Plataran Menjangan Resort & Spa

I want to believe that in Bali, the gods allowed me to occupy the exact room assigned to me somewhere in a great big forest to help me make sense of the overwhelming things I was about to witness there. You see, I and my companions were at the western leg of our Bali journey, inside the West Bali National Park, and have just settled in at the Plataran Menjangan Resort & Spa. The resort is right inside the 19,000-hectare park, within the 382-hectare Eco-Development Area under Plataran Menjangan’s care and supervision. Therefore, I was expecting nature and wildlife to obviously characterize my stay.

Instead, in Plataran Menjangan, I would experience nature and take pleasure from it through Balinese artistic expression – through the Balinese people’s unique gestures, their cuisine and handiworks, and their culture that reveres nature. Plataran Menjangan is an expression as well. It’s everything that it does within the grounds entrusted to it. For starters, I’d say it’s a fascinating villa that looks like it conjured its own identical twin in the heart of a forest.

The guest villas at Plataran Menjangan incorporates airy, open spaces; traditional Balinese art decor, comfortable furnishings and modern amenities

Seeing double in a good way

I stayed at the two-bedroom forest villa with our copy editor, technically two conjoined villas with a double leaf door at the center to give us access to each other’s room should we need to. When I peeked into his villa—I’d really rather call it a villa instead of just a room because it’s complete—I was amazed at the mirroring of elements of my villa in his. There’s the marriage of Balinese and Javanese architecture; the seductively curtained canopy bed; the two-part bathroom bearing a stone bathtub; finely crafted wooden furniture; paintings, sculptures, and carvings; the heavenly high ceiling and sheer breadth of space.

Upon inspection of another villa, specifically the ocean front pool villa, I saw the same Balinese imprints in design exhibited. Every space in Plataran Menjangan’s villas, every wood carving of a leaf or a flower, is nature’s tangible reflection.

General Manager Najib Abdullah,

The three pillars

I hardly asked Najib Abdullah, Plataran Menjangan’s general manager, about Balinese artistry so evident in the whole resort, because my agenda was to inquire about the resort being an eco-resort. I wanted to know why the Plataran brand chose to situate itself inside a national park where it would naturally be bound by environmental mandates. Could it not have just found land outside the park and freely operate? I asked him, “Why do you guys want a headache?”

Najib did not falter in his answer: it’s all about commitment. And while he has worked for numerous luxury and five-star properties around the world, it’s his first time handling a five-star eco-tourism property. This makes it easier for him to see the distinction of Plataran Menjangan from all the rest—Plataran’s commitment is its identity.

“Nature. Community. Culture. These are the three pillars of the Plataran brand,” Najib shared. He explained that being an eco-resort right inside a national park isn’t about choosing to do things the hard way. Rather, it’s about being true to their identity as Plataran, which helps guests experience nature not as transients but as partners. Thus, the resort is heavily invested in endemic tree planting, bird conservation via the Bali Starling Sanctuary, and more environmental efforts. The 382 hectares that the resort occupies is its full responsibility to protect and cultivate. This doesn’t intimidate the likes of Najib at all. It’s a duty he sees as revelatory: “It changed my mentality and foresight.”

Top: Lawar Kacang and sate lilit; Bottom: Chef Dawa leads the asianTraveler team's Balinese cooking class; the team busy preparing ingredients,

Nature in three courses

When I heard we’d be given a Balinese cooking class, I didn’t think of it as a nature-focused activity, until I held the ingredients sourced from the village. As Najib discussed, they work with Balinese suppliers: “All our vegetables and chicken, we source from within a 5-kilometer radius.” Not only was I about to cook Balinese but I would also do it farm-to-table style.

We started by preparing bumbu genep or complete spice paste. I sliced ginger, garlic, galangal, turmeric, shallots, lemongrass, candlenuts, and red chilies, then pounded them with a bit of oil, coriander, peppercorns, and kaffir lime leaves. With the guidance of Chef Dewa, I mixed the bumbu genep in our appetizer course, lawar kacang, a green long bean salad. This comes with sate lilit, a Balinese barbeque of ground meat clumped around bamboo sticks. We used ground barramundi, also mixed with bumbu genep. Never mind the worry of one of our companions about the dish being spicy, I wanted the dishes to be authentic so I kept adding sliced chilis as per recipe, all with Chef Dewa’s approval.

For the main course, it’s ayam betutu, a traditional chicken stew. I pan-seared the chicken, transferred it to the pan of sautéed spices, poured in chicken stock, and simmered this until the stock reduced. Lastly, there’s the dessert course, dadar gulung. I made pandan crepes from scratch, spreading ladles of my whisked mixture on a hot pan, then flipped them. For stuffing, I cooked pandan leaves, grated coconut, brown sugar, and ginger. After they had cooled, I placed spoonfuls of stuffing on each crepe and rolled away. I suppose I did well. I had my companions eat their recommended daily allowance of Balinese spices.

Feast on Asian, international, and fusion cuisine at The Octagon

Eyes can dance

I was glad I didn’t have to cook my every meal, though, because Plataran Menjangan’s restaurants are not to be missed. The Wantilan Open Kitchen’s heritage menu carries Balinese and Indonesian fare which we had for breakfast at the Wantilan Deck. Our dinners were at the Octagon Ocean Club, serving Asian, international, and fusion cuisine. But all these excellent dining experiences aside, there’s one Plataran Menjangan meal I had which might be my most important Bali meal—our afternoon high tea session at the grounds of our cooking class earlier, where there’s an open-air stage I didn’t even notice. As soon as we arrived for tea time, I almost forgot about the tea time, because I was instantly transfixed by the sight of seven girls in sarongs on stage, dancing to a tune played by lilting flutes and playful percussion.

I don’t know much about the history of Balinese dance except for the basics: it serves sacred and artistic purposes; women who dance it are trained as early as before they can walk by being taught the hand and finger gestures; it can be performed to entertain guests such as our awestruck bunch; and it’s unique among all other dances in the world, using expressive gestures of hands, fingers, head, and eyes.

That’s what exactly the seven girls showed us—amazing angular movements of hands, fingers, and heads, and astonishingly expressive eyes. In my whole life, I’ve never seen anyone dance with their eyes, until that moment. I could also see they were depicting the movement of animals, like chickens and fishes, with the way they walked with bent knees while craning their necks in a birdlike fashion, and swaying their hips in such a way that the arms and hands follow like fins. All these while their eyes rhythmically opened wide, or momentarily fixed to a point, then opened wide again. Suddenly, two of the girls approached me and gestured that I join them. I don’t know how to dance like they do, but who am I to turn down my hosts?

Where Nature Speaks in Balinese

Seeing double in a good way

The three pillars

Nature in three courses

Eyes can dance

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