DINE AT A JAVANESE ELDER’S HOME

At Pak Bilal’s home (pictured, right), a gamelan plays softly as diners arrive via a candlelit path. In the kitchen at the local elder’s bamboothatched house on the Indonesian island of Java, a cook fans bananaleaf parcels over coals.

The chefs, waiters, food and glassware are all from Amanjiwo (aman.com), the magical Amanrun resort carved from stone in the jungle of central Java. Pak Bilal supplies the authentic setting and cross-cultural interaction while diners enjoy prawn soup with wood ear mushrooms, fish curry and, of course, sambal and rice.

After dinner, if you’re lucky, there will be a jatilan show at a nearby village. It’s a disappearing Javanese art form that Aman is trying to preserve by supporting the shows whenever they happen.

The audience waiting at the makeshift bamboo arena is mostly young families, which is surprising because this is not what you’d call a PG-rated performance.

Chanting and drums set the mood as men with dyed-red faces and animal markings crash into the arena like crazed monsters. The holy man, or dukun, recites spells to send dancers into a trance. Spirits seize their minds and frenzy their bodies as five men on broomstick horses charge in. And then all hell breaks loose and the kids’ eyes almost pop out of their heads.

It would be easy to spend every waking hour at the magnificent Amanjiwo resort but Java will keep calling you away: to witness dawn from the rooftop stupas of Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist temple, and afterwards to breakfast on a neighbouring hill as elephants amble by. Or to hike to an eighth-century temple through rice paddies, always with an eye on the simmering Mount Sumbing volcano. It’s nothing at all like Bali, in the best possible way.