Like nothing happened…

The other day, my girl had something on in school so I dropped her off and headed to the town centre just to look around. Gosh!!! It was so very busy and there were so many people, so many cars like nothing had happened. It sure did not look like there had been a pandemic, not at all.

Well, just like before, it was quite impossible to find a parking space but after driving round a couple of times, I managed to squeeze in between two huge vehicles into one that happened to be vacant at the time, right in front of this coffee shop…

I decided to check out that stall selling ethnic cuisine there…

…to see what might tickle my fancy.

No, she did not have any babi hutan (wild boar). As far as I know, she used to get her supply from Kapit but now that the inter-town road has been completed, I am not sure whether those express boats…

…are still running or not as those used to be the main form of transportation, don’t know now.

She did have pansoh manok (chicken cooked in bamboo) but I am not fond of that as they always use those lao kay boh (old mother hen/chickens that have served their time, no longer producing eggs). The meat is tough and more often than not, I could detect an unpleasant smell that would put me off right away.

In the end, I just bought RM5.00 worth of the daun bandong/empasa/ubi (tapioca leaves)…

…and the sambal petai (stink beans), RM5.00 of that too…

I must say that they are not very generous at those ethnic stalls – for RM5.00, I only got about a handful of each.

The cangkok manis with pumpkin looked good…

…but I decided to give it a miss.

As soon as I was done, my handphone rang. My girl had finished doing what she had to do so I had to go and get her, no time to roam around or do much else. We headed home and had the two vegetable dishes for our lunch and dinner. I would say that even though there wasn’t much, there was enough to buang gian (appease my craving). I sure enjoyed them…a lot!

RUAI AKU CAFE is located below Eden Inn (2.285223, 111.831256) along Jalan Maju to the right of Hai Bing Coffee Shop/Seafood Restaurant, right across the road from the Rejang Esplanade.