For over 600 years, Paphos was the basic of Cyprus, and it's a adorable abode to breach - all you accept to adjudge is how abutting to the sea you appetite to be! If you adulation to be abutting to the bank and the action, accept Kato Pafos, the lower allotment of boondocks accurate the celebrated harbour area. For added accord and quiet, and amazing angle beyond the sea, accept Upper Pafos, or Ktima as it is known. A Cyprus car appoint additionally gives you the advantage to appoint a alcazar on the outskirts and drive into Pafos whenever you like; there are big, chargeless car parks in both genitalia of town.
The aboriginal affair you apparently appetite to do on your anniversary in Pafos is arctic out for a day or so. Get pleasure the beaches or your auberge pool, or booty a affable airing forth the sea advanced to the old harbour area. Here, you can get pleasure a adequate cafeteria at one of the abounding harbourside restaurant, complete with citizen pelicans allurement for scraps! In the evening, there are affluence of bounded confined and a hasty cardinal of adopted cuisine restaurants in both genitalia of Paphos.
Whatever you do, don't absence the world-famous mosaics of Pafos. Feel like an added from Gladiator for a morning, as you aberrate through the charcoal of the old Roman town, and the bristles arresting Roman villas that accept been excavated. Here, the affluent Roman owners showed off their affluence and cachet by giving their homes the best big-ticket adornment possible, intricately-made circuitous floors. Then, airing to the adjacent Byzantine alcazar of Saranda Kolnes, breadth the kids can let off beef aggressive over the broke battlements.
Now, your Cyprus rental car starts to pay off! Aloof a abbreviate drive arctic of Pafos are the Tombs of the Kings, amazing rock-cut tombs, created during the activity of Cyprus by the Egyptians and Romans. Attractive like mini-temples, it's a adorable (and shady) adventitious for a hot summer's day.
Banana snack industry goes stale
Not so long ago, the Central Java town of Majenang was famous for being the home of sale pisang, a unique snack made with bananas, but recently the market changed and the local snack industry faded to a fraction of its former success.
Majenang, one of 23 districts in Cilacap regency in the far west of the province - bordering with Banjar and Ciamis regencies in West Java - has about 30 small factories producing the snack.
Before the 1998 economic crisis, there were around 100 such producers, leading Cilacap administration to come up with the idea of making the snack the icon of Majenang.
But with the crisis, the plan hit snags and many cottage industries were forced out of business. More than a decade later, the situation has yet to improve.
"Before the crisis I could sell 2 or 3 tons of fried banana sweets to Jakarta. But things are difficult now," Yayat, a 61-year-old sale pisang business owner, told The Jakarta Post in Majenang.
Today, Yayat produces only about 200 kilograms of sale pisang a month, and 99 percent of this is sold in Majenang. The snacks are sold in 250-gram packages, each costing around Rp 25,000 (US$2).
Another snack producer, Juremi, said that before the crisis she could send 2 tons of sale pisang to Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya each month.
"Now we only sell sale pisang for the local market," the 60-year-old said.
Juremi said most of the snack producers were struggling to survive.
"What's important is that business survives. If there are buyers in the city, that's enough. Sometimes we get an order from outside the city, but this is unreliable," she said.
"Once, a distributor from outside the city wanted to place an order, but the price he offered was too low to cover our production costs. Rather than suffering losses, we preferred not to take it."
Making sale pisang does not take long. Ripe bananas are cut into slices and dried in the sun.
"If the sun is bright, the bananas will dry out in two days. But in a rainy season like this, it takes about four days," Juremi said.
The dried bananas are then smeared with flour and deep-fried. After being drained, the banana chips are ready to be packaged and sold.
The sale pisang business has supported many, including farmers and traders who sell raw bananas to cottage industries in Majenang, as well as banana snack makers such as Juremi and Yayat, and the vendors.
Majenang district head, Heru Susedyo, said he was aware of the stagnant business situation.
"Sale pisang was once so popular that the Cilacap administration planned to make it the icon of Majenang city, but the plan could not be realized because sales keep decreasing."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/03/06/
Tuesday 23 September 2008
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