In Reply to: info on palm sugar being made plse posted by robrose on Sunday, 25. July 2004 at 08:41 Bali Time:
compound type activities there's only one option I know of unless you know someone who knows someone, etc. We went on the FANTASTIC Sunday tour with Casa Luna, Ubud. They only run this on Sundays, and it goes from 9am to about 2pm. What a great day! You go by a/c 4 wheel drive, so it is a little touristy, but you see things that you otherwise wouldn't be able to see. We firstly went to a home compound where a local family produces palm sugar for their own use & sell any leftovers to other locals (they're all involved & for a days work, producing 3-5kg of palm sugar, they rake in the outrageous amount of Rp15,000-Rp25,000). They rig up a faux palm tree top on the ground and demonstrate all the work required to get the nectar to create the sugar. You see them climb the trees, get to taste the sugar and see a family compound in action. Then it's on to a beach where you meet a family who live in abject poverty on the beach, doing the backbreaking, time-consuming work of farming sea salt. It's really interesting! In both places you receive very generous amounts of their produce, as part of the tour. From there we went to a weaving plant and were able to buy the fabric we saw being woven, another fascinating activity. Somewhere in there we ate at a (very) local fish warung. Wouldn't have been game enough to eat there normally, I don't think! We were a bit of a novelty, I don't think they see too many tourists there. The food was fantastic & was included in the tour (fish curry, satays, salad, sambal, softdrink). I can't recommend this tour enough, even if you don't like organised tours it's worth going on this for what you see. It also gives you the opprtunity to help, both because the people involved get paid to welcome you into their homes and also because you have the chance to slip them some Rp when no-one's looking. The charge for the tour was Rp150,000 for adults, 100,000 for kids, and absolutely worth it! Hope this helps, sorry for any typos! Cheers, Sue.