Stopping by…

I remember I did drive into the town once when my friend had to go there for whatever reason I cannot remember now but we did not stop and I did not get to go anywhere either. So when my friend, Mandy, suggested going some place during my short trip to the peninsula, I proposed going to Malacca on a day trip and stopping by Seremban along the way.

“So, Seremban, here I come!!!”

It is a nice little town – bigger than Sibu though not necessarily nicer…

…and what is this? Hey! It’s our very own Sibu cold storage company!!!

Yeah!!! Sibu boleh!!! LOL!!!

We headed straight to the market…

…and it was Mandy who commented that the one in Sibu is much nicer. Well, I guess ours is newer and better-maintained so everything looks more neatly-arranged and cleaner.

The two of us went upstairs to where the hawker stalls are…

…and I would say that the air circulation there is much better so the place is quite airy and not hot unlike the one in Sibu which I would avoid like a plague as it is more often than not so very hot and stuffy and I cannot imagine how I can enjoy eating in such an uncomfortable environment.

I wanted to try the Hakka mee that I had read about in some blogs, praising it to the skies…

…but honestly, I did not think it was that great. No, no, don’t get me wrong! It was quite nice, not too bad really but our kampua noodles and the Kuching kolo mee are better…or to me, at least. I am sure it was supposed to be dry…but you find the sauce or whatever filling up almost half the bowl underneath the noodles. They probably forgot to add the minced pork that day but I think what I had here would win hands down.

Mandy ordered the sui kao (meat dumplings)…

…and it came looking like this. Now, where were the fried shallots, the chopped spring onions? Inside, it was all meat – the ones we have here (made by some guy from Selangor) or the ones here have prawns inside and of course, they taste a lot smoother, not as coarse, and are much nicer.

I ordered the kopi-o-peng…

…and I noticed that the people there are kind of possessive over their things. Gosh!!! All that green paint on the glass! Here, they would just put a dot at the bottom of the glass so it would not be so starkingly obvious. LOL!!!

They kept telling me that I must try the beef noodles which unfortunately was on the other side but the nice lady from the drinks stall went over to order a bowl for us. When it was served, both Mandy and I were somewhat surprised as it did not look like what we had expected…

The brown sauce was not that great – I would expect it to have some beef taste, like Bovril perhaps, but it was not like that in any way. Then, instead of noodles, they used something like the big mihun or what we call hung ngang in Sibu…or the noodles that you would find in Penang assam laksa or one of those big and fat Japanese noodles…

Normally, when it comes to beef noodles, we would get yellow noodles in clear beef soup or for the dry version, we would have something like kampua or kolo mee – kosong, that is without all the meat and stuff served with beef soup and all the meat, tendon and gu tor (beef stomach) would be inside like what we have here. All right, as it was, I would say that it tasted fine but between the two, I think the Hakka mee was nicer. Even the complimentary soup with the beef balls inside tasted bland, unlike the soup at beef noodle stalls elsewhere.

I did notice while we were there that they had a very wide selection at a chap fan (mixed rice) stall there and everything really looked so very delicious. Well, it was too early for lunch and anyway, we were saving up for Malacca so we did not get to try that.

After leaving the market, Mandy took me here…

…and I saw this eating place that I’ve seen in some blogs before right across the road from where we were…

Unfortunately, we were already too full so we did not bother to hop over to check what they had to offer there.

Here, they certainly have a lot of stuff…

…but I really did not know what was nice and what I should buy. That is why I always say that when you visit a place, it would be best to have a local to take you around and show you what is good and what isn’t.

Mandy said that she bought some of these for her colleagues…

…and they all loved them a lot so I bought a number of packets to bring home to Sibu. I’ve tried it already but let’s put it this way. Had I tried it there, I would not have bothered buying and carrying it all the way home. It was like any local-made cookie, floury and a little bit sweet. My missus did not think much of it either and felt that the walnut cookies that smallkucing and Yee Ling bought for me were a lot nicer. I did not buy any of their sio pao (baked buns) either as I’ve never been a fan of those.

After that, we left town. I’m afraid I did not really see much of it or drop by any places of interest…so perhaps I would have to go again someday and maybe stay there for a night or two…and perhaps I might come across some things there that I would really like.