It’s time…

These shops…

…are relatively new and are located on the other side of town from where I stay so I do not frequent that area very often. They are right across the bypass to the road leading to the airport in Sibu, opposite the area of shops where this supermarket and departmental store is…

I guess they have their own clientele as you will see a lot of people in the vicinity at anytime of day, shopping at the supermarket and its bakery, eating at the coffee shops or going to the branch of a bank there and there is also a Sugar Bun outlet there and the spin-off cafe, Red Carrot is right next door. The food court seems to enjoy brisk business and I do not know whether the good fortune is brought by the presence of this horse that they had put up facing the building…

Some people do believe in good feng shui and all that stuff.

It is comparatively quieter here across the road but I did see quite a lot of people at the coffee shops when I dropped by. There are four in those two blocks and in the end, I decided to check this one…

…out as it seems to look a bit more impressive than the others.

There are a number of stalls and I ordered these Sibu-style Foochow sio-bee (RM3.50 for 3)…

…from one of them. They were pretty good and if I understood the girl correctly, you can get three storeys/baskets for RM10.00. That means that these would be slightly over a ringgit each but for one thing, the ones I had were very big – I suppose that is quite obvious as the sio bee were overflowing over the edge of the saucer inside. Usually, that saucer is big enough for three siew mais at the usual dim sum places with a lot of room to spare.

I also ordered the claypot noodles (RM5.00)…

…which I thought was quite all right but I was disappointed by the lack of ingredients with just the minced meat balls and black fungus and a few strands of green vegetables and the egg was, unfortunately, broken. I would love the poached egg to be whole, the yolk still intact and runny inside and perhaps, they can give their customers the option to add more stuff and pay for the extras – things like prawns or fish balls and fish cake, and liver and intestines as well perhaps.

I walked round the place after that to see what the other coffee shops have to offer and I chanced upon this little one that has these curios for sale…

That old-school radio-cassette recorder/player (top left) is tagged at RM200.00. I wonder if it still works…and I also wonder how much people would be willing to pay for mine which certainly looks a lot better and nicer than that one.

Well, I don’t know when I’ll be back again but I think if I do drop by, I would probably want to try one Malays stall at the coffee shop at the far end (not in the above photo).