Tuesday Feast Day

Tuesday Feast Day

Tuesday, July 2, 2019.

Another muggy day. A good day to walk up the hill in the back of the house. The route is about 3 miles in total, but up a steep hill, so it is fairly hard exercise.  My brother Seng, his daughter Theng and I walked two rounds up and down the hill.  I was very sweaty at the end, and a quick cold shower revived me.

My friends Wan Soo Har and Lim Kah Wah came to pick me up at 1130 AM for lunch.  I have pictures of them following.  We drove to Balik Pulau, which means in Malay, the Back of the Island.  If you look at the city Georgetown as the front side of the island, Balik Pulau is almost diagonally opposite, across the hill in the middle of the island.

At Balik Pulau, we picked up Ong Kong Chan, and headed towards the fish market.

Pulau Betong

The fish market is in an area called Pulau Betong. Pulau is the Malay for island, so we are now in Betong Island.

Fish stall at Pulau Betong

The fish market is small. This is where a couple of local fishermen sells their catch of the day. As we approached the market, a fisherman is pulling fish after fish from a basket in his motorcycle, and dumping them into the boxes in the fish market.  Here is a picture of the catch of the day. There are many kinds of fish on sale.  Most of them, I have seen before, but do not know what they are called.  My friend Wan Soo Har is the self-proclaimed expert on fish of every kinds.

Here is Soo Har selecting the fish we want for our meal.  He picked some flat fish (I like this. They looked like flounder. Flat and not too long.)

In high school, Soo Har was a year our senior. He stayed back a year because he failed English. He applied himself in our senior year, passed the University entrance exam, finished university, and became a teacher.  He retired as a high school principal.  His wife Soon Hee retired as a girls' high school principal too.

My friend Ong Kong Chan was my classmate in Form 4 (junior year). Kong Chan and I were the top students in high school.  He went to Malaya University to study Mathematics, and became a teacher after graduating with an Honors degree.  He retired almost 15 years ago, but is still giving Math tuitions to new students.

My friend Lim Kah Wah. We have been friends since junior high. He attended University of Science in Penang to study Biology.  He became a teacher as well, and retired as a principal of a high school.

All of us came from very poor backgrounds. Take, for example, Soo Har received a tuition scholarship to attend university but his father did not want him to attend college, because they cannot pay the living expenses. My friend Ong Kong Chan took out some of his scholarship money and helped Soo Har pay for the room and meals every month. What a great guy.

I remember when I first came to America, I have no money as well. Some of our old classmates wanted to send money to me to help my living expenses.  I declined, because I was able to get a job working in a restaurant.

Soo Har brought six boxes of durian with him. Durian  is a strange and beautiful fruit. I have a picture of it below. This is the king of fruits in Malaysia, and is becoming popular in China as well. A lot of the local production is now shipped to China, causing a shortage locally, and pushing the prices up to the stratosphere.

Durian comes in many named variety: Green Skin, Black Spikes, Musan King (Cat Hill King), Red Shrimps, D120, Du Lu and so on.  The more famous the name, the higher the price.

Durians are sold by weight. Here, we use the international system, so they are sold in kilograms (or kilos).  The unnamed ones are sold for 20 to 25 Ringgits (Malaysian Dollars) per kilo. The named brands like Musang King can go for 200 Ringgits per kilo.

The durian's fleshy meat covers a big seed. The flesh is yellow, soft. It has a think membrane skin, and the inside is mushy in texture, like a vanilla custard. It has a very strong smell. Many foreigners cannot stomach this smell. It is like heavy perfume. Some people cannot stand heavy perform.
The taste of durian? generally, I think it is sweet. It does have a high sugar content. Besides that, sometimes, they taste slightly alcoholic, like wine.

This is what durians look like. Generally round, not perfectly circular. It is covered with spikes. The stalk is usually still attached to the fruit.

Durian trees are very tall, about 50 to 80 feet tall. When the durians are ripe, they will fall down by themselves, detaching themselves at the stalk from the tree. The fall will sometimes cause the fruit to break open. It is nature's way to spread the seeds and propagate the fruit.  The farmers usually put a web of netting under the trees to catch the durian from falling onto the ground.

We bought some flat fish, a big Makekrel, some shrimps, crabs from the fish market. We brought them to a restaurant nearby. The owner and cook was a student of Soo Har and Kong Chan, so he was always happy to see us, and give us preferential treatments.  We found an empty table, and started enjoying our durians.

The shop owner/chef cooked up our crabs. This is a dish of Chilli Crabs. The cause is sweet and slightly spicy. The crabs have been opened and cut into bite sizes, so it was easy to pick out the meat.

For the fish, the chef cooked a curry fish for us. We were so happy to see it, we started eating right away.  By the time I thought of taking a picture of it, it was almost all gone. The curry was treated with tamarind, a sour fruit, so it is a spicy and sour curry. Very enjoyable.

We also called for a dish of Sambal fried Kankoon.  Kankoon is much like spinach with hollow stems Sambal is a spicy mixture of onion, garlic, chilli peppers, shrimp paste, salt and pepper.

This plate of Sambal shrimp is actually very good. As is with the local practice, the shrimps were not shelled. The sambal sauce adheres to the shrimp.  When you eat this, you suck on the shells to get the flavor, then bite into it to taste the meat and spitting out the shells. That is what they do here, so no one raise an eyebrow on the spitting out the shells.

This is actually my favorite of the meal. The flat fish (flounder) were simply deep fried until they were crunchy.  Biting into the fish is like biting into fish chips - crunchy, salty, sweet meat.



For the meal, we each had a glass of iced nutmeg juice and a plate of white rice to go with all the seafood.

The cost of the meal was about 140 Ringgits (RM) The fish from the fish market was 75 RM, and the restaurant charged 63 RM for the cooking and the drinks and rice. Total: 138 RM or about $35 (U.S.).







Dinner in town