KennethT

Our flight from KL to Singapore landed just after 4PM and our flight home didn't leave until around 11:30, so we had plenty of time to go through immigration (their automated gates took about 2 minutes), get our bags from Air Asia in Terminal 4, then transfer to Terminal 3 to check our bags into Singapore Airlines and then lounge around the Jewel. Changi Terminal 4 baggage claim: I was hoping to spend some time wandering around the trails through the forest of the Jewel, but it was closed for maintenance... Since we were finally here and had time AND weren't sick(!), I made a reservation for Violet Oon. In my opinion, she is like the Peranakan equivalent of Lydia Bastianich as she has several restaurants, a line of take home packaged foods, TV cooking shows, etc. We had been looking to try her restaurant for YEARS and finally made it - spoiler alert, it was totally worth the wait. So many choices, such limited stomach space.... Nyonya food is not known for being particularly light! Singapore Island Iced Tea - like drinking liquid kaffir lime leaves. Homemade ginger beer Kuay pie tee - so savory - strips of turnip and bamboo shoot poached in prawn stock, put into the fried cups, topped with a perfectly poached shrimp, with chilli paste and fruit syrup. So delicious. One of the reasons why I wanted to come here - Ayam buah keluak. This version was much more thick than the one we had years ago in a family Peranakan restaurant in the city. This one was such a great mix of savory (from shrimp paste) and sour from tamarind. There was a lot of chicken buried in there, plus 3 keluak nuts, which the interior looks like this: They provided a small spoon to dig out the keluak meat, the flavor of which is completely unique, complex and utterly delicous. Hints of chocolate, a bit of a tang of alcoholic fermentation - so hard to describe. The texture was silky smooth. Chicken and potato curry. The curry sauce was thick and luxurious with lots of coconut cream. One of the reasons I wanted to try this is because it is similar to one of the curries I make - curry powder and coconut milk. So good. By this point, we were almost bursting at the seams, but I felt that I needed to try this: Pandan and gula Melaka cake. The cake was super light and the butter cream had great gula melaka (a special palm sugar from Melaka) flavor. Totally worth all the sugar and calories. Since we still had a couple hours before we were to board our flight and it was already past our bedtime, we got some of the Darjeeling tea: Afterwards, we waddled out of the restaurant and took our time wandering around before getting to Terminal 3 and our gate. Food on the Singapore Airlines flight home: and So that's it... thanks for reading along!

The next day we had to leave early (before they opened for breakfast) to start our long journey home. A quick snack in the Sandakan airport, waiting to go to Kuala Lumpur: pandan and chocolate cake. The cake was not particularly light or dense and was a bit oily but tasty at the time. Not many options in that airport. Kuala Lumpur Int Airport T2 doesn't have many decent food options - there's a main food court in the security area that mostly had American fast food - McD, Burger King and A&W! There was an Indian place and this Malaysian place: The name of the place is a play on words as the word for chicken is "ayam". Before I get to the food, the guy at the register seemed like he hated us patrons just for being there. Maybe he was just frustrated because half of the menu that they had by the register was out of stock (at 1 in the afternoon). You order at the register and they give you a placard to put on your table for the server to identify you - but they forgot to give us like half our order so I had to go back and bug the guy to send the rest. Cucur bawang - onion fritter with peanut sauce - somewhat soggy. Tofu ayam - fried tofu stuffed with chicken and potato - quite soggy, served with the sambal hitam (black sambal) in the photo below which was incredibly spicy once it crept up on you! Chicken samosa - about as good as the other stuff we got! teh tarik As we were leaving the food court, we saw this store, almost completely devoted to durian... After lunch we were leisurely making our way to our gate. As we were almost there, we noticed that Air Asia or the airport changed our gate, which happened to be on the total other side of the terminal, which is HUGE! About halfway to the new gate, we started running as it was about to start boarding! All thoughts of not being all sweaty for our 18 hour flight home were dashed during our run!

After lunch, we went back to the orangutan center since the entry ticket is valid for the full day. In the afternoon, the pigtail macaques decended on the area... which the orangutan largely ignored... Dinner back at our hotel: Grilled chicken lime juice nasi goreng Breakfast the next morning: This time I got a danish... although afterwards, I wished I got the croissant again Another popular thing in Sepilok is right next door to the orangutan sanctuary and share the forest (sometimes you seen an errant orangutan there but we didn't): As the sign says, the Bornean sun bear is the world's smallest bear - it gets to be around the size of a labrador. As they look so cute and cuddle, they are commonly poached to be sold as pets (very illegal) and if they are recovered, they are sent here. About half of the sun bears who come here will never be released into the wild completely as they don't have the skills to survive on their own. As you can see in this sign: sunbears are named because of the gold markings on their chest. No two bears have the same markings - they are individual like a fingerprint is. As you can see, the bears live partially enclosed, unlike the orangutans who can roam as they like. and climbing back down again - you can really see his markings in this one: After watching the bears, we walked to a different hotel for lunch. Views from our table (we were the only ones there): Lime juice Chicken wrapped up in a roti prata with curry sauce this was interesting - like a Sicilian rice ball made with nasi kunyit (turmeric rice) and topped with sambal fried chicken and potato with curry sauce Then, dinner back at the hotel: Char kway teow nasi goreng (again)

The center closes for a few hours in the middle of the day so we left and went to a different hotel in the area to have lunch. The view from our table: Hokkien noodles Chicken curry and lime juice They didn't have kitchai ping, but they did have: Sabah chai

The airport in Sandakan (the city near Sepilok) is small but modern. Our checked bags came through super fast and then we hired a Grab taxi to take us to our hotel which is a lodge located on the edge of the Sepilok-Kabili forest reserve. It's set up like a bunch of cabins in the jungle. Our home on the range Since we got there in the afternoon, we spent the time just walking around the hotel grounds. We had dinner at the hotel - there aren't really any places around in this area to eat other than in the hotels - it's pretty remote. My wife had the nasi goreng (fried rice) Lamb curry served with The vast majority of our hotel's menu was western and not inexpensive. They also had a selection of pizzas. Even though we didn't eat every meal here, I think our total restaurant bill for 3 nights (added to the room bill) was as much as one night's stay! But this is all relative, the hotel is RM500 per night (about US$100) We also had their specialty tea: Breakfast in the morning: No explanation necessary. She also had I wasn't particular thrilled with the breakfast menu so I just had something light - I normally don't eat breakfast at all Not a bad croissant and Sabah tea But the real reason people come to Sepilok is this: Founded in 1964, it was opened with the purpose of rehabilitating orphaned or confiscated orangutans. Orangutans are mostly solitary animals, primarily due to food pressure. So if a mother has twins, she will typically abandon one of them as there may not be enough food around for her to support two youngsters for the 8 or so years that the young will stay with its mother. The orangutans wander around the center on their own - the visitors are confined to various walkways and platforms. This sign greets you almost immediately: The first area you come to is the area for adolescent orangutans who are being more actively taken care of by the center. These youngsters are developing the skills to be able to survive in the wild. They have a building (air conditioned!!!!) where you can watch them playing and feeding. We were told that we were quite fortunate as it is rare to see the old alpha male make an appearance. They usually see him only a few times a year. Adolescent mother with infant The ropes lead off into the forest and they can come and go whenever they want. Another area is a feeding platform in a different spot in the jungle. Sometimes no one visits the platform when the food is put out - especially if there's already plenty of food in the forest. Sometimes they want to walk down the path near us: There are staff around to make sure you don't follow the orangutans or they don't get too close to you. Not only are they wild animals, but since they are so close to humans, genetically, they are capable of catching human viruses. Any time you see staff near them (like at the feeding platform) they wear latex (nitrile?) gloves and wear N95 masks.

Since having this dish recently in Singapore, I decided to change the way I make it. Ayam buah keluak - chicken in black nut curry. Some keluak meat (a black paste) is at the top. We had this at Violet Oon a couple weeks ago and it was one of the best things of the trip. Her curry sauce was very thick, so I decided to try it and I think this came out the best since Ive been making it - since 2017. Stir fried bok choy with garlic.

Yes, I eat them, but a more normal sized pile - they're typically an accoutrement, not the main dish! My nasi lemak plate typically looks like this:

I was really fortunate - they took me to all the best places, except Lespinasse! They never took me there! Damn them!

Breakfast the next morning - just before checking out to go to our next stop. Prata, savory donut, fried chicken, sambal and gigantic pile of ikan bilis for my wife Prata, donut and chicken curry teh tarik last of the great pineapple A dish full of a different chicken curry (lot of curry leaves) A dish full of lamb curry (no coconut milk) chicken Lamb The airport in KK is modern and quite nice for a small city. And since we were traveling within Sabah, we had to go to the "domestic" security area. If we were going to peninsular Malaysia (like to Kuala Lumpur), we'd have to go to the International one as Malaysian Borneo is still somewhat separate. Of course, no one told us this until we were leaving the International security area and we had to turn around go back through the whole security area and back to the front of the airport. To be fair, it wasn't labeled as such but it was the security area that was directly ahead... turns out that the domestic one is downstairs and kind of out of the way. Once we got through security, we had a small snack: Nasi lemak for my wife I was still a bit full from breakfast, but when in Rome.... Roti canai with chicken curry You can tell how humid it was outside from the photo below. I've seen the fog come out of the A/C vents in a plane before, but this was ridiculous!

Since being home, we've been going through roti canai/prata withdrawal, so... Homemade roti canai with homemade chicken Capitan curry (forgive the sloppy plating, I was in a hurry) and Stir fried baby Shanghai bok choy, with garlic.

When I was young, I was fortunate enough to have my parents take me to Lutece while Soltner was still there. My parents loved that place.

Ha! They're absolutely necessary in countries where you could be washing your hands with water that potentially has typhoid or who knows what in it. The wipes are better than normal hand sanitizer since it will also clean dirt off, not just kill most things in the dirt. However, beware, hand sanitizers are not very effective against norovirus.

I'm glad about that. We fell in love with this region (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia) years ago and keep coming back. It's such a great mix of cultures. As of now, we have much less Malaysia experience than Singapore or Indonesia - even though I feel like we've just scratched the surface with those too.

On the waterfront, next to the fruit market, dried fish market and handicraft market is the "night market" which is basically like a big outdoor food court. We thought it would be fun to go there for NYE dinner. There were also people grilling chicken wings, etc (you can see this in the background above). Unfortunately, if you look closely, none of the fish or seafood is on ice (and it was still 90 degrees outside with high humidity) and there were piles of fish and seafood that were precooked and sitting around for who knows how long which is what you would be served if you ordered something, which made us really uneasy. We felt much better about grilled seafood in this type of environment at a hawker area in Penang where all the fish/seafood was kept on ice and grilled to order. You could see nothing sitting around and it took like 20 minutes to get your order. So, since it was NYE and many of the other places I had heard about were closed, we decided to get room service in the hotel again because the restaurant was having a big buffet dinner with mostly western options - it was packed full of locals though! Crispy shrimp Nasi Goreng (fried rice) with grilled chicken and fish crackers I had ordered a fish dish, but the oxtail dish came instead but without the assam pedas and bitter bean fried rice... and then about 20 minutes later, it arrived as well... Grilled fish with sambal - it was no (Old) Lai Huat in Singapore And because it was new year's, we got some dessert: Pandan coconut cheesecake with gula melaka (palm sugar from Malacca) and grated coconut We were in bed by 9:30 or 10 (still a bit of jet lag and we're early birds now) so we missed the fireworks display that was going on over the water - we probably would have had a great view of it from our room. I remember waking up - it sounded like it was right outside but I didn't want to get out of bed!

we need a vomit emoji

We didn't take pictures the next day either but it was another good day of diving. Lunch was a mee goreng (fried noodles), fried potatoes and another vegetarian stir fry. Dinner was room service again. The next day was New Year's eve so we had plenty of time that morning so I had time to take pictures of breakfast: More roti prata with chicken and potato curry My wife's gigantic piles of ikan bilis and beef and chicken floss, with a half of a prata with sambal great pineapple teh tarik Nasi lemak with (clockwise starting at 9:00) - black pepper lamb, chicken floss, beef floss, fried chicken, sambal ikan (fish with sambal), a normal sized pile of ikan bilis, sambal Lunch was at a well known kedai kopi that had lots of tourists, but also locals too as I saw the owner walk over to several tables to chat and wish them a happy new year, and several getting takeout. Menu, menu, on the wall.... One of the things they are known for is tuaran mee, which is a noodle dish that uses some rice wine as a flavoring agent - they make their own here in the restaurant. Kuching laksa. Kuching is the major city of neighboring state Sarawak. Made with a good shrimp stock with tamarind. Rice noodles, lurking underneath Kitchai ping

I'd highly recommend getting candlenuts on Amazon or something then keep them in the freezer. I think they're very different from macadamias or any other nut that is commonly used as a sub.

The next morning we were up early to get to breakfast as soon as they opened so we could eat fast. Due to the rush, we didn't take pictures, but it was more roti with curry, nasi lemak and my wife had her pile of ikan bilis... hehe.... A fast taxi ride to the marina and then a pretty fast ride on the boat to get to the far side of Gaya island, the near side of which is on the left in the first photo here. And this is a map of the marine park: The visibility wasn't so great as there was a storm the night before (while we were sleeping) but we did see quite a good amount of stuff over the 6 dives we were down there. A hawksbill turtle spent some time checking us out before heading up to the surface to take a breath, lots of great coral, several huge schools of yellowtail snapper - some of which had some larger predatory fish amongst the school, blue spotted stingrays, a small octopus, moray eels, etc. We didn't take any photos since we're both still somewhat inexperienced (although I felt a shift near the end of this trip so maybe that will change in the future) and we felt it would be too much of a distraction. This is the basecamp where we hang out between dives and have lunch: On the second day, in the jungle to the right of the beach, we saw a bunch of proboscis monkeys jumping around the trees. Lunch was provided by the dive company - since there really isn't running water or power at the basecamp, they made a vegetarian luffa stir fry to be eaten with rice and fried potato wedges: It was quite tasty and not too heavy which is good since we were going back in the water not long after. A long tailed macaque was a lunchtime companion. We got back to KK around 5:30 and we were pretty tired (there was a bit of current) so we just wound up ordering room service and I forgot to take pictures...

That's what I was wondering. Nice job getting around the restrictions.

What do you use for curry paste?

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel to relax in the air conditioning a bit and start packing for our scuba diving day the next day since we'd have to head out early in the morning. For dinner, we headed out to a well known kedai kopi in the city center, on the first floor of a hotel. The thing they are best known for is: According to many sources, these are the best chicken wings in KK - some even say the best in all of Malaysia! Personally, we were less than impressed - they were ok, but covered in the gloppy, sticky sweet sauce. We thought the wings that we had in a hawker stall in Penang as well as a multitude of different vendors in Singapore were much better. Prawn curry - this was pretty good with tamarind- better than the wings! Stir fried kang kong, aka morning glory. They didn't have any Sabah-chai. And since it was still around 90 degrees outside, Kitchai ping

After breakfast we took a tour of the city center's supermarkets looking for dried chillies to bring home. Most the supermarkets were really lackluster and their produce didn't look very good - I would have killed for that supermarket near our hotel in Jakarta! The last supermarket we visited is on the outskirts of the city center (in this last supermarket, I actually did find a couple different types of dried chillies that looked really good to bring home so one mission accomplished!) and it's obvious here how the city is wedged between the South China Sea and the rainforest.... This is standing in the supermarket's parking lot, facing away from the ocean: Just past this tree is impenetrable jungle! After the supermarket, we took a Grab taxi (like Uber in SE Asia) to a large garden store that an Instagram acquaintance of mine who lives in KK recommended to look for chilli seeds. The garden store was huge and gorgeous with tons of tropical plants, and lots of vegetable seeds but they were out of all their chilli seeds. For reference, a 30 minute taxi ride in no traffic to the suburbs cost RM13 - or not quite $3. After looking around the store, we took a short ride to a well known seafood restaurant. There are now 3 or 4 locations of this mini-chain (with one in the city center) but blogs I read said that the original location in the suburbs was still the best and most consistent - conveniently, not far from the garden center. Outside, on the right, are tanks full of live fish and seafood And the menu: Water and kitchai juice Chilli scallops. I'm not usually a fan of scallops, but these were great. Fish head curry - a good size grouper head and shoulders with an amazing asam curry - coconut milk, tamarind, curry leaves and spices. This is a local vegetable that doesn't seem to have a name. On the receipt, they called it Sabah vegetable but I kept reading it being called Sabah chai - and whenever I asked for it, everyone knew what I was talking about. Evidently, it's a perennial vegetable that's kind of like a fern - it's very inexpensive because it's constantly growing all over the place, so you can cut it and it keeps growing. It's also really tasty. We got it sambal style here.

You're not wrong. Whether it's Malaysia, Indonesia or Singapore, I can't think of a single spice paste that doesn't use tons of it. And even things like fried chicken are typically simmered in a spice paste first, before being fried. Years ago, I had a friend who couldn't tolerate garlic - lots of stomach cramps after eating it. She loved to eat "ethnic" foods, so she was always looking for some kind of miracle cure. She settled on using something called Beano - it's some kind of enzyme - you take it just before eating things with beans (or garlic) and it helps your body digest it. That was a long time ago, I don't know if anything better has been developed since then.

Malaysian or Indonesian restaurants here in NY are few and far between. Those that are here are even less than mediocre and are expensive for what they are doing. When you did frequent your local Malaysian place, what did you typically order? I had a discussion with some Malay friends a while back - we were trying to decide why Malaysian food hasn't taken off in NYC (or elsewhere for that matter) like the various regional Chinese or Thai has. My thought was that the Chinese and Thai have a few dishes that everyone knows - mapo tofu, pad Thai, various stir fries with known ingredients, etc. while most Malaysian/Indonesian dishes are unknown quantities so people would be nervous ordering them not knowing what they'll taste like. I think of it like a killer app for software companies. Or maybe it's the fact that shrimp paste is in everything....

In general, they're so cheap that it's not a big deal to buy a couple and then come back to buy more if you like them. One vendor was actually cutting samples for every tourist walking by (and there's tons of them) but his prices were also like double that of most of everyone else! Most of the vendors didn't speak English - sometimes they don't even speak Malay but rather speak some local language, but the guy cutting samples was hawking in pretty decent English and was quite aggressive, so I like to avoid those types.