Rojak - The dish that sums this place up!

So if you were to ask me to sum up Malaysia from my experience so far I'd use the analogy of rojak.

Now I'm quite aware that this analogy is now going to need some unpacking as, unless you are going to look up rojak on Google or your search engine of choice, you probably don't know what it is, let alone why it is an analogy for its country of origin.

So what is Rojak? So rojak is a dish we encountered first on travel vlogs and then in real life around January. It is a salad. A desert salad. Covered with shrimp paste.

What? A desert salad? You mean fruit salad, right? Well kind of, yeah I guess. I certainly has fruit in it. In fact unripe fruit is a key component.

Unripe fruit? Yes, unripe papaya, mango and sometimes pineapple. Although the pineapple is usually the riper kind - it provides a nice sweet contrast to the other ingredients. It also has vegetables.

Hang on, vegetables? Yes, vegetables - usually radish, cucumber and turnip.

And shrimp paste? Indeed. Mixed with cane sugar and sesame seeds, then topped with chopped peanuts. The paste comes out thick and tar-like and is sweet, salty and umami all at the same time. It is sort of reminiscent of dark chocolate... ish... maybe...

And people eat this willingly? It's a local favourite and Penang classic. We even found several good vegetarian versions.

And here's the thing, as weird as it sounds, as unlikely as this combination of things is - it works. Rojak is delicious. Surprisingly so, but it is. It shouldn't work. It defies logic, but you can't deny the results.

I guess this kind of sums up Malaysia from my perspective. When you look at it on paper - the traffic chaos, the bureaucracy, the trash, the snakes, the jungle, the beaches, the temples, the monkeys, the food, the people, the innovation, the art, the laid back attitude, the lack of health and safety - the whole fascinating mess, it kind of works. Not only that, it's really rather good!