Food tastes best when it's grilled on the back of a motorbike

It's Wednesday night here in Kota Bharu, my last night here. Tomorrow morning, I leave for Penang.

These past few days in Kota Bharu have been interesting. In all honesty, I didn't do anything epic, or go very far, but it was a great experience.

On Monday, my first full day here, I just got a feel for the city. My lovely guesthouse is pretty close to the city centre.



I ventured into the Central Market, that place is very, very large. It has anything you could possibly want (except pork). There's a large section of fruit sellers outside. On the first floor are the vegetable sellers in the middle (it's an octagonal building), and the fish and meat sellers around them.




The other floors have other provisions like dry goods, textiles, cleaning supplies and more. An attached building has all sorts of food stands selling lunch. That's where I had a great bowl of "stomach" soup. I don't believe the guy when he told me the stuff in the soup was just stomach (from the cow). The stand had these different "parts" hanging from hooks, and they cut off pieces for my soup when they made it. One of the large parts I saw them cut stuff off from for my soup from looked like stomach, and another looked like cooked beef (the actual meat). I'm not really sure what the other two items were. One kinda looked like a funky intestine-y type thing, though it was all kinda tightly coiled with tissue connecting all the tubes. The other looked like, well, I have no friggin clue what it looked like. How did it taste? Offalicious. It had bean sprouts and herbs and a flavorful broth and vegetables. I enjoyed it, unidentified parts and all! Sorry, I forgot to get a picture of this one.

On Monday I also went to the World War 2 museum, it was OK. It didn't have a lot of "artifacts", only a few. It mostly just told the story via posters and pictures. It focused heavily on Malaysia's role in the war. Kota Bharu was the first landing point of the Japanese for the invasion of Malaya.

I wandered around the city some more and got some dinner, fried rice. It was good. I then headed over to the night market, which sets up every night outside the Central Market. It was alright, lots of vendors selling all sorts of clothes and accessories and pirated CDs and movies. I had a little snack there too, fish satay. The fish wasn't really in fish form, more like these weird little balls, and they didn't taste much like fish. They were super cheap though, 10 sen a piece (100 sen=1 Ringgit, 1 ringgit=30 cents US, so 10 sen is about 3 cents US). The best part was that the vendor was grilling them on the back of his motorbike. The setup was resting on the kickstand, and he had all the skewers ready to go in a large plexi-glass box on the back. Behind the box, resting on the back of the bike, was a charcoal grill on which he cooked the skewers. He would then dunk them into this sweet-spicy chili sauce and put them in a bag and give them to you. It was great! I had never seen something quite like it, definitely one of the coolest things I've seen.




Tuesday, yesterday, I wandered a lot more. I went to the Royal Museum, which is all about the Sultans and Sultanesses of Kelantan, focusing on the current ones. It had lots of their items and rooms from their homes from over time (they basically moved all the furniture and possessions and re-assembled the stuff in rooms at the museum). It was pretty interesting, Their Highnesses now seem to have a primarily ceremonial role.

For food I ate at some out of the way roadside stalls. I had roti cannai (I really like the stuff). Another meal was fried rice (again) which was also good. I also got some really good Chinese doughnuts. They fry em right there, so you get them while they're hot. One was like a kinda sweet, plain cruller, alright. The other was this disc that puffed up so it was hollow in the middle. Inside the cavity was a layer of (sweet) red bean paste. Red bean paste has got to be one of my favorite ingredients, it tastes soooo good! That doughnut (OK, doughnuts, I went back for a second) was spectacular. If you think red bean paste sounds gross as a dessert item, please try it. It's just awesome. It's pretty thick, mashed up boiled red beans (it's not very wet though) with sugar.

Today I did some souvenir shopping and went for a long walk outside the city centre. I didn't know there was so much in Kota Bharu, I had only gotten a little taste previously. It is a good sized city, about half a million people. I had a basic lunch of chicken with soy and rice, and a bit of soup at this hawker centre. It was good. This evening I went to the night market again. This time around I had a new food. I had grilled flattened dried squid. There are these little carts that set up near/around the night market. They hang up all these little flat dried squids (I don't know how they get to this stage) from strings running across the front of their cart. To make the dish they take the little squid and put it through this crank roller (with ridges that interlock). The squid gets really big (in surface area), though unrecognizable except for the little tentacles. It also takes on the texture from the rollers. The "squid" is then placed on the little charcoal grill for a few moments to heat it up (I don't think it really cooks), and flipped around a few times. It's then placed in a little plastic bag with a bit of sweet and spicy chili sauce (like with the fish satay, it's pretty popular condiment around here, a bit like our ketchup). You eat it out of the bag as is. It only costs 1 ringgit. It wasn't bad, I didn't think it was fantastic, but it was a good snack.



Tommorow morning I fly out to Penang back on the West Coast. I'm really looking forward to it, it's supposed to be great.

Well that does it for me, I gotta go to bed. Thanks for all the great comments, I love to hear them.

Goodnight,
Mike