Moon cakes

August 14, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

Hari Raya dates have been replaced in all the shops by displays of moon cakes. These cakes are round pastries filled with a rich thick filling usually of red bean or lotus seed paste. They are eaten as part of Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations. This festival dates from the fifth century, involves lunar worship and is associated with the legends of Chang’E, the mythical moon goddess of immortality. I found a lovely tea shop in central Ipoh this week. It has a beautiful cafe where one can drink tea from delicate china cups and eat Chinese delicacies, including moon cakes. Since I was on my own I didn’t stay but I did buy some cakes – I chose green tea pastries filled with date paste (and no sugar added!). It is an acquired taste but, having just eaten the last wedge of the first cake, I can report that it is growing on me. Perhaps next time we’re in town, we’ll sit down for tea and moon cakes – join us if you like!

Peace and quiet

August 7, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

This is the courtyard at the side of our house at Lakeside Villas and we spend a lot of time out here. It is cool, catching any breeze that there is, and there is a large fan in the ceiling. There is also a small table where we often eat all three meals. However, we are driven inside when the nearby theme park (http://www.sunwaylostworldoftambun.com/) starts playing music over its very loud sound system. The bass beat reverberates off the limestone hills straight into our courtyard. We have complained in person and by letter/email and were told that Sunway (the huge property company that developed Lakeside Villas and other housing complexes in the area, and owns the Lost World of Tambun theme park) seeks to provide “wholesome, family entertainment”, which obviously involves loud, repetitive “music”. Noise seems to be part of our lives here. The beautiful grounds around the area, which are also maintained by Sunway, are kept in shape by workers using very noisy tools – the grass is cut by teams of people each wielding a screaming trimmer and there is often the drone of leaf blowers. No “soft sighing of summer lawns” here! Renovating houses, which are barely seven years old, seems to be a favourite pastime of home-owners in Lakeside Villas. Several of our neighbours have moved out and left us to endure the noise of jack hammers and tile cutters. But today all is quiet – the builders have moved out of our street and the Lost World is not playing any music. Today we’ll enjoy our lunch in the courtyard.

Hari Raya

July 31, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

Muslims in Malaysia celebrated Hari Raya last weekend and we all enjoyed a four-day break. Hari Raya is the end of Ramadan and many Muslim families mark the holiday with ‘balik kampung’ (going back to the village) so the roads are very busy. The symbol of Hari Raya on many posters and greeting cards is the ‘ketupat’, baskets woven from coconut palm leaves which are stuffed with rice and then boiled. Not surprisingly food is central to Hari Raya and family gatherings. We were invited to an evening meal on the third night by our Muslim neighbours. The table was beautifully laid with all sorts of traditional dishes, many of them deliciously spicy. There was another table filled with sweet dishes. We tried to to do justice to it but when we got up the dishes were scarcely dented. Our neighbours had all their children and grandchildren staying over and the house was filled with the excited chatter and laughter of the children, dressed in their shiny new clothes. They were enchanting.

Marvellous Malacca

July 26, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

The four of us visited Malacca and we were all enchanted with it. We stayed in a boutique hotel in Jonker Street and explored the little temples, antique shops, souvenir sellers and cafes that thrive in the narrow lanes of the old town. The oldest buildings in Malacca date back to the 16th century and there is an eclectic mix of Malay, Straits Chinese, Indian, Dutch and British cultures. Highlights of our three-day stay included A Famosa, the gate house that is all that remains of the Portuguese fortress, and, up the hill, St Paul’s church, which was consecrated in 1521 by the Portuguese and subsequently became a Dutch Reformed Church when the Dutch took over Malacca in the 17th century. We had a delicious lunch in the beautiful Majestic Hotel and spent an fascinating afternoon in the Baba Nyonya Museum. This is a restored 19th century Chinese family home and showcases the unique lifestyle of the Straits Chinese who adopted Malay culture. The museum is filled with magnificent furniture, clothing and jewellery and we shown around by a charming Chinese guide dressed in Peranakan costume. On our last morning we visited Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia founded in the mid-17th century. It is beautifully restored and full of paintings, carvings and statues. You would need many visits to take it all in. Just before leaving marvellous Malacca we had iced coffees at the wonderfully modern Mods cafe.

Gratitude

July 18, 2014August 22, 20144 Comments

Our girls arrived safely at Auckland airport on their Malaysian Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur. When we dropped them at KLIA, the news of the downed flight MH17 was already on the front pages of all the papers. We spent an anxious day thinking about both our children on one vulnerable little plane, longing for the text message to tell us they had arrived in Auckland. We were lucky, we got that message. But it made us think of all those whose loved ones will never return and the gross injustice of all those innocent people being blown out of the sky. Life is short, life is precious and has never seemed more so than today.

Penang Hill

July 8, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

On our recent trip to Penang we went up the Hill in the funicular. We were amused that our tickets said “domestic child” while the girls were called “foreign adults” – we had presented our identity cards; locals pay far less than tourists. It is a quick, smooth ride up to 800m. The views over the city and the strait from the top is spectacular, particularly on a clearish day. We took a walk and stopped off at several bungalows, which date back to the early 20th century when British colonials escaped the heat by going up to the hill station. We also took a path through the dense jungle, where beautiful butterflies and other insects abound. We ended up at the aging Bellevue Hotel where we enjoyed club sandwiches and lime juice. Then it was back down the hill and into Georgetown where we explored one of the clan jetties and had a delicious meal. Penang didn’t disappoint.

The eye of the beholder

July 5, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

Our daughters are with us at the moment and it is wonderful to have them here for all sorts of reasons – to catch up after not seeing them for six months, to have time to chat about things that don’t seem important enough to include in a Skype conversation or an email, and just to be together in the same place for a couple of weeks. It is also great to see where we live afresh through their eyes. They really like the house and approve the juxtaposition of our furniture and other household items with those of the landlord. They have enjoyed the walks we’ve done around Sunway City, the visit to one of the cave temples, the stroll around the alleyways of the old town and the delicious meal we had in a street restaurant in Little India. Their enjoyment of the things that are different about our life in Ipoh from our life in Ohaupo has made me realise again how lucky we are to be having this experience. And this weekend we are off to Penang!

Dengue

June 30, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

We were woken this morning by a government Land Rover going slowly down the road with a tannoy blaring some kind of warning in Bahasa Melayu. Not understanding the language of the country we are living in, we were mystified. Shortly thereafter a man in an overall and a face mask came slowly down the road spraying something that immediately billowed into clouds of white vapour. Realisation dawned. They were spraying the area against dengue-carrying mosquitoes. We rushed to shut all the windows though the chemical smell was already obvious inside the house. Amazing that we were not informed ahead of time with some kind of pamphlet in the mail box. Nevertheless, dengue has been on the rise in Malaysia recently so I guess the powers that be are doing what they can. Scary that there is no cure for dengue and no vaccination either.

Dog

June 25, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

I have never owned a dog and I don’t consider myself a dog lover. I do, however, feel very strongly about the fate of the little dog who lives over the road from us in Lakeside Villas. He lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a cage in the carport. The maid wheels the cage around so that he is always in the shade and I presume she also makes sure he has food and water. I have seen her open the door and remove his waste and give him a slap when he tries to nip her. The people who live in the house never pay him any attention and he is certainly never taken out for a walk or to play. I first became aware of this dog because his barking at night woke me up. Now when I hear him barking, I just feel sorry for him. I have discussed this dog’s fate with my neighbours – apparently one of them has already notified the SPCA, which issued a warning to the owners, but nothing changed. There are many dogs in the yards around us. Some of them are taken for daily walks by their owners but more usually by the maids. There is one outstanding example of dog ownership in our street – an elderly rescue dog who is taken for a walk every morning and evening by his owner herself. She waits patiently for him to do as much sniffing as he wants to and then off they go on their slow meander around the pathways of Sunway City.

Shopping in KL

June 20, 2014August 22, 2014Leave a comment

I spent several hours in the 1 Utama shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur this week. Utama is the Malay word for ‘main’. This is the largest shopping centre in KL and the fourth largest shopping centre in the world apparently. I went there because it is a convenient taxi ride away from Jim’s KL office and because there are some stores there that I wanted to go to. But it is overwhelming and exhausting finding one’s way around and one trudges for miles to get to a particular store. What struck me most was that the only people you see in those glitzy designer stores are the shop assistants. How do stores like Gucci, Armani and Tiffany survive when they never seem to have any customers? However, there is an café in 1 Utama that makes a coffee like one I would enjoy in New Zealand and I know exactly where it is. I headed there first. Then I went to the large bookstore but came away with only one book. The selection of books in English is very limited and most of the books displayed I’ve either read or I don’t want to read. I also went to the upmarket grocery store where they import food from all over the world, including New Zealand and Australia. This is indulgent because there is plenty of good food in our three local supermarkets in Ipoh. I bought kiwifruit, new potatoes, Marmite, hummus and, best of all, a beautiful salmon fillet which they packed on ice for me. I had it for dinner last night and it was delicious, especially as I also opened the bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc that I had lugged the length of 1 Utama!

Travels from New Zealand

Two olds explore the world