The warung is the testing ground for a boy’s first love, a refuge for inebriates, and the equivalent of a smoking room for the village gents. There are both long-established warung and those that materialize overnight for temple festivals, market days cockfights, and dance performances. It’s where one fully indulges one’s sweet tooth or partakes of brem and arak.
These remarkably well-stocked makeshift food stall/cafes feature several hard wooden benches, the back support built into the structure. The warung is a simple affair of bamboo walls and thatch roof. A platform bed is often attached for lounging, napping, gossiping and eating. The food is cooked and water boiled in the back. Shutters fold down at night, securing the contents.
Farmers stop here before going to the fields or to work repairing roads : in the late morning they stop in morning. The warung is the men’s club of Bali. The enterprise is often run by coquettish teenagers looking for a boyfriend or husband. If the girl is particularly beautiful, boys will come from the sorrounding villages just to buy things from her. A male will order hot tea or coffee so he can flirt longer. Some boys will come with a new motorcycle (smoking ass or jit mekudus) or a new watch to impress her.
Late night warung, lit invitingly by hissing gas lamp are popular with bemo drivers, small traders, truck drivers and imsomniac sufferers. Caste, age, social status dissapear in the proletarian atmosphere of the warung. They’re great sources of gossip, and unfettered and spirited conversation is the order of the day.
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