All About the Food

So today was a tour consisting of food - breakfast, lunch and dinner.  James' partner, Mary, was our tour guide today as James was off caving with another group, but did meet us for dinner at the end.  Mary is of Bidayuh heritage, so is very knowledgeable about native foods, not to mention the people and the language.

Our first stop was for laksa, a Chinese breakfast, consisting of vermicelli noodles, chicken/shrimp, all cooked and served in a spicy broth.  Very good.

Our next stop was to a local village where a shop processes birds' nests for bird's nest soup, again a traditional Chinese dish.  They believe it makes women's skin younger and more vibrant, and makes men...well, more vibrant.  So they take down nests made by the Swiftlet (a type of swallow), and they're made, by the way, of Swiftlet spit.  Yep, entirely of saliva.  This is the raw product.

Then they have a bunch of people with tweezers picking out all the impurities after the nests have been soaking for a while.

Then they reform them back to sort of what they looked like before cleaning them, and they dry them, so they end up looking like this.














We then went off to the market in Bau where a local could find any fresh produce or meat they could ever want.

And we saw some sights there that would turn your stomach.  Mary is holding up a sago worm that people will buy to eat.  The sago worm eats dead bamboo stalks.

Then Mary took us to her brother's place, where her sister-in-law, Leo, demonstrated how to make some of the food we were going to eat later for lunch.  It was fantastic, and the food was too.

Here she ground up garlic and various other herbs and spices and squeezed the juices onto some pork along with soy sauce.  It was absolutely delicious.

Then she made a similar marinade to go with chicken and put it in a bamboo shoot to cook.  Again, delicious.

In between preparing these dishes and eating them, Leo cooked these items as well as some vegetable dishes while we went off to explore the Fairy Cave nearby.  We all donned miner hats complete with lights.

It was an extensive cavernous cave.  The Chinese believe there is a fairy queen here along with other fairies, and they light joss sticks to her around the stalagmites.

We did make it back out, and went back to Leo's house to eat.

Here's the bamboo cooking, and we're sitting outside ready to eat.

After lunch, Leo played the slotuang (I think that's it).  She plays it by striking the bamboo and tapping the top.

When we were finished here, we went to one last Bidayuh village where they celebrate an annual festival with a village across the border in Indonesia.  The village people walk from one to the other.  One year they come to Malaysia, the next year, they go to Indonesia.  It's about 1 day and a half walking through the jungle.  And guess what?  They have heads!  A couple in our group lost theirs, I think.

After we left the Head House, we went back outside to a storm brewing.  The sun behind storm clouds gave this beautiful view.

After we left the village, we went back to Kuching and finished up the evening with dinner at a Chinese restaurant chosen by James and Mary.  We met up with James there as well.

All in all, another terrific, long day.  Tomorrow we are off to Kuala Lumpur.