For our February trip, Drew and I booked a last minute deal with TravelZoo that got us flights, hotel, breakfast, and a high tea at the Shangri-La Tanjung Aru, one of the nicest resorts in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on the island of Borneo. When most people hear of Borneo, they think of this...
Thinking of Borneo as a mystical jungle isn't that far off. Just outside the city is Mt. Kota Kinabalu, the highest peak in SE Asia at a staggering 4,095 meters, or 13,435 feet. That's almost a 14ner! It's huge considering that the rest of the island is, well, an island and therefore at sea level.
Borneo is also known for its conservation work with Orangutans and other jungle creatures. Since I'm not a huge fan of monkeys to begin with, and since we've seen our fair share of monkeys both in Kuala Lumpur and in Bali, we decided to skip the Orangutan sightings for the beach.
We flew into KK on Wednesday afternoon, dropped our things at the hotel and went straight back out again for some linner. (Lunch/Dinner). We ended up at a collection of seafood restaurants in an area called Kampung Air. Essentially the restaurants ringed this large covered pavilion filled with family style tables. Since it was early afternoon, we had the place to ourselves. Each restaurant had tanks in front showing all of the live seafood it had to offer. Essentially you picked the exact seafood you want, then you picked a style of cooking: steamed, sautéed with butter, etc. It was, ultimately a tourist spot, as the prices were normal to us, but much higher than we would find at a mom and pop shop. But, the food was worth it.
We chose a local fish in the sweet and sour style. It was actually one of the best whole fish I have ever eaten. The outside had this great caramelization of the sugar and the inside was the white delicious meat. I even got to dig around for the cheek meat. Delicious!
We also got prawns in dried butter. Not really sure how they accomplished the drying of the butter, but you see the end result and it was worth it.
After our seafood linner, we went to the local market where the real stuff happened. First of all, I have never seen so much seafood in one place in my entire life. There was fish of every size, from eggs to the largest catches. There was squid of all sizes, eels, crabs, everything. And all of the sellers were yelling at the top of their lungs to attract customers. If you listened closely enough, it sounded like a strange song, as each seller had his distinct call that he issued with noticeable regularity. We just tried to stay out of the way and observe, but that was harder said than done as the place was packed.
This market also had meat, fruit, veggie, dried goods, and cooked food sections. Drew, of course, kept muttering with whole-hearted dejectedness "why did we already eat.....why....why...." So, we came back to the cooked food section the last night of our trip, as we had to try it. The picture below shows a stand of grills where women cooked the seafood in billows of smoke. I'm not sure how they could stand both the smoke and the heat, but they knew their craft.
We ended up with tiger prawns, which are, arguably, one of the best delicacies in the seafood world. Drew and I would disagree though. They are expensive, and their size makes them actually quite tough. We'll stick with smaller prawns in the future.
However, the piece-de-resistance was the grilled stingray we tried. The meat wasn't fishy nor mushy, and it was grilled to perfection. Add a bit of kaffir lime, and you have heaven. It was also very easy to eat, as the bones, seen below, support the meat in a grid pattern, which I assume helps the stingray move in its wavy, flowy fashion. So, you just scrap away the meat and don't get a single bone!
After puttering around the market, we went into the city itself. Just outside the market were about 10 men sitting at sewing machines waiting for jobs. This was quite funny for me. Why are all of the seamstresses men? And they were using old fashioned, pedal operated sewing machines. Classic.
We also walked through a clothing market. It was like an outdoor department store! Except the clothes looked like they had been rained on a time or two :)
We also passed by a lotto store that was packed to the brim with men waiting to buy their chance for a different life. Kind of sad actually.
Finally, we had to try the local desserts. We got bubble tea along with these kaya balls. Kaya is a coconut jam, so these were essentially waffle batter balls with coconut jam inside. We got 10 of them for a dollar. You can see more cooking on the right.
No comments:
Post a Comment