I have a theory about Indonesian food: the cheaper the price is, the better it tastes. At least that's how it generally is for me.

At the moment I live in Bandung, the capital city of the province of West Java. It's a quite famous city mostly for the nice cool weather (unlike the hell that is Jakarta); the tourism spots; the old Dutch buildings; and of course: the food. I love this city.

Except on Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays.
Because on these days thousands of people from Jakarta would come here to spend the weekend causing traffic jam. I don't understand them, really. Bandung is only two hours away from Jakarta by car, and I get that Jakarta's so HOT and CROWDED that they need some time away, preferably to a nice and calm place, but when they come here (and by they I mean tens of thousands of them), they bring the hotness and the crowdedness of Jakarta with them.

Okay, back to my food theory. I spend about 30,000 rupiah ($3.00-yes, three dollars) for my daily meals on average. But that is when I'm being greedy and careless and when money is the last thing I need to worry about. Sometimes, when I'm being stingy on myself I would only use 15.000 to eat.

But in Indonesia, IDR 15.000 is enough. Some even consider it more than enough. Interesting, huh?

So here's my daily meal routine. For breakfast, after my morning run, I usually have milk and half-boiled egg (it's good for restoring energy). The egg costs about idr 500. that is, about 5 cents. Two glasses of milk cost probably about idr 3.000-that's 30 cents.

I have my lunch at school, and since I'm a scholarship student (gee this makes me sound so smart-a scholarship student haha), the lunch is free. Usually we get to choose our lunch packages everyday: sphagetti and mango juice, nasi goreng (fried rice) and chicken, and so on.

But usually after school, about 4 or 5 in the afternoon, I will get hungry. So I would stop at a cake shop and get myself a "pisang goreng keju", fried banana with cheese (usually also with palm suiker), for 3500 idr. Here's how a "pisang goreng keju" looks like:



It's YUMMY, trust me!

And for dinner, it's really random. Sometimes I go for McD's or steak or sea food. Usually I will have indonesian food. But I will never, ever, go to Indonesian-food restaurants. Not only because they're extremely expensive (it's actually only 10 american dollars at most but it's equivalent with 25 litres of gasoline here), but mostly because they don't taste that good. I know, strange huh? But like I said, good indonesian food is cheap indonesian food.

So I will go to a warung (a small restaurant) and eat nasi timbel. It is rice packed with banana leaf (and it smells good) usually served with chicken and tempe and sambal. And for only idr 8500 you will enjoy this:



So, in total, I spend about 15.500 on meals a day. A dollar and fifty cents. And I'm full and happy!