Visiting the Niah Caves, and a Devil's Food Cake

Nothing like a good dose of blogging, scanning through captured photos, a slice of proud-product of the weekend just past in hand, crumbs on lips and keyboard all sticky, to beat away the troubles of a Dilbert-worthy Monday.


We rose bright and early on Saturday to make our way to the Niah National Park. It was a relatively painlessle ten-kilometer jungle walk, on a plank walkway so we didn't soil our shoes too much. Age-old trees provided shade that I was grateful for, given the awful spell of hot weather we have been having lately.






Caving was, well, not nearly as fun as the jungle walk. Credit to the park authorities, the raised walkways were well laid out and made it easy for us to navigate. Bats and swiftlets hung about above our heads as we tried to avoid as the guano , an impossible task. It was actually pitch-dark in some areas and we needed our torches to walk through.

 

Truth be told, what I felt really made our little trip extra special was our stop overs on the way to the park itself, the teeny town of Bekenu, where we had a freshwater prawn fried noodles breakfast.

 

And thanks to a minor vehicle malfunction, I got the chance to wander around the Niah Bazaar and the nearby river, on the banks of which stood this adorably garish hot pink Chinese temple.



And the Bekenu market. Clams the size of fists, with their white flesh peeking out only to slip back when we curiously touched them. Mussels by the bagful for 2 ringgit! And a rather sorry assortment of baby sharks, their skins leathery to the touch, their little fins, which could not have been more than 2 or 3 inches long, cut off. When will we learn to stop this unsustainable demand? :(



On the bright side, we were lucky that it's the season for fishing for freshwater prawns. Small-time fishermen brought in their prawn traps with their catches inside still writhing and leaping out of the river. A kilo cost us 28 ringgit! And as you can tell, these were healthy, good-sized specimens.

We also bought some garish pink dragonfruit (which turned out to be supersweet) and a giant soursop (we were advised that it’s a powerful antioxidant) that would have cost us a lot more in Miri. I wish I bought those mussels though - I could never find them in Miri and they were so darned cheap.


Sunday was an altogether different day. Aside from resting my aching bones (obviously the quest to get fitter has not been going as well as I'd hoped). We went over to a friend’s place for his housewarming. I’ll admit I’m pretty jealous of his super plush sofa and built in oven, and of course, of him having a place to REALLY call his own. I made Devil’s Food Cake, following a David Lebovitz recipe. I followed his recipe to the T, except for the frosting part where I made the mistake of using my 72% cocoa solids bar which turned out way too strong (never thought I’d say that), and had to whisk in almost a cup of butter and spoonful after spoonful of icing sugar to temper the bitterness.



So all in all, a weekend well spent. Next – on to a recipe that will hopefully do my prawns some justice!