Sing 8. Nick's Food Tour of Asia, Parts 6 and 7

Part VI: Ribs

Seeking a change from my all-rice diet and feeling like splashing out, I headed down to the local Fat Bastard-eria, Missippi Slim's. This is a restaurant, presumably a chain, named after the owner, Slim. Slim was obviously named by an Australian (probably a red head called Bluey) and he features prominently throughout his establishment. There's the big, 4-foot wide life sized photo of him out on the street, and he shows up on every page of the menu: there's Slim heartily tucking into a plate of fat; Slim wiping the grease from his bearded maw; Slim counting a wad of ringit he just relieved you of for a very tasty, if not entirely healthy, meal.

Now, I hadn't eaten (western-style) ribs for some time. My first trip to America was the last time, in fact, and that was in 1982. I remember them being pretty fatty and not particularly satisfying. More the kind of dish Fijians would get excited about, rather than Jack Sprat here. But lamb ribs, I thought, might be different. Lamb chops are ribs, aren't they? Maybe they just name things differently.

Well, they were nice, and Slim's special barbeque sauces were pretty tasty, too. And I probably needed a bit of fat to help give me that shiny coat. But at the end of the day, you're paying for a plate of fat covered bones. (It's the American version of chicken's feet.) This just leaves you hungry, so you have to order more, (in my case, Mississippi Chocolate Mud Cake), and that probably has no nutritional value, either (in my case, absolutely not!)

On the other hand, Mississippi Slim's does give the chance to catch up on what's been happening on the country and western music scene for the past 40 years, and the fat was damned tasty. But if you go, get the burger. It has meat in it, is half the price, and will leave you practically incapacitated from over-eating.

The overall score, based on two visits, is 3/5. Definitely worth a look when you want to get bloated on western food and still have a sense, false or otherwise, of having done better by your body than if you'd gone to KFC.

No wonder Americans are so fat.

PS: Vegetarians needn't apply.

PART VII: A&W

Went to a fast food place in Kota Bharu (A&W), only because a mate was. Pretty standard hamburgers, but served with root beer. Who the hell divised this cruel and revolting substitute for a beverage? It's not beer, it's not refreshing, in fact it's not even possible to drink: it tastes like cough syrup for crying out loud. I once tried it in America the first time I went. When I was eight. Urgh.

A&W scores a measly 1/5: eat it if you must, and if you want something that tastes the same as Burger King or MacDonalds, but in smaller servings.

So now my list of forbidden foods/drinks is as follows:

1. Anything endangered (eg bear paws)

2. Anything still alive (eg monkey brains)

3. Sun-dried tomatoes

4. Durian (pending further experimentation)

5. Root beer

This ends my food tour of Asia for the time being as I'm back in Melbourne and really need to start doing some work. But now:

A DIFFERENT NOTE

On a different note, the lack of booze in Muslim Kelantan reminds me of the funniest thing I saw in Malaysia. Being so Islamic, all the women in Kelantan, and indeed in much of Malaysia, wear head scarves that hide all the hair. This makes it difficult, therefore, to sell certain items to the consumer. Such as shampoo.

Sunsilk, however, has a billboard campaign featuring a bottle of shampoo, a slice of lime, a bit of water and a smiling, scarf-headed woman. "My hair's so shiny and full of life with new Sunsilk. If you were my husband and we were in the privacy of our own home, I'd show you. But check out these eyebrows. Aren't they something?"

Its probably the same advertising people who do the bank and tampon ads.

I wonder what they do in the Arabian countries where the women can only show their eyes...

Sing 7. Big Ol' Rant

I was obviously an angry young man when I wrote this, but in the interests of journalistic integrity (ha!) I thought I'd include it. NJL 7/10/6

Anyway, I was asked the other day what I thought of the Malaysian concept of service. To which I naturally replied, "what concept?"

It's not that service here is bad. Service is actually very good in most cases. When it exists. Which is rare.

For example, the dodgy DVD seller who told me, without anyone asking him to, of his other stock, not on display, that I was also welcome to purchase. Or the pimp who hung out on Jalan Sultan Ismail, between my hotel and the restaurants, who asked me every time I passed whether I wanted a girl. Such unsolicited helpfullness is "good" service.

But contrast that to the taxi drivers who just ignore you standing at the taxi stop waving frantically, and when they do pick you up they have no idea where your destination is (ie, the twin building, 27 storey international hotel about 1,500m up the road, on the corner of Jalan Ampang and Jalan Sultan Ismail. What do you mean you don't know where Jalan Sultan Ismail is? It's a major road with a mono-rail running its length. Do you even know where we are now? No, turn *right*, in the direction I've been pointing all the time. Now turn *left* back onto Jalan Ampang, otherwise we're going back to where we started and where's the point in that, or can't you fathom that concept either? What do you mean I can't have a receipt? Of course I can. Every legal taxi has receipts. Fine, no receipt, no fare). Or the waitress who comes by to ask what you'd like (a menu, please), says "certainly, sir" and then forgets. Each time.

Or even my contact at the bank. I'd ask him for a power extension cord and he'd say something in Bahasa Malaysia to the girls that contained the phrase "power cord" and it would never show up. I think what he was saying was "Roza, I'm just going to say the words 'power extension cord'. Please ignore them, and do nothing."

I'm told all this stems from a Malaysian/Indonesian desire to tell you what you want to hear. Singaporeans tell it like it is. Yeah well that's nice, but who's more developed and who's living in filth?

Sing 6. The Roads, Part 1

A note on roads for the petrol heads (and Dave).

Roads in Singapore are well maintained and sparsely populated. Because of restrictive Certificates Of Entitlement, a ten year life span of cars, and at least 100% tax on vehicles, the cars are all fairly new and classy: if you're spending $30,000 on a COE - ie, the right just to buy a car - and then $100,000 for a $50,000 car, you may as well get something good. Needless to say, they are often riced up.

There are also a lot of motorbikes, nearly all ridden by people wearing shirts backwards and unbuttoned. No-one actually knows why. I think someone cool did it once and everybody else just followed suit without asking why. Like bellbottoms. But the shirts invariably fall down to the elbows. So if it's an attempt to keep dirt off, it doesn't work. If it's an attempt to look cool, well that doesn't work either. I'm sure the unbuttoned look is to keep cool, but I'm also sure that the air currents would get dirt on their backs, too.

As for the roads, they're mainly divided. This is a good thing as indicating to change lanes isn't a fashion that took off here as readily as wearing improvised hospital gowns. It seems the way to do it is much like in Melbourne: occupy two lanes for a while and just drift into the next lane when you feel like it. Without the one-way system or road dividers, I'm sure things would get ugly, but everybody seems to understand and the system works.

Now Indonesia has some shitty roads. No edges. Lots of mud and dirty kids. Real third world stuff. I reckon you can tell if you're in the third world by looking for a combination of the following:

• unsealed edges
• lots of corrugated iron
• shanty villages
• dirty kids

The real giveaway, though, are the motorbikes. In the third world the motorbike is the family vehicle. Have to go to the grandparents' for the weekend? Not a problem, they're in the shed out the back. No! The other grandparents: No worries, just pile the missus and kids onto the Honda dirtbike and strap a case on wherever you can. Not enough helmets? Who cares? Small accidents don't happen here.

KL, in terms of roads, is like Paris. They're covered in shit, they stink and they're filled with fucking lunatics for whom road laws aren't so much disobeyed as disdained. Respect for other road users is more like a vague rumour, heard of but not fully understood, and certainly not considered applicable. Red lights mean nothing. This is not a city for pedestrians. Indicating just wastes time.

And the mopeds! Like Paris the place is full of them. I guess because they're too poor for cars bikes are the go. But not the big street machines of Singapore, or the dirt bikes of Batam. Oh no, here it's hundreds of shitty, gutless two-strokes. It sounds like the national whipper-snipper championships. Oh for the sweet hum of a 750.

And they are fucking liabilities to a man. Where are the police? Why aren't they out arresting these people. I don't know what the road toll's like here, but I bet it's high. Even though Malaysia has the death penalty, what they need is some good old Singapore style zero-tolerance policing.

After a little more than a day in this open sewer of a city, I'm reminded of Sydney. Replace the homosexuals with mopeds and the Opera House with the Petronas Towers and take out that ounce of culture that Sydney has (in Balmain) and you couldn't tell the two apart. (Especially in the really multicultural bits.) Maybe I'm getting soft after being spoiled for so long by the West. Maybe I just need to see the good part of town. I'm new here, after all. But right now, even though my hotel suite (it has a couch so to me it classifies as a suite) overlooks the Petronas Towers, I say this:

Get me the fuck out of this goddamned shit hole!!!

Sing 5. Nick's Food Tour of Asia, Part 5: The King of Fruit

There are a lot of fruits in this part of the world that, as westerners, we'd consider 'exotic'. Jack fruit (yum), those weird little things a bit like segmented lychees (yum), all manner of stuff. But they say the king of fruit is the durian.

Now, durian is a little on the nose. Indeed, it's so pungent that it's banned in some places. Cut open a durian in the wrong company and there'll be trouble. That said, you can't really avoid smelling it sometime in SE Asia. For example, the Park N Shop supermarket beneath the office in Hong Kong used to smell of durian, and a lot of taxis, both here and there, smell of it too. It's a sickly sweet smell, a real I've-just-been-sick-in-the-corner type of smell. But they say that it smells a lot worse than it tastes.

So when I tried it last night at the Changi Yacht Club with Ben's friends I was surprised how wrong "they" were. Being somewhat used to it I didn't find the smell that bad. I didn't take a huge lungful-type smell, but I could tell it wasn't incapacitating. But as for the eating... Let's just say that if durian is the king of fruit, then it is the King John of fruit. The King Louis XVI. The Ivan the Terrible. The Good King Wencesles it ain't.

The flesh was gooey. (Apparently the Thais like the flesh hard - gooey flesh can be indicative of rottenness.) There's a big pip in the middle of the goo and around six sets of goo-covered pips in all. (I really didn't count them, so don't hold me to it.) This is surrounded by thick white rind and a softish, green spiky shell.

As for the taste, initially it tastes a bit like it smells: kind of a sickly, breadfruity taste. Then the aftertaste kicks in. This is hard to describe. Interesting, that's for sure. And definitely exotic. Bitter. Bile-like. Putrid probably sums it up best. And repeating. It's the taste that keeps on tasting. For hours.

Of course, as the newbie, I was offered the last piece after I'd already relished my first. Politely I declined, but these guys weren't taking "no" for an answer. If anything, this piece was even more interesting and exotic than the first.

Eating many foods requires you simply win the mind game. Dog, eyes, brains, intestines, fish head. Clear the mental barrier and you're fine. So far, though, only durian has presented itself to me as a food for which you have to physically train.

So give it go if you're out this way. Maybe you'll love it straight away. My score, however, is a low one: 1/5 (1 for the benefit of the doubt. I don't want to write it off yet. Maybe it's better hard.)