Malaysia - Day at the Beach

On our first day in Malacca, D&T decided to treat us to a little road trip to the nearby beach of Port Dickson.

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Dave and Teresa's job in Malaysia is to teach English teachers, which requires them to visit various schools everyday. As a part of their contract, the Malaysian government gave them brand new cars. It sounds awesome on paper, and is even more awesome in real life. Check out their sweet, matching Proton Sagas!


They drive on the left in Malaysia, which is frightening in general, but even scarier when it's these two Canadians behind the wheel!

Picking their poison

Somehow, Dave and Teresa repeatedly managed to bring donuts (specifically a donut called The Alien) into the conversation the night before, so that morning, before heading to the beach (and breakfast), we made them take us to their donut spot, Big Apple Donuts & Coffee, for our first of many donuts while in Malaysia.

The furry looking one with the pink is The Alien, D&T's favorite. The other one is the Dandy Randy.

The descriptions of each from the company's website:

The Alien - "The perfect mix & match of chocolate dip & filling inside and out."

That's an OK description. It at least tells you one ingredient (two if you count 'filling'), where as the Dandy Randy's description leaves you more confused.

Dandy Randy - "This is a palatable journey for the bold and strong. Preferred robust flavors married with the shindig of wicked smiles and sublime conversations."

Riiiight...

Not being big donut eaters, we were a little skeptical of a Malaysia based Asian donut chain, but Dave and Teresa made believers out of us. The Alien was just as delicious as they talked it up to be. It really was the perfect mix & match of dip & filling!

After our Big Apple appetizer, we went to get some real breakfast at one of their favorite roadside hawker stalls. Hawker stalls are open buildings where many different stands are set up specializing in a certain dish or type of food: noodles, soups, rice, fried things, skewered things and other delicacies - street food with a roof!

Fried Popiah

Popiah, meaning 'skin' is Malaysia's spring roll. It is a wheat pancake filled with bean sprouts, carrots, cabbage and some type of meat cooked in a soy or hoisin sauce. You can get them fresh or fried. Of course, we opted for the friend variety.

Siew Pao

This is the Malaysian version of a Chinese steamed bun or Humbow. It's a baked pastry that's slightly sweet filled with a meat cooked in soy sauce, giving it a nice flavor contrast. Pretty tasty!

Delivering the Laksa.

Nyonya Laksa is a heavily spiced coconut milk based noodle soup. It generally contains some type of seafood and fish balls along with noodles, bean sprouts and other vegetables and served with a spoonful of sambal chili sauce, but can include any other kind of meat instead of seafood. This Laksa has whitefish, fish balls and lots of curry. It was delicious!

Negotiating

In the excitement of eating, Teresa forgot to put a parking pass on the dashboard. The people working in the hawker stall noticed the police man and warned us, but the warning came a little too late and she ended up getting the ticket anyway.

Nasi Lemak Bungkus

On the way out from breakfast, on an impulse, Andrew picked up these two beauts as a last snack before hitting the road. Nasi Lemak is considered the national dish of Malaysia. The Nasi Lemak Bungkus, is a small, t0-go version of it. Traditionally, it's steamed coconut rice, with dried anchovies, roasted peanuts, a hard boiled egg, some form of meat and chili sauce wrapped in a banana leaf. These one's were a bit simpler, containing only meat, sauce and rice; one pork and one chicken.

Little girls on their way to school.
(You'd have a tough time turning this into a sexy school girl uniform!)

Traffic was awful!

@ Port Dickson

The parking lot was full of people selling all types of crap.

Was this an accident? A prank? A Malaysian bird tag? Was he just married? Whatever the reason a streamer was connected to this guy's foot, the dumb fella didn't seem to notice.

We arrived in Port Dickson about an hour and a half after hitting the road, aka an hour and a half after breakfast. Andrew was in I'm-on-vacation-so-I-gotta-eat-everything mode, so this meant it was high time for a snack. He wanted a fried banana, but the man wouldn't sell him fewer than 4. Instead, the man just gave Andrew one, which he devoured and enjoyed.

The man was so nice to just give him the fried banana, that he had to buy something. After thinking long and hard, Andrew settled on this heart-shaped chicken nugget skewer. As with all chicken nuggets, it would have been better with ketchup, but it was not bad on it's own.

Our rented slice of paradise

Andrew's Shadow
He stood guard while everyone changed into their suits.

When they got back, he decided that another snack took priority over a swimsuit change, so he headed off to explore the rows of food stalls.

Lady's Choice!

Beach Food!

After a lap up and down the stretch, he decided to go with the boys at Ramly Burger. It looked like a respectable joint, and they used far more lard on the grill than the other 'burger' stalls he passed.

The Egg Banjo

A fried egg, shredded cabbage and mayo on
a buttered hamburger bun. It was awesome!

We were blown away by the number of burqas and head coverings worn by the majority of the women while people watching in Kuala Lumpur. Maybe we're ignorant, we don't know, but we had no idea just how Muslim a country Malaysia really was. And, without much experience in Muslim countries, we were continually surprised throughout our trip. One of those times was at the beach. Judy and Teresa were the only females in swimsuits. All the other girls were wearing long sleeved shirts with jeans, floor length skirts, sweat pants or pajama pants to play in the sand, go swimming and even ride the banana boat. It was fascinating (minus the thought of wet, sandy jeans, which is absolutely revolting).

This rat-tailed stud is who rented us the chairs and umbrella...

Time for another round of snacks!

Grilled Otak-Otak

Otak-Otak, a common Southeast Asian treat, is a paste made of ground mackerel and spices (chillies, garlic, turmeric and lemongrass), then steamed or grilled in a banana leaf. It was OK. The flavor was nice, but the texture was a bit on the mushy side for our liking.

Malaysian ice cream 'truck'

The delicious grilled corn man

The fresh coconut lady

Drinkin' his coconut

Andrew actually spent the entire time at the beach sitting in the shade and/or eating. Everyone else changed into swimsuits, went into the water and laid in the sun (normal things one does on a beach) but he wasn't having any of that!

Poor Ponies

Why they were offering pony rides at the beach, we have no clue, but it was really sad. And, no one was cleaning up after those sad little creatures, so big ol' pony poop piles were everywhere.


Much to Andrew's liking, after the beach the others started to get hungry, so we set out in search of dinner. We drove along the stretch of the beach a few times, looking for a seafood grill, and finally decided on this road-side restaurant, Barakat Tomyam Seafood.

The (very rare) Malaysian Table Tree

The sun washed out the sweat on Dave and Judy,
so they at least looked presentable...

...with their backs to the sun, Andrew and Teresa,
on the other hand, weren't quite as lucky!

kiwi shaved ice

Near the bottom of the extensive juice menu, Andrew found 'corn juice.' For each of the juices, you had to choose to have it with shaved ice or as a milkshake. The thought of a corn-shake was really enticing, but he decided to go with the corn shaved ice instead, because he was afraid the ice cream would dilute the corn's naturally delicious flavors. Not mentioned on the menu was the fact that all the juices come with a hefty serving of simple syrup, so it was the flavor of canned corn only sickeningly sweet. A few drags on the straw were all he could handle. ☹

Behind that fence was the kitchen

An amazing chandelier made of spray painted Styrofoam plates!

We picked up a stray...

The Spread!

From left to right: Clams in a spicy sauce, chicken balls, fried rice, fried rice and 'fish with 3 flavors'. (not pictured because it hadn't come out of the kitchen yet: squid in the same sauce as the clams.) All of them were good, but the fish was amazing!

The Champion!

We never figured out what the '3 flavors' were exactly. Sweet, salty and spicy perhaps? It didn't matter. It was too delicious to waste eating time trying to figure them out.

Malaysia - KL

We arrived in Malaysia in the wee hours of the morning, and really had no plan of what to do until we got on a bus later in the afternoon to head to Malacca, where our friends Dave and Teresa live. We both knew for months that we were going to spend the better part of a day roaming around Kuala Lumpur, but for various reasons, we never did any research on the city or even made a loose plan of what we were going to do.

From the airport, we took a taxi to the bus station and bought our tickets, hoping that the bus station could be a starting point for our wandering. It turns out that the bus station would have been a fine starting point, but it was under construction, so all the buses were now operating out of a temporary (and frightening) station in the middle of nowhere, leaving us just as clueless about what to do.

After buying our bus tickets, in a moment of uncertainty, we jumped into a taxi and told the driver to take us to the only thing we knew of in Kuala Lumpur: "Petronas Twin Towers, please!"

By this point it was only 6 something in the morning, so we had no idea if anything would even be open. (Nor did we have any idea if the Twin Towers were more than just office buildings.)

First view of the city and our destination

Petronas Twin Towers
The world's tallest buildings!
(between the years of 1998 and 2004)

It turned out that heading for the Twin Towers was a fine choice. Along with offices, they also housed a mall, hotels, a subway station, restaurants, etc, so we were able to eat a leisurely breakfast and watch as thousands of Malays streamed by heading to another day of work in one of the 88 (x2) floors above us.

During our breakfast and people watching (rush hour people watching is some of the best!), we managed to pass enough time where things would be starting to open, so we headed out to begin our exploration of Kuala Lumpur.

First Malaysian street food experience

Two plastic bags of goodness
(did not have a clue what we ate here)

Helpful...kinda

Malaysian 7-Eleven's have Slurpees!
And meatballs on sticks!!!

Friends Forever!

Mmmm, a broccoli juicebox!

Snack Time!

Soto Ayam

A basic, Southeast Asian chicken soup with a hard boiled egg and vermicelli noodles seasoned with turmeric.

Super salty, but super delicious!

Roti Canai

A flour and egg based flat bread generally served with a dhal (lentil) based curry sauce, however many sweet and savory versions of the bread and sauce exist. It's fatty, greasy and delicious!

cheezels

Kraft Cheezels Biskitz were advertised on almost every bus stop we saw, so we had to try them. They tasted like crackers smothered in Kraft Mac N Cheese powder. Not good. They were too cheesy (rarely a bad thing, we know) and left a nasty film in the mouth. We really thought you were someone we could trust, Kraft...

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When our wandering time had elapsed, we got back into a taxi and headed once more for the temporary bus station. That morning, we found the bus station to be a pretty scary place. Then, it was quiet and mostly deserted. When we arrived there the second time, in the late afternoon, we discovered that our fright that morning was nothing. This time, it was hotter than hell and chaotic. The place was packed with taxis, buses, cars, trucks, travelers, hawkers, bus company workers, and even a scattering of crazy/scary people that just seemed to be hanging out there. It was not a nice place.

The buses in Malaysia are privately run (read: The buses in Malaysia are frightening and confusing.) The tickets we bought that morning were for a specific bus and time, even though the hand-written tickets/receipt we were given didn't have a company name, a date, a time or even a destination. We didn't have a clue what to do with them or where to go. We showed our tickets to the most official looking person we could find - a man holding a clipboard. Without really even looking at them or listening to us, he pointed at a tent with some plastic lawn chairs. Not helpful. But, we didn't have any better ideas, so we walked to the tent and sat down. A little before our bus was supposed to depart, a few buses with "Malacca" written in windows pulled up. We picked one, handed our tickets to the driver and took a seat. We had paid for an express bus, but had no idea if were were on it or not.

The bus

Sitting down, it was obvious that our bus had been on fire at some point in it's career. Lots of exposed wires hung down and most of the carpet on the ceiling was charred. We were feeling really safe and comfortable at this point!


By the grace of God, our bus ended up being an express bus like we had wanted. It was a good thing too, because that fire not only destroyed the carpeting, but the A/C as well. Any more time on this thing and there would have been tears from both of us.
After riding the bus from hell (again, there was fire damage to prove it), we made it to Malacca and into the safe and loving arms of our favorite* back-country Canadian hillbillies, Dave and Teresa!
*Favorite by default. They are the only back-country Canadian hillbillies we know.

The view from their 18th floor balcony

Night of Romance

♥Valentine's Day 2011♥

Korea has no shortage of couple's holidays, whether they're imported from other cultures or made up here in-country. Christmas is even a couple's holiday here! So, when Valentine's Day came around, we didn't really plan anything extravagant, or even really special for that matter. (Plus, living together, spending all our free time together and being pretty much the only friends we have, February 14th wasn't really much different than any other night: we ate dinner and watched a movie. The only real difference was that we exchanged presents, which is the true meaning of the holiday anyway.)

For our Valentine's dinner, we decided on a favorite of ours, steamed mussels in garlic and white wine and veggies and dip to snack on during the movie. Andrew picked up the seafood from the fish market near his school and Judy grabbed everything else.

After the feast, we exchanged gifts. Andrew gave Judy the standard Valentine's fare: Jewelry, chocolate, knit sparkle gloves, lotion and matching Thriller couple-tees. Judy also went the cliché Valentine's route and bought matching Adidas tracksuits!

A match made in heaven!

Andrew giving his paparazzi face.