Evening comes…

We arrived in Bintulu at around 5.00 p.m. that day and after checking in at the hotel, my missus and I went on a random drive around the old town and we ended up here…

If I am not mistaken, the locals usually refer to this place as the Tanjung Batu beach. There is another one at the Similajau National Park, but we did not bother to check that one out.

It being a Sunday evening, the place was crowded and I was quite put off by the rampant littering all over the otherwise very beautiful park located at such a scenic seaside location…

There are some stalls there…

…and to put it mildly, they did not look very clean nor presentable. I only saw one stall selling satay and stuff, run by some Chinese boys so my guess would be that there should be more but they were not open as this is the Muslim fasting month of Ramadhan. The rest were selling drinks, ABC and so on. I saw this man cutting a coconut…

– he certainly was enjoying brisk business selling his coconut drinks in the current hot and dry weather that we are experiencing here right now.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I do think the town authorities should pull up their socks and take some drastic action to improve the state of affairs in this town…especially at this beautiful beach…

…which would have been such a pleasant place to relax or go for a stroll…

…had it not been spoilt by the crowd that frequent the place.

After a brief stop here, we went back to the hotel to bathe and get ready for dinner here…

My cousin’s children, the son from KL and the eldest daughter from Penang, and their families were arriving that same day and they were going for dinner at this restaurant right across the road from the hotel where we were staying and she had asked us to join them.

I enjoyed the midin, fried with garlic…

…so much as it was very nicely done – very “sweet” and crunchy, absolutely perfect. Maybe I was hungry after the long drive and the long day but I honestly thought I had never tasted midin that was nicer anywhere else, ever.

The sweet Thai chili chicken…

…was very good too and so was their hot plate tofu dish…

I hear this is one of the signature dishes of the house.

The fried bitter gourd with salted egg…

…was fine, as good as any elsewhere but I thought the salt-baked fish…

…I had here was a lot better. This was similar to what I had here and if I am not wrong, it was the salt they used. It was good on top but when one reached the lower part of the fish, it would be way too salty with all that salt around.

The so-called Philippine pork leg a.k.a. crispy pata…

…wasn’t anything like what I’ve always known it to be. I don’t think it was deep fried like in the case of the usual ones. This came across like roast suckling pig except that we only got the leg, not the whole animal. It was nice, of course, but we were already too full by then…so I just had a bit of it.

After that scrumptious dinner, it was time to head back to the hotel and hit the sack for I had to get up early the next morning to pick two aunties of mine who would be flying in from Kuching. Thank you so much to my cousin, her hubby and family for this very delicious welcome treat upon our arrival in Bintulu.