Journeybug

Saturday April 28, 2007

Yummy Terengganu

By ANTHONY TAN

Senyum Sokmo: these words can be found on T-shirts, souvenirs and car stickers in Terengganu, and they simply mean "Smile Always" in the local Malay dialect.

The East Coast state will certainly bring smiles to your face with its unhurried, stress-free lifestyle, endless kilometres of coastline, pristine islands and fresh seafood.

Freshly fried keropok lekor being sold in Kampung Losong, Kuala Terengganu.

Visitors from the West Coast will find some of the local words unfamiliar as they are peculiar to the East Coast.

When you go shopping, traders may quote the prices as "se ya" which means RM1 or "dua ya" for RM2, and so on. If you hear someone say "mek", they are probably addressing a woman or girl.

Two food items that visitors must try here are the keropok lekor and nasi dagang. Keropok lekor (fish sticks) is a popular snack made from fish ground with sago and salt. It is then shaped into long tubes, deep fried, steamed or boiled and eaten with chilli sauce. Kampung Losong in Kuala Terengganu is famous for its keropok lekor.

Nasi dagang is a rice speciality of Terengganu. Normal rice is mixed with glutinous rice and coconut milk, then cooked. It is eaten with its own signature side dishes of tuna curry and vegetable pickle.

Penang folk can visit a different kind of Pulau Pinang off the Terengganu coast. Terangganu's Pulau Pinang is one of the nine islands in the Redang Island Marine Park archipelago. It is where the marine park centre is located.

Travelling to Terengganu is now faster for Penangites and people from Kedah, Perak and Perlis, thanks to Firefly's daily direct flights from Penang to Kuala Terengganu.

In conjunction with the inaugural flight in April, the Terengganu state government hosted a group of media representatives for a two-night stay in Kuala Terengganu and one night on Redang. While the trip to Redang was the highlight of the tour, we found there were ample attractions to keep us occupied in Kuala Terengganu.

The state boasts the largest museum in the country in Bukit Losong, near the state capital. The Terengganu State Museum (
www.muzium.terengganu.gov.my), sprawled over 27ha, with a floor space of 75,075sq m, consists of the main museum (four blocks), a maritime museum, five traditional houses and a landscaped garden.

At the Islamic Gallery you will find the Batu Bersurat (Inscribed Stone), which was found in 1887 in Kuala Berang, on display. The Textile Gallery is interesting because it records the types and manufacturing processes involved in such local textiles as the songket, limar, batik, pelangi, cindai, gerus and telepuk.

If you visit the museum, be sure to look out for a display on a local tradition called melenggang perut, a traditional method involving a coconut that is used to determine the sex of a baby when the expectant mother is seven months pregnant.

Although predominantly Malay, Terengganu's capital boasts a Chinatown complete with a welcome arch. Here, you will find an old well in Kampung Tiong called Low Tiey's Well. It was dug by the Lim clan who came to Kuala Terengganu some 300 years ago from China.

The oval-shaped well has separate bathing chambers for men and women. During a long drought in 1875, the well did not dry up and provided water to the town folk.

If you like horseback riding by the sea, go to the Terengganu Equestrian Resort (
www.ter.com.my) in Kuala Ibai, reportedly the only world-class seaside equestrian park and resort in the country. Nearby is the Tengku Tengah Zaharah Mosque, named after the late Sultan Mahmud Al-Muktafi Billah Shah's mother. Built in a lagoon, it looks like a floating mosque at high tide.

For shopping, the Kedai Payang Central Market in Kuala Terengganu is the place to go to. Besides housing a wet market where fresh seafood and fruits are on offer, it also has numerous stalls selling handicrafts, souvenirs, brassware, clothes made of batik and songket, as well as keropok lekor and fish crackers, both raw and ready-to-eat.

One of the modes of transport in Kuala Terengganu is the trishaw. Some of the newer trishaws have rechargeable batteries, which is handy especially when going uphill. But then, there is no hurry when you are in leisurely Terengganu, where you can watch the sun rising every morning.

Related Story:
A thrilling time in Terengganu