The Other Malaysia

BonVivant · Friday at 01:13 PM

Thanks, KenT. I have a couple of hours tomorrow before leaving town. Will try to find Zyrtec at a pharmacy if things don't improve fast enough.

The worst is probably over but it took a lot out of me. 6 hours have passed and I'm still in bed with pain. Thankfully I can breathe almost normally now. Had to forgo dinner tonight. Throat constriction, hoarseness, painful. I've been reading about jackfruit allergy. I have a huge chance of it happening to me. Jeez.

Edited Sunday at 01:52 AM by BonVivant (log)

BonVivant · Friday at 10:39 PM

I'm 96% fine again. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Had our last breakfast at 2 different places on the same street.

Big steamed bun and buttermilk bun

All the steamed buns filled with pork are the same. Braised pork, 1/4 boiled egg and 1 shiitake.

On the way to where we had to catch a van to the next destination... Not a Vietnamese restaurant but they have "Phở" and coffee.

If you must vandalise, at least make it funny. (It's a character from a horror film)

We made it to Kota Belud, a small town half way to far north of Borneo. The presence of Chinese-Malays is drastically less than in the capital. We asked the (Malay) driver to drop us off at a Malay restaurant for lunch. It was full of Malays and employees were also Malays, but the food looked Chinese. It's a local restaurant and the food freshly cooked. Chicken is king. We had no iron-rich food since we got to Sabah (I'm anaemic).

Tofu

Stir-fried lettuce

After lunch we checked out the market. Noticed straight away dried fish/seafood stalls were more numerous than in the capital, and vendors were mostly non Chinese-Malays.

Betel leaves. There are stalls that sell only betel stuff. Some elderly people chew it.

Some dried fish come with sambal

I enjoyed eating this vegetable many times in Taiwan and am delighted to see it again at markets in Sabah.

Ginger flowers

Glutinous rice yeast balls hung on nylon strings

It's not fish sauce. I asked. It's local honey.

The fish section is small. The first thing I noticed was the fishmongers. Nearly all were women here whereas it's usually men elsewhere. Did not linger long, the smell was strong.

There are so many swallow nests inside that the solution is to hang big plastic sheet above the stalls.

After done checking out every row I went back to my favourite stall:

It's huge. Lots of water. I drank and drank. Took a while to finish drinking all the water.

I said I wanted to eat the flesh but had no spoon, "I'll make you a spoon". The "spoon" (a sharp piece of green otter shell) actually worked. But when a coconut has a lot of water there is very little meat. This one had no meat. You can see the inside of the coconut, the thicker the meat (endosperm) the whiter the interior. There's nothing here.

Apparently we were the town's latest attraction. Many people stared at us everywhere. Some grown people and children said "hello hello". When I bought something or asked about something and if they could speak any English at all they had questions for me. This small rural town doesn't see a lot of tourists. They only come for the big regional weekly Sunday market by the coach load (package tours) and go right back to the capital after browsing the market.

Sunset in rural Kota Belud seen from one of my room's windows.

Edited Saturday at 01:16 AM by BonVivant (log)

BonVivant · 2024-06-18T12:15:42Z

Sat next to a young man in the mini van on my way to his home town Kota Belud whom I asked many questions about the town, durians, its food and whatnot. He said to try the town's favourite noodle soup ("Mi Sup"). So the next morning I set out to look for Mi Sup. It's not hard to find and when I found this food centre it seemed everyone was eating the soup.

We tried from different stalls. It's OK to sit down at one stall (you must order something here first) and also order something else from different stalls. The broth is different, obviously every stall has its own recipe. Chewy, fine (wheat?) noodles, chicken broth, topped with shredded chicken (or in small chunks with bones).

I walked through the market every day to find fruits or whatever.

This is what makes Malay food taste good... Shrimp paste.

In the old days they used something very simple to shred coconut or to obtain the milk manually. Now it's electric. The elderly man wanted me to make his photo. Thank you, mister!

Malaysia is deep-frying paradise. Seems almost anything can be deep-fried here.

A coconut a day. The coconut and the dried fish vendors share the same stall. He speaks English just fine, the young woman who runs the dried fish stall is very highly proficient, her mother as well. The reason we stopped by their stalls every day, besides buying a coconut, was to ask about typical topics such as travelling in Sabah, food, customs, transport etc. When someone is happy to provide insightful information I take this opportunity to learn. The stallholders could answer all our questions, were super friendly and helpful. This small, insignificant town most tourists wouldn't even consider staying the night has most friendly and welcoming locals. We are glad we gave it a chance.

We love to drink coconut water and in Borneo it's so common and easy to find. The prices varies so you must ask first. Anywhere between 2-7 ringgits.

Fish flavoured crackers

Do I lick the pods? Garlic-flavoured whole peanuts in their pods.

Durian flavoured fruit concentrate

I like green mango salad and by now I have noticed only Malay/Muslim eateries have it.

And they always have aubergines in a red sauce

Hard boiled egg in sambal

Chicken

We had the first river tour this afternoon. Unfortunately it didn't go well at all. Started out good, though.

This is the real Sabah. Very rural, wild, life is simple, oil palm plantations dominate the landscape, people are ready to smile at each other and strangers. As a tourist you simply don't have access to many places, especially deeply rural, wild or rugged areas. You must join a tour and fill out a form declaring all the details. Sabah is the poorest state but (one of) the most expensive to travel in because of the tours. On top of that, some tours' prices are higher if you are a foreigner. But in general, when shopping, if there's no price on something and you are a foreigner you will probably pay more than locals, but not always, to make it clear. I'm glad it's not as bad as some other countries, though. I really hate dual-pricing/OK-to-rip-off-the-tourists system in certain countries. I tend to shun them.
https://images2.imgbox.com/21/4c/l0QUvyS2_o.jpg

Just 1 lousy photo of a macaque a few minutes into the boat ride then it started raining.

The rain picked up the pace so fast and hard we were all soaked like swimming with clothes on (the boat had a roof but open on all sides, the wind blew the big fat rain horizontally through the boat!). Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Nature owns you nothing. It was dried again later and we could jump back in the boat to see fireflies. So many, floating like snow in the dark.