malaysian festival

In spite of the threatening skies and my croaking voice, I made an effort to go to Tumbalong Park at Darling Harbour just to see what this Malaysian Festival is all about. Known as M-Fest, apparently it has been traditionally celebrated at the same venue for the past 18 years. I am indeed a mountain tortoise as this is the first time I've attended the M-Fest.

I left the house with high expectations of satisfying my cravings for some good char kway teow, bak kut teh, KL hokkien mee and penang laksa. I was sorely disappointed.

Firstly, because it had been raining the night before, the whole grass field where the food stalls were set up on was wet and muddy. I had dressed up a bit and worn my black patent stiletto pumps for going to the theatre afterwards and so had a lot of difficulty navigating my way around the puddles.

Then, after trying so hard to maneuver my way to the main food stalls, the lack in the variety of malaysian delicacies offered made me feel like an idiot for braving the mud pools in my stilettos. There were about 10 stalls, out of which 1 sold desserts, 1 sold drinks, and the rest had satay, briyani, prata, nasi lemak and maybe a few other things. Where were all the delicious foods?

Although already greatly disenchanted after the first scan through the stalls, I had thought to just grab something to eat since I was already there. But the queues! They snaked here and there on the mud and I wasn't ready to wait in line for some normal malaysian foods I can easily get in Kingsford. I also noticed that the 2 most famous stalls there with the longest queues that were selling the most tempting foods had outlets right smack in the city. That didn't make sense cos instead of queueing for like 45min in the mud, I might as well have walked to the outlet for a nice and comfy sit-down lunch.

And so, I was out of there in about 20min.


ps: a colleague told me about an upcoming Singaporean Food Festival in Melbourne in October (I think). I wonder if it's worth making a trip there? I want to eat orh lua, black carrot cake, lor mee, zhwee kueh, and so much more.