When you live on an island in South East Asia - there are some things you have to come to grips with. For one - people hear just don't eat cheese. It's actually kind of a joke... "wow, people from the west really like cheese..." It just isn't in their normal diet.
Part of this, I think, can be explained from the cheese that is available here, which quite honestly is pretty nasty. By the time you get to a decent tasting cheese, the cost is prohibitively high for most Indonesians. Even for us, we have to selectively choose when we will include cheese in our diets. Pizza is considered a 'rich' food because of the amount of cheese involved.
We have found a "cheap cheese" store in our current city where we can get self-packaged store-brand cheese at a decent price... but in our new city, this was the best price I could find on cheese:
Around $6.50 a cup for mozzarella... and closer to $7 a cup for cheddar. While this is certainly 'doable' on our budget, it has entered the realm of 'splurge' and not an 'every day item'. Our kids will have to search out alternative snacks instead of the tried and true "cheese and crackers".
On a similar note, you'd think living on islands where the word "Java" comes from, there would be a good selection of coffee here... but the nationals, honestly, can't afford it. They mix a single cup of instant coffee, generally. The blessing for us is that Megan's brand of chosen coffee is actually available in our new city.
