Nostalgic…

Next stop, China Street…

…which I remember was once, South China Street though I did not know where North was.

I had a friend there, his family ran a charcoal business in one of the shops along this street and his friends called him hoi thua kia (charcoal kid), so bad! With friends like those, who needs enemies, eh? But he did not mind though and took it very well. I walked round the place but no, I could not find any charcoal shop there anymore.

There were these very nice artworks…

…on the walls…

…probably a tribute to the old school tin-smiths…

…who still have their shops…

…along this street to this very day.

I walked to Lao Ya Keng…

…but it looked kind of sad with so few customers and only a few stalls operating at the time and a kueh chap stall based at the shop beside it. This place used to enjoy brisk business with so many stalls to pick and choose – I remember I used to enjoy the kolo mee at a stall further in but I hear that now, different stalls open at different times in a day – a favourite is the pork satay in the afternoon at around 1.00 p.m. onwards. That certainly sounds like a very strange arrangement – people in the old days would start at the break of dawn and toil all day till night.

I did not see anything there that tickled my fancy so I crossed over to this restaurant…

…on the other side of the road. It sure brings back a whole lot of fond memories and the many times I went there for dinner, upstairs.

I remember once, I was there with some friends and they asked me to order a drink but I did not want any…and they asked again, suggesting that I could order a 7Up…and later, they asked once more, the third time. As we were leaving, I slipped on the first step of the wooden staircase and tumbled down one-third of the way. I stood up and slipped again…and by the time I stood up and slipped again the third time, I was already on the ground floor. I could not sit for a week after that! LOL!!! This is what the Sarawak Malays and Melanaus and the other ethnic races here call poonek. I did blog about this incident before here.

Sadly, the wooden staircase is no longer there – it is now covered with Italian tiles…

…a far cry from what it used to be and to me, it was such a disappointment to see that and they no longer run the restaurant upstairs either. At least in Sibu, our old school restaurant has enough following to keep it going!

I also remember that in the 70’s, I used to drop by here for the chicken rice with steamed chicken, char siew and siew yoke drowned in curry gravy and much to my delight, they still have it on their menu, the Hainan curry rice…

…they call it. I asked the lady and she said that her parents took over in the early 80’s and when I told her, I used to eat this here in the 70’s, she said that would be the time of her grandparents. Gee!!! Imagine going back three generations!

I was so very full from the breakfast I had but I simply had to order a plate…

…to enjoy for old times’ sake. I don’t know if it was because I was already feeling so full but I did not think it was all that nice – I did not derive any of the delight I used to feel when I ate it before.

I left the place feeling kind of sad – I suppose I would just have to accept that, like it or not, nothing stays the same.

ANN LEE RESTAURANT 安利酒樓 (1.558135, 110.346121) is located at No. 28, Carpenter Street in Kuching.