Spice Garden and Cooking

Today I went to a spice garden. I got to ride the lifeboat again to the pier and then we were off for the garden. When we got there, we were guided through the garden (much like a botanical garden) and learned about the many different herbs and spices they use there in Malaysia. Our guide was pretty funny and was wearing a portable speaker on his fanny pack. He tricked us into trying the leaf from this plant called the King of Bitter – you can guess how it tasted. After that, we went to this building where there were cooking stations for each of us. Then, this famous chef lady walked us through two traditional Malaysian dishes. It was the best cooking experience I’d had so far. Their dishes are very colorful (the second dish had yellow, green, pink – from the ginger flower, purple, brown and white all in one dish – too many flavors for me). I mostly liked the dishes, but there were certainly some things I didn’t like/didn’t think fit. The first dish was a mixture of veggies, chicken and mushrooms – could have done without the mushrooms :P The second dish was this mostly sweet rice dish with mint and coconut mixed with saffron and onions. It was ruined, in my opinion, when we added the fish powder – salty, fishy fish taste just doesn’t go with sweet to me at all. We were one of her best groups because we did exactly what she told us to do, even though we were a bit slow at it. She told us how she’s taught many prominent chefs, but they don’t wait for her instructions before guessing what to do and don’t follow the instructions well when they do wait. Needless to say, she was quite pleased with us. If you were wondering, yes we got to eat what we cooked. After, I went with some friends to go around the city to do some last minute shopping before going back to the ship. We happened upon little India, which had an atmosphere very much like that of India. Overall, I really liked Malaysia – it’s a diamond in the rough. I would say it is my second favorite port as of now.