Bali: The end of the road…Now to unwind…

When we first spotted the island of Bali from the ferry port on East Java at Banyuwangi, we thought we were nearly there. It’s really very close to Java, about the same distance as the Humber Bridge covers, near my home town of Hull…

The ferry across costs an amazing 60p or so, and we felt a sense of relief and elation at this apparently easy crossing to the final leg of our journey.

One hour and a half later, we were just pulling in to port at Gillimanuk. I have never ever experienced such a slow ferry. I think we did stop several times on the way over, but for most of the route (that can’t have been more than a mile or so) we seemed to keep to an extraordinary 1 mph – it must take some skill to drive a vehicle that slowly for such a long time.

By the time we disembarked, it was nearly dusk. We wandered over to the little bus depot a short walk from the harbour and saw a bus for Denpasar. The thing is, said the driver, we only have seven passengers, and I need 15 to set off…

Now, we’d come across this kind leave-when-youre-full approach to public transport elsewhere, but this was different. In China, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, there tended to be a steady stream of people looking for transport. At Gillimanuk, one new passenger came after one hour. And after two hours, we still only had eight fares.

At that point, the bus driver offered to leave immediately if we’d pay twice the fare. since bus fares are dirt cheap in Indonesia, we kind of wished he’d asked two hours earlier, but we set off on one of the longest, windiest island roads I’d ever experienced. Only about 80 miles, but it took nearly three hours, meaning our arrival in Denpasar was nearer midnight than 11pm, about four hours later than we had hoped.

Our last travel leg proved therefore to be one of the most difficult of all over the 110+ days of the journey.

We spent all the free time we had on Bali checking out the final tea and coffee venues for review.

But we were determined to have a photo taken on the beach at our last stop. So, here we go…

We managed to find a quiet, mainly-locals beach on the other side of Denpasar from Katu or Seminyak. And we kind of liked this statue of a fisherman standing by the beach. He kind of encapsulated how we’ll be now we’ve settled on east coast Australia, looking out to sea wondering about our next journey…

So, that’s it.

25 long distance bus journeys

22 trains

14 private car journeys

12 mini buses or mashrutkas

10 planes

2 shared taxis

1 ferry

after we left Yorkshire, we made it to Australia…

There will be other posts, but that’s it for now, folks. Our journey is done. Time to unwind off the road for a while.

You get tarot with your tea at Biku on Bali

I don’t know if Biku Tea lounge on Bali is busy every day, but they were turning people away the day we pitched up hoping to go for their mystical high tea. We got lucky with a table for two, though sadly the tarot card reader was fully booked that day, so we didn’t get a chance to hear her predictions on our future beyond The Road.

We took a taxi out to Biku from central Denpasar, though the district it’s in – Seminyak – is full of western tourists and the beach is not too far away, so Biku may well be within walking distance for many holiday makers on Bali.

We’d come here on recommendation from the tea-loving community in Jakarta, because Biku is another of those rare tea shops in Indonesia that serves up tea grown and produced locally.

There’s certainly a great range of teas on the menu, with black, green and oolong teas grown on Java, and more Indonesian tea in their basic breakfast blend (even the Assam is likely to have been grown in Indonesia, after the Assam tea plant was introduced to the islands in the 19th century). They also have some imported teas, all carefully managed by Tjok Gde Kerthyasa, a tea master himself who’s based in Bali, but is connected to the wonderful Sydney-based Tea Craft (which I must try to visit soon).

So the tea menu at Biku was exciting enough.

The afternoon tea (or High Tea) menu even more so. We have both loved it when tea houses in South East Asia offer both a ‘traditional’ western afternoon tea (with scones, jam and cream etc) and an eastern or local version.

So it is with Biku, and as an added bonus, if you go for the Asian High Tea, you get it served on wonderful cups and dishes with elephant motifs and simple, clear decoration (whereas the tableware for the western afternoon tea is very colonial and floral).

The savoury side of the Asian High Tea is interesting, with samosas, spring rolls and curried egg sandwiches. But the sweet part was even more exotic, with date scones served with mango jam, a sticky rice sweet filled with peanut paste and a wonderful fruit called salak. So the Asian Tea is our top tip if you go to Biku, especially if you’re a visitor.

Hey, when else are you going to get an afternoon tea like that? Oh, and make sure you book ahead if you want that tarot card reading. The ‘Mystical High Tea’ is served from 1-5pm, but the resident card reader is in demand so she’s probably very good. And I don’t think she reads the tea leaves…

This was a great way to end our journey from Yorkshire with a slap-up afternoon tea, and lots of local flavour.

It’s the 42nd tea room we will be reviewing across the 25 countries of our journey (there were 66 coffee shops, suggesting coffee has been easier to find, though there’s a blog entry in that discussion, since most tea places in China were not really tea rooms in the western sense of the word so can’t be reviewed as an afternoon tea experience).

Amazingly, with all the tea, coffee and cake consumed over 17 weeks of this journey, I lost 5 kilos, but that’s more to do with the efforts of carrying heavy luggage, the miles we walked finding the coffee shops and tea rooms, and the heat we encountered in most of the countries.

So, thanks to Biku, you rounded off this epic journey beautifully, and just in time for us to get to the airport for our night flight to Australia.

Head into Denpasar for coffee on Bali

When we finally got to Denpasar (via that snail-paced ferry from Java, and the tortuous bus route along the island’s windy roads) we found ourselves in the middle of Bali’s capital in a resort hotel frequented mainly by Indonesians, and well away from the touristy parts like Kuta or Seminyak.

There are countless coffee shops – probably run by Aussies and New Zealanders – over by the beaches, but we were treated to some quality local coffee culture within a short walk of our hotel in the centre of Denpasar.

First up, we found the rather dubiously named Playboy’s Coffee House, its image of the bunny rabbit’s head making us wonder what sort of joint we were entering.

The Nuova Simonella coffee machine reassured us, though, as did the house blend advertised, which married some local Aceh and Flores beans with a Yirgacheffe from Ethiopia. So some thought had gone into the coffee, and it showed with the resulting cappuccino, a delightful start to our day in Denpasar.

It was quite a late start, mind you. At 10.15am, we were the café’s first customers (they open at 10am) so don’t dash along here for a crack-of-dawn cuppa. But if you are on the beach and fancy a coffee in Denpasar itself, Playboy’s could be the place for you.

You couldn’t find a friendlier pair than Steve and Eky, who run the show, either. The decor and fittings all look pristine and sparklingly clean, as if the place only opened a few days before, and there’s a nice touch, with Eky’s badminton championship medal from 1997 standing on the counter by the wall, showing there’s more to life than coffee…or at least there was all those years ago.

There’s good air-conditioning here, or a terrace out the front if you prefer to bathe in the warm air, and a room at the side which is covered by a roof but otherwise open to the front. So, lots of options, and I’m guessing they are more of a nocturnal venue than early morning…

Which brings me back to that name: I asked the owners why they had chosen the name Playboy’s. ‘For fun’, they said, and to create a concept for the menu, which does indeed include lots of interesting innuendoes, though we didn’t try the Nutty Naughty, the One Night Stand or the First Fruit.

We stuck to their basic coffee and cake, and were very happy with that for our morning cuppa in Denpasar.

As we walked back towards our hotel, happy to have found good coffee on Bali, we passed by another coffee shop, which drew us in with its announcement that they roast their own coffee.

Golden Honey is an ‘artisan coffee roastery’ but also specialises in pizza! Again, we were the only customers in there at 11am, and with pizza not really on our minds, we decided to stick to the coffee, but wondered again if this was more of an evening venue, where people come for dinner and then finish their day with a quality coffee.

As you’d expect from a place that roasts their own, the coffee was good, all Indonesian this time, which we also like to see, though I personally preferred the brew they gave us round the corner at Playboy’s (the thing is, it’s always hard when a venue is the second coffee shop to be visited in a short time frame – the joy of having the first caffeine of the day means the 2nd cup has to be extraordinarily special to gain the same effect on the senses…).

I loved the concept, though: locally roasted, using Indonesian beans – our coffee made even from a Bali crop – and selling bags of the best on the counter. Once again, I couldn’t resist, and we came away with yet another bag of beans, this time from Bali of course.

So, that was our last coffee on the road on an odyssey that began with Loustic in Paris and ended with Golden Honey in Denpasar. Our next coffee would be at Adelaide Airport, when we arrived the next day into Australia.

But there was still tea to come in Bali. More on that tomorrow…

Taking tea in Jakarta: Indonesian tea, where possible

One of the great things about social media is that it allows you to connect with people you’d never otherwise know, and then if you happen to be travelling through their home town, it gives you the chance to meet for real. That’s what happened with Ratna Somantri, the head of promotion at Indonesia’s Tea Board.

Ratna’s enthusiasm for tea is so infectious that she has built up a 600-strong network of Indonesian tea lovers, many of whom meet up monthly just to discuss (and drink, of course) tea.

We arranged to meet Ratna on our last day in the Indonesian capital, not knowing that she had arranged a get-together of half a dozen others from Indonesia’s tea industry, so we had the pleasure of afternoon tea in Jakarta with tea growers and tea distributors from all over Java. Now, that made for a surprise tea party, making us want to return for one of their monthly big meet-ups next time we’re over.

Ratna is a great champion of Indonesian tea, but is far from her goal of seeing Indonesian grown tea on the menu in cafés and tea rooms all over the country and premium quality tea brought to everybody’s palate in her own country.

In fact, she reckons the TWG tea room in a trendy shopping mall in Jakarta is one of the few places you can actually order a pot of Indonesian tea. And that’s why she arranged our meeting for tea time at the the glitzy TWG Tea at Pacific Place. There’s a fantastic range of teas on offer there, more than 500 types, but only two Indonesian teas on the menu, so we got to taste both of them…

We also tried the afternoon tea itself, with the classic tiered tray, delicate sandwiches, pastries and little cakes, all of which had a tea theme or tea as one of their ingredients.

This is a really good place for afternoon tea in Jakarta, though it’s got a fairly exclusive glamorous look to it, and it’s not the cheapest place in town for a cuppa.

What made it extra special for us was the company. There was Alexander, the organic tea grower, who invited us back to visit his plantation next time we’re in the country; Retna, who plied us with samples of her wonderful teas, also grown on Java; and others whose names I didn’t note down (much to my shame – sorry, because we had some great conversations with all of them!).

The good news for tea lovers planning a visit to Jakarta in 2015 is that there will soon be a new tea room opening soon. Gaia Tea & Cakes is the brainchild of Ratna herself, and it should be a wonderful platform from which to showcase more Indonesian teas than are available anywhere else at the moment.

Our other afternoon tea experience in Jakarta came at the rather splendid Hermitage Hotel in the Cikini district.

This is a new hotel in a recently renovated 1920s building; a really stylish place for taking tea. Sadly, as Ratna pointed out, their very good afternoon tea does not offer any chance to taste tea grown in Indonesia, even though you can choose from a number of other teas supplied by the same TWG company whose tea room we visited in Jakarta.

What we liked most about the afternoon tea at the Hermitage was the option to choose an eastern afternoon tea with spring rolls, curry puffs, a delicious moist sponge cake and some gooey green stuff with coconut, which we couldn’t identify but tasted wonderful. as an alternative to the western style tea, with sandwiches, quiche, mini eclairs and macaroons (but no scones!).

Tea at the Hermitage is only served between 3pm and 5.30pm but it’s well worth it, though we wondered if their price of about £7 (GBP) was just an introductory offer to draw people in. If not, it’s tremendously good value too.

It’s just a shame that they’ve gone for big corporate suppliers (even if they’re good ones like Illy for coffee and TWG for tea) when there are fantastic local suppliers who could make this a real showcase for all things Indonesian.

Still, for a country that is so associated worldwide with coffee, Indonesia is looking like it’s going places for tea. If we revisit in five years’ time, I like to think tea will be much more widely available and drunk in many more venues than now.

In the meantime, we are still trying the tea samples our Indonesian tea friends gave us, and very good they are so far, the red tea being our favourite at this stage…

Coffee in Jakarta: quality, history, branding and something Swedish

Once we’d decided to cut Sumatra out of our itinerary, we actually had a few days to spare in Jakarta. We made the most of them with some fantastic coffee finds, bringing together all sorts of reasons for liking a coffee shop.

Most people in the west will have come across Java coffee or Sumatran, but once you’re in Indonesia, expect to be hit with the subtleties of coffees from East or West Java, from South or North Sumatra (Aceh being a popular coffee source tragically associated in my mind with the tsunami 10 years ago, but not usually thought of as a coffee region on the northern tip of Sumatra), and then the wonderfully exotic Papua, Flores, Bali or Sulawesi.

We may only have gone to Java and Bali on this journey, but our appetite has been whetted for future trips to other islands, for the tea as well as the coffee. Indonesia, we’ll be back!

Our first experience of coffee in Jakarta was actually our favourite. Tanamera Coffee has everything I look for in a coffee shop: friendly, welcoming staff, coffee roasted on-site, a good vibe and buzz from happy customers, not to mention good air con to escape the Jakarta heat and excellent wifi.

Oh, and the coffee, was exceptionally good, too.

Tanamera Coffee was not that easy to find, mind you. If you’re not local to Jakarta, you may not realise that Thamrin City Office Park is not the same as Thamrin Plaza shopping mall or Thamrin City Hotel. And our taxi driver gave up pretty quickly, forcing us to ask about five people before someone had heard of the coffee shop…

Once you find Thamrin City Office Park, you can’t miss Tanamera. And if it’s anything like the day we were there, you’ll see a crowd of people outside sipping their coffee. It’s a mixed crowd, by the way, with as many westerners as locals, so word has got around the community clearly without the need for bloggers like us!

All the coffee on offer was sourced direct from the farmers, all over Indonesia and roasted at the back of the premises here. You could choose between a single origin or a blend for the espresso machine.

We loved this place and lingered for much longer than we would normally (partly due to the torrential rain that began to fall shortly after we arrived, forcing us to order a second coffee).

A really good coffee shop in Jakarta. Thanks to Aga for making us welcome (and thanks to Aidan the Aussie from WA who we didn’t get to meet, but who had the idea of setting this place up in 2013.

Bakoel coffee shop doesn’t appear in most people’s ‘top coffee shops in Jakarta’ lists, but we loved the place just for its sense of history.

It was founded in 1878 by a guy called Tek Sun Ho, whose portrait still stands proudly on the wall of their branch in the leafy district of Cikini. It has a Dutch name (Bakoel Koffie) and makes the most of its Dutch colonial past, with photos of the coffee shop from 1920 and 1938.

The building still has a colonial feel, with ceiling fans rather than air conditioning, a leafy garden at the back and lots of old coffee making equipment around the place.

There’s a choice of three blends on offer for your coffee: Black Mist, Heritage 1969 and Brown Cow, using blends of Sumatran, Java and Sulawesi beans. Yet another rain storm forced us to stay here for a second coffee, too, doubling our usual daily caffeine intake, but this is a great coffee shop for feeling a connection to history…

We don’t usually review coffee shops that are chains, preferring the individuality of the small business run by its owner or at most a place with two branches. But in Jakarta, there are several local chains, and we came across Anomali Coffee because we needed an early start one morning and these guys open their doors by 7am.

The coffee was good, the atmosphere perhaps a little too big and urban for my liking, but I did love their branding. These guys have the best designers for the packaging of their coffees, so good that we bought a small pack of their Aceh beans to bring home with us.

And it’s at Anomali Coffee that we realised the variety of Indonesian coffee you can get. They had probably the widest range of coffee for sale from a fantastic list of Indonesian islands, enough for a European visitor’s mind to boggle, especially as I’d never even heard of Flores or Toraja and had no idea that Papua was a place for coffee…

On our last afternoon in Jakarta, and on our way to afternoon tea (but more on that on the tea in Jakarta blog tomorrow), we stopped by Crematology in Jalan Suryo.

The coffee here too was excellent, the venue spacious and relaxing, but my curiosity drew me to the wallpaper over by the bar, which appeared to be a map of Stockholm, all in Swedish.

As I was paying, I casually asked why they had a map of Stockholm on their wall, and the barista suggested I ask the owner, who was sitting just by the wall.

20 minutes later (and by now running late for that afternoon tea…) I was still chatting with Elliot Davernas, the Swedish guy who set up the Crematology concept.

If you like an ethical approach to your coffee, Crematology has to be the choice for coffee in Jakarta.

Elliot has a hands-on approach to managing this coffee shop, and prides himself on prioritising home-made rather than factory produced, even for the furniture that fills the coffee shop. In fact, one week from the opening of this place, he told us, they didn’t even have a bar to work from because Elliot wanted all hands on deck to MAKE the bar from the solid block of wood he had acquired – all part of the team-building spirit that makes this one of the most egalitarian places to work in Jakarta, with jobs rotated regularly and everyone able to do anything to keep the place running.

Elliot’s passion is not only contagious, it’s addictive. I reckon even I would have joined in with the furniture making if I’d been on his team, though I’m not sure they’d have had such a smooth surface if I’d put the finishing touches to it.

It’s a shame I didn’t have  time to try more of the coffees and cakes on offer here at Crematology. But I’m really glad I asked why they had that map of Stockholm on the wall. After all, I always liked a coffee shop with a good story to tell. And Elliot can certainly tell a few of those.

But it did make us late for tea. And that was an even more special occasion, about which more to come in tomorrow’s blog entry…

Jakarta – from colonial Dutch to shadow puppets and English practice – in pics

We were fascinated by Jakarta, though horrified to see on Australian TV since we finished our journey, that the city is sinking at an alarming rate. We headed straight to the old town, once known as Batavia, for a spot of lunch in the 2nd oldest building down there.

Café Batavia is a bit of an institution in Jakarta, with its beautiful colonial architecture and its live music scene. There’s a real 1920s feel to the place, in the decor and the music…

Turn right out of the café and right again to follow the original canal that the Dutch built here hundreds of years ago. There is still one Amsterdam-style bridge.

We didn’t take many photos round here because we were so overwhelmed by the dreadful conditions people were living in. Levels of poverty we had not seen anywhere else on this long journey through 25 countries, and we were told that things have improved in recent years!

But there’s something about heat and damp and pools of water (from the daily rainstorms as well, presumably, as the flooding from sea levels), with rubbish floating on top of everything, that made this whole area utterly depressing and made us turn back fairly quickly – something we had very rarely done in the whole four months of the journey.

Back at the main square, on which you’ll find Café Batavia, there are lots of vestiges of the Dutch presence here. A post box.

A gravestone.

Makes me want to read some sort of novel set in Dutch colonial era to get more of a feel for how life was both for locals and colonials in those days. Any tips most welcome…

This was the first time in Jakarta for both of us. Our previous ‘knowledge’ of the place being purely based on that 1980s film classic ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’. One of the most powerful scenes in that film introduced us to Indonesian shadow puppets, so we were delighted to meet the manager of Wayang Museum, who is a 4th generation puppet maker.

He showed us round the museum dedicated to the puppets and told us countless stories of the background to the characters and the different generations that created new versions of the puppets.

It was transfixingly fascinating, and we were easily led to the market stall afterwards where we bought a pair of puppets for our new home in Australia (only to have them picked out by Australian customs, who encouraged us to chuck them out, though we opted for the expensive treatment of them because we love them so much and the craftsmanship was so extraordinary – we’re still waiting for them post-treatment by Aussie customs!).

Back outside in the main square, Jakarta was alive with people enjoying a warm Sunday afternoon. There were lifesize puppets doing a special local dance, usually in pairs, a kind of busking, but looking deeply traditional, too. We loved it.

And clearly, every English language college, every English school lesson had tasked its students to grab any native speaker and conduct an interview, to find our views on Indonesia (difficult to say much in depth after less than 24 hours), where we planned to go, and where we were from.

It’s actually a really good teaching idea. Just funny that every single class seemed to be doing it, and we must have done six interviews in the short hour or so we were in the square, running away from a 7th in order to get to that puppet museum before it closed.

We’ll cover the rest of our thoughts on Indonesia through our coffee and tea blogs, to follow in the next few days, as the story of this great journey nears its end…

There’s more to tea in Singapore than a trip to Raffles

We couldn’t resist a visit to Raffles in Singapore, not for a Singapore Sling, but for Afternoon Tea. With only 24 hours in the city, though, that meant we didn’t get to revisit the wonderful Tea Chapter in Neil Road for a Chinese tea experience (you’ll have to see the Fancy a Cuppa blog entry for our views on that).

It also meant we didn’t manage to get to Smitten Coffee & Tea Bar, which is out by Robertsons Quay and looked really hard to get to on public transport in the time we had. That was a shame and it goes top of our list for next time we’re in Singapore, because its concept reminded me of the wonderful Bean & Bud in Harrogate for its focus on both coffee and tea…

So for this trip, it was Raffles and only Raffles.

We quickly found out that the done thing for afternoon tea at Raffles is to reserve a table, as elegantly-dressed couples and groups sailed past us into the tea room, while we were asked to wait.

In fact, we were told, it would be 45 minutes before a table was free and, they added, with local taxes and service added (the so-called plus-plus), our afternoon tea would come to some £50 a head (as if that would put us off, when we’d travelled so far…).

So, we sat and waited in the sultry, but leafy grounds of the hotel and watched people coming and going, some dashing by on their way to their (presumably reserved) tea, others just coming in for a selfie in this hotel of all hotels in Singapore.

Some of the Trip Advisor and Google reviews of afternoon tea at Raffles do speak of the confusion over just what afternoon tea consists of, what you are obliged to have, and how much it all costs. Some even say they were forced to have the champagne tea, taking the price way over what we had been quoted.

There was never any question of champagne for us (maybe we just didn’t look the champers types), but when they came to serve us and spoke of the eat-all-you-can buffet in the other room, with spring rolls, fruit and other delights, we told them we actually just wanted a regular tiered tray afternoon tea with a pot of tea of our choice. Was that possible?

Indeed it was, they said, and that would cost us less than the initially quoted about £100 for two, coming in at nearer £30 a head…

Slightly bemused by the pricing system, we sat and waited for our tea to arrive, taking in the atmosphere. We enjoyed the old colonial feel and the notice that spoke of this (the Tiffin) dining room having been the best ‘east of Suez’, though there’s something about the stuffiness of those exclusive colonial hang-outs and the fawning nature of the service in them that would put us off going too often.

Actually, the afternoon tea was quite generous (five little sandwiches each, macaroons, little pastries, mince pies – being near Christmas), with a quality pot of tea (Darjeeling for me, English Breakfast for Anita), and a delightful harpist strumming away in the background.

The mystery, though, were the dishes of clotted cream and jam that sat untouched on the table next to the tiered tray. Untouched because…there were no scones to spread them on.

I ventured over to the waiter to ask whether there were scones, since we had jam and cream. Oh no, they’re on the buffet, we were told, along with the spring rolls and the fruit…

Hmmm. I’m not sure what the Colonel and his wife would have made of that in colonial days, but we smiled to ourselves and made do without, only for the waiter to appear suddenly with a plate of four scones for us, thrown in gratis, I think because by this time they were at the end of the afternoon tea time and most people were turning to Singapore Slings.

Still, I can confirm that the cream and jam are very tasty, and the scones good quality. It just seems bizarre that they are part of the full buffet rather than the tiered tray of afternoon tea. Ah well, when in Singapore…

To be fair to the staff, as the afternoon came to an end, and we were virtually the last tea drinkers left, they did become a lot more relaxed and friendly. I just wish we could get away from the stiff formality of such elegant places. They could learn a thing or two from our favourite posh afternoon tea place in London: the Palm Court tea room in Piccadilly somehow manage that great service, with elegance and friendliness rather than starchiness…

And one final gripe about Raffles. I know it’s the tropics and you can’t really avoid them, but the tea room was abuzz with flies, mostly quite small, but somewhat disconcerting as they wander over your sarnies or macaroons before you take a bite.

Other than that, it was a beautiful afternoon and actually well worth the cost. So a hearty thumbs up from us for afternoon tea in Singapore at Raffles. There is more to tea in Singapore than Raffles, but at least once in your life, do give it a go.

Ideas and inspiration from coffee shops in Singapore

I’d heard good things about the coffee scene in Singapore, but it’s the kind of place we usually rush through on the way somewhere else. This visit was no different, with just 24 hours in the country before we headed towards Indonesia, though this time we prioritised the coffee. And I’m very glad we did.

Nylon Coffee in Everton Park was very special.

They just do coffee (rather like some of the coffee shops we’d found earlier on the journey in Vienna or Budapest), so the only question you’ll be asked on entering the shop is: “How do you want it?” (If you’re desperate for a cake or something else to nibble with your coffee, there is a bakery next door, by the way).

They roast their own beans, so your nose will guide you the last few yards to the coffee shop entrance, with the aroma wafting out into the street.

And their menu is pretty simple. It’s espresso, white, iced, long black or filter. And there are three sizes to choose from. They do a seasonal blend in the espresso machine (Central American beans in there for our visit), though there are more options if you go for the filter.

Who needs a more complicated menu than that?

No sugar is needed in coffee this good, so no sugar is offered and in fact there was no sugar in sight anywhere in the coffee shop. What a contrast to the coffee scene in many other parts of South East Asia.

Best of all, there’s nothing pretentious about this place. We got to meet Jiamin, one of the co-owners, and I immediately warmed to her attitude, especially when I mentioned that I hadn’t enjoyed my coffee in another venue in Singapore earlier that day.

“Coffee is very subjective,” she said, and you know what, I really think it is. A place I don’t like might be someone else’s favourite, though in our case it’s usually as much to do with atmosphere and welcome as it is the actual coffee quality.

So Nylon Coffee Roasters was one of my favourite coffee shops on the whole 25-country journey, even if it was standing room only, and there’s no wifi!

The fact that Nylon Coffee was so busy on the afternoon we dropped by shows what a destination coffee shop it has become for locals in Singapore, especially as it is tucked away at the back of a residential block well away from any main streets.

If you’re going for the first time, you might need a hand with directions, mind you. Once you find the arched entrance to Everton Park (just off Everton Road), you can avoid doing the tour we did of every retail outlet by nipping round the back to the right after the arch and then walking along the side of the block. After 100 yards or so, you’ll find Nylon. Believe me, it’s worth the effort.

Chye Seng Huat Hardware is a completely different type of coffee shop, actually more reminiscent of those trendy mums and toddlers places you find in Dulwich or Stoke Newington.

Again, we spent a while finding the way in to this place, pushing and poking the front door and windows on Tyrwhitt Street street before we realised the entrance is around the side, where everyone is sitting out on the terrace.

This is an old hardware shop near to Little India, which is how the coffee shop got its rather unusual name. It’s in an art deco building, with a lot of the fittings from the old hardware store giving the place a real urban coffee shop feel, as you would find in many big western cities.

Education is a big part of CSHH and they’re keen to show the whole coffee-making process, from the green beans to the coffee cup. So there’s different coffee stuff going on all over the premises, with a roaster, a workshop, an annex with a retail space, the coffee shop itself and more activities we didn’t get a chance to see upstairs.

But, like Nylon Coffee, there’s nothing preachy about the approach in CSHH. And they were happy to chat about their coffee and the coffee shop concept even though the queue was building up behind us.

The coffee was fantastic quality, again. And with two choices of espresso blends on the hopper, we had no option but to stay for a second cup.

Oh, and unlike Nylon, these guys do food. It was our choice for an excellent breakfast, though beware of the small tables if you do choose to eat (yes, we had a spill, which seems almost inevitable if you try to fit two cups and two plates on one table…).

So, coffee in Singapore is a fantastic experience, and we barely scratched the surface of the scene over there. If you really want to check out all the good coffee shops there, you’ll need at least a week. But if you only have 24 hours like us, we’d highly recommend Nylon Coffee and Chye Seng Huat Hardware.

World War 1 in Singapore – reminders of, in pics

We weren’t in Singapore for long enough to do a proper picture blog with observations on life there, especially after our long, long delay at the border, where Singapore officials were meticulous to the point of taking four minutes per person trying to enter the country.

Most people associating Singapore with wartime are thinking of the collapse of British rule there as the Japanese advanced in WW2. But we were fascinated by some of the WW1 references we found.

I’m not sure how many streets in France still have names like this these days.

Even I wasn’t sure whether it really referred to the Vichy leader, until I saw other street names nearby…

And clearly the World War One connotations for Singapore are not as painful as they are in the UK. I can’t imagine a school playground getting a name like this back in Britain, even in a year when everyone is focusing on centenaries…

This part of Singapore – near Little India – does have some remarkably well-preserved architecture, though we wondered what sort of people lived in these beautiful terraced houses when they were first built.

They had a beautiful covered walkway down the front of their homes, whoever they were. And some lovely tiling out the front.

It’s a little bit clearer who the guests were at Raffles in Singapore a few decades ago…

And being on a coffee and tea tour, we had to give afternoon tea at Raffles a go. More on that in the Singapore coffee and tea blog (to follow), but Raffles retains its distinguished feel.

I just couldn’t help feeling that I probably wouldn’t have been a regular visitor to the place during colonial times, as I’ve never been a great fan of fawning service or arrogant customers, and for some reason as we sat sipping our tea there soaking up the history, I couldn’t help thinking that there’d have been an awful lot of that back in the days when the tea room was the best dining space ‘east of Suez’…

 

 

 

A traditional coffee in Kluang; an exciting Liberica in Johor Bahru; and a lively local place for breakfast

A lot of travel guidebooks tell you it’s worth stopping at Kluang railway station for a coffee, but they don’t tend to go into the history of this place, which goes back almost 80 years.

We got lucky with a coffee connection made in Kuala Lumpur when we met local lad Ony, who insisted we stop off on our way south towards Johor because he knows the owners of the Station cafe.

This meant we not only got to try the coffee experience in Kluang, but were also shown around by Chiang Lim Jit, one of the family members whose grandfather set up the station café all those years ago.

It’s a fantastic story, involving immigrant workers from Hainan in China, who came to Malaysia mainly to work for the Brits, whose army camp was nearby. The Hainanese had great culinary skills, and part of that involved making the coffee.

It’s intriguing, mind you, to wonder what happened a couple of years after they opened up shop when the Japanese rampaged their way through these parts: did the station café remain open? Did the Japanese even drink coffee? We didn’t get time to ask these questions, so if anybody knowns anything, do let us know…

The coffee they use here used to be grown just two stations up the line, but is now sourced a little further away nearer to Johor. It’s still a quality Liberica bean, though.

This is no ‘third wave’ artisan coffee shop in the modern western sense of the word, however. And we didn’t really get to see exactly how the coffee is prepared: the staff were so in awe of Chiang’s techniques when he turned up, that he was hidden from view as the waiters all huddled around him to watch.

We could see it involved pouring the coffee from a great height, though, or was it just the water being poured over the coffee beans or powder? In any case, the result is what is known as a traditional coffee (as opposed to your espresso or more modern ‘pourover’) and you have the option of black, with sweetened milk or with evaporated milk.

It’s a strong, rich coffee, and it’s very very popular round these parts. The café was full shortly after it reopened for the afternoon at 2.30pm (yes, they close for lunch!), and we were told its regulars include Singapore border officials who think it’s worth hopping on the train up for a cuppa, and the Sultan of Johor, who has been known to arrive driving his own private train to get here.

It’s also hard to know what exactly goes in the rather tasty toasty things they serve up to have with your coffee. There’s a secret family recipe to their kaya, which comes on toast or steamed, but is basically roasted sugar and butter – it is delicious!

There’s talk of developing the railway through here, making it a fast track across Asia and pulling down the railway station building. The family have opened up other coffee shops round Kluang, but we think the original place is a fantastic piece of history they surely have to preserve: the kitchen is still in the same position it was 78 years ago, as is most of the seating area; the only major change since 1938 is that the owners no longer sleep on-site waiting for the first train to pull through in the mornings.

Sadly, because the train departures from Kluang are so few and far between, we had to transfer to the bus for our onward journey south; now that’s something they could do to improve travellers’ access to this wonderful café in Kluang…

We found a fantastic coffee shop in Johor Bahru. My Liberica has a good story of its own, too.

It’s run by four brothers, who each have a different role in the business, one focusing on the coffee plantation where they grow their own Liberica beans, one leading on the roasting side of things, one doing the marketing, and the fourth keeping an overall eye on the business.

The great part of this story was that to start up their coffee business the brothers had to persuade their father to swap part of his palm plantation over to coffee, and if you’ve been to Malaysia you’ll know how hard that must have been, with hectare after hectare of land now covered with palm oil trees as far as the eye can see.

It’s especially exciting because the liberica bean represents a mere 2% of total worldwide coffee production, and it’s certainly not a bean I’d come across before hitting south east Asia.

My Liberica has the feel of a western style artisan coffee shop, with lots of choices of how dark you like the roast, how you like your coffee prepared and which bean or blend you want. They even do the infamous civet luwak, which we’d seen on the road since Vietnam, but avoided trying.

And best of all is the My Liberica philosophy: “It’s OK to enjoy or dislike your coffee how your palate prefers; a coffee can be a matter of compatibility or fate.”

We chose a cappuccino made to perfection on their Marzocco machine, while the barista fiddled around with syphons and flames for someone else that morning. This is the kind of coffee shop we’d return to day after day if we lived in Johor Bahru and we’d love one day to visit their coffee plantation…

It’s not an easy coffee shop to get to, mind you, with no public transport within a mile of the place, so we had to get a taxi to and from the Taman Molek area, but we tried another coffee shop right in the centre of Johor and didn’t like it nearly as much. So if you’re anywhere near Malaysia’s second city, get yourself to My Liberica for a fantastic coffee experience.

Of course, there’s also that new coffee shop opened up by the guy we’d heard about who used to be based in Kuala Lumpur. We managed to miss the soft opening of Atlas Coffee Embassy by a few days, and he was opening up properly a week or so after our visit. But this means the choices for coffee in Johor Bahru are good ones.

We can’t leave Malaysia, though, without a mention for our favourite place for breakfast in Johor Bahru. Hua Mui (on the corner of Jalan Trus and Jalan Dhoby) has been around for decades, but the original owner’s granddaughter is still in charge.

You’ll get a fabulous egg toast with a rich milky cup of tea for next to nothing here, and you’ll feel most welcome as one of the few westerners among a crowd of locals.

The way they prepare the tea reminded us of the Kluang coffee maker, with the kettle held way up high and poured deftly into our cups from about 6 feet up – it’s apparently another Hainanese family doing things the Hainan way.

It’s the usual sweetened milk and it probably isn’t the best quality tea, but it’s a fabulous experience and our top tip of all in Johor Bahru.

We returned there a second time, by which we were recognised and made even more welcome by the staff, before we embarked on the lengthy and arduous border crossing into Singapore by bus, but that’s another story…