My department was organising an evening out for our Language Club and Debate Club students at a little place called Heritage Garden Steamboat Restaurant. Now, for those of you who are not in any way knowledgeable about things Eastern, Steamboat restaurants are very common ways of enjoying the culinary bounties of nature here in Malaysia. The way it works is that you have a big table, usually round, with a gas burner in the middle and a large pot full of steaming hot soup on it.
Arranged around the sides of the pot are small griddles for frying bits of food on. You go and select as much fish, seafood, meat, raw veggies, fish balls etc. as you can fit on a plate, and, with the encouragement of your friends and family, as well as the help of chopsticks and large ladles, you proceed to cook your own delicious morsels! No need for snotty waiters who get your order wrong, and no need to wait for hours for your food! You simply prepare it right in front of you!
And here are some images to show you how it's done:
The Heritage Garden is situated in a cosy outdoor garden under a roof with lots of plants and wood carvings on display. There are plenty of tables and the atmosphere is smoky, steamy and steeped in food and jollity.
This being the tropics, the mosquitoes were also at the feast, so I suffered mercilessly from dozens of tormenting bites from these disgusting little pests. They really enjoyed my sweet, warm British blood. Well at least the UK is managing to export one thing to Malaysia!
But, even though I was being eaten alive, I stuffed myself silly - eating far too much including some ice cream! When will I ever learn? Probably when they cart me off to the cardiac unit I expect. Ah well...
One thing I did learn, though, is just what it means to say that Malaysians love food. Our party consisted of about 20 students as well as three of us lecturers. They were all joyfully placing bits of food on the grill plates and popping various morsels in the cooking pot and later taking them out, to devour them with loud conversation in high-speed Malay and English. And it all started again, once they finished.
Several of my students kept asking me if I had had enough - even though my stomach bag was about to burst! It seemed perfectly natural to them to take as much food as they could, without worrying about the consequences. And they are all SO thin!!
In the end, I had to make my excuses and leave this culinary revelry. I must say, it strengthened my faith in young Malaysians, who all seem to be born to enjoy themselves without doing silly things like getting drunk, puking up, shouting rude songs at each other or getting off with each other.
All the kind of things I used to do when I was their age! It's a good thing that the past is, definitely, a foreign country to which there is no visa!
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