Noodles for Breakfast

On the way to Batang Ai (a lake which was created by the construction of the dam serving as a hydroelectric power station about 20 years ago), it’s possible to make a stop-over in the little town called Serian. Every day there’s a great market where Malaysian and Indonesian traders are selling their goods such as fruits, fish, chicken and sunglasses. Besides the usual meat, it’s sometimes also possible to find quite the exotic goods over there – however, the chances to spot these are quite small when you are carrying a big camera or wearing a t-shirt of a well known tour operator.

Sometime ago I was doing the usual tour and explaining some exotic fruits for my small tour group. When I reached the area with the fishes, I suddenly realized that I was walking alone. I went back to my group to see why they were not following and was surprised to then see the contents of a few plastic bags on one table. The reason for the trader to cover up the Python meat when seeing me or a tourist making pictures is quite simple: There’s a hefty fine and jail time to hunt, kill and sell protected species in Sarawak. Although I have to admit that I was quite curious about the taste of Python, I’m also quite okay with knowing that it’s supposed to taste a bit like chicken.

At another stall I bought one of my favourite fruits – the Rambutan, a kind of lychee which has an aggressive appearance but is very sweet and delicious in taste. There’s also another quite famous fruit I should mention at this point, called Durian. Some people say it smells like hell, but tastes like heaven. I think it smells like rotten animals and tastes like hell. But maybe that’s just me as a person preferring sweet fruits such as Rambutan. At the stall I said:
“Ehm..satu Rambutan.” Finger-Point.
The woman: “Tiga Ringgit.”
Me: “Tiga? Ok cool. Terima Kasih.”
She responded with a simple “Sama-sama.” and concluded the sale. Wait a second – did I just have my first dialogue in Malay?

There are many situations like the above, when you order a fruit you didn’t know a few month before in a new language you didn’t know a few month before making you realize that something changed. I guess it’s normal to adapt to some degree to your environment and develop some kind of routines the longer you live in a place. Sometimes, when there aren’t any German speaking tours to follow as a German guide, Christian and me are working in the Office. We are getting very interesting tasks from our supervisors including the creation of weekly assignments to assist the organization and scheduling of the tour guides, researching about the mangroves in the Kuching Wetlands to assist a project for protecting this area and developing statistics for mangrove tours in the last years.

From time to time, the routine kicks in (mostly for Breakfast and Lunch time) and we walk to the next Kopitiam, the Dim Sum Café. As I mentioned before, sometimes you have to adapt to your environment – over here this is especially true when it comes to food. Unless you are in a major Hotel it’s quite unlikely to find a traditional European breakfast. So for breakfast I’m usually having Kolo Mee: Noodles mixed with vegetables and chilli and served with slices of Pork. At first I was a bit sceptical about it, but now I’m almost feeling that I lack something when I didn’t get my rice, noodles and chilli of the day. Maybe getting used to the food is like eating with chopsticks – you just have to try out new things and adapt a little. Maybe you will even gain some new insight, for example that Noodles can be actually quite yummy for breakfast!

Jumpa Lagi,
FS