Surprise…

Actually I was expecting a group of cousins to drop by Sibu for a brief visit over the weekend so it certainly was a pleasant surprise when I received an sms from another cousin telling me that she and her mum – my aunt who is my mum’s youngest sister, her daughter and her sister would all be in town the following day. Ain’t that great? Finally, there would be a lot of people coming to town.

They arrived at around 5.00 p.m. and after taking them to pay my bedridden mum a visit, I took them out for dinner at the Payung Cafe here. Of course I ordered my favourites for them to try – the belimbing prawns, the special otak-otak and the mushroom roll…and I took the opportunity to try the Payung rojak…

I had expected it to be like the Indonesian gado-gado but it turned out to be more like Penang fruit rojak except that in place of the pineapples, sengkuang and what not, they used an assortment of raw vegetables and slices of taukwa (beancurd cake) instead. On the whole, the combination turned out great and I would not mind ordering that again on my next visit.

I was somewhat disappointed with the kacang ma chicken though…

At best, it was just so-so – nothing like what we would cook for ourselves at home. It was not “hiam” enough probably from the lack of ginger or ginger juice and there was insufficient wine. Normally we would add so much that we would end up intoxicated after feasting on it.

For dessert, we shared the double orders of jelly pisang and the banana cake with chocolate ice cream.

My auntie loved the ambiance of the place saying that it reminded her of Bali.

And look at what my niece brought back for me all the way from the UK! A memorabilia from the recent Prince William and Kate Middleton royal wedding!

I can’t remember who it was that received some commemorative souvenirs from a friend by post and I was green with envy. All I had was a postage stamp on a card that my daughter sent from New Zealand. Well, now I would have this very nice tin for keeps…after feasting on the Walkers’ Scottish shortbread inside. Yum! Yum!

Well, as I have mentioned earlier, another group of cousins would be arriving the following morning so you can expect some more posts on what we would be doing/eating during their brief stay here. Stay tuned!