My first weekend side-trip was to Ipoh. Ipoh is a smallish town north
of Kuala Lumpur by about two hours. Three of us drove up on Saturday
morning.
Since this was my first trip out of the city, it was also my first glimpse at rural life in Malaysia. Once we were out of the city, there wasn't much. Well, unless you count palm oil and rubber tree plantations.
The first thing we did when we got into town was stop at a resturant and eat. I'm told there are two things to do in Ipoh; one of them is eat. Heh heh. Oh, but the food is so good!
I got my first taste of Char Kway Teow that day. Nope, it's not a girl. It's this certain type of noodle (a flat hand-made rice noodle a bit like fettucini) with a few veggies and meat chunks (usually prawns or chicken), an egg and some soyish type sauce all fried together. Yum. Instant favorite for this fried-food white-boy. (Though a girl would have been an instant favorite, too.)
I also tasted another something which has a name I don't remember. It was chunks of fruit and crispy pastry-type stuff smothered in a slightly bitter black sauce and bits of nuts. It was good, but it made me uncomfortable to eat it. It took me a long time to figure out why. Weeks of that discomfort niggling at the back of my brain like a little insect... Then I had that same black sauce on something else (not in Ipoh) and actually found an insect crawling in it. Yeah. It's just way too easy to hide nastiness in bitter blackness. Sometimes I feel dense.
I think this was also the first resturant I ate at that was decidedly dirty by American standards. There weren't any insects in this food -- in fact the food was pretty clean. But it turns out that building cleanliness is a bit of a dunbother in Malaysia -- they dun bother with it. When I sat down, I layed my hands on the table in a typical caucasian waiting-boy manner. "Don't do that," they said. "Why?" I asked. "Dirty," they said. I thought, Did I accidentally flip them off?
The plates and food are clean, as are the utensils, but the tables, chairs, floor, etc -- basically everything you're not eating or eating with -- are all not-so-clean. If you drop your spoon on the table, you don't keep using it; you go clean it or get a new one. Also, you don't get napkins. Everybody brings their own little packs of tissue and they use that if they need a napkin.
I was the only white-boy in the place. And apparently the people around us were surprised that I knew how to use chop-sticks. Heh heh. Maybe they wanna see what else I can do with chopsticks?
. Topher
Since this was my first trip out of the city, it was also my first glimpse at rural life in Malaysia. Once we were out of the city, there wasn't much. Well, unless you count palm oil and rubber tree plantations.
The first thing we did when we got into town was stop at a resturant and eat. I'm told there are two things to do in Ipoh; one of them is eat. Heh heh. Oh, but the food is so good!
I got my first taste of Char Kway Teow that day. Nope, it's not a girl. It's this certain type of noodle (a flat hand-made rice noodle a bit like fettucini) with a few veggies and meat chunks (usually prawns or chicken), an egg and some soyish type sauce all fried together. Yum. Instant favorite for this fried-food white-boy. (Though a girl would have been an instant favorite, too.)
I also tasted another something which has a name I don't remember. It was chunks of fruit and crispy pastry-type stuff smothered in a slightly bitter black sauce and bits of nuts. It was good, but it made me uncomfortable to eat it. It took me a long time to figure out why. Weeks of that discomfort niggling at the back of my brain like a little insect... Then I had that same black sauce on something else (not in Ipoh) and actually found an insect crawling in it. Yeah. It's just way too easy to hide nastiness in bitter blackness. Sometimes I feel dense.
I think this was also the first resturant I ate at that was decidedly dirty by American standards. There weren't any insects in this food -- in fact the food was pretty clean. But it turns out that building cleanliness is a bit of a dunbother in Malaysia -- they dun bother with it. When I sat down, I layed my hands on the table in a typical caucasian waiting-boy manner. "Don't do that," they said. "Why?" I asked. "Dirty," they said. I thought, Did I accidentally flip them off?
The plates and food are clean, as are the utensils, but the tables, chairs, floor, etc -- basically everything you're not eating or eating with -- are all not-so-clean. If you drop your spoon on the table, you don't keep using it; you go clean it or get a new one. Also, you don't get napkins. Everybody brings their own little packs of tissue and they use that if they need a napkin.
I was the only white-boy in the place. And apparently the people around us were surprised that I knew how to use chop-sticks. Heh heh. Maybe they wanna see what else I can do with chopsticks?
. Topher
Leave a comment