Bottoms up: Navigating menus in Indonesia can be a challenge for tourists. Especially if you don't notice this one detail. Photo / Rendy Novak, Unsplash
Bottoms up: Navigating menus in Indonesia can be a challenge for tourists. Especially if you don't notice this one detail. Photo / Rendy Novak, Unsplash
An Aussie tourist has been left red faced and out of pocket in Indonesia after a menu mix up anyone could make.
The tourist from Kalgoorlie was in Bali, celebrating a special birthday with friends, and had booked somewhere special to mark the occasion.
They thought they would ‘push the outrigger boat out’ and go somewhere they wouldn’t normally go. Feeling flash, they asked to look at the wine menu and took a look at the bottom of the page.
“We usually don’t drink wine when in Bali due to the cost and average wine on offer but this time I decided I would splash out on a bottle of wine given the occasion,” he confessed in a post to the Bali Bogans Facebook group.
He asked for a bottle of Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet. The rather grand sounding bottle of 2004 Grand Cru came with an equally grand price tag.
“Definitely a bit more than I would even pay in Australia but it was a birthday celebration right? AU$170 isn’t too bad so I said to the waiter, we will have that bottle please. The waiter paused and said, ‘are you sure sir?’”
This was sign number one that he might have overlooked something on the menu.
Corked: Foreign wine is a luxury item in Bali, but the tourist hadn't realised the cost of this particular bottle. Photo / Facebook
“I scoffed at him and said ‘yup no worries’. (like how dare he think I’m not good for a $170 bottle of wine) anyway the wine was consumed along with a delicious dinner and at one point the chef came out to introduce himself.”
Sign number two of the bill awaiting the table.
“I did think at the time it was strange but I just assumed it’s a nice restaurant and didn’t think about it again.”
The group settled up for the bill without looking and left. Still something was weighing on his mind about the waiter’s strange reaction to the bottle.
It was only the next morning that the tourist realised his mistake, when he logged into his internet banking to check the cost of the mystery bottle.
To his horror he saw a charge for over AU$2000 from the previous night. Rummaging around in his pockets he found the receipt listing the bottle at closer to $1,700.
The wine list was in 100′s of thousands of Indonesian Rupiah, not tens of thousands.
It wasn’t the tourist’s first visit to Bali and he said it wouldn’t be his last, but he would check menus more carefully next time.
“That meal actually cost more than the entire holiday,” he wrote.
Rupiah, Lakh the dreaded Plus Plus
On the resort island of Bali, navigating a menu is more than simply knowing the conversion rate.
With an exchange rate of just under INR10,000 to $1 many menus will round off a few zeros to save space. Make sure you read the menu properly, or you could be left with a not insignificant rounding error.
In southeast Asia, luxury items will often use ‘Lakh Rupiah’ - a unit of 100,000 rupiah - for efficiency. Travellers should beware the subtle capital ‘L’ following price tags. It makes a big difference.
Another oddity in Indonesia, Singapore and parts of Malaysia are menus is the Plus and Plus Plus (++) after items.
A single “+” will mean plus taxes, “++” means taxes PLUS mandatory service charge. It is common in tourist hot spots and hospitality.
A + will add an additional 10 to 20 per cent in goods and service charges, that could be closer to 30 per cent for bills with a “++” at popular tourist destinations.
