Play with Clay!

Rumah Keramik Tanah Baru - Depok.

This time it’s a bit unique. We came down to this place due to invitation of our Business Partner for Family Gathering. I decided to join the invitation almost without thinking to long due to this clay stuff, since I strongly confident that this is good for children and also for my wife that has interest on handicraft stuff.

So here we go, long the way down to Depok, with bit confusion and several times got lost on the way to the place, finally we reach to the destination. A warm and very tidy place with bunches of trees and surprisingly, there are lot of endangered trees around the place.






We got very warm greetings from host and lead us enter the main “Pendopo” that seems become their main building in this entry area. The building it self build from wood and bricks with Javanese architecture that has several set of wooden dinning table, which has Ceramic tile on top of it, combined with candle ceramic bowl side by side with ceramic vase that hose a bunch of flowers. Very nice setting. One of the unique thing is the lighting that been setup in the middle of the building that made from lot of “silk cocoon” stuffed with tiny Christmas tree light every one of them.

We got choice of “The Sereh” or “Gula Asam” combined with very nice “Pisang Goreng Kalimantan”, “Singkong Goreng” and traditional glutinous ball in Coconut Crisp or “Klepon”…. Especially for me, “The Sereh” is very erotic ……. It has been claim by the host that The Sereh may restore your freshness in a short while after you have it. Regardless what he say, for me the combination of “The Sereh” and “Klepon” look very nice indeed.



One thing about Pisang “Kepok” Kalimantan that meant to make a very nice “Pisang Goreng” is very unique, since it may not be able to eat in raw form like the other banana, it has to be fried before it unique sweetness and a bit sour taste appear. Because if you may eat it in raw, it will taste very rough and dry. Again, this “Pisang Goreng” is their special chef recommendation menu.

Back to the main activities, we have to wait for a while before the venue begins with some introduction why this place builds and what meant for? So, this place called Rumah Keramik Tanah Baru, belong to F. Widyanto a maestro in a ceramic or clay craft, and especially this place build to introduce clay to younger generation, and it has open house every weekend and has several clay stuff fun program to try out.

Well, in short speech, we’ve been brought for in-house tour to introduce several places, seems they have several “traditional bungalow” for the one who wants to spend the night here, but need to understand that they do not provide TV, but you may still have to surf the .net since they have WiFi around the place. This in-house tour may takes about 30 minutes before we reach the final destination, the Clay Workshop.



First they brought us to a house, well this is actually a “buffalo stall” but now converted into a nice bungalow that you may stay for overnight, but no TV around …… There are several interesting detail in this bungalow since some of the items made creatively from tradional unused things, such as batik stamps made for light decoration.

The very interesting thing is the light that I thought was a Christmas light chain that used to be found in Christmas tree, but it doesn’t. Once you were closer to that thing you will notice that the light was made from silkworm cocoon! The tiny bulp were creatively stuff into silkworm cocoon, each of them, very creative, and according to the host that this is one of the masterpiece that may not be sold even though they often to receive very high offer from some guests.




Now, back to the workshop, after small tour we not seated in three long table and we have a tennis ball size raw-clay in front of each of us. After short guide presentation what and how, and a little demo, we may start create any form we want from clay. And it was not easy after all ………..

But it is very nice experience yet very unique …..






Last but not least, The activity closed by very nice lunch, several kind of traditional dishes.







Oh, you may free to visit this place since they have open house every weekend, just to see around or to taste their unique “Teh Sereh” or other traditional dishes that you may not be able to find in other places.

Pecel Madiun @ Bogor??

Madiun dish but has to be found in Bogor? How come? Yup, we found this “Warung Pecel” just because we wanted to avoid traffic Jammed just before enter Jl. Pajajaran, Bogor from Jakarta – Bogor, Tol-Gate.

According to the owner, Pak Pardi, It just new open couple months ago since from his observation Bogor has not “proper pecel taste”, so he wants to show Bogor & Jakarta people what the real Pecel is ……… Oh my! He is a successful “warung pecel” entrepreneur in Madiun, seems he sees some opportunity here in Bogor that may have many sundanese “makan place” around.

He run his “Warung Pecel” with his wives, and some relatives (it seems), in small but clean enough “baboo construction” footstall in front of one house in Jalan Bina Marga. Like the common house surrounding, the place is quiet convenience and has some spacious space for car parking in front so that you may reach this place easily.




The “main stage” is a large food display table just right after you enter the main stall, with “Ibu” sitting there surrounding with all pecel attribute, equip with their various side-dish that you may chose and ask them to grill a bit just to make it warmer. You may found “Tempe”, “gepuk”, “jeroan” and many more that may not be mention one by one.



The main dish it self is “Pecel Madiun” which is rice that placed on top of “rottan” dining plate on top of banana-leave, with several boilled vegetables with spicy peanut sauce. But unfortunately, the sauce has been modified to reduce “authentic spicy taste” and a bit sugar added to increase sweetness. This is the part that I do not like, the taste is less authentic rather than if you buy directly in Madiun, but the rest is perfect. They also has other side Dish like Rawon or some other authentic east java spicies, that we do not have opportunity to test it.

But in overall, this dish may be good to try out ………………..


Location : Jl Binamarga No 24 Bogor.
Phone : 0251 7 139 139
mobile : 0811 139 139

Saung Mang Engking, Depok

Heard this place many times ago. But never got a chance to visit it since it located in Yogjakarta. Seem my parents love it to much seem it always become regular place to visit every time they were traveling to this city. Well, it’s only maximum three hour drive from Semarang, so it’s more like you drive from Jakarta to Bandung only.

Few months ago I knew that they open their branch in Jakarta, somewhere in Depok, but again, there are two places that I always try to avoid them in Jakarta, one is Bekasi and the other one is Depok, why? Because their heavy traffic Jam, and I have it to much! But this time I can not resist since it is a Sunday, and from few ‘googling’ and ‘Muliplying’ found that every pictures I found is very hard to resist. So here we go ……

Found the place is in the outer complex of Universitas Indonesia, the largest University in the country, and found the facts that It located just next to UI lagoon, so it bring our imagination to the very nice & clam place with lot of ‘Saung’ next to the lagoon, lot of fish pond like always traditional saung place, very large backyards, bunch of trees so that we may laying down rest our self and not need to rush to finish our meals …..

And it did! Just exactly the same as we were imagine about, just like my description on the previous paragraph, but only one miss, the place is very crowded in the lunch time. We need to wait almost 30 minutes before we have our ‘cabine’ or ‘saung’. Lucky there’s lot of interesting place to see before we can start to order our meal, so there’s no further complains to made ………………

Build on about 3.500m square meter of land, this makan place belong to “Engking Sodikin” a culinary businessman from Tasikmalaya, this place is build from about 13-15 palm leaves roof gazebos on top of very large fish pond or we may call it lagoon. It’s quite common “Sundanees” style of “kuring”.

One interesting place is a wooden bridge across the small artificial stream made from a bunch of stone that separate two lagoons, and have lot of red-carper fish, hundreds and you may feed them with fish pallet that you can buy in the cashier counter, so it will makes our kids busy for a while.

I and my wife also have a chance to sneak around in their kitchen for some photograph, just so see how they prepare food.

Now it’s about the dish itself, from my parent’s recommendation that we should try “Udang Galah Bakar Madu” so this is the first thing that we need to order, besides Gurame Cobek and Kepiting saus Padang, and few other side dishes.

The BBQ udang came in shaslick style, so you will find 3 stick of blue-prawn shaslick (four prawns each) covered with red sauce, nice, sweet but a bit spicy …

But from my opinion, the prime dish is their Gurame Cobek that a deep fried Garupa fish with spicy mixed red onion and various type of chili padi gravy pour on top of it. Very delicious but ‘Hell’ you can imagine how spicy it is, it will burn your tongue but will keep you eat it until the last fish bone. Very nice indeed.

Kepiting Sauce Padang is standard, quite similar with some street-stall seafood sauce padang except the freshness of the Crab it self is very good.

The deep-fried cumi and udang is also nice & crispy.

Well, more over, the dish cost is quiet cheap compared with what you have eaten. The place is good & clean, the dish is delicious and moreover your damage-rate would not so heavy, except the location is quiet far from our home.

One tip, just avoid to be there in the lunch time, since they are very busy, you may chance to have very chaotic dish delivery, your meal will be interrupted since you may have to wait your partial dish that may not be arrive in the right time.

Just be there, make sure you know what you want to order and make it in a single run!

While you wait your dish, there’s a lot of waitress running around bringing appetizers that you may call such as ‘Kaapertart’, ‘brownies’ and many others.

I forgot to record their address, but I have their GPS coordinate
Coordinates: 6°20'56"S 106°49'53"E

But it is very easy place to find, if you came from TB Simatupang TOL, just get out in pasar minggu gate heading to Lenteng Agung, follow the road until you find the UI Flyover, follow the flyover turn to Pasar Minggu, and just you head down from flyover there’s a small junction in the left side of the road you’ll find a small signboard about this place, just follow the direction and you may enter the security gate to go into the complex. It located inside the UI Complex next to University Dormitory.

Ciputih, Ujung Kulon

Found this place from searching the net – googling, not much information found except few personal blogs in multiply that try to tell how beautiful it is. Curiosity, yes that’s the exact word that drive me to search little deeper.

Start with very little information got from the net, and equip with the only map got from “Pulau Umang” website, we decided to go there just to have a look on that site, who knows we may bring our family or friends here.

It’s a medium distance drive from Jakarta, about 5 hours drive. Depart on 4.30 in the morning, we took Jakarta-Serang Tol then Exit in Serang Timur then facing to Pandeglang trough inland route. It is not an easy road actually, since it is a primary economic route from Serang to Pandegelang, we have to struggle against large trucks and Intercity Buses. Many people said that taking this road is the shortest path to go to pandegelang, but for me, it is unpleasant drive compare with another route if we took Anyer-Carita-Pandegelang, at least there lot of Sceneries to see. For the one who like easy drive, I strongly suggest to take Anyer-Carita road rather than this one.

Passing Tanjung Lesing junction, the road was getting worse, it’s not too bad actually, if you have sedan car, then you may got some trouble, it will slow you down up to 10-20km/h, but if you have higher ground clearance car like MPV or SUV, it should not be a problem, except you’ll have much bumpy journey. This road condition will continue for next 1-2hours drive, up to a small town called Cijulang, before it getting better. You’ll find lot of “Pulau Umang” signboard that you may use it as navigation point up to another small village called Sumur, there’s a junction that you have to take a straight choice, rather than the right one (which lead you to Pulau Umang harbor front). Start from this junction, you still has to drive about 6km further before you reach the resorts.

First impression, the resorts complex is huge, but build “as is” with letting the original environment grow like they should be. No fancy artificial garden or water fountain or whatever that you may find on several resorts. It just a bunch of trees grow on top of white sands ……… yes! It is real white sand!

The beach it self is very wide sand beach, white sands, blue and clear seawater, it reminds me to Dreamland or Nusadua Beach in Bali, and it has almost no sea waves. Very calm beach. Very beautiful ………………. According to local people there, this is the only one beach that has such kind of sands. We are lucky, since the weather is very clear so that you may watch the blue sky, blue sea and white sands very clearly.

Next to the beach, there’s a large swimming pool in front of the main building which is a restaurant, well, it is not a well managed restaurant, they serve very minimum level of food choice, but at least you may have “Udang goring a’la Ciputih” or “Ayam Masak Kecap”, but the unique thing about the place is, you may enter up to the kitchen to talk with the cook even you may borrow their equipments to mess with your stuff.

Facing the beach, there are unpopulated isle called pulau mangir, you may have to go there by renting a boat from “Sumur”, if you like snorkeling this isle is a good spot for you. It has a wide white sand beach, mixed with very clear water with lot of live corals beneath. It’s about 1m deep and you may have very fun snorkeling there, but have to be cautious since you will find difficulties to step on it.

One thing that you should prepare is about food, since the place is very remote, they do not have proper logistic, more over the room rate is not include breakfast, the best way for you is to bring your own logistic, instant-noodle, preserve food is very recommended, otherwise, you may go to sumur in the morning to go to “Fish Market”, you may buy some fresh-fish just landed from “Bagan” and ask the kitchen to cook it, they will charge you Rp. 15.000/kg, fried or BBQ. But no prawn and crabs, just fish and Squid. If you may want to have prawn, you have to buy it once you enter panimbang long the way before you reach Sumur.

In Overall, this place is marvelous! It has been our favorite destination recently; we’ve been here three times just in less than 6 months, even though we have to take 6 hour drive from Jakarta, it doesn’t matter!

A little tips: do not go there during Nov – Mar since it has west wind seasons, you’ll find larger sea waves that usual and (off course) rain, not recommended!