Lets be
honest, we were pretty lame on New Year’s eve.
A “Mexican” dinner followed by some champagne on the porch that resulted
in some early bedtimes. If not for the
crazy loud fireworks show a few miles away, we may have not even known it was
midnight. How do you make up for a
showing like this? Celebrate Chinese New
Year not once, but twice.
The
weekend before the official Chinese New Year holiday we found ourselves,
naturally, in Chinatown. Some friends
had been nice enough to organize a dinner for anyone that was still around at a
hawker stall in the heart of Chinatown.
This is how we found ourselves on the second floor of a hot, sweaty,
cramped building with row upon row of food stalls. It was like trying to navigate a maze or a
labyrinth. At least in this case, the
maze had “street numbers” on each end so you could attempt to not get
lost. Eventually, we looped around enough
to reach our destination, even though I could have sworn we passed the same fish
head curry stall at least 3 times.
Now, we
have been in our fair share of hawker centers since we arrived on the island,
but in this case we were way out of our league.
If we hadn't had some sherpas to get us through the ordering process on
this one, I’m not sure what we would have done. Probably would have gone home hungry. By far and away the most authentic, local food experience we have had. Before you knew it, a variety of large plates
of meat in interesting sauces was showing up and being placed in front of
us. The chicken in salted fish sauce –
not my favorite. The cuttlefish balls
that looked like miniature porcupines, surprisingly good. We capped dinner off by again wandering down
the “roads” to suddenly stumble about a stall selling microbrews from around
the world. How was this even
possible? I started to question it, but
instead purchased my first Black Butte Porter in 18 months and decided I didn't
care. Hooray beer as the man in the Red
Stripe commercials used to say.
One week
later it actually was Chinese New Year and we found ourselves on a different
island, 373 miles north of Singapore.
Without local guides to provide advice, we did what most Americans do
when the weather is nice out and its a holiday – BBQ! This involved my first
real grocery shopping experience in Malaysia.
Buying granola bars, water and strawberry wafer snacks in the basement
of the mall across from where I stay does not really count as real grocery
shopping. That’s the type of statement
that college kids try to make to convince themselves they are capable of buying something other than frozen pizzas and Doritos at the store.
Walking
into Tesco the day before the holiday, yikes.
Red signs everywhere, buy this, buy that. I now know promosi means promotion, didn't
take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Tracking down peppers and onions was relatively easy. Lots of other vegetables and spices around
that smelled interesting, but were passed on.
Next stop was trying to find the non-halal section. Usually hidden in some corner somewhere, sure
enough, beer on the outside, meat on the inside. The Italian sausages looked great, but we had
erred on that assumption before.
Luckily, someone from Australia saw us eyeing them up and said they were
good. With that vote of confidence, we
bought all they had. The guy working
behind the counter was a little taken aback, but what are you going to do? When you find something legit here, you buy
in bulk.
An hour
later the stars were out, smoke was coming from the grill, the sausages were smelling good and I was cooling my
heals in the pool. It wouldn't be long
before fireworks were going off around the island. It may have been Chinese New Year, but it
sure felt like the 4th of July.
Not a bad way to spend a weekend in early February instead of early
July. Now if only I could find a way to
water ski in the Strait of Malacca.....
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