Tuesday, September 2, 2008

2008 Ramadan Bazaar - IP @ Indah Permai

Today, lucky for me, is a public holiday, thanks to the National Independence Day falling on Sunday. Because of that I managed to check out the bazaar in IP, which to this day I still regard as the best ever in KK. So anyway… off I went happily, anticipating the best, ankle pain and all.

What I had forgotten was to anticipate for the jam owing to the public holiday and because today is the first day of the fasting month.

My God… the jam… was horrendous… parking was a nightmare though in the end I managed to park somewhere near the UMS quarters.

This year, instead of the usual site opposite the row of shophouses, the bazaar shifted to the Giant parking space. In a way it was more convenient to walk around in one area rather than stroll along the long line of stalls selling the same stuffs over and over again.

From what I observed, nasi kerabu was the new trend in Sabah, or at least in KK. There were at least 6 stalls of them, the rice in every shade of blue from neon to secondary – school – uniform blue. There were even marine – and also green – colored ones. Sabahans and non – Sabahans alike were crowding these stalls for a taste of this Kelantan origin blue (or green or marine) rice.

Chicken wing stalls, as usual. Sigh… gone were the days of RM1 per wing. The current price nowadays ranged from RM 1.20 – RM 1.50.

By the way, I saw something that piqued my interest. A stall was selling palm – sized (man’s size, baby sting ray maybe?) sting ray grilled on hot plate. Too bad I noticed it too late so had to forgo it.

There was also a petai – based stall selling everything with this stinky bean (but this stinky bean has a cool name, Parkia speciosa) from fried rice to ayam masak pedas. It was actually my first experience with the bean throughout my whole life (don’t laugh… I wasn’t too adventurous in my younger years) but well… the bean proved to be too much for me though the fried rice was fine.

Then there’s the stall selling nasi dagang (another Kelantan origin), nasi tomato (rice cooked in tomato paste, yummy!), gado – gado (Indonesian traditional salad) and pasembor (well, a bit like salad with fried batter, fried tofu, hard – boiled egg, cucumber, taugeh @ bean sprout and sengkuang @ sweet turnip [really ah? I found this on the net…] tossed together in peanut – based gravy). The pasembor was alright though the gravy is too watery and sweet.

Altogether, I think the bazaar has gotten better with each passing year. 4.00 pm is the advised time to drop by as most people have not come out from the office yet. Parking… well, good luck with that.

Happy fasting everyone!

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