Jonker Walk was interesting but nothing special when we visited on Thursday evening, but on Friday night, as advertised, it really sprang to life. Crowded with tourists and locals, the street was lined with stalls selling everything from head massagers to handbags, the majority featuring foods of every description, many poetically mysterious: hand punch lemon tea, egg puff, dragon beard candy, stinky tofu, yoghurt cube, mango yoghurt puff, sugar cuttlefish, herbal tea eggs.
Loving the theatre, baffled by the produce, we ended up being seduced by a free sample and feasted on deep fried shiitake and oyster mushrooms, with yummy satay sticks to follow.
Then a good night’s sleep before catching the bus back to Kuala Lumpur, for a connection to another that would take us (for just £7 a head) on the four and a half hour journey up into the Cameron Highlands.
After booking into our hotel, we ventured out in search of dinner to be immediately struck by the babble from a Chinese restaurant heaving with Chinese customers. Working on the basis that popular often means good, we decided to give it a go. And ended up enjoying an entirely new experience: a burner in the middle of the table bearing a big pan of bubbling broth in which you cooked a vast array of ingredients – raw beef, chicken and fish, jellyfish and crab sticks, fishballs and tofu, lettuce, celery and Chinese leaf, shiitake mushrooms, eggs, noodles, and lots more besides. “We’ll never eat all that!” we agreed. Then did. Yum!