So, you all know I went to Kelantan over the weekend. I've heard mixed reviews about that state, and frankly, I myself have mixed feelings about Kelantan. I think it's a very laidback place, good for escaping from the rest of the world, 'cos over there, you seldom see people using handphones. Sure, there are some people who do use it, but I haven't seen anyone obsessed with their phones like us. Even better, very few people use the Internet there. However, I think it's this laidback culture that results in inefficiency. For example, during the time I was there, there was public holiday 'cos of the Agong's birthday, and also 'cos of Vesak day. Added to that, we met with the weekend. Therefore, many shops were closed, which I think is quite a waste, considering the fact that public holidays mean more people will be out shopping, thus making it a good time for shopkeepers to earn more money. And... well, the organization of the roads weren't very well done as well. If we wanted to go somewhere which was just in front of us, we couldn't. Instead, we had to make a huge round around the city just to reach there. Nonetheless, it is very interesting and enriching to visit these sorts of places once in a while; a good exposure too, 'cos in Singapore, where do we find places where we can rough it out? Let me put up some pictures for you to see!
Above are pictures of the train we were on. I tried to take a whole row of the beds, but it wasn't possible. =( Anyway, the trains are not too bad- at least the beds are rather comfortable, and they give cutains so we can close the curtains and avoid others if we wish to. As you can see, the beds are bunk beds, and, well, though there are curtains to block out people, these curtains are not enough to block out sound. So if you happen to take the train with a group of students or other people who like to "share" their music, you might find it a little hard to sleep. In the last photo, the one with the straw? It was dropped onto my bed by one student who was drinking coke. It stained my bed!! And I don't know if that student knew that he/she had dropped it, 'cos nobody took it off my bed. -_-"
So after like 15 hours of the train ride, we finally arrived at Kota Bahru, the town of Kelantan. My granduncle brought us to this stall selling Nasi Dagang, which is supposedly famous. However, because we arrived late, there was no more Nasi Dagang left. That's my father's favourite food actually. Nasi Dagang is actually the unpolished rice with curry- fish or chicken curry. The irritating part about this dish is that the fish has too many bones, and small ones at that. Bleah. It has never been my favourite, so I'm glad I didn't eat it. Anyway, on the day we arrived at Kota Bahru, it was Vesak Day, so I went vegetarian, and at the 豆包, as you can see in the picture. It is a sticky dumpling-like thing, the outside is sticky, and it surrounds a big chunk of 豆沙 inside, which is mixed with a bit of pepper. It's very nice! But there's a problem with it. It's too sticky! It's kinda hard to scrape the skin off the banana leave, and when u bite it, the texture is kinda like the malt candy we eat- you know, the one where they put the malt on a pair of chopsticks and you are supposed to twist it occasionally so that it doesn't drip?
After brunch, we went to the cemetery to 扫墓 for my grandfather and great grandparents. I didn't take any pictures this time, 'cos I think it's rude to do so. Anyway, this is my second time visiting a cemetery, and the place is soooo quiet! Rather eerie actually. But I'm glad I went, 'cos I think it's a good experience to 扫墓. Anyway, it was an eye-opener. The cemetery was like a maze! I am really amazed by my father's ability to be able to recognize my ancestors' tombs, 'cos there are simply too many tombstones there already. When we went to my grandfather's tombstone, guess what? Some idiots had smashed his photo! All the pieces were gone, leaving only the stone behind the picture. I was, and am appalled by that behaviour. There's no respect shown for the dead! Talk about manners and respect. My goodness.
We were all pretty tired after going to the cemetery, as the weather was too darn hot there. We were just perspiring all the while we were there, and the sun was soooo painful! And smart me didn't put her sunblock. -_-" Our next item on the agenda was to find accommodation. Guess what? The hotels only had space for the first night we were there, and ALL had no more rooms for the next night because of some conference which people from other states were coming to attend. Talk about bad timing man. So we had to go from hotel to hotel to enquire about the rooms, and luckily, we found one which had a room available for the second night, albeit the most expensive room. But beggars can't be choosers, can they? But in the end, we didn't have to stay in that more expensive room, 'cos the receptionist at the hotel we were staying in on the first night told us there was a room available for us if we wanted it. Oh man, that room sucked! The carpet was stained, the blankets didn't feel clean, and the toilet was a wet toilet! Argh, I hate wet toilets. What made this worst was that the carpet hadn't been vacuumed for goodness knows how long, so when you have just washed your legs and stepped onto the carpet to go to the bed, hair and other unidentifiable objects cling to it, making it as dirty as before. -_-" And I don't like that feeling. Oh, and the room was so damp! I had left my books, foolscap and magazine inside my bag, and I didn't even touch it, and the next morning, everything was damp and limp. Argh.
Anyway, that night, we visited this place near the Chinese Chamber of Commerce famous for their Nasi Kukus, a certain type of Malay rice where it's rice, fried chicken, and a small scoop of 3 different types of curry and chilli, and you can choose whatever else you want to add on. This Nasi Kukus is very shiok. Don't judge a book by its cover. Though one small spoon of each type of gravy seems too little to satisfy you, it is actually enough, because when all the gravies are mixed, the taste would become much better. If you had requested for more of one type or the other, there wouldn't have been a balance in the taste of the rice already. Some of the dishes featured here are the barbecued chicken intestines, and ground coconut stuffed in chilli, like the yong tau foo chilli, only that this is with coconut while the yong tau foo one is with fish paste. The chicken intestines look kinda disgusting, don't they? I thought so too actually, and was reluctant to try it, but then again, if I didn't try it, how was I gonna tell you all what it tasted like? Well, try it I did, and it was rather nice. Sweet and a little spicy, with a barbecued taste. It was rather chewy as well, a bit like sotong. The ground coconut in chilli was good 'cos the chilli was fresh, so you could taste the chilli, and so was the coconut. Good experience! Then we ordered ice kacang from the neighbouring stall. It's run by this old couple, so cute! Their service was very good. Their ice kacang came with a small scoop of neapolitan ice cream, and real kacang! Haha we seldom see that in Singapore these days. And what I liked about it was that the ice was crushed really very finely, not like that of Singapore's, which is coarser. And all the while we were eating our dinner, the smell of the longkang kept wafting over into our nostrils. By right, it should have thrown us off our appetites, but strangely enough, it didn't. We still had a good time eating our food. =)
The next day, we went to the Thai wholesale market. We heard that they only sell their goods until 9am, after that, they are chased away. Everything was sold wholesale, including watermelons and chickens. Haha, how do people manage to finish so much watermelon? But I guess this is good for those with large families, and those who are running food businesses. It's so crowded I tell you! But very fun. There was so much to see, so much to take in.
And finally, we went to eat my father's favourite Nasi Dagang. He has been looking forward so much to it! Well, I didn't eat it, 'cos as I said, I don't really like it, and I don't have to try it to let you all know how it tastes, 'cos I've eaten it before. Personally, I find the curry too coconut-y and a bit too thick for my taste. So besides Nasi Dagang, we bought food from the food van outside the kopitiam. We bought
kiam kui, and Nasi Kapit. I forgot to take a photo of the kiam kuih, but it's something like zhui kuih.
You see the building in the first set of slides? Those buildings house swallows. This enterprising idea sprung from some relative of my father's, and the idea has sparked off the birds' nest craze. Now almost 2000 shophouses are used to house the swallows. Of course, the swallows are not owned by anyone; they are wild swallows looking for places to build their nests. It's not legal to rear so many of them, so what these people do is that they create an environment that would lure the swallows into their shophouses, and then build their nests, after which the nests are harvested and voila! You have birds' nest! It doesn't take much maintenance to house them, actually. All you need is a big, dark room, preferably with many floors, and to build grids into the ceilings. You don't even need lights, 'cos swallows like dark places to build their nests. However, you need to provide some kind of system to make the place cool, as swallows like cool places. It's a really lucrative business; 1kg of the birds' nest can fetch about 4.5-5k! And it's easy money. You just do whatever was mentioned above, and hope and pray the birds come in. When that happens, you just sit back, relax, and wait to harvest the nests. Doesn't it sound too good to be true? How to tell if a shophouse houses swallows? Well, you know it when you see many many swallows circling around a building, and also when the interior of the house is sealed with cement. I took several videos of the swallows, lemme show you... Too bad my camera didn't have microphone to let you hear the birds.
For lunch, we went to eat my mother's favourite: kau jum (read: cow jump). It's a dish with green rice, the green coming from I think 18 different plants, topped with beansprouts, cucumbers, parsley, basil, chilli, fish and keropok. It's a rather healthy meal actually, so full of fibre. I never really liked it much when Mira cooks it at home, 'cos the rice always turns out mushy, but over there, I got hooked. It's really much nicer there than at home. The taste of fresh bean sprouts and chilli was good, especially the chilli- it really whetted my appetite! There's also the Kelantan laksa, my all time favourite Kelantan dish. Except here, they call it lakseh, because they use kway teow instead of the thick bee hoon. I much prefer the thick bee hoon though. I've always like the lakseh from this stall, but that day, the texture of the kway teow threw me of. It was too mushy! Nonetheless, the gravy was still very good. Oh, and a special mention here. I've never seen someone so happy in his work before! The ice kacang man looked so cute, smiling as he made his ice kacang. How often do you see people doing that? And he went about doing his job with such contentment I couldn't help but enjoy my own bowl of ice kacang. Haha..
The next day, we went to the market, both indoor and outdoor. Basically, they sell the same things in both places, except in the upper floors of the indoor market, they sold clothes and other stuff. They sell turtles' eggs too! So cute! But it's illegal, and stock for the eggs are usually rare. Unlike Singapore, where we have stalls and the stall owners stand behind their stalls and serve you, in these markets, the stall owners sit among their goods and sell their stuff to you.
That night, we went to a Thai restaurant my parents have been raving about. It was in such a secluded area, just look at the photos and you know what I mean. However, many people still managed to find their way over there, so you can imagine how popular the food is. They had so many customers that we waited for about an hour for the food to arrive! -_-" But when the food came, it was a bit of a disappointment, 'cos the food was only ok. None of them made you want to eat again and again and again. The fried eel in vegetables was the most disappointing I feel. It was too spicy! They added peppers in their whole chunk! It was so hot that you couldn't even taste the food except for the pepper. Besides, I think they cut the eel too small, such that we couldn't really feel the texture of it. There was an interesting dish which we didn't order- the standing chicken. They deepfry the whole chicken, and then make it stand up, and then they put a tea candle directly below the chicken and serve you. The novelty is in the standing chicken. I'm not sure how it tastes though.
And then after that night, my battery went flat, and I didn't charge the battery. Any way, we went to the border of Malaysia- tat bai- to shop. That is Malaysia's border leading into Thailand. In the past, we used to go into Thailand to shop, but now, because Southern Thailand is in chaos, nobody goes there anymore. Even the shopkeepers have moved away. Tat bai sells mostly clothes and toys. Just think Far East Plaza meets Mini Toons, and you get the idea. So many Spongebob Squarepants stuff were sold! Bags, soft toys, key chains, etc etc. Yi Lun went crazy over there. She wanted to get the furry Spongebob slippers, but unfortunately they didn't have her size.
So, the day at Tat Bai was our last day in Kota Bahru, and at night, we made our way back to Singapore, and we spend 14 hours on the train.
There was not a single moment of hunger during the trip there. We just kept eating and eating and eating, plus, I don't think I want to see curry for a long while. All the meals there consisted of curry! I'm glad to be back in Singapore, eating food that don't involve curry. Did you know, during my stay there, I only saw one stall selling chicken rice?!
