Didn’t I tell you…

Didn’t I tell you I would be back?

Well, I did. Sometime ago, I told the Malay lady that I would be back because the last time I dropped by, I ordered mihun (rice vermicelli) but she served me mee (noodles) instead. She apologised for her mistake but I said that it was all right and I would go there again for her mihun the next time around.

That was in May and it was already the end of July before I managed to keep my word and went to eat her fried mihun special (RM3.50)…

…which came with a fried egg and a serving of her special beef…

…and also a calamansi lime to squeeze over all of that…

It was all right but I think I prefer her mee…

*recycled pic*

…but then again, I would always prefer mee to mihun…so some people may not quite agree with me. Which one would you rather have?

Signed, sealed, delivered…

This came by special delivery the other day…

What a big box! Who had sent it? What was inside? I opened it quickly and was just as mystified when I saw the box…

Now, who on earth would send me an electric kettle? Whatever for?

When I opened the box, I found this box of rendang paste…

…and a packet of seaweed ramen…

…some heong peah from Teluk Intan…

…and a box of Malacca’s Tan Kim Hock dodol…

It certainly was so very nice and thoughtful of the sender to send these over just for me…but good grief! The postal charges were astronomical! But thanks so much, anyway…

Now, I will have to see what I can send in return…

From the inside…

Here, one of the options that you can choose for breakfast would be the gu tor (beef tripe) noodles…

I have heard of two places in town that people claim are good but I have yet to go and try myself. I had this one at the coffee shop at the back portion of the Sibu Medical Centre here…at RM3.70 a bowl.

This is the soup version and if I remember correctly, I had a post on it before – the dry version…which is actually kampua kosong (the noodles without meat) and the beef tripe soup served separately in a bowl.

You will need this special homemade chili sauce for the tripe…

…for it does not go so well with ordinary bottled chili sauce.

No doubt it’s a bit pricey…but it’s quite popular and at least, it is nice and something different that  one can have for a change.

Made of clay…

Through gritted teeth and forcing myself to ignore the misspelt and ungrammatical name in English, I went and try this new place in town located at the back portion of this coffee shop.

I had the cray…I mean, claypot bak kut teh (herbal pork bone soup)…

…which tasted quite good especially for people who consider strong herbal tastes in their food as somewhat medicinal and get put off by it but I would prefer it to be a little bit stronger. That was RM8.00, together with a bowl of rice.

My missus had the claypot chicken…

…which was also nice but nothing more than chicken in soy sauce cooked in a claypot. It certainly would be nicer with some dried chilies and maybe some bits of salted fish to enhance the taste…and perhaps a sprinkling of cashew nuts as well. This one was slightly cheaper – RM7.00 with rice.

We also had the sio bee (meat dumplings)…

…which certainly looked more like the local Sibu Foochow-style ones and not like anything from Taipei as the name of the place claims…and come to think of it, do they have bak kut teh in Taipei? I thought I read somewhere that it is actually a Malaysian dish? I also had the sio bee at this other place that specialises in Taiwanese cuisine and theirs were quite different, I must say.

Anyway, these were RM4.00 for five, so it works out to 80 sen each. Like the rest of the stuff that we had, I thought that they tasted all right but you would not see me going back there again for these. There are nicer ones elsewhere and cheaper too.

So, on the whole, what we tried was not bad, this much I would say…but others may see it in a much more favourable light. Period.

So long, so long…

It is indeed so very long – this longhouse at Rantau Kemeding in Kanowit…

…sited along the very serene Kanowit River…

I came here for the Gawai Dayak Festival way back in 1978 and 1979, if I remember correctly but of course, it was not as nice then…

In my previous post, I mentioned that Philip and I went to Kanowit and we bumped into an old friend who brought us here on a wonderful guided tour of the place. Being linked to Kanowit town by tar road, it is now conveniently accessible by car unlike way back then, when we had to use an outboard-engine powered longboat…or walk/cycle along a small pebbled lane all the way to the longhouse.

If you look from where I was standing in the ruai (the common area or community hall in the longhouse), it is very long on this side…

…and even longer down the other side…

We were lucky because they had visitors that day so the people at the longhouse were all prepared to welcome them.

There was their traditional rice wine – the tuak…

…and all these – I’m not too sure but I’ve seen people using the pop-rice (like how people make pop corn) for the mering or blessing ceremony…

Then there was the ranyai…

…a banana tree from which they hang all kinds of goodies. They will dance around the tree with a parang (traditional sword) and try to cut the strings. If anything gets cut loose and drops from the tree, that will be the prize for the dancer.

Of course, for the welcoming, they had some dancers all ready to do the ngajat (traditional dance)…

…and there was the “music band” in attendance…

In a longhouse, the families will stay in their own bilik which is like a house by itself with its own sitting room, bedrooms, kitchen and all…so in essence, a longhouse is like a terrace house except that they share a common ruai and verandah. I entered the bilik belonging to the tuai rumah (headman) and look at what I saw!

The complete set of Encyclopedia Americana…

…and lots of English books – including Ernest Hemingway’s biography…

…and Mario Pusi’s “The Godfather – glimpses at our illustrious colonial past and our English education in days gone by.

Well, if anybody happens to be interested, you can log in to their website: http://rantaukemiding.blogspot.com and if you want to drop by on a visit, the tuai rumah‘s contact numbers are 084-753563 or 013-8823076.

I certainly enjoyed the visit so much…and I met my friend’s mother who could still remember me and an ex-student of mine who now has a grown-up daughter. Gee! How time flies and how things have changed over the years!

I was here…

I was here…

…in Kanowit town back in 1978 – my first posting after graduating as a teacher.

I loved the kampua noodles then…

…and I love it now.

Philip and I went on a leisurely drive to Kanowit last Saturday – he grew up there and moved away when he was 10. The first thing we did upon arrival  was to go for the noodles and we also had this bowl of pian sip soup…

This particular noodle stall that I’ve always liked is now at a different place – as far as I know, this is the 4th since I was in Kanowit so very long ago. The present coffee shop where it has relocated has no name except for the old sign board for what that place used to be…

I remember seeing that but I cannot recall exactly what was there.

I rented this little room above the corner shop…

…and stayed there for over two years. It had the morning sun on one side…and the afternoon sun on the side wall so you can imagine how hot it was by nightfall.

This primary school, St Francis Xavier’s, was just a stone’s throw away but I understand it is now used as the boys’ hostel…

The school itself has moved to its new premises…

Wouldn’t it be nice if Melissa could be posted there when she has graduated? It would be like history repeating itself – like father, like daughter. LOL!!!

We did not explore further as we happened to bump into an old friend of mine and she took us on a wonderful guided tour of her longhouse but that would be in the next post.

Upon returning to town from the longhouse it was already midday and we did not want to roam around anymore in the tiring heat so we decided to head back to Sibu. We did stop by Fort Emma – built by Charles Brooke, the second White Rajah of Sarawak…

…on the way and I managed to take a photograph of the mighty Rejang from where the fort is.

I loved the place and I still do – that little town will always have a special place in my heart, that’s for sure.

I’m on fire…

My missus and I went out for a bite the other evening but our original destination was not open and eventually we ended up at Taman Selera Muhibbah, an open air hawker centre located not far from my house.

I was delighted that my regular satay stall there was already open for business even though it was not 7.00 p.m. yet…

Now, doesn’t she look nice and neat…and clean? At some of those satay stalls, you see those dark, skinny and scruffy-looking kids dressed up like “Mat Rempits” and the mere sight of them would you think twice about eating what they cook.

All the sticks of satay were nicely laid out on the grill over the hot burning charcoal fire…

…to be barbecued to perfection…

…and eaten with the delicious and spicy peanut gravy provided…

You dip the meat into the gravy like this…

…bite it and pull it off the skewer and eat. Yum! Yum!

For RM1.00, you get three sticks and we had 10 chicken and 20 beef…and that cost RM10.00. Cheap! And very very nice! Anybody wants satay?

Leaving tomorrow…

Gerard, my ex-student who incidentally is also my godson, was back in Sibu for the mid-year holidays but for some reason, we did not manage to get to meet until last Friday for lunch and he would be leaving the very next day for Melbourne, Australia where he is currently pursuing his tertiary education.

I had difficulty looking for a parking space around town and eventually, we ended up at this place where we went to the last time he was back in Sibu…with Philip‘s son, Michael, from the US.

I ordered their special blended kopi-o-peng (iced black coffee) which would be served looking something like this…

Anybody would think that this was iced coffee with milk, don’t you think?

Slowly, the bubbles would rise… and the coffee would get darker…

…and at the end of it all, it would look something like Guiness stout…

I like the coffee here but I do not get to drink it often as normally, I would come here for dinner and I would not want to drink coffee in case I could not get to sleep the whole night through after that.

Now, what did we have for lunch? We had the sweet and sour fish fillet…

…and the sizzling venison on a hot plate…

…and this plate of fried cangkuk manis with egg…

Personally, I feel that nobody does it better than this restaurant. We also had the Foochow-style tofu soup…but I forgot to snap a picture of that. All in all, the bill came up to RM33.00 for the food alone, four dishes altogether.

Well, I certainly hope you had a pleasant flight back to Oz the following day, Gerard…and I guess I’ll be seeing you again at the end of this year when  you come back for the summer holidays. Take care there, God bless.

Somewhere else…

My daughter loves these…

…but since I became ultra-sensitive to msg, I’ve stopped going to the place where we used to go as I seem to feel uneasy after eating probably due to the excessive use of the stuff.

I’ve tried a number of other places but did not think they are up to the mark.

Pian sip, as these are called, are our local Foochow-style wantan but the skin is very different – whitish, thinner and soft – not chewy or firm as in the case of wantan skin. Cooking it, as in the case of kampua noodles as well, can be quite a challenge as you would need to do it just right – not overdone lest it becomes too soft and soggy.

The other day, I decided to try the ones here (RM2.50)…

…and I liked it a lot.

The meat looks a bit more substantial than at other places, the texture of the skin was just right and the amount of ingredients used to toss the pian sip as well. I also noticed that the lady adds chopped spring onions to the meat…

…which further enhances the taste of the pian sip and makes it nicer.

I certainly would take my daughter to this one when she comes home…

Guilty…

If Cleffairy were to accuse me of putting up this post with the sole intention of torturing Annie-Q, I would definitely plead guilty as charged as she would be so darn right! LOL!!!

You see, in her comment the other day, Annie said, “Did you just mention ‘quinee’??? WOW!! So so long I never had quinee, I love quinee, very nice smell and yummy!!! Slurp slurp. Quinee also got season one right? Hmmmm….“

Well, it used to be seasonal but with global warming and climatic changes in the world today, even Mother Nature is totally confused. If you look at my neightbour’s trees at this point in time, one is flowering…

…while on the other tree, the fruits are about ready to fall off…

In the past, it used to be hot and arid around the middle of the year and wet and gloomy around year-end when all the fruits would appear in the market – durians, dabai (black olives), lenggeng or mata kucing, langsat, manggis (mangosteen) and a whole lot of others.  That was what we would call the fruit season then but these days, it is no longer so predictable. The fruits would appear at odd times and sometimes in abundance while at other times, there would just be a bit and they would cost a bomb.

Quinee is quite common here probably because it is easy to plant and does not need much care and attention unlike the Thai mango…or worse, the coconut mango or the apple mango varieties. But some of the fruits may be too fibrous and are generally not very popular. I had two big trees in my garden before – the fruits were the best in town but at one stage, the trees were infested with bees. The dreaded insects would come in the daytime and by nightfall, I would see them flying home, wherever that was, in one big thick black cloud. Because of their presence, I was afraid to let my daughter out of the house in case she got stung and eventually, I had to engage some people to come and chop the trees down and take everything – leaves, branches and trunks away.

It was a pity really for everytime the trees started bearing fruits…

…I was able to go round distributing them to all my relatives and friends in town and after a couple of rounds, there would still be a lot left and I would take them to the fruit sellers in town. At RM1.00 per fruit and 80 sen if they were a bit smaller, I was able to make at least RM200-300 each time.

I do not eat it myself though for even after one slice…

…I would feel as if I am coming down with a sore throat or a fever so whenever my neighbour’s would drop on my side of the fence, I would just throw them back. You want some, Annie? Muahahahaha!!!!