Popiah and an 8 year old

Our final evening in Malaysia coincided with Mothers Day. Kenneth's relatives gathered together at Aunty Lily and Uncle Aik's apartment for a popiah party to celebrate Mothers Day together as well as to farewell us. Popiah is difficult to describe but if you can imagine picking out a variety of salads, egg, sauces and Chinese sausage and laying them out and then rolling them all into a skin akin to the skin you roll with Peking Duck then you'll get .... popiah! It makes a healthy and very delicious meal that creates social chatter as everyone has a go making the popiah together.

I had the amusement of sitting next to Kenneth's 8 year old nephew, Jonathan. Like every good Malaysian, Jonathan appreciates his food and hopes to be a chef one day. Here's an insight into our conversation at the table on my final night in Malaysia:

8 year old: Eh, Aunty Stephanie... Aunty Stephanie... Aunty Stephanie...!

Me: Yes, Jonathan?

8 year old: Do you want another (popiah) skin?

Me: Um... maybe later. I am still working on this one (pointing to my 2nd popiah).

8 year old: Oh ok then ... maybe later. Just tell me when you are ready for another skin.

Me: Ok.

8 year old: How many can you eat?

Me: Um.... well I am getting pretty full. Probably 3 or 4. You?

8 year old: Whaaaaaaat?!! Only 3 or 4?! I tell you ... last time ah... I ate TWELVE popiah in one go! In ONE go!

Me: (Practically choking on my popiah and raising a dubious eyebrow towards him) No way! Are you sure?

8 year old: Sure I am sure wan .... how not to be sure? I tell you I ate TWELVE popiah!

Me: You mean you ate them consecutively?

8 year old: Hah?

Me: Did you eat them one after another... like all at the same time?

8 year old: Yah! Yah! All in ONE go!

Me: How big were they? Do you mean you just ate twelve skins? Not twelve popiah?

8 year old: Noooo.... I told youuuuu.... TWELVE popiah like this size (gesturing towards the chubby popiah on his plate).

Me: Wow! Good appetite!

8 year old: Yah! I have a big stomach ...

8 year old's mum (from a distance): Jonathan! How many have you had?

8 year old: Only 3 tonight ...

8 year old's mum: No ... you've had four. I know you've had four.

8 year old: Hah? Only 3 wan I thought .... four ah?

8 year old's mum: Jonathan! Enough!! I said enough! Go and wash your hands...

8 year old: Oh ok ... (goes off to wash his hands obediently)

Malaysia Boleh!

My Highlights

1. Sweating it out at 6:30am on a 2 hour morning walk at Bukit Kiara with Aunty Lily before the rising tropical sun caught up with us and sitting down to a bowl of Ipoh hor fun (flat rice noodle soup) and kopi-o (Malaysian black coffee) as a reward.

2. Admiring the creative and modern window dressings and shop fit outs at Megamall and The Garden including the clever use of bamboo, old town Portuguese styled windows and empty cans of Carnation sweetened condensed milk.

3. Getting to know Kenneth's relatives better and his old school friends for the first time. Playing with Kenneth's ever growing mob of nieces and nephews. Visiting Aunty Baby Yee (Kenneth's old neighbour) who helped us purchase our wedding rings 2 years ago in PJ. Really good to see her in good health.

4. Purple Cane Tea House. They serve a myriad of teas and every dish on the menu is cooked in or with tea. An example is steamed fish cooked in strawberry and black tea sauce or tofu simmered in green tea, ginger and ginseng. The soups were divine too!

5. Catching up with my uncle, aunt and cousin Su Suan over a simple breakfast. Wish we had more time!

6. Hawker food - nasi lemak, assam laksa, curry laksa, Indian mee goreng, nasi briyani, yong tau foo ... Malaysia is for the most part about food food and more food! The variety of food available is bamboooooooozling!

7. Hawker desserts - ice kacang and durian flavoured cendol was all I managed this trip... but they say all things in moderation preserves the essence! These babies gave me a sugar high which coooooled me down one humid evening!

8. Bread Story. This is a local bakery that was fashioned after Japanese style bakeries which were in turn an eaternised take on the French patisserie. Bread Story is uniquely Malaysian because you can get awesome fusion breads like a soft sweet baby baguette filled with otak-otak (a spicy Malaysian fish pate that I absolutely loved as a kid.... lucky for me, my mum still makes it at home!).

9. Mamak stalls. Mamaks are hawker style coffee shops found sporadically throughout KL and PJ. They are run by Indians who are Muslims and Kenneth's cousin Seng Po took us to his favourite one in PJ called Kayu Nasi Kandar. This is where I had my authentic teh tarik (tea with sweetened condensed milk which is pulled from one cup to another several times to create a frothy effect) fix which hit the spot! The nasi kandar (rice with an assortment of curries - see fish head curry picture in Kenneth's post below) tangoed on my tastebuds leaving me in delightfully curried out stupor. Just take note to stay away from the cabbage salad served as a side dish unless you want to lose all the weight gained (and more!) over previous gastronomic experiences by getting the runs like me the day after.

10. Living with Kenneth's relatives and still enjoying the comforts of home before we leave behind all that is familiar.

Malaysia - Food and Loved Ones

Tanahairku - My homeland (lit. my soil and water) Malaysia where I was born is all about the food and more importantly where so many of my loved ones are. From the Kayu Nasi Kandar with cousin Seng Poh to Cristang famous for their pork burgers with school mates I haven't seen in 21 years, Malaysia has a big part of my heart.

Although we didn't accomplish completely our 10+ point food target list, we had a feast of both belly and warm Malaysian hospitality. Staying with Aunty Lily and Unclue Aik at the very central Northpoint apartments just across the road from the huge aptly names Mid Valley Mega Mall, we had a great time with cousins and kids galore.

So many things have changed in Malaysia. The roads, the buildings, the nationalities that make up the workforce and the churches! Visiting a local Methodist church in residential PJ on a Saturday night (1st of 4 services) we worshipped with close to 2000 people in lively and relevant style. Something probably not very common 21 years ago and despite governement opposition and anti-conversion laws.

From almost everyone I spoke to, relatives to friends, all had little faith in the mainstream Malaysian media, save a friend who works for NST of course! Apparently, the latest election results which hugely favoured the Pakatan opposition party was all organised through the internet and blogsites. A popular one is www.malaysiakini.com which purportedly gives the inside story on issues that actually matter in Malaysia. While we were there, it gave a blow by blow account of an amazing ruckous in the Perak State Assembly where the Chairman had to be literally carried out! Also, almost everyone I spoke to seethed with dissatisfaction with the current system because of the blatant racism, cronism and outright corruption. On the surface though, things are booming, the shops are full and people seem well fed, but underlying is a tendency to blame the government for everything. From inefficiencies in beaureaucracy to an amazing number of road toll booths mushrooming up at every corner.

The average Malaysian speaks 3 to 6 languages fluently and often switching between them in a days work, is educated if not overseas at least to technical college level and works at least 12 hours a day just to satisfy the never satisfied boss. They are incredulous when told about our plans to travel for 6 months, as it has never even entered their minds before! As the idea sinks in slowly, they reveal a deep seated wish to do so themselves. Not for the travel sake, but just to spend a bit more time with their loved ones, to enjoy the fruit of their hard work before they contract heart disease or cancer from their highly stressed lives.

Farewells

The first leg of the epic journey started with a few tears (Stephanie's), hugs and farewells from our loved ones. Sometimes the love between family and friends is most acutely experienced at goodbyes. Parents, siblings and their husbands and Roger made us very honored as they bid us farewell on the start of our epic journey. How amazingly blessed are we to have such wonderful people so dedicated and committed to us and each other? We'll miss them and it's hard to believe we won't see them for the next 6 months! But with the onset of Skype, USB video and blogging, we'll hopefully be more in touch than if we were still in Melbourne!

Before this grand send off we also said farewell to a few friends at Pesano's at Knox O-Zone, over superhuge pizzas and alot of food of course. From this amount of community to just the two of us will be a stark contrast! We will have the opportunity to relate to one another and really get to know each other over the long haul journeys through the desserts of Northern China and the Talimakan in the NW, and look forward to when we can rejoin our community again.

It was good to see Roger just back from his Central Australian holiday with Nikon D300 and rented car relatively rested and using the momentum to plan his future escape and grand plan to finish his book. Let's hope we see the beginnings of it emerging from the wells of ideas in his mind soon!

Farewells are never easy. Life for our friends and family will be steeped in the familiar everyday, whereas ours will be different everyday. In 6 months we would have changed, they would have changed. I hope we'll be able to continue where we left off and not diverged too far that our memories fail us for time and distance and we become strangers. I have hope that the heart will remember. You know who you are, we love you guys and look forward to sharing our experiences with you and hearing about your 6 months in Melbourne as well!

The farewells have ended, now the journey begins.