When my daughter came back to town for the weekend, I just had to bring her to the Ramadhan Bazaar at Bandong here so she would be able to pick the things she would like and could enjoy them to the max.
It was very crowded…
…even though we went quite early, probably because it was a Saturday and everybody was not stuck in the office at that time of day. I met a friend, a teacher like I was, who said that she saw my post on this but what I do know is that she has been patronising those stalls for a while now after I had blogged about them on those earlier occasions. The stall-owner, when she saw me, told me delightfully that there was a lady the day before, home from Australia, who mentioned that she saw the post too – I wonder who that was.
Durian is in season right now and I noticed a couple of stalls selling tempoyak (fermented durian) and we grabbed a tub at only RM5.00 each…
…at my regular Malay food stall since I know them very well by now and vice versa. That was pretty cheap – in fact, my missus made her own once and after spending so much on the durians, she had to toil for hours getting the flesh of the fruit off the seeds and all in all, she only managed to make just a little bit. It is so much easier to buy…and the one here is quite good – good but a little bit salty. They say it will be less salty when it has fermented more.
We bought the bubur pedas (top) for Melissa to take back and enjoy in the course of the week but we decided to give the umai (bottom left) – the raw fish, a Melanau delicacy, a miss this time around. Hey!!! What’s that to the right of the tempoyak? I did not notice it when I was there…and it sure looked like something really nice. Hmmmm….gotta check that out the next time I drop by the bazaar.
It was tough trying to decide but we did manage to get all that we wanted…and on the way back to the car, we stopped by this cafe (next to the 1Malaysia Clinic) to have a look at what they had…
…and boy, everything looked very nice! I did not notice they had anything up for sale on my previous visit and of course, I was delighted that every tray was covered with cling film. They would only open to take whatever you want when you ask for it, a far cry from what I saw up north in the mainland where the flies would line up along the rim of the trays like birds on the telephone line. That was so disgusting! Absolutely shocking!
There was this handsome little boy barbecuing some stuff…
…but we had already bought all that we wanted, much more than what we could handle, in fact, or else I certainly would buy something from him, never mind even if it was not really nice, to give him a bit of moral support. I love seeing kids helping out like this – how many these days would want to do that? Most, I am sure, would be too spoilt-rotten to even lift a finger to help and would rather while the time away playing online games on their smartphones or ipads, right or not?
We went home with our loot and enjoyed our early dinner which included this nasi kerabu…
…and laksam…
…before going for the sunset service at a church here.
My missus bought this bingka durian (3 for RM1)…
…to try and it was so good – so very lemak (rich) and so fragrant with the durian in it. Gee! If we had known it would be this good, we would have bought a lot more. I will just have to wait till the next time I drop by, I guess…probably this coming weekend when my daughter will be home again.
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 