the trip. But, if I didn't write it, somehow I would feel guilty. Let's just start it.

So, it was basically my dad's idea that made us excited to try this restaurant. He said he'd been there with his friends before. Meaning our excitement was entirely based on his story about how interesting the place was going to be for the rest of us (7 people) who had no idea of the place at all.

We left home at almost midday towards the volcano. We weren't actually told where exactly the restaurant was located because my dad was not so sure either! LOL. Oh, well, we found it in the end. To be honest, the restaurant would not be something that you would find or notice by the road or know by watching the signs by the road. I mean, I was sitting next to my brother driving and since my dad didn't remember the exact location and the name of the restaurant(!) I had to look out for signs that said restaurants as we entered the area called Pakem (still about 15KM away from volcano Merapi) where *the* restaurant should have been located. There weren't any significant signs. The car turned right, left, and stuff, went past healthy looking rice fields, and there was this restaurant in the middle of almost nowhere with its rather big sign by the road that said RM Timbul Roso or something like that. I was (we were!) just hungry!

A much smaller sign in the restaurant
I am always fascinated by restaurants that come village themed and offer tranquility by their location that is far away from the main, busy road. And, Timbul Roso was one of those restaurants. So, I felt cool about it and excited to want to get deeper in what they had behind the entrance.

I noticed that everything was about low budget as we were entering the restaurant. The roofs were typical traditional house roofs made of clay. Walls were either bricks or not existing(!). Floor was either concrete or bamboo. Chairs were either wooden or not existing(!).

LOL.

Well, in the Javanese culture, we do not always eat on chairs but also on the floor. There are many such tradition themed eating places here that offer people the unique experience. Of course, for people who are from Java, such experience is not so unique in a special way. It is what they (we) do. -BTW, I do have chairs and a proper dining table in my house! LOL. By the way, this tradition of eating on the floor chair-less is commonly known as lesehan. Leseh is basically to sit on your butt on the floor relaxing.

Back to the restaurant. As you can see in the photo, we were seated in one of the huts made of bamboo and wall-less.
Click the panorama photo to view the enlarged version

What was cool about being in one of the huts was that we could feel the breeze from the river down right next to the restaurant. It wasn't scary at all, actually -even though the restaurant was about 50 meters above right by the river. And, the river was Kali Kuning (lit. yellow river) which I visited and talked about in this blog post.
Here's the river ... that you can't see at all (!). I used Panorama360 app on my iPhone and the brightness level wouldn't auto-adjust as the photo clips were being taken. You know how a panorama photo is made!

Surrounding the huts are trees and plants, and ponds with gigantic cat fishes. It's not exaggerated. They were big, as big as they could be! Trust me. I wish I had their photos. Big as BIG can be!

The ponds are right under some huts, too!
Well, basically, environment wise, the restaurant wasn't so bad. It wasn't completely nice either. Just okay. But, if you're disgusted by dirt on the paths, scared of ponds with living monsters hungry for food, tall trees, a big river just by where you eat, and unhappy with the idea of eating on a raised bamboo floor, let's go to sleep now. But, you have to be my type.

HAHAHA just joking. Sighs... *desperate*.

Back to the topic(!).
Food.

Food was okay. Nothing special. We ordered two whole gurames (more common name in English: tilapia, I guess?) that were grilled. Actually, we ordered two and a half. The half was grilled with honey (and fire, too, of course). But, honestly, we had had slightly better tasting grilled gurames from a different restaurant in the town (500 meters away from our house).

Now I forget what else we ordered. Nothing was special, anyway.
Oh, we were disappointed with the cah kangkung because it tasted boring from not having enough spices. We agreed that they needed garlic. We ordered two plates of it and, badly, left them barely untouched.

Abandoned kangkung
Bla, bla, bla. We went back home rather full and ready to take a nap.

Now, I need to go get dinner out which by the time this post is published is sitting in my stomach.

More fotos:

When I saw this I thought it was quite interesting

The toilet was out of sight! We're not in it!

Tall trees and some muggles

Me in front of a random hut with a pond underneath it

Me peace-signing
Cheers!

(BTW, I wanna try to earn money from blogging, and I just signed up for PayPerPost and need to paste this random sentence: How will your filled film house the apparent clause?) LOL!

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