KennethT

I'm not sure - I always thought that it was around March to July or so, but I think it varies depending on location within the monsoon rains which are seasonal wind direction changes which affects the rainy/dry seasons. For instance, this time of year is the rainy season for the east coast of peninsular Malaysia and the dry season for the west coast of peninsular Malaysia - like Penang. Malaysian Borneo itself is not as dependent on the monsoon as it gets a lot of rainfall year round, but according to Weatherbase, the height of precip in KK is June-November and the dry season is Jan-April but it's reversed in other areas of Borneo - like the east coast like Sandakan.... and since the amount of light available is basically the same year round (so close to the equator), I imagine the mango season has to correspond with rainfall. So, since they grow them all over the place, maybe there is a continual supply, just depending on whether they are local or need to be brought in from somewhere.

Breakfast the next day: Roti prata and a savory donut with chicken curry and sambal \ more teh tarik more pineapple From the soup station - prawn mee - wheat noodles with liquid shrimp and shrimp paste topped with fried shallots - chilli sauce on the side Chicken kurma - a Malay version of an Indian korma - uses similar dried spices but also has lemongrass, and coconut milk instead of cream Seafood "paprik" - some kind of mild-ish chilli sauce Sambal ikan - fish cooked in sambal chicken, fish and sambal seafood

For dinner, we decided to take a walk around the city a bit and wind up at a well known place for Bah Kut Teh (aka bak kut teh) translated as pork bone tea. The Malay style is porky with a bunch of dried herbs and is supposed to taste like an herby tea as opposed to the Singapore style which is basically just garlic and black/white pepper. Bah kut teh with pork meatballs and ribs, fried dough Accompaniments - raw chopped garlic, chopped green chilli and sliced red chilli Soy sauce with chilli Yum Stir fried "baby kailan" which I haven't seen outside of Singapore more kitchai ping We had the good fortune to see this from our table: So of course.... Delicious - great durian flavor, creamy, not too sweet....

Along much of the waterfront are open air markets. The one directly across from our hotel was the puffed snack/dried fish market: KK was originally a fishing village, which is evident in the multitude of dried fish/shrimp and fish parts on sale. Puffed snacks Right next door to this oderiferous market is the handicrafts market, sometimes called Filipino market as many of the vendors are Filipino (many there illegally). They will do alterations right out on the street: There's also a large fruit market: Mostly flavorless mango. After wandering around the markets in the morning in the 90 degree heat with tons of humidity (the heat index was about 110F every day), we decided to go across the street to one of the many indoor malls which has a supermarket: On the hunt looking for dried chillies to bring home In the basement of the mall is a food court with a very well respected kedai kopi: They have a steam table full of various different dishes, but they also have a menu: We got a roti canai with goat: The style this place does is that they drown the roti in the curry. The goat was flavorful and tender and the texture of the roti was fantastic but midway through the curry soaked section started dissolving! Roti cobra with chicken - roti cobra is basically the same as the roti canai but topped with a fried egg This is a drink we had all over, similar to the lime juice (limeaid) that is all over SE Asia, this is called kitchai ping - calamansi juice and a good dose of sugar, plus a salted dried plum is covered with a bit of hot water (to dissolve the sugar and start to rehydrate the salted plum) then covered in ice and more water. So the drink is sweet, tart and slightly salty - very refreshing when it's really hot outside. A frothy teh tarik. It's so humid there, the plants wind up growing on top of plants - I loved this tree, partially taken over by a monstera and various ferns

Our hotel had a fantastic breakfast buffet, included in the cost of our room. Multiple stations featured food from all over the world with many from the local area which we frequented. But they also had a lot of Chinese like rotating dim sum and congee (there's a lot of Chinese tourists in KK), European stuff like cured meats/cheeses/yogurt, also an egg/omlette station, waffles, croissants, bakery, and a soup station with a few different broths and many choices for additions. One thing I always hit (every morning) was their roti prata / curry section: While the prata weren't made to order, they were freshly made and had great texture. Three different curries to choose from (vegetarian, chicken or fish) plus the smaller pot full of sambal (chilli sauce) which is ever-present in Malaysian food. They also had a good Nasi Lemak station - which is white rice or sometimes coconut rice with a bunch of stuff with it - very popular all over Malaysia and (with a different name) Indonesia as well: Back left is the dish full of rice, then a dish of sambal, fried chicken, beef floss and chicken floss, ikan bilis - small dried fish that have been fried and peanuts, plus egg and cucumber First of many roti prata with chicken curry and sambal Fantastic pineapple Teh tarik - a specialty of kedai kopi (coffeeshops) all over Malaysia and Singapore. A very strong black tea (or coffee) is mixed with sweetened condensed milk and sometimes Milo powder and poured back and forth between 2 pitchers to mix and froth. Tastes kinda like hot chocolate. A nasi lemak plate: And if you haven't eaten enough yet, there were a rotating selection of curries/sambals... On the left is kambing masak hitam - or goat in black curry and on the right was their version of a chicken rendang. The goat was really good but the chicken was a bit on the sweet side.

Hello!!! And welcome to another edition of KennethT in SE Asia... thankfully, this time around I have no illnesses to report whatsoever!! It's a miracle! I'm amazed that we didn't get sick right off the bat - as we were sitting at the airport gate waiting for our flight, there was a youngish guy about 20 feet away who had a constant deep chest cough and he never covered his mouth while coughing. Of course, he wound up sitting directly behind me on the plane!!! So, we decided to wear our N95 masks almost the entire 18 hours of the flight, except while eating. Not the most pleasant but I'm happy to say that it was successful in keeping us from getting sick. I'm going to start by showing where this area is on the map as it's not well known - actually, I'm stealing @BonVivant's maps, hehe.... On the right side of this map is the island of Borneo, whose ownership is split by Malaysia, Indonesia and the small country of Brunei. Within the Malaysia portion, it's divided into 2 states, Sarawak - the western portion, and Sabah, the eastern portion. Here is Sabah in a lot more detail. We stayed in Kota Kinabalu - the capital of Sabah - for our city and scuba diving portion (there's a protected marine national park about 15 minutes off the coast of Kota Kinabalu by boat) and then a short bit in Sepilok, an area in the middle of the rainforest near Sandakan. The whole area of Sabah used to be covered by one of the world's oldest rainforests, but sadly, has been greatly reduced in area due to the creation of palm oil plantations, many of which you can see when you fly from KK to Sandakan (about a 40 minute flight). Incidentally, if you're interested in scuba diving, one of the top locations in the world, Sipadan island, is located just south of Semporna - but we will most likely not get there for a long time (if ever) since it's so high in demand that there's a daily lottery to see who gets to dive there as well as the fact that dive operations there can be picky so they insist on only taking divers with Advanced certifications and tons of dives in their histories. Anyway, as usual, we flew via Singapore Airlines direct from NYC to Singapore (about 18 hours), the meals of which were detailed here: and here: and here: Our flight was supposed to take this route: however, at the last minute, we diverted flying over the Netherlands and then head down over the middle east, India, etc. I was hoping to fly over the pole since I was hoping to look at the Northern Lights, sometimes visible from an airplane. As always, I love the Singapore airport Terminal 3's baggage claim filled with tropical plants: Our connection to Kota Kinabalu left out of Terminal 1 which doesn't have nearly as many food options as some other terminals (love you Terminal 2!!!), but we still were able to get a decent chicken rice: It was very good, and similar to Wee Nam Kee in Terminal 2, but the seating area was much more crowded. We landed in Kota Kinabalu around 10:30, and immigration was fast and easy, and the airport is a convenient 20 minutes from the city center, so we got to the hotel before 12PM. Of course, our room wasn't ready at that time, but the hotel was amazing in that they let us us a different room to shower/sleep/whatever while we were waiting!!!! So we had a nice 5 hour nap before heading down and having an early dinner in the hotel since we were still too tired to go running around the city. Even though it's hotel prices, they weren't so bad - KK in general is SUPER cheap.... like a 30 minute taxi costs about $2.50... There's currently about 4.5 RM (Malaysian Ringgit) to 1 US$. A decent char kway teoh Nasi goreng (fried rice) with grilled chicken After dinner, we changed rooms and went back to sleep!

That's some nice looking galangal. If you want some other names for it, it's called lengkuas in Bahasa Indonesia and Malay - one of the culinary terms that actually translate the same (not all do - ginger is jahe in Bahasa and halia in Malay).

Yes, the first ones. They also had the middle ones but like you, I wasn't a huge fan since they can be bitter - but I think that's what they like about them - especially when a curry has some palm sugar in it like most do.

What do you use to truffle your m&c?

When in Thailand, I was always a big fan of curries which frequently contained the Thai apple eggplants - but they should really be called golf ball eggplants as they're closer in size to one of those or maybe a raquetball than an apple. I can find them in NYC once in a great while if I keep my eyes peeled.

Has anyone seen or used this: https://www.stirmate.com/ Traditional Indonesian (Sumatra) rendang is cooked over low heat for like 8 hours while being constantly stirred. I don't mind stirring the last bit by hand, but standing around for 8 hours isn't appealing.... hehe. If this thing worked well, I can think of quite a few uses for it.

Twinkie's don't have a shelf life... they have a half-life.

Premium economy - there is no coach on that flight - just PE and Biz

Nice. Neck bones provide great flavor and gelatin. Unlike @Tropicalsenior, I like to cook the crap out of any meat when making stock, so all the flavor gets extracted into the stock. I would do what she does if making directly making soup, but I always make soup from premade stock, so my stock is all meat flavor and gelatin - I also don't use any aromatics since those extract quickly and can be done when making the final product.

I wouldn't call it cardboard, and I come from the land of pizza! Seriously, it was quite tasty - but the dough was more like a thick, soft flatbread than pizza. It's a quite welcome snack prior to landing, and I would say that it's certainly better than what's provided on most airlines that I've been on, not that that's saying much.

2 hours before landing, And a long missed snack - I haven't seen it for a few years... Sambal made from chillies, shallot, garlic, shrimp paste and small dried fish.

I'm half asleep writing this but hopefully it will make sense.... Singapore Airlines SIN - NYC, dinner served around 2:30AM (we took off a little before 1); Arugula and thin sliced braesola salad, ciabatta roll stuffed with herbed butter and a pandan/coconut mousse cake with Lamb curry with roti jala My wife had the chicken biryani Both were really good and from their Book the Cook. Breakfast was Decent croissant, fruit yogurt and Char sieu and wonton mee with Sing Air's sambal - again, book the cook and really good. Chinese broccoli not overcooked, char sieu was tender with good flavor, mee not mushy. My wife got chicken satay (unpictured) and said it was the best satay of the trip! And a decent Chinese oolong tea

Yes, pigs feet but also unsmoked hocks work well too. For my pork stock, primarily used for bak kut teh and for a Nyonya dish, I use a 16 quart pressure cooker filled with a rack of pork ribs (Wild Fork Foods gas them for $2-3 per pound) plus a couple of feet. Pork jello.

Shallow fried? A lot of Malay/Indo stuff is done like that.

Deep fried or stir fried?

Also good for green mango/papaya salad

Yes it's a long time, but it goes by fast

About 18 - 18.5 hours. I also had a really good double chocolate muffin (from Norway) and a nice oolong tea about an hour ago but no pics. This is the refresher just served about 2 hours before landing: Made in Italy While it's no NYC pizza, it's a very tasty flat bread with tomato sauce, cheese and dried basil.

Meal #2: Decent croissant and the mixed fruit was ok - really good pineapple but strawberries were pretty flavorless. The yogurt/mango/oat/coconut confection was good. Wife got pork congee (book the cook) Soy sauce chicken with wok fried noodles. Dark meat chicken was tender and moist and noodles had decent texture. 4 more hours until we land!

Singapore Airlines NYC-SIN... Meal #1 A very nice mixed leaf salad with 2 perfectly poached shrimp, plus candied walnuts, blackberries and croutons. The sticky toffee pudding was pretty good too. My wife got steamed chicken with lily buds (book the cook) Mine was braised e-fu noodles with chicken and yu choy (also btk). Great aroma to the braising liquid and chicken (dark meat) was tender and moist. I've had this before but this time was a bit better and the yu choy were not overcooked this time like they were last time.