Photographic proof!

Last weekend's birds' nest soup experience definitely needed to be captured for posterity - and of course I had to do something with the photographic evidence that we really had eaten bird spit!

So here's the double page layout I have done, with a tongue in cheek Chinese-style title.  The design is based on a Becky Fleck sketch, and the papers used are Kaisercraft Secret Bird Society (very apt, I thought!)  The birds are cut with a Sizzix swallow die cut, the title is cut on the Cricut using Deng Thick font, and there's a bit of inking and stamping on there too if you look hard enough ;-)

Birds' nest soup - yummy! (not)

I dug an enormous hole for myself on the way to Melaka on Saturday when I said to the kids:  "Your challenge for this weekend is to eat something that you've not tried before".  Little did I know that, just a couple of doors down from the hotel where we spent the night, was a newly opened building, dedicated to the history, making and selling of birds' nests.  Not just any old nests, but the edible kind, the ones that are considered a delicacy by the Chinese.  The ones that they believe have great health-boosting properties, and so are prepared to pay an absolute fortune for.  Well, yes, they have been proved to be high in protein - that's so the tiny fledgelings can eat them and grow big and strong so they won't be next-bound for too long.  But frankly if I was going for something high in protein, I think I'd much sooner eat a nice juicy steak!

So anyway, these nests are made by swiftlets. Legend has it that a great Chinese sea captain, forced with his crew to seek refuge from a fierce storm in a cave, decided to try eating them when they ran low on rations.  And he discovered that after a couple of days, the crew were all much healtheir and stronger.  And thus the appetite for these tiny little nests, made of bird spit, was born.  These days a lot of the nests are farmed in purpose-built buildings.  It's a lot safer and easier than collecting them from cave ceilings hundreds of feet high.  The building we saw had become home to the swiftlets when it was abandoned, and the new owner, a birds' nest magnate, paid a fortune for the run down house simply because the birds and their nests were worth so much.  Here's what some of the nests look like, before processing:

And this is how they look after processing, when being sold in the shops:

That big round box on the top had a price tag of 5,878 RM - that's roughly GBP1,175!


Before touring the house, we ordered a bowl of soup between us, so we could at least say we had tried it.  At 50RM (10 pounds) for the bowl, it was apparently a bargain.  We had seen the nests in the rafters, plus a few birds, and we had seen Malaysian workers painstakingly picking out all the bits of feather and other, um, waste materials.  Now it was time to taste the cooked results.

The soup came with a choice of raw cane sugar or honey sugar, we were recommended to use the honey sugar.  To be honest, it was fairly innocuous.  It smelt a little like egg white, tasted of honey sugar (!) and the stringy bits were just gelatinous, a bit like tapioca and semolina, except in longish pieces rather than little balls.  But knowing what it was made all the difference to our "enjoyment" of it - it was hard not to feel ill, and it would be fair to say that none of us has an overwhelming desire to go back for more.

We had a great time in Malaka - I'll be back with some more stories and photos soon.

A KL institution

It's fair to say that under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have looked twice at this cafe, much less have gone in.  You can see why - from the outside it looks like it wouldn't be out of place in an old black and white Western - well, with the possible exception of the very Arabic-style script above the door!

As for inside - well, let's just say that it hasn't seen even a single lick of paint for quite some time.  If Dulux were to launch this colour, it would have to be called hint of nicotine.  It's the sort of place where you walk in and feel you should be ordering a pint of stout.

But this, ladies and gentlemen, is a Kuala Lumpur institution, which has been entertaining visitors to the city since 1921, when it used to cater to planters and tin miners.  Author William Somerset Maugham has stayed here, and Malaysia's first prime minister was an early patron too.

Ninety years later, it is still renowned for its good food, from steak or fish and chips to more Malaysian dishes.  I'm told that at weekends it's packed.  On Thursday morning, when I and seven other new-to-KL expats were introduced to it, there were very few people in there.  Saturday lunchtime I returned, with Alex and Caitie in tow, and it was definitely busier.  The vegetable spring rolls were delicious, as was the fried rice Alex had.  Caitie was less adventurous and stuck with French Fries, but they too were tasty.  All were served piping hot and with astonishing speed by the long-serving waiters, some of whom have apparently worked their all their lives, and should now really be drawing a well-earned pension.

Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in this neck of the woods.

Tea, tourists and a dodgy fish curry....

Our latest Malaysian adventure was a trip to Cameron Highlands, an area high on some mountains in the middle of the country, famous for its tea, strawberries and other farm produce.  It is a popular destination because, being high up, the air is cooler and - allegedly - fresher.  I say allegedly because if you go on a public holiday weekend, like we did, you end up being caught in long traffic jams (caused largely by bad parking), and stuck behind buses giving out obnoxious exhaust fumes that would definitely earn them a black mark for pollution back in the UK.  Or, if you're really lucky, you could get stuck behind a dustbin lorry - very unpleasant in this heat....

It's fair to say that the weekend was, as my friend put it, a bit of a curate's egg.  The bad was the jams, the many, many tourists, and the somewhat tacky feel to some of the main areas.  (Anything that couldn't move fast enough had a strawberry motif on it!).  Plus the dodgy fish curry mentioned in the blog title, eaten by Alex in the hotel on the Saturday night.  It kept him up most of the night, and he was in bed all day Sunday and most of Monday :(  But obviously it's OK, and we won't let it put us off going back to that hotel, because we got the cost of the curry back..... hmmm - not sure whether to be pleased that I at least got something back, or insulted by the paltry compensation!

The good was the fantastic scenery that could be found once you left the main road - just look at this:

Rows and rows of verdant tea bushes, stretching out across rolling hills.

Here is Caitie, enjoying the novelty of cooler air, and being able to wear a fleece!

The tea and cake we had at a plantation was lovely, and very welcome given that by then it was very definitely cool and more than a little misty!  The strawberries we sampled were delicious too.

Would we go again?  Possibly, in another year or two - but not on a public holiday weekend, and not to the same hotel!

Just a quickie.....

Just a quick post today to share a layout I did a couple of weeks ago.  The photo is of Will at Pangkor Laut last month.  It isn't easy to get a photo of him with a natural smile, he's usually too busy posing!  Love this one though :)  Stash info for my scrappy friends - the papers are from the My Mind's Eye Stomp! pad, stars are stamped with some ancient Autumn Leaves stamps, and I used a Becky Fleck sketch.

Thanks for looking.

272 steps (phew!), brightly-coloured shrines and gigantic gold statues....

...sums up Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur in just a few words, but really doesn't do the famous site much justice.  Especially when you consider that it is one of the biggest Hindu shrines outside India, and attracts over a million people during the Hindu Thaipusam festival.
Yes, there are lots of steps - hard work in this heat, but it is quite humbling to watch older people determined to visit the shrines, even if they have to sit down at regular intervals to catch their breath before continuing their long climb to the caves at the top.  It is hard to imagine, too, what it must be like there during Thaipusam, when the pilgrims flock there and carry offerings of milk to Lord Muruga, each and every one of them climbing all the steps.  Apparently some of these offerings are in huge containers, some weighing as much as 100kg, set on frames with skewers which pierce the skin of the carrier.  That truly is a sign of devotion.

So, as we were walking up the 272 steps (or being dragged up by our teenage son in some cases!), it was good to stop every now and again with the excuse of photographing a macaque monkey or two.  There's no shortage of these - some enjoy chasing unsuspecting tourists who have made the mistake of having food with them - not that they get to keep the food for long in some cases!  Some are happy to just perch on the top of posts, looking for all the world like just one of the many carved decorations - until they move!

At the top of the steps are caves, huge limestone ones, with shrines dotted here and there, all lovingly carved and painted in gloriously bright (albeit sometimes faded) colours.  No doubt a better knowledge of Hinduism would help the appreciation of them, as apparently many tell the tale of Lord Murugan's victory over the demon Soorapadam.  The caves, as you may have guessed, are dedicated to Lord Murugan, God of War and Victory, and it is his likeness that towers over visitors to the caves, in the form of a 140-foot high golden statue by the entrance to the steps.

It wasn't a long visit by any means - in fact we popped in on our way back from the elephant sanctuary - but one that was definitely worth making.

Rather than upload loads of photos, I've uploaded the scrapbook layout I've done - I have to say, it was hard narrowing the hundred or so photos I took to just 14!  But it does at least give a flavour of the visual feast we enjoyed.

Elephants!

This week, we finally got around to visiting Kuala Gandah National Elephant Conservation Centre. It's been on our to-do list ever since we got here, but what with wanting to avoid the crowds there at weekends, and Alex being at work weekdays, it just hadn't happened. So Alex booked a day off work, and off we went!

We had a great time. We hand-fed some baby and injured elephants, kept in enclosures, with peanuts; and also fed some much bigger elephants with fruit - no space between us this time. Just look at this photo - no zoom lens needed, I really was that close!

We also got to ride on them:

And Will braved the muddy river to bathe with them!
 

We had a great time - we all love elephants, and it was wonderful to get the chance to be up close and personal with them.