Day 2 - Malyasia

Breakfast

Breakfast was the complimentary buffet at the hotel. I haven't gone over this yet, but my hotel is not a hotel ... it's a palace. My bed is wider than it is long, I have a view of the ocean (sunrise from my room below), I have a walk-in shower, complimentary ice cream was served at check-in, beverages are free every night from 6 to 8PM ... and they put these delightful coconut candies in my room everyday. I may just not come home.


The buffet fits the extravagant theme of the hotel. It caters to the international crowd that I see roaming the lobby. There are the standard US favors of waffles, eggs to order, hashbrowns, and cereal. But then there are the more international dishes available, like fried noodles, cheeses of all varieties, sliced meats, chicken sausage, and fish congee. I don't know what fish congee is, but it looks like oatmeal ... which I'm not sure is a good thing since it has the word "fish" associated with it. Regardless of the name and appearance, I'm trying it at some point.

This morning though I started out with some fresh pineapple, watermelon, cantelope, and papaya. All very juicy and flavorful. Since I don't get papaya at home that much, I was drawn to it most. After the fruit, I moved on to a plate of grilled tomatoes, chicken murtabak, and beancurd sambal. The murtabak tasted like mo shu pork wrapped in a deep fried puff pastry. It was definitely a unique dish for breakfast but very good. As was the sambal which was essentially fried tofu in a chili sauce with onions.

Despite my desire to be adventurous, I stuck with coffee as my drink of choice. If I'm not awak, I can't enjoy the food.


Lunch

Although the official work doesn't start until tomorrow, we had to get going to the plant to get set-up. It took most of the morning and early afternoon to get everything where we wanted it. On our way back to the hotel, the taxi driver asked us if we wanted fresh coconut. Hellz yeah. So we stopped in front of what appeared like someone's house and saw this:

Surprisingly the man still had all of his digits ... and we had a coconut with a straw in it.

After sucking up all the liquid, which was refreshing despite its richness, the same man retrieved the coconut from our hand, hacked it in half, and returned it to us so we could eat the meat. But first it had to be scooped out using a makeshift spoon from the outer shell of the coconut.


It tasted nothing like the coconut you see at the store but instead had a mild milk taste with a wet texture. It was fantastic. Enough to hold us over until dinner ...


Dinner

Dinner yesterday was so good that we decided to do a similar style meal but a different restaurant and with different dishes. The place was open air (as are many restaurants in Malaysia on account of the warm weather with a pleasant breeze coming off the ocean) facing the ocean.

Tanks full of future meals greeted us as we entered. The variety is remarkable. Couple that with the numerous ways each can be prepared and the options seem endless - and the menu reflects that.


This gentleman in the picture below runs frantically between the tanks to pick up the kitchen's orders. It doesn't see more than 50 feet out of water. That's as fresh as it gets. Returning to the picture and for those of you keeping score at home, that's one fish in the net that he scooped out of the tank near his knees and one fish he is dragging out bare handed. Impressive.


I mentioned geoduck in my last post. It is essentially is a gigantic clam, which is shown in the pic below. I've never seen them in the States but here, they are everywhere. Since we past on them last night, we decided to start with them tonight.


For service, I expected the geoduck to be cleaned and sliced into tubular pieces and then cooked somehow - perhaps breaded and deep fried like calamari. Instead it was thinly sliced and served raw with some soy sauce and wasabi. The texture and flavor were nearly identical to raw clams; only the pieces were much larger and absent of any sandy grit that sometimes accompanies raw clams.

The next dish was a form of long legged crab. (In many cases the names of the dishes were lost in translation ... or in other words, I missed what the waiter said.) The long legs were cut into small sections for easy handling and then cut open using the provided clippers. The meat was similar to king crab in color and flavor. The sauce was yet another form of a chili sauce.

Almond chicken served over a bed of diced melon similar to a honeydew. Even though it wasn't a completely unique dish, it was still better than most I've had.

Snails the size of your knuckle. With no way to cut through the shell, the snail meat is sucked out. Again it was served in a chili sauce that wasn't enough to mask the extremely fishy taste. Not my favorite dish ...

A steamed whole fish; don't know what kind. It was in a soy and vinegar sauces. I actually ate the cheek meat, which is extremely tender, juicy, and flavorful.

Hello not-so-beautiful-but-oh-so-delicious. These are the mantis prawns I talked about yesterday. Having had these a second time in as many days, I think that these are actually prepared by frying them. The shells are thin, like a shrimp, and extra crisp, something I wouldn't expect from boiling, as I previously speculated. Another new observation on these tasty critters is that the cooked tail meat has a localized spots of purple hue on the surface.

Scallops with broccoli. Done perfectly in a garlic sauce. Nuff said.

The second crab for the evening. This time it the meat was removed for us and mixed into some sort of a soupy dish. For all the colors and texture, the only thing I was able to truly taste in this dish was the crab. It was fine served over rice, but nothing to write home about ... on a food blog though is another situation.

With full stomachs, we returned to the executive lounge in our hotel to let the food digest.