Half of the hoardes of local tourists that converge on this little village are a slowly dying breed . Ethnic Chinese who speak English every day at home and even dream in English . Such as muah .
But to hear them yelling at top volume to each other from between tables to across roads ( and these are just small roads mind you ) was quite a shock to the system since most of the people I see in Penang every day , converse mostly in Malaysian Mandarin nowadays .
The other shocking part was discovering that my Cantonese, is practically useless here as the townfolk converse in Hokkien almost exclusively . Either they simply cannot understand Cantonese or have no cable network subscription at home . Beats me but if you insist on trying , you might have to contend with puzzled frowns .
Some people may equate the dialect spoken here to Penang Hokkien , but the true blue Penang kia , begs to differ as the sing song intonation is just not there . Though not as " chor lor " as Klang Hokkien , he insists the Hokkien here is not Penang Hokkien .
End of discussion .
Anyway , the jetty where the tour boats land , is rather rickety and the town road is not so accommodating , thus I just cannot imagine how this place can possibly take more tourists in , later in the evening when the Firefly spotting tours begin .
Before I give you the list , you might want to know how we found our way in here. Via Google maps . Don't ever use it .
Let me tell you why . Someone working for Google Malaysia either took the easy way out or has not been updating the routes around Taiping and Kuala Sepetang . The charted route took us to Holan so to speak leading us to end up on a labyrinth of a road next to this one where we had to renavigate our way here via the old fashioned way : by asking locals for directions .
Right . Here we go
1. Charcoal .
Known in Hokkien as Black Gold ( Or Kim ) and placed next to your business cash register or accounts book to attract money luck .
Some dress up the glossy burnt charcoal with red ribbons .
At the charcoal factory on the outskirts of the fishing village , you can even find an enterprising Malay couple selling this .
Purchased the vapour water by product from them , as it is said to be a fantastic insect repellant .
A large bottle costs 10 ringgit and you can even apply it to cure skin problems .
2 . Lengchai tatooed fishmonger
Ehem , I mean fresh seafoods .
Such as flower crabs ....
....frozen Garoupa ...
( got others lah like Tenggiri , Hong Chou , Black pomfret , white pomfret etc etc )
....swamp crabs with spotted claws ....
....prawns ....
( the ones sold here taste completely different from the meaty thick delicious prawns sold in Langkawi and Kedah . Small , with fine shells and very creamy head )
.....blood cockles ....
( extremely difficult to get this size nowadays , no thanks to foreign smugglers , who grab all the baby seeds )
3. Dried seafoods .
Cottage industry which all the hardworking villagers have a hand in here .
In the foreground , salted fish is laid out to sun dry .
...you may also purchase salted dried anchovies , shredded and whole squid , dried krill etc etc etc ( so many varieties , some of which will cost a bomb elsewhere )
What I got for myself .
Dried mussels , dried clams and salted sandpiper .
Further off the beaten track , I managed to locate the rickety bangsal shed where dried harmai shrimp was being processed . It not only smelt so sweet and fresh , the proprietress who looked like she was at least 70 looked so healthy , helming a 5 woman workforce ,
I succumbed . Cast my kedekut nature aside and bought a kilo of it .
What you see here is half a kilo .
Paid gorchap kor for it .
That's 50 ringgit for a whole kilo !
Gonna last me loooong oooo.
4. Boat tours with cute teenage boys as agency runners lol . Their job is just to hand you namecards .
Go dolphin , dugong , otter , eagle , bird spotting during the day and firefly watching after nightfall
5 . Eat .
Like seriously eat . Because seafood here is so cheap and so good and the portion is so big , you must be stupid not to eat .
There are 4 seafood restaurants who open from noon till night , a noodle operator in the afternoon and various snack operators hawking homemade deep fried crisps and pastries ( see the stall behind that boy on top )
One example ....the purple sweet potato crisps below
We ate here ( apparently they are the same group as Kang Kao nearby ) . Everything sold in this air conditioned restaurant is lipsmacking .
Historically , the village was where the first train outpost was , in the country . At the time this area was known as Port Weld , so for those of you who are interested , hey that's a bonus. Item number 6 for you to get up to .
Advice : bring a Hokkien speaker with you . If not , arm yourselves with plenty of pictures from the internet .
Location : Kuala Sepetang , Perak
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