Paleo in Bali

When a family wedding prompted us to come to Bali, we decided to extend the trip a bit more and spend a total of 4 weeks on (mostly) Bali. With travel come challenges, and usually they are language, transportation and food. The first 2 are, IMHO, things to get used to, but if you follow a "diet" that eliminates rice, then traveling to Asia can be a challenge. So before we embarked on our trip, we decided not make things hard for ourselves and eat as local as possible.
Honestly, in any situation I'd choose rice over wheat anyways. Besides rice, a few other obstacles were sure to be on our path:

Soy
Mostly in oils and sauces, the chances are we'll have food that contains it.

Peanuts
In particular, satay sauce. And it so happens I love satay sauce. Seriously, this stuff goes with anything and I plan to have it. Period.

Organic?
The real strict paleoers will say that food has to be organic, but until now my experience is that organic isn't a very common thing here. Personally I don't think you have to buy organic in order to eat paleo, so this will not be an issue as well. Funny enough the organic eggs I wanted to cook this morning turned out to be rotten, so that's out too.

MSG
It's found a lot in all sorts of products, so carefully read labels whenever possible. Note that it is sometimes labeled as E621.

Choosing your meals.

It's a smart idea to research a bit beforehand what things are, especially if you want to eat local food. Some of the foods translated:
chicken - ayam

pork - babi

egg - telur

vegetables - sayur

fish - ikan

fried - goreng

Beef is less common, but most tourist restaurants will have it on their menu.

Meals will pretty much always be served with rice, but you can easily create a paleo meal from most menus at a "warung". Looks for places that have a quick turn over to avoid unpleasant belly issues. 

Drinks

Finding a paleo beverage can be trickier, since sugary drinks are also popular with the locals. Wine is extremely expensive, as are spirits, so your best choices are tea, coffee, water and coconut water.

Add a bit of lime to your coconut water and you have an amazing refreshing drink! 

Another favourite, albeit a bit more sugary, is watermelon juice.

To be continued..