Durian & Organ Delight at Johor Bahru Trip

July 31, 2007

(Singapore Sessions, Episode 4 )

Current mood: sleepy

Part 3-Well instead of finishing paper, I am writing this instead!! Bad student. Oh well, I only have 2 weeks here to play so I am going to cram a lot in during a short time. I finished my class work on Saturday around 1pm and then my classmate, Rachel, (who will be attending the U of W in the fall on exchange) and I took the bus, train, bus, bus to go to Johor Bahru of JB for short in Malaysia. It is literally on the other side of the Straits of Johor, just north of Singapore, so it would be like going across the floating bridge from Seattle to Bellevue, except you go from Singapore to Malaysia. In a 24 hour day, we crammed the following in. 2 Day 1 night Johor Bahru Trip.

Sat

Ate Bah Kuk Teh (pork meat cooked in herbal soup) and pepper pig stomach soup for lunch (Lani, yes I ate pig stomach and it was good.)Durian Hunting at Johor Jaya (Outskirt of J.B)Shop for pirated CDs at Holiday Plaza (The shopping mall with the best quality of pirated CDs)Dinner at Rachel’s home @ Taman Pelangi (Rainbow Garden)(Dishes: Curry chicken, Sambal Sting Ray, Sambal Sea Shell, prawn ball soup, barley water, durian)

Sun

Breakfast at typical Malay Restaurant: Roti Canai/Prata (the plain one), Roti Telur (with egg), Roti Tisu (Bread Tissue, the cone shape), and Lontong (Glutinous rice in curry)Shopped and Walk around at Dangay bay. (Pouring rain)Walked through Johor Sultan Garden.Visiting the oldest Chinese Temple in JB, Sikh Temple and Hindu Temple.Lunch: Claypot chicken rice with chinese herbal tea (Luo han guo)Tea break: Local coffee + fish cracker
In short, walked a ton and ate even more. With the heat, I’m not very hungry and they keep feeding me more food.

Durian…. For those of you that haven’t had it, it is really hard to describe. It is a spikey fruit that smells, I mean it smells. Kind of a mix of Gasoline and a mediciney smell. Indescribable. Anyway, you crack it open and there are 5 pods that look kind of like raw chicken and they have a huge seed in the middle. You eat the meat, and it is really creamy and kind of is like a caramel/buttery taste. Very rich and strong. The locals love it. It is actually quite good, they call it the King of Fruit and the Mangostein is the Queen (also smells like gasoline.)
Anyway, had a blast in Malaysia, walked around the Sultan’s gardens and estates, of which there are many. Apparently the Sultan (which is the appointed official for the region) rarely moves into an old estate so they usually build a new one, so there are many of these huge estates that are empty, around Malaysia.

I also ate pig stomach at one of the markets here and it was pretty good. Not too organy tasting and the broth was quite good. I figure I will audition for Fear Factor when I get back. I am going to have some organ delight tonight and probably try some eyeballs or something…mmmm. Malaysia was great and Rachel was the best tour guide ever. Her family was so nice and just kept feeding me until my belly button popped out. Stingray is quite good by the way, very tasty.
On Tuesday, 7/31, I finally had a chance to walk around downtown Singapore. Had lunch with my roommate and her father (not the flying cockroach), but Stephanie, exchange student from Hong Kong via Huntington Beach, CA. Then I went out and got lost, just wandering the streets. Went down to the Singapore River and caught a junkboat tour to look around, and then walked down to the Esplanade and saw the Merlion, kind of the symbol of Singapore. The other exciting thing is that they have Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf here in Singapore, so in honor of my friend Maria, I popped in and had an ice blended. I had to travel across the world to get one, but it was good. Damn Starbucks, Coffee Bean’s Ice Blendeds are soooo much better than a frapaccino.
Met Suzanne, former U of W Exchange student, for dinner of duck and rice and then we went shopping at a huge 3 or 4 story market that was full of small stalls of very cool stuff. If you’ve been to Manchester, it is like the big market there. Very cool, lots of fun stuff and did some shopping. Afterwards we had Durian ices and another kind that I can’t remember that had red beans and green squiggly candy things in it. The ices were great because it is soo hot here and they cool you off. Great day, didn’t rain at all. I think that was a first, because there is usually 1-2 big thunderstorms a day and then it stops and is just humid.

Well got to go and work on my papers. Today is a homework day, but dinner tonight down by the river and more shopping and walking around.

New photos posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/beth.tallman/SingaporeHighlights?authkey=2LzIwTgCHw0. This is an easier site to use. There are some good ones.

Beth

(FYI, you can find Durian in International District or Ranch 99, organized by Cortilia)