Looking around…

At the end of my previous post, I mentioned that we took my two aunties to the market in Bintulu…

There wasn’t much in the market proper and neither was there anything to buy at the tamu, the native/ethnic side with their jungle produce and other stuff…

We did not buy the belacan (dried prawn paste) here…

…as my cousin told me of a house in the vicinity of Tanjung Batu where we could get very good belacan from a lady surnamed Sim. Following my cousin’s directions, I managed to locate the place and bought all that we wanted from her. Unfortunately, it was not the season so she did not have any more cincaluk (fermented shrimps) for sale. We did not want to buy those at the tamu as they looked kind of overly pinkish, probably the result of the use of colouring though some say they use ang chao (the residue obtained from the making of the traditional Foochow red wine).

After we had got our belacan, we stopped by this shopping mall…

…as I heard they have a “New World” in Bintulu…

…and I was expecting it to be affiliated to the ones in New Zealand. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed that it was no different from any other supermarket around and in fact, some of ours can be a whole lot better in terms of the availability of imported stuff including those from New Zealand and also Australia.

There wasn’t much at the mall proper – it was a mall like any other anywhere else…

…but I spotted this stall…

…selling pretzels, popcorn and cream puffs…

I have not come across any place in Sibu selling really good cream puffs so I decided to buy these and try even though they did not come cheap at RM1.70 each. Ouch!!! I asked for a box of 6, RM9.60, meaning that there would be a discount of 10 sen each and the girl took these empty cream puff shells…

…and pumped in the cream of my choice – I went for the vanilla, the only one that I like…

…and goodness me! She actually weighed each puff shell and repeated the action each time she had pumped in a bit of the cream to make sure that she would get that exact same amount of cream in each puff, no more no less.

I tried one right away and thought it wasn’t too bad and I finished off the rest later in the hotel…but at RM1.70 each…or even at RM1.60 after the 10 sen discount, I don’t think I would want to buy anymore ever again, thank you very much.

After we had left this mall, we stopped by the Farley branch there…

– we have one in Sibu and each looks like a replica of the other, almost exactly the same. You can see the Promenade at the back – that’s a new hotel coming up in Bintulu but it isn’t completed yet at this point in time.

It was way past noon already so we decided to go for lunch and I took everybody here…

…for the ethnic/Dayak cuisine.

This was what I had…

– the pansoh babi (pork cooked in bamboo) and the lumuk (aka as buah terap) muda, both of which were so very good…plus the bandong (tapioca) and cucumber leaves…

I loved the bandong leaves – the cucumber was all right but they had a milder taste and were overshadowed by the former. The ikan patin masak asam…

…was simply excellent – I truly liked it a lot!

That was indeed a delightful meal but I had to fork out RM8.00 for all that I had picked. It certainly was a lot more expensive than what I had in Kuching which was half the price and equally nice. I guess that’s to be expected in a town with all the highly-paid “gas people” walking around with wallets and pockets bursting at the seams. Anybody would like to raise an objection to that sweeping remark? Muahahahahahaha!!!!!