Indonesian Archipelago Series: Culinary weekend at Malang

Are you ready for my Indonesian Archipelago series ? I am myself so excited! We will start first with Malang city in East Java, Indonesia.

Malang is just 2 hours by car/train/bus from the city I live, Surabaya, Indonesia. Being the second biggest city in East Java, its role is mostly also as a recreational destination for Surabaya people thanks to its proximity to the mountains. Several big theme parks are also located in its vicinity. If you are in the mood of having colder temperature and good culinary time, Malang is definitely the first option to go. 

This time I went there with my nuclear family just to spend a weekend in our usual hotel, Ijen Suites. This place is not so new anymore, but my brother had already been a regular customer here because he loved the swimming pool area. One thing that you should now about most of Indonesian people is that we love to take photos (of ourselves). So if you build an instragamable place for free here, the people will surely love you. I always think that happiness is always a simple thing in Indonesia, nothing fancy. But well, it also depends on your circle and way of living either you feel the social pressure from them or not. 

Talking about the instragamable place, our destinations are the different revitalized villages along the Brantas river banks that have been painted in different theme: colorful and all blue. Why should it be blue? Malang is famous of their football team, Arema, which has blue as its color. In the contrary, Surabaya has green for Persebaya. Both hooligans are kind of in the top of the most fanatic supporters of the country. These villages are painted by a paint industry as part of its community service that is based on an internship done my university students. Here in some universities, you have to do your internship in the villages living with locals and make useful projects instead in big offices.

We firstly went to Kampung Biru. Biru means blue and Kampung means village. Both these villages are located in Jodipan district. 

Tips: Don’t worry about how to commute here because we all use online taxi/motorbike. I could not be proud of our public transportation yet, but I am surely proud of our super-easy online transportation giants. Depends on the distance but mostly you wont spend more than 30,000 IDR or 3 euro per trip of 15-20 minutes. However, some areas are kind of conflicted by means of local taxi companies/local motorbike versus the online one. This area is called red zone and you as the customers must coordinate with the online driver to be picked up without being seen by the local taxi association. This area mostly includes the most important landmarks of the cities. So be careful especially when you don’t speak Bahasa. 

The entrance of Kampung Biru is a bit hidden, down the tiny street. You should buy an entrance ticket of 3,000 IDR (around 25 cents) and you will get these cute flannel keychains made by the locals as your tickets. Just following the road down and up you will see this legendary tree that is considered as the famous photo spot to have the view of the village. What amazed me here is that all the locals are super duper friendly and casual with us as guests. I mean, I was expecting people would look at us while we were taking photos but it seems that they accepted this fact long ago. The houses are so tiny and glued to each other yet have this kind of clean impression. 

Just walking around 10 minutes along the river you will arrive in the 2ndvillage: Kampung Tridi / Kampung Warna which basically means Colorful and 3D painted village. There was a huge crowd that caught my attention which turned out to be people doing Jaranan, a local dance done with people being half-conscious and they will imitate the spirit of animals and able to eat things human normally does not eat: glasses etc. Yes, it is scary, especially the music. But to be honest, this kind of culture is truly Indonesia. I feel my head is getting dizzy and I am having goosebumps so I just skipped that area and did not take any photos there. We went straightly to the famous bridge that linked Kampung Tridi and Kampung Warna. 

Here you could see the river bank, the jaranan performance, and some interesting street food stalls along the river bank. It was quite crowded by people taking photos on the bridge. However, there is another spot at the top of  local people’s roof which has better view. To enter this place you just need to pay as you want, but to enter the bridge you should pay another 3000 IDR. 

I had to admit that I really enjoyed these villages and admired their creativity and hostility. I hope people are keep coming to these villages and support their economy. Local performances also could be more managed so tourists can see it in particular time not randomly. 

After our walk, we grabbed another online taxi to look for one of the most famous meatball soup (Bakso) in the town which is Bakso Cak Toha at Trunojoyo street. I am in love with the fried meatball that I took it again until 4 times, oh my god. They did not sell complicated meatballs with filling unlike usual stalls. They are really focus on original meatball and fried one only, so trust me this one is not to be missed. 

Not far from Bakso Cak Toha, there was this old supermarket called Lai-lai that basically sells all food that you can imagine from traditional to imported ones. I always love the vibe of this kind of place, it reminded me of the old times where we went shopping with our grandmas and got candies as little rewards. 

I had a little cousin who is doing her bachelor here in Universities Brawijaya so why not giving her a visit ? Asking her where the hippest place in town, she pointed out OURA cafe, at Pahlawan Trip street. The design is cool consists of 2 floors with open space at the 2nd one where you can chill on jellybean bags. They sold both western and Indonesian food with quite expensive rate but if you convert them to euro it was normal. I ordered salmon steak and Thai tea. We spent the night just chilling under the stars. Unfortunately, the grass was synthetic lol. They also have live music in the 1st floor, I could see lots of people taking photos everywhere. See how we love to take pictures ?

Not having our breakfast in the hotel, we headed to different hotel: Tugu hotel. This place is super popular among international tourists due to its unique thematic design in every inch of it, from Chinese to Thai decor, it is like entering a ride in a theme park, really. However, I don’t have the feeling to stay there, it gave me some kind of creepy feeling. But if you are an artsy and eccentric person, I think you would be in love at once. So we went to its cafe called “Und Corner” which sells traditional cakes and snacks. We had lovely cake and tea there with a nice atmosphere of a wooden cafe outside the lobby hotel. It was such a calm morning, seeing cars passing by the street. 

For lunch, we went to Rawon Rampal, Panglima Sudirman street. The place is like typical traditional food old restaurant so don’t expect something fancy. You can see directly the kitchen where the ladies prepare the meat into giant pots. Rawon is a meat soup, but the color and taste is so special due to the black of keluak spice. Eat it with the salted egg and you will fly to the moon. Here, they also sell soto soup so you can choose between radon or soto as the soup for the meat. 

On our way home, there is one particular place you could not miss. I really feel sorry for people who have never tested Ayam Sri, Pandaan, a traditional chicken recipe located in Pandaan. Hundreds of cars parked just to queue for hours to eat here. We took away 2 boxes of chicken, and trust me the samba is just blended with the meat. It is not fried, but I don’t know.. maybe half steamed half fried ? I don’t know their technique, everytime I eat this chicken I feel like flying. 

So, that was all I got for this tiny weekend, It would be best of course to stay longer and explore the vicinity of Malang, maybe next time!

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