Wet and Dry in Tawau

Tawau (Sabah, Malaysia) isn't much of a tourist haunt.  I think the only reason Western folk really go there is a brief stop off on the way down to Semporna for some of the world's best scuba diving.  This is the second time I've been and so I'd got used to having a restaurant full of people stare at the white man whilst he ate but the sheer amount of attention we got in the fish market was still surprising.  The whole place literally stopped when we walked and we couldn't walk past folk without them staring and saying something.  I couldn't understand, obviously, but our local guide (the gf's cousin) assured us it was all very pleasant chatter - one of them called me Mr Bean which loads of them stallholders seemed to find very amusing.  The fish are so much bigger and more colourful than the things I see in European markets so well worth a look even if we weren't buying anything.


After the fish market we headed across to the fruit and veg market where we found the most amazing dried fish stall.  There was so much variety in what they'd dried.  I've bought dried shrimp from Chinese supermarkets in England, and had the ikan bilis (dried anchovies) in my KFC breakfast wrap, but outside of that I wouldn't really think dried fish was that common over there.  This stall showed otherwise with things ranging in size from the tiny shrimp to 30cm long whole fish.  One day I need to find out how they're prepared, and try them for that matter.

Comments

[Sunflower]

The fish market is amazing isn’t it? I can recognise most of the fish except the blue green one. The ugly fish with big teeth could be kind of blowfish, seen it few times in the market but never eaten one.

My dad used to buy a whole massive grouper fish like that in the picture (the wooper), and filled the whole freezer. Lovely fish to eat.

That dried fish stall must smell a bit. I have seen most of the items shown but only eaten a few common ones like ikan bilis (dried anchovy), udang kering (dried shrimps) and large salted fish (great for curries). The medium dried salted fish I think is ikan kembong, great just pan fried and eaten with lots of local lime juice and chopped chillies. Some of the small fish are smoked and they are quite pungent.