Claypot Frog Porridge

Okay the title does sound like the name of a 70s prog rock band, but I'll explain - bear with me...

So nearly three weeks in and things are beginning to feel 'normal'? I suppose we are doing 'normal' things, like shopping, school, housework, exercise etc. It's odd not doing these thing with or around the people we would normally do them with, but video calling is keeping us connected.

Okay the view from the balcony (still can't get over that we've got one of those) isn't 'normal' - don't think that the tropical forest covered hill will get old any time soon! And the pool... well there we are!

However normal is relative and whilst a lot of things seem like they're feeling much more every day, there are some things that are arrestingly odd - clear reminders that we are somewhere very different.

One of the things that has struck me so far has been the combination of the old and the new. We could have moved to a number of places over the last couple of years - Singapore, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have all featured as possibilities, but it is the unique combination of cultures that attracted us to Malaysia. 

An example of what I mean about the arrestingly odd mix you get here is the fact that here you can see ultra modern tower blocks of high end condos next to tin roofed kampong style houses. This cheek by jowl existence of these two extremes is no so clear in Northern Europe. Yes there are examples of layers of architecture from various periods in most towns and cities around the UK, France, Germany, Spain etc, but you tend not to see such stark contrast between the extremes. The differences appear more layered, more graduated, certainly in the UK that's the case. 

Okay in Newcastle you have sections of Hadrian's Wall right next to the Centre for life, a combination of a nearly 2000 year old land border with a 21st century medical research facility, but there's nobody actually living like a Roman in the middle of the town!

Here the two contrasting elements of Malaysia seem to exist side-by-side.

There is also a much greater 'flatness' in terms of our ways of life in Northern Europe. Subsistence farming is not really a thing any more. It would be naïve to suggest that there aren't massive disparities in wealth in the UK - I've seen that first hand, but there is nothing quite like what we've seen here in terms of these very different ways of life sandwiched together.

This is a tin roofed building and I think it is basically a smallholding. There are also lots of 'shophouses'. These are traditional properties where the front part of the house is essentially a retail outlet or small cafe and back and upper sections are where the family live. From a modern British perspective this is unusual. You actually don't have to go back too far to see when that was still the way business worked in Britain - the flat above a shop (to quote Pulp) is a fairly common thing still, but it's not usually occupied by the people running the business.

You see the old ways of life and the new quite literally sitting side-by-side. Here for example:

So this guy is grazing on a strip of land behind a relatively new housing development, right next to the primary school Thomas will be attending. Apparently there is a local herder who brings his goats along here too.

Now this didn't weird me out as much as it might have thanks to one peculiar fact of geography. Being from the North East I have spent an amount of time on and around The Town Moor. As anyone local to the area knows, this land is free land that can be used to graze cattle - and it does get used for this exact purpose. There is a herd of cattle on The Town Moor. As a result I just assumed it was kind of that sort of deal - it probably isn't - nothing in Malaysia seems quite as systematically organised as that, whereas the right to graze cattle on the Moor is actually part of a legal covenant. 

But, back to the frog porridge (said nobody ever).

This is one of those oddities that I suppose comes close to culture shock. I had at first thought that this was a mistranslation - like the coconut egg jam (also quite a good name for a prog rock band or album). Coconut egg jam being a literal translation of Kaya - which is a pandan and coconut curd - curd being in a very literal sense 'egg jam', well sort of. 

That's what I thought had gone on here:

But, no. This was in fact a rice porridge dish, cooked in a clay pot, made with frogs. Hmmm.

Okay I'm very aware that it is a combination of my cultural sensitivities and the fact that I'm vegetarian that makes me back away from this one quickly - after all frogs are on the menu just over the channel from Britain, as are snails. However this really did reinforce the 'otherness' of this place we now live in.

The hawker market that this stall was in is excellent. We've ordered from three different stalls there already and bought cakes from another and the food has been very good, but it's also been that kind of experience that you wouldn't get in many other places and there's certainly not a precise cognate for this in the UK. 

The other element is again the contrasts - this is the hotel immediately behind the hawker market:

Contrasted with this...

Very sad to see a place like this so empty - the covid restrictions are causing a lot of pain here, as they have the world over, but hopefully they will return something closer to normality soon.

This is part of what we came for. This is, in some limited fashion, an experience of a very different culture. Throw into the mix the range of religions, roadside temples and shrines, monkeys, lizards, snakes and who knows what else (note: so far the only snake I have seen was at the side of the road and not very healthy - it had been repeatedly run over) is out there and it all makes for a heady brew of 'otherness'. 

And we've barely even scratched the surface!