Movin’ around…

In my previous post, I mentioned that my friend and her family from New Zealand arrived late on Saturday night. Their flight landed a little ahead of schedule at 8.25 p.m. instead of 8.35 p.m. and by around 9.15 or so, we were already back at the house.

She was not too thrilled by the Sibu Foochow fried noodles as she said they had that in Malacca and it was known as Hokkien fried noodles, something different from the KL version. They liked the Sibu Foochow-style sio bee (meat dumplings) but they went wild over the nasi kerabu…

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She said that she had that in KL before but what I had tapaoed for her from this place was soooooooo much better. We sat and chatted and ate and it was way past midnight our time, 5.00 a.m. their time in New Zealand when we went to bed.

The next morning, I let them try our Sibu Foochow Mooncake Festival biscuit – the pek guek/tong chiew peah…and She said that it tasted like the Kampar chicken biscuit. They also sampled the Foochow engagement sweet – the lay peang…and though they liked it, I don’t think they were all that thrilled by it.

After that, we all went out for breakfast. They loved the pian sip so much…

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My friend said she never liked wantan, soup or dry and would rather go without…but she loved these a lot.

She tried the Sarawak laksa and was not quite accustomed to it at first as she had expected something like curry mee or curry laksa but as she went on eating, she started to appreciate it more. Thus, it came as no surprise that subsequently, she bought so many packets of the sambal laksa home and try to cook it herself in New Zealand. She loved the kampua noodles too and it did not surprise me one bit that she was not singing its praises all that much – the noodles at that place were good but not the best in town. Then she had the toasted kompia with meat filling and she declared it the winner, hands down, over bagels. Yeah!!!! We are the champion! LOL!!! The chicken dumplings or sui jiao got the thumbs down though – at best, they were just so-so.

Then I took them to the market…and we spent around two hours there. She was so captivated by everything – so many things that she had never seen before, and the familiar ones were so unbelievably cheap…and she bought so many kilos of the hay bee (dried prawns), the ikan bilis (dried anchovies), all kinds of salted fish including the ikan sepat masin…and of course, she MUST have the ikan terubok masin. Unfortunately, the roe/eggs were not available or she would have bought those too.

After that, I took them to my regular Bandong kuih stall but it was already 11 something by then – most of the things were sold out and they were already closing up shop for the day. Some of the items were already up for sale – buy one, get one free…and we bought more nasi kerabu @ RM3.50 for two (which she said was not as nice as what I had bought from the shop the day before) and nasi lemak sambal sotong @ RM1.50 for two…

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She also bought some of the remaining Malay kuihs and of course, she enjoyed eating those as well. We dropped by my parents’ place as she insisted on making a courtesy call to visit my mum…and we ate all those that they bought at the stall there.

After that, we went back to my house to rest for a while…and they tried some dabai (black olives) which they liked – they were not ecstatic over them though…but my friend said that the cut pineapples my missus served them – the nenas madu – were the best she had ever eaten in her entire life.

They could not sit still for long and so, my missus took them shopping at the relatively Giant Hypermart, Parkson and Wisma Sanyan and they also dropped by Delta Mall…and by the time they came back, it was almost time to go out for dinner.

We went to Ruby that night but that would be in the next post…