23rd March - leaving Molucca and Heeren House - Baba Nyonya food - a day with Nelly and Weng Wah - off to Singapore

Sunday 23^rd March

Yes we did leave our lovely Heeren House.  I got up early and gazed out the window at the peaceful river…and the gathering of befrilled trishaws pausing below, each playing a different very loud song.  The last one left, with a VERY resonant Achey Breaky Heart to start my day…

We had our lovely scrambled egg breakfast, prepared by beautiful Marcia, whose cardboard cut-out appears gracefully at the door of the House:

Pete and I had our last chat with our new friend English Dave, a lone-traveller – no not by choice; his wife died six years ago and he decided to make an epic seven-month journey to South East Asia all by himself.  He is writing a detailed journal, and is very good for a bit of serious and interesting conversation.

Pete and Dave in the lovely Heeren House dining room

Nelly and Weng Wah arrived punctually at 10.00 to take us out for the day.  We went to a Chinese shop selling very neatly arranged pyramids of arcane foods:

And yes – there was flattened dried squid – I will email this photo to James Headlam to make his day!  (I have a photo** of him tasting this delicacy, in Phuket...a picture tells a thousand words...)

Next stop Little India.

So many sparkly glittery things!!

and a very nice little early lunch of dosa with three different sauces in a very busy little café.   Weng Wah has membership at a gym high up in the Ramada Hotel, so we went and looked around this posh establishment, and took photos from the rooftop:

Looking down at the old part of town we have just left

Next stop: Episode #2 of lunch – rice balls, with poached chicken.  I LOVE rice balls…I had them for the first time, by accident, a few days ago and I gobbled them all down so that I couldn’t fit in one bite of the omelette I had mistakenly ordered…

I had visions of some minion in a back scullery painstakingly rolling out the balls, but no – Nelly knows about food.  There is apparently a nifty machine, like a rice cooker, which creates the balls all by itself.  (This knowledge did not reduce their yumminess quotient.)

Fortified with rice balls, chicken, lemon tea, we went to look at a Malaysian Life exhibition.  No not exhibition…some other word.  They had built a whole series of beautiful wooden houses in all the different styles of the 13 states of Malaysia.  We climbed up and down stairs with great enthusiasm to look through these lovely houses:

But after about five Nelly asked if we really actually did want to look in every single one…there were still at least a dozen spread out before us.

Well…no…But we did stop to look at a man who was very good at spinning tops.  He tried to get one to spin in Pete’s hand but this only resulted in a whole lot of laughter.

On the way out we posed with some ever-patient bullocks and then drove out into the countryside to Nelly and Weng Wah’s house. 

Weng Wah, Nelly, Marguerite

Baba Nyonya food prepared by an authentic person in the authentic way is…YES very wonderful!  So what did Nelly cook…well the good thing was – not too much.  We had already eaten quite a lot of food and I was a bit frightened that she would bring out a banquet.  Fortunately it was just the right amount: a delicious dish of baby bok choy with garlic; pork ribs* with potatoes and something she called Malaysian turnips – I have no idea what we would call them but I loved them a lot; prawns in a delicious sauce; multi-grain rice.  Followed by chilled quartered oranges.  Perfect!

Something very funny…apparently when Pete rang Nelly, having sherlocked the Koh number in his inimitable way, she had no idea who he was.  Peter Headlam??  She asked Weng Wah who was equally nonplussed.  But they very politely invited us to stay, came and met us at the Heeren House etc.  As we were talking on the first day, Nelly began to remember just a few fragments.  Did we come to your house for dinner, and eat curry?  When they went home, they dug out the photo albums from their last few trips to Tasmania, and there, in the 1992 album, were about seven photos of Nelly and Weng Wah at Rosehill, looking very much at home, chatting and laughing with Pete and Clare, and obviously going off to stay the night in the comfy shearer’s quarters accommodation…So of course I copied the photo, for posterity!

Pete, Nelly, Clare, Weng Wah - 1992!!

We are catching an early bus to Singapore…movin’ on!!

* No I never eat these but I didn’t need to; I just dished out a good portion of the very tasty veg.

** In case you missed it the first time...