Close encounters of the 3rd kind

I arrived in Malaysia on a Thursday and I would have had only the following weekend to enjoy a bit my stay there…

The plan was more or less clear even before reaching there, I wanted to visit Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the country. Because when I was younger I was really an F1 and Ferrari fan, I knew only one thing of that city, which is what at every single Malaysian grand-prix was broadcasted on television, i.e. the majestic Petronas Towers.

Petronas towers by night

Petronas tower and the surrounding park

Since my business trip was proposed me just 4 days before leaving, I didn’t have any possibility to read any guide or finding out what was more convenient for me to visit, but the project of visiting the towers already sounded grand to me…of course I was so excited of being there that I wouldn’t have asked for more! I was already dreaming of being the new Catherine Zeta Jones..no, don’t worry, I don’t suffer of kleptomania and I am not thinking of any robbery, but come on, if you watched Entrapment, I guess you have dreamt of being there once in your life!

My hotel actually was in Melaka, a smaller town which is something like 2 hours of car from Kuala Lumpur, but of course I had totally no clue about this during those days and I had no idea of how reaching there, but I was determined in asking the hotel how to find a bus. I also wanted to try the local transport in fact!

However, two of my colleagues, saved me from the trouble and with their wonderful Malaysian hospitality they came the very first day I was working with them to ask me what I would have wanted to do in the weekend.

One of the 2 guys was actually from KL (yes, that’s how Kuala Lumpur is actually called by Malaysians, and gives already the idea of a friendly, accessible city, an impression that doesn’t take long to be confirmed) and immediately this resulted much better than any guidebook I could have read at home and moreover going there with the company of 2 Malaysians gave me the possibility to look at it with their eyes. Well…actually I was a bit upset we were going by car, I wanted to experience the public transport, but that came however much later, and moreover we have seen so many things that day that by bus it wouldn’t have been possible (do you know that Asian thing of going-shooting-leaving…that’s exactly what we did!).

So, before going to KLCC (another slang of the locals, Kuala Lumpur City Center, exactly the underground station for Petronas Towers) they proposed me to go to Batu Caves, a Hindu temple created into the caves (‘batu’ in fact means stone in Bahasa Malaysia, the local language). The best part is that to reach the temple you have to climb something like 300 steps…it sounded like the temple of KungFu Panda to me, you know, the one that Poh needs to reach to see the Great Competition and enters from the roof  on a firework or something like that (I watched that cartoon in the trip from Milan to Singapore 4 days before, so I was extremely in the mood that day!).

So, we agreed the first stop would have been in Batu Caves. Actually, already reaching there was marvelous, because this temple is northern than KL and we were reaching from the south, so we bypassed the city and from the highway enjoyed a wonderful panorama on the Petronas towers, even if a bit from far.

When we reached there, the scene was majestic: an enormous statue of Lord Murugan, one of the Hindu gods, was at the entrance of the temple, just before starting the climbing up on the stairs. All around, the jungle: so much of green, so many trees, leaves everywhere…

Lord Murugan welcoming visitors in Batu caves temple

At the base of it, various stalls selling all the necessary stuff for the offers to the gods: flowers, incense sticks, but also bananas and milk…

Thank goodness I didn’t buy anything, but that was not the choice of the young couple just 2 steps in front of me….damn it!!!

I didn’t had the time to climb 10 steps of the 300 that were waiting for me, that suddenly an Unidentified Flying Object was on my collision course…!!!!

I didn’t had the time to understand what was happening that the UFO was grabbing the little shopping bag of that couple…and in less than 2 seconds with its long-nails hand-like protrusions was opening the milk bottle and eating the bananas.

My gosh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A monkey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it is not in a zoo cage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goodness gracious, what does it want from me? Is it attracted by any swinging object like a cat? Will the camera hanged on my wrist be the next victim of its alien predator istinct!?!?  Which diseases will it bring (s%^t, I don’t have vaccination against rabbia, colhera and lebrosis!)

Thank goodness it took me less time to understand it was just interested in food that the time for my heart to collapse…

My gosh man…that was scary!!! But after the long moment of real panic, I understood the monkeys were actually cute..even if I prefer always to keep my distance with animals…in the end of the day, to me are always wild creatures…

Probably now you are thinking that after this encounter I really enjoyed my visit…NO! NOT YET!!!

After climbing the 300 steps in the hot & humid weather of Malaysia, still trying to recover my breath and…another surprise!!

An horrible, huge snake in the hands of a man coming closer to me and asking me to touch it…..GO AWAY AND LET ME LIVE!!!!!!!!!! (Yes, at that point I was having my heart in the throat already!!!)

The temple is marvelous, and it really deserves a visit…but maybe knowing before reaching there about the fact that in Malaysia monkeys can be found jumping here and there with no constriction would have made my day a bit more relaxed…

No wonder my colleagues were laughing and laughing when I told them: ‘Guys, you know, this is the first monkey of my life that I see out of the cage’!

Inside Batu Caves temple

Later on, I get so used to them, that I didn’t either bother jogging in the park with them around, but that took me much much longer.

But of course monkeys are not the only animal you have to share your life with in Malaysia. Locals are absolutely scared by cockroaches (I hope this spelling is correct, because these insects don’t exist in Italy and I am not very sure of their names…) but what was really hard to be tolerated for me was to share my apartment with lizards…Of course, we have lizards in Italy, but they are much more polite and educated and can understand the borders of what is your house! In Malaysia no, they are definitely too forward and always coming to your party without invitation!

Thank goodness, I was able to find the lizard repellent in the shops and this helped a bit the situation: psssssshhhhh, a spray of white powder and the lizard cannot climb anymore…ehehehe!!! I am smarter than you baby!!!!

But, I don’t know if it was because getting angry with the small has always its drawbacks or what…after the lizard, once I was stopped in a state of shock, when I was driving my car out of my condo and I couldn’t pass for the huge lizard in front of me…..It’s name is ‘biawak’ in Bahasa (English should be monitor lizard) and it really looked like my friend the cicak called the big bully to take revenge upon me! Well, I saw the security guard of the condo  a bit annoyed of me stopping in my car and not doing anything..so, he came out, clapped his hands and the huge biawak that seems so slow evaporated in few seconds…it took me definitely longer to recover from that view!

But that day in batu caves was memorable definitely, because new things always have big impact on us…so big impact on me that I asked my colleagues: ‘Guys, so you think I can find an apartment at a very high floor!?!?’ And them: ‘Why when you can have a wonderful, big, detached house with a garden and lot of palms in the surroundings?!?! You’ll never have something like this in Milan!’ And me: ’Please….tell me I can!!!!’

I ended up on the 5^th floor…it was ok-lah!!!(When Malaysians wanna say so-and-so, they prefer to say ok-lah…. but this is another story!)

There is no spoon...but chopsticks, hands and mouths!!!



Maybe the shock of not having a knife or the fact of having ordered an extremely hot soup when the temperature was 32-34 Celsius degrees, could have been enough for my meals…But much more was going to come!

But before moving on, I need now to introduce you to the fact that Malaysia is actually a wonderful mix of cultures, more than one country on its own. There are in fact, 3 main races cohabitating together: the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians. The Malays are the descendent of Indonesian sailors, who reached the coasts of Malaysia many centuries ago; the Chinese and the Indians instead, have been ‘imported’ by the English during their colonial dominion over Singapore and Malaysia much later on. Of course, these are the 3 main components (in terms of percentage) of the population, but of course you can find Baba-Nyonya (mix of Chinese and Malays), Eurasians, Westerners, Indonesians, Banglas, Thais and the Orang Asli, actually the only real autochthonous inhabitants of the Malaysian peninsula.

This campur-campuran (‘mix’ in Bahasa Malaysia, the official language of the country) of people is actually one of the most amazing aspect of Malaysia, even if it is really a complex phenomenon that cannot be understood with a quick glance, but actually requires a deep dive into Malaysian life to be understood, so maybe we will discuss about this later on in some other posts (even if, trust me, for sure I haven’t understood completely yet!).

However at the time of these facts happeneing, for me it was just amazing; in the end of the day, Italy is made of Italians, who all speak Italian (and very rarely other languages, even English), who are all Christian Catholics (yes, there are believers and non-believers maybe, but the cultural background definitely derives from centuries of history of the Church within the borders of the Italian peninsula), celebrate all the same feasts..and so on. Nowadays, immigration has started also in Italy for sure, but the pillars are still very strong.

In this occasion instead I was having the possibility to get in touch not only with the Malays, but also with the Chinese and the Indians…3 countries at the price of 1! And 3 different cultures! And 3 differents meals!

So, I think you can guess quite easily that at the Chinese restaurant, beside the famous spoon and fork, you can find chopsticks. In the end of the day, Chinese restaurants are so diffused even in Western world, that everybody of us has at least once in its life tried to use the chopsticks…and probably not with great success!!!

Actually, if you have somebody who teaches you how to keep the chopsticks in your hands as my friends did, it is not so terrible…well, of course if you accept to go back to work in the afternoon with a nice stain of soy sauce on your shirt!!!

But much much later, I managed to get an A-grade in the subject ‘chopsticks’ from my professors-friends and the test I was submitted to, was to catch peas…

Actually, what I have never revealed to my Chinese friends (sssh!!!Don’t tell them!!!!) is that they think peas are so terrible to be handled with chopsticks…but what about fishballs!?!?! They are impossible!!! Especially if raw!

No, don’t worry, they don’t eat raw fish (sushi is a different story…and that’s Japanese! Don’t be confused!), but there is this nice thing, called steamboat, in which you cook yourself (a bit like fondue), so you have to pick the raw fishball from the plate and bring it inside the boiling soup…….Oh, my gosh!!! What a long way it is!!! With this slippery sphere having minimum points of adherence with the chopsticks, that’s absolutely mission impossible!! Nooooooo, digging the tip of the chopstick inside the fishball is not allowed!!! Have a fair game!!!!

Steamboat and the variety of food you can cook in it

 But maybe the tip of the chopstick, could turn out to be extremely useful, when you’ll finally have another Chinese cuisine masterpiece, which is dim sum. Dim sum are basically dumplings steamed in bamboo containers, and often inside are very very juicy. So, take your spoon (yes, beside the chopsticks you are still entitled to a spoon, but not a western one, this is smaller and deeper), put the dumpling on it with your chopsticks passing by the soy sauce for a dip (yes, I know it is an extremely long journey and you are fearing the dumpling will fall into your Chinese tea cup, but you cannot miss the soy sauce!) and…….bite!

Dim sum, fantastic for lunch, dinner and even for breakfast

Ahhhhh…………it’s hot!!! F$%k man, I got burnt!! Yes, I strongly suggest you to break a bit the dough of the dumpling with the tip of the chopstick, so that the steam can come out…not that it works extremely efficiently, but it helps a little bit…and I think I haven’t got an A-grade yet in not getting burnt while having a dim sum, so I have no better suggestion!

When you had enough of Chinese food, don’t worry!!! You can go for an Indian meal!

So, when you will be proud of yourself because you can adapt to the Chinese etiquette and eat perfectly with chopsticks, you will undergo another huge cultural shock…

Traditionally in fact, Indians eat with their hands..oops, sorry, hand! Because only the right one is allowed to touch the food.

Well, when they told me for the first time we were going to the Indian restaurant and they would have been pleased in seeing me trying eating with my hands, I still wasn’t really shocked. Come on, I am the Sandwich Queen! It is not such a big difference!

That lasted 5 minutes, until I asked: ‘Well, tell me; how is a typical Indian meal?’

And then every word of the answer was increasing more and more my panic…

Rice (hm…with hands? Strange), curry (wait a minute…what are you telling me?), yoghurt (what?!?!...that’s disgusting man!!!!)

Ok, ok, I have to admit it, to every Westerner that seems a bit disgusting at the beginning: for you, who have been told since young to seat properly at the table, not to put your elbow on the table, to put your napkin on your knees, to use the big glass for the water and the smaller one for the wine, to use the napkin before you drink, and after you drink, not to touch your hair while you’re eating, to put the fork and the spoon on the right of the plate on the napkin, and the knife on the left, and…………………..an incredibly neverending list of do’s and don’t’s during the meals…

This is definitely too much…you think you really cannot break this barrier…

But think about it carefully…

No, no, think about it out of the box….

Come on, come on, you can do it……..

A bit more……

Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Finally you are free! Nobody is going to judge you for that, all your posh friends dressing Gucci and Prada are 10000km away, and you will even be considered brave by them, because you didn’t stop in front of this difficulty!

What are you going to risk, in the end of the day? Enjoy!!!!!!

So, ok, I have convinced you in trying, didn’t I?

Well..that’s very good, because you haven’t gone yet beyond the real barrier, not until you will see the Indians in the restaurant eating.

You would have never imagined such a level of politeness, elegance, good manners all together as the ones that the Indians can have during their meals with their hands.

I, with silver fork, knife, and spoon, lace napkin and table cloth, 2 crystal glasses and I don’t know how many porcelain plates, cannot either try to get equal.

It is amazing, and after almost 3 years from the first time I ate with my hands, I don’t either dare to ask to my Indians friends to submit me to a test for my A-grade in the ‘eating with hands’ subject…I am still too far, even to try…

In Indian restaurant meals are typically served on banana leaf, and this give them a very special taste; in fact, you can just go to the restaurant and order ‘banana laef’, the anek (big brother in tamil, as the waiter is generally called) there will take care of all the rest. They will serve you rice, putting it at the center of the leaf, and then vegetables are put all around. Meat or fish is typically ordered specifically, so you can ask for coli curry (chicken curry) or meen curry (fish curry), but other currys and gravies will come as per default.



Homemade Indian food



Need some help to order your food? Use this as guideline!

Then, with your right hand, you can create your own bite, mixing the different options in front of you, obtaining always a different taste at every bite. Remember to show respect to your food, nicely bowing and getting closer with your face to the meal and finally push the bite inside the mouth using the thumb.

I am pretty sure that the first impression will make you think of using both your hands to have your food, or at least this is what I did. Taking the meat out of the chicken leg using only the right hand was really impossible for me, it was too sticky together with the bone….

Well…think twice about it! There are at least 2 good practical reasons why you should avoid this; the first is that once you have both your hands dirty, how the hell do you think of touching the glass to drink?!?….yes, my first Indian meal was definitely making me very thirsty!!!

Second reason, with all those spices, you will start to sweat, your nose will start to get ‘liberated’ and how the hell do you wanna clean yourself?!?! Yes, my first Indian meal was definitely a struggle!

But it was definitely tasty. If in Italy we say that a good gourmet eats with eyes, nose and mouth, an Indian can add a fourth sense to experience the food. It is amazing how you can feel how hot the food is, if there is any piece of spice which need to be separated, and so on… It is a 360degrees experience…

After this, I guess you will want to try even the Indian bread (yes, yes, you have to cut the pieces with just your right hand! But for that you need a specific degree I think!). And remember, it works exactly opposite that for Westerners restaurant: you order the kind of bread you want, then the gravies come as per default. At the beginning, I wasn’t able to understand what I was supposed to order!!! So, you will meet the world of puri, naan, pharata, idli, chapatti, roti canai, tosai…don’t miss any, because they are wonderful!

And then, your skills will be useful also in the Malay restaurants, because they also traditionally eat with their hands: otak-otak, curry puff, kueh, are just the tidbits you will not resist at the pasar malam! (night market)

Murtabak, pancake with meat and spices

Kuih-kuih, when you want something extremely sweet...

And after all the mixture of way of eating experienced in Malaysia, with fork and knife at the Western restaurant, hands fat Indian’s and Malay’s, chopsticks at Chinese’s, it didn’t make too much wonder to me to find in a children’s book:

Amin makan dengan mulut (Amin eats with his mouth)…well, this seems a certainty at least!!!

But even if it can seem difficult, even if it can seem strange, do you know what is really the best of having food in Asia for me!? That if you try to get beyond the barrier of differences, all the Asians will welcome you!!!

For them it is an honor and a pleasure to guide you, to help you, to make you feel on your own skin how they behave, who they are…and they will never raise a complaint, a scolding, they will never be shocked of your errors…

And now, I am sure, if you watch this video… you’ll feel more sympathy for Adnan than for her!!!! (From 'Adnan Sempit", a Malaysian movie in cinema beg 2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fUWPjY-RxXI#t=376s

There is no spoon!!

There is no spoon! from Matrix scene

Ok, I have to admit it…starting with a title like this to describe my encounter with Asian meals could seem extremely wrong….

In fact, a Westerner having his first meal in Asia will for sure have to face the shock of using spoon instead than knife, which is basically impossible to be obtained in even the best of the restaurants. This would not be either too bad if you are imagining that all the meals are based on rice…but what for sure you are not imagining now is what comes together with the rice…A wonderful, yummy gravy enriching a majestic chicken leg accompanying that rice. And this will be cool, if not that the gravy is typically extremely slippery and of course is fully covering the meat that you are so desperately trying to detach from the bone!!

It is just a matter of observation before you discover that your colleagues are all perfectly using the side of the spoon to cut the meat and gently bring it to their mouth. So, it shouldn’t be so complicate right? In the end of the day, etiquette was born in Italy during the Renaissance, and you perfectly know how to behave on the table...!!

Well…good luck! You are going to spend a full meal sweating (and that’s not for the hot of the Equatorial weather nor for the spicy food!) because you are living with the fear of seeing your chicken leg flying from one side to the other of the restaurant while you are trying to cut the meat with something which is obviously not meant to cut! (What a shame you are the only one thinking this in the whole table!!!)

Nasi Ayam Rendang: a meal which will repay you from all the efforts with the spoon!

So, why should I now write a post with the title ‘There is no spoon!’ when actually it should be “There is no knife’?!?!

It is because I want to tell you what happened during the very first meal I had alone, definitely an experience to tell. For the first 3 days I have been in Asia, the most welcoming colleagues I have ever had were taking care of me, and trust me, if you are lucky enough to be accompanied for lunch by an Asian, there is only one clever thing that you can do at the restaurant. Ordering the very same dish he is having! Try not to ask for explanation, or to understand the menu… but copy! Remember that is by imitating their parents that young kids learn how to survive in this world…do the same! It doesn’t matter if you are a 20, a 30 or a 40 years old guy: the first time you get to Asia you are just a kid who needs to discover a new world!

However, as I was telling, after 3 days of loving and caring babysitting by my colleagues, I had to order food on my own…and that has been really a challenge! I perfectly remember I was in a shopping mall in Melaka, Malaysia. As most of the shopping malls in Malaysia, a big area is dedicated to the food court, which means you have different stalls all around with tables and chairs to dine in the middle. And typically the food is Asian style…posh Westerner restaurants have definitely different location….

It must have been the attraction of the unknown, it must have been the thrill of a new experience…I directed myself in the food court that night. And what I have seen reaching there was many people, families, having happily their dinner which was so inviting and yummy. ‘Yes, yes, I made the right choice’ I was thinking looking at the nice dishes people were having ‘Why should I go for westerner food if I can have some of this?’

Yes, sure…but reality can be different from dreams…

Problem number one: which stall to choose? In the list, there was one which seemed interesting, because it was clearly selling noodles…in the end of the day it’s like spaghetti and pasta, right? An Italian cannot be wrong in having pasta, isn’t it?

Problem number two: among the various ‘pastas’ (come on, let me still believe it!), which one to choose? The menu was reporting ‘Curry Mee’ and I perfectly remember what was going on in my mind: ‘Ah ah curry…I like curry!’(Of course during those days I basically didn’t know what curry is). But what does mee mean? Well, nevermind, that should be fine!’

So, I happily ordered my food…but the happiness lasted less than 5 minutes (Stalls serve you incredibly fast..too fast sometimes!) While everybody around me was eating rice or something fried or something so yummy that your mouth is watering, what I was in that moment receiving from the stall owner was an horrible…..soup!!!!

Now:

1)      Soups are eaten by sick people, or old people, and not definitely when you are outside and having yummy food all around!

2)      Soups are eaten in the winter…not in the heat of the equatorial weather!

3)      Most important: sh#%!!!! Why I have always seen yellow curry and this f*&king soup has an horrible brownish-reddish-grayish color!?!?!?

Curry Mee: probably a dish which doesn't exactly meet the Westerner taste...but don't forget to try it however! It is definetely something to tell your friends about!

Ok, ok, wait a minute…take a deep breath! What is your next move now?!

Escape #1: Your hotel has an Italian restaurant inside..run outside the shopping mall, take a taxi and get some real pasta!

Escape#2: The shopping mall is big, and full of McDonald’s, KFC’s, Starbuck’s, … Food here is extremely cheap, and your companies pay for it…so, run downstair and go for a double cheese!

Escape#3: ‘There is no spoon!’ You watched Matrix, right? It is just your mind which builds reality, and the only important thing is how perceive it..And Asia has just started to show how this is true… Sit down, don’t run and twist that spoon!

With that image of the ‘Elected’ in my mind I sat down and bent my spoon…Curry mee is definitely not my favorite dish but I am still alive.

With 2 lessons learnt:

1)      Can’t is a four-letter-word

2)      Goreng means fried in Malay, never forget this if you wanna eat something tasty!

Mee Goreng: don't forget the magic word!!!