It’s not far…

Last year, when my friend, Philip, was home from the US, he drove me to Bintangor and the year before that, we went to Kanowit. These are towns about an hour or so away from Sibu by road and this year, we went a little further, via the bypass/shortcut just before reaching Bintangor, to Sarikei…

This is the main town, the capital, so to speak, in a division (that comprises all the districts under its jurisdiction) on its own…

…so it is quite busy, unlike Bintangor.

This is the boat jetty by the river – the very impressively named Terminal Satu…

…and I would say that from where I stood, it did look nicer than that dreadful LCCT.

It seems to have grown a lot since the last time I was there on one of my working trips but some of the old shops are still around…

…though they do look like they need a coat of paint…and the market is there at the same place, still looking the same…

…and if you go straight ahead (you will need to go around the market though as the part in front of it is a one-way street…or so I thought), you will get to Bank Road where this coffee shop is located…

– home to the celebrated prawn noodles…

This is the tom yam version…

…which is very nice, very fragrant and despite the fact that I found one calamansi lime, unsqueezed, and one asam (tamarind) jawa seed in it, it was not really sour and was, in fact, a bit sweet. I think I would prefer it a little bit more sour – perhaps if I had spotted the lime earlier and squeezed that, it would have been just perfect.

I heard that I would be able to get only this tom yam version of the prawn noodles here and if I wanted the Foochow char chu mee version like the one in Sibu, I would have to go to a town nearby, Jakar. That, of course, is not true as we can actually get that here as well…

I found the taste a bit different from the one in Sibu – it seemed that they had more wine in the soup and I liked it a lot. The one in Sibu comes across to me like any char chu mee (Foochow fried-cooked noodles, soup version) with those freshwater prawns added…and the ones here were a lot bigger.

As for the price, oh me oh my!!! The ones here aren’t all that cheap either – at RM26.00 a bowl…

– RM4.00 cheaper than the ones in Sibu (RM30.00 now) but between the two of us, it would come to RM8.00 already and if you have a lot of people in your group, I guess it does make quite a lot of difference.

After that very delightful brunch, we went in search of the Hung Kiew Kee Restaurant along Jalan Berjaya as I wanted to try their “gold coins”…

They’re actually layers of meat, fat and liver…

…marinated with char siew sauce and barbecued to perfection and I would say they were absolutely out of this world. So very nice, indeed!!! No worries, while indulging in that, I did make an effort to remove the fat…a bit. Hehehehehehe!!!! It was, by no means, cheap though – over RM20 for that little bit and actually, the restaurant people were not all that keen on selling it as they were busy with a wedding reception going on at the time when we were there. However, Philip told them that we had come all the way from Sibu just to try their “gold coins” and in the end, they relented and agreed to sell us that little bit to sample.

After that, we made our way back to Sibu, stopping at the market in Bintangor along the way for the very famous and very popular rojak…

 …before making our way home after a most delightful day trip.

Thank you so much, Philip – I had a great time and I sure enjoyed the food…and the company and thanks also for the can of luncheon meat that you got for me…

– Singapore recipe, made in the E.U. Hmmmm…just can’t wait to give it a try!!!