Sam & Pete Hit the road

We’ve spent the last couple of days in a home stay at a place called Sukasuka Island in a man made dam just outside of Kuala Kangsar.

Our hosts for our stay, Aziz and Asiah were fantastic Aziz’s knowledge of local history seems to be limitless and Asiah’s cooking really opened our eyes to the amazing food found here in Malaysia.

Aziz lead us on a tour of a local village reached by a short boat trip, he pointed out many of the local plants that sustain the village financially and food-ily. Rubber is BIG here. They cut a slit in the rubber tree and the white sap slowly drains out into a small bucket tied to the tree. According to Aziz – it takes about 6 months to fill a bucket and with the recent increase in demand for rubber, they sell the raw rubber to processing plants for around RM3/kg (around AUD1/kg). It’s causing a few of the younger people who’ve gone to the city looking for work to return to the villages to become rubber farmers. Once the tree reaches extends it’s usefullness, they sell the tree as wood for furniture etc.

We had a great time trying to guess once again all the local herbs and spices (though no one did as well this time round). We found curry leaves (smaller this time), tumeric, some kinda ginger flower and tapoica It was great to be able to taste these in the food served to us for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Lots of relaxing was done by all – they play a game with marbles here very similar to Mancala called Chonka which was very entertaining, but seemed to go on for hours and many games were left without a conclusion.

We’re really starting to stand out as tourists now – not that we didn’t already, but in a small village of mostly Muslium people, it’s hard not to notice. Our trishaw rider in Melacca had to get off and push us up the hill (clearly not enough Weetbix for breakfast as none of the other riders suffered this fate). We’ve visited a few Mosques where they wrap you up head to toe to get in

We caught the bus and a ferry to Penang today (the bridge out to Penang Island is the largest is SE Asia at 14kms, but the ferry seemed more senic). We’re here for a two nights, then off to Thailand. Looks like a nice place with heaps to do Ate at an awesome resturant for lunch called the East Xiamen Delicacies, we’re still a little paranoid about getting sick but it hasn’t really stopped us trying the food

– pete