Culinary adventures - chili crab in Malaysia

One of these weekends we went to Malaysia for dinner. It sounded cool that you could actually go to a different country just for dinner. After all, Malaysia is just a causeway away from Singapore, so it should be a breeze. It turns out it’s not that simple. First of all, we went during a long weekend, which meant a lot more people from Malaysia took the chance to go home then. So the traffic was kind of bad, especially since there were six of us in the car and Steve and I were sitting on top of each other, literally squeezed against the door.

Then came the immigration part: to cross into Malaysia and come back you need to fill out paperwork twice. You can do it in the car, if you happen to have extra forms, which our guides - Steve's co-workers - did. But it’s a huge waiting line (in the car) until you get to hand in your paperwork. There are also a lot of soldiers with machine guns walking around. Singapore and Malaysia aren’t exactly crazy about each other, so we’ve heard. There are so many cars waiting that some people just cross the causeway on foot – since it’s faster – but they walk right in the middle of the traffic and that’s just nuts. As we got into Malaysia, we went crossed the city of Johor Bahru (the second biggest city in Malaysia, after Kuala Lumpur) and drove into the country to get to our restaurant. All in all, the trip took two hours.

You can tell right away that Malaysia is very different from Singapore. Forget all about the squeaky cleanliness and get used to a grittier landscape. There are still apartment buildings and restaurants, but things just don’t look polished. Plus, we’ve heard it’s very dangerous to ride a nice car in Malaysia, especially late at night…

Still, as you ride into the country, the landscape reminded me more of a certain Algarvian architecture… the kind of houses that were built in the 70’s and 80’s, I guess: all white, with outer walls made of little columns, and aluminum doors and windows. Who copied who, I don’t know. There’s also a lot of tropical vegetation and in some areas all you see are trees and bushes.

The restaurant was nicely located near the water and from the distance you could see the lights in Singapore. Our party ordered some local specialties such as deer, chili crab, snails and steamed fish. We also drank coconut water (directly out of the coconut). I will admit I didn’t try the snails, but I heard they were good. The deer, crab and fish were all delicious (ok, the crab sauce was delicious, as I don’t eat shellfish. Still.) and our waitresses were all very nice, even if we didn’t speak a word of Malay. Fortunately, some of Steve's co-workers did, so that wasn’t a problem. We felt very welcome, especially considering we were the only white people in the whole restaurant and we were in the middle of the country.

The only drawback was the return trip: it took us another two hours, although this time there were only five of us in the car, thankfully. We almost got our camera taken away, since Steve thought it was a good idea to snap a picture of a soldier with a machine gun. Fortunately he only made us delete the picture.

I almost forgot… Uncle Bill, I am happy to report they did have regular bathrooms. They were pretty clean too.