KL Food Trip: Stingray Curry Mee

I don’t know how Noid searches out these places, but she manages to find new ones every time we visit. Tucked away in a nondescript coffee shop called Hai Keng Restaurant is a humble hawker stall that serves up a mean bowl of curry mee. Singaporeans will more likely call it laksa, but it’s slightly different from the usual laksa lemak made famous by 328 Katong Laksa.

The gravy is a thin curry that isn’t too lemak, i.e. with only a smidge of coconut milk for richness. It’s a bit of a hybrid as they add lime juice just before serving, so this is sour, spicy and slightly rich all at once. You can choose from laifun, which is thick rice noodles typically used in assam laksa, or yellow wheat noodles normally used in traditional KL curry mee. I liked how schizophrenic it tasted to me, as the mint leaves, lime juice and laifun lulled  my mind into thinking that it’s more like assam laksa. Then the hint of coconut milk and squishy taupok (tofu puffs) reminded me that it’s quite like Singaporean laksa too. But what set it aside was the stingray accompaniment. It came as a thick, succulent slab that added juicy seafood flavour to the whole concoction. The clams were decent too, but just couldn’t compete with the stingray.

DC had yellow noodles with roast pork topping in addition to the stingray. Even though the roast pork skin was a bit soft, the flavour of the pork was very decent and goes much better with the curry mee and stingray. Order this combination if you’re in doubt. My one criticism of this place is that while they’d arranged my clams artfully in the bowl, they forgot to add long beans to mine. I only realised belatedly that I had been somewhat shortchanged. No matter, the beansprouts in mine were fresh and crunchy.

While you’re at Hai Keng Restaurant, be sure to order the kopi. The strong local brew is thick and heady with a rich aroma, probably because the coffee beans are roasted with butter. Either that or they add a dab of butter with the condensed milk. The standard hot version and the iced versions are equally good.

Fu Shou Lou Nonya Seafood Curry Mee
Hai Keng Restaurant – near to Digital Mall
Jalan 14/20 (Seksyen 14), Petaling Jaya,
Selangor 46100, Malaysia

[GPS Coordinates: 03 06 629 N, 101 38 117 E]

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Back to Tulamben: The Wreck

I’d greatly enjoyed my last trip diving in Bali and I knew DC would love it as much as I did. It was a no-brainer to choose Tulamben and Tulamben Wreck Divers. Tulamben has the fabulous Liberty wreck and other fantastic dive sites that are just off the beach (hence no long boat rides and the chance to return to the room for an afternoon nap), and TWD has excellent guides like the eagle-eyed Wayan.

The wreck itself is fairly broken up, so it’s impossible to have an idea of its size just from one picture. Here’s part of the inside where a portion of its hull came to rest tilted on its side.

It’s not often that we come up close to the resident great barracuda. My last trip, I only caught a glimpse of him once and it was the same this time round. A group of us practically came nose to nose with him in one of the chambers of the wreck. You can just about make out its ferocious teeth. Pardon the poor picture quality, I was still testing the camera.

Other visible bits of the wreck included a boiler valve encrusted with coral, and I tried to get some pictures of me trying to turn the valve, but in vain.

Residents of the wreck included plenty of bumphead parrotfish. When we went in September, it seemed like the season. We saw them on a lot of dives at the wreck and not just in the early morning.

This one in particular was easy to approach as it rested on the bottom. It didn’t seem fazed by the big SLR at all.

This poor fella was probably sick and in need of some serious cleaning from the blue-streak wrasse here, hence not quite caring whether anyone took its photo.

We caught some other less-sick fish being cleaned, like this blue-spotted stingray bulging out from the bottom in its characteristic way, signalling that it was open for cleaning.

Tulamben’s black sand gave cover to all sorts of strange fish, like this peacock flounder just about concealing itself. Only its bulbous pair of eyes gives the game away, thereafter its shape becomes apparent.

Similarly given away by its bulging eyes was this dragonet.

It reared up as I got closer, but not close enough to see exactly what type of dragonet it was.

Beyond the wreck, there were other things to see, just not that often, like this blackfin barracuda.

There was also the occasional squid, seen from afar. Squid tend to be very shy and it’s not easy to get a shot of one especially in the day time.

But the most exciting thing about the blue was the occasional treat of fish schooling above the wreck, like these jacks starting to form a tornado.

It’s quite exciting when you see a bunch of them forming up, I always wonder exactly how many fish end up inside that tornado.

It’s such an amazing thing watching them congregate and almost block out the light.

A Quick Trip to Redang: Mourning the Coral

DC  and I went back to Redang to look up some friends for diving. We were there just as the coral bleaching broke out and were incredibly sad at the poor state of the coral. Global warming had taken its toll and the seas were unseasonably warm this time of the year. To upside was only for me as it was warm enough that I didn’t need to wear a wetsuit, the wuss that I am.

Our first dive was a bit of a shock. Whole patches of the coral had gone ghostly white and the patches stretched far and wide across the coralscape as far as the viz allowed us to see. It didn’t help that the water was a bit murky and the usually brightly coloured coral was completely washed out.

A lot of the hard coral was affected,, including the staghorn that was bleached from its usual tan to sickly yellow to dead white. It was an incredibly sad sight.

At some places, it wasn’t too bad, but we could already see the bleaching taking its toll on the outer edges. It was so depressing that the yellow sunflower coral that the other divers liked so much did nothing for me, looking to me as if they were pus-filled fungal colonies taking over the reef.

Yet, not all dive sites were affected. Only some areas hit by the worst conditions of warm water and unfavourable currents suffered badly. On other reefs, it seemed like life went on as normal, with only minimal bleaching that was hardly noticeable.

At some areas, I pretty much forgot that the bleaching situation was really bad – there was so much coral and fish life.

But the diving wasn’t always great. Somehow we ran into a lot of poor visibility, especially in the sandy areas where we saw this blue spotted stingray.

And this crocodile flathead, also in the sand.

Things got a little better on the coral itself where there were bigger fish like this grouper.

And on the coral were the pretty brown-banded pipefish that came in pairs, skittering over the reef with cautious movements.

The soft coral didn’t seem to be very much affected. It was healthy enough that this lionfish took refuge in it, peering placidly out from its sloe-eyes.

So all wasn’t quite lost as the reef didn’t seem to be all that dead. It appeared to be rebounding despite the dead patches. We were cheered as we continued our diving.

Layang Layang: Reef Life and Macro

Don’t think that Layang Layang is only for the pelagics. There’s plenty of macro to be found here, it’s only that sometimes the currents and the wall can be a bit challenging for finding those critters and also getting the perfect shot of that tiny little creature. There was a lot of reef life here, such as this rather surprised looking tomato grouper.

I was also quite pleased to see one of my favourites, a juvenile black snapper with its characteristic black and white stripes and dots.

Then there were the fish that insisting on posing for a picture, like this slightly constipated looking pennant bannerfish.

There were also bottom dwellers like blue-spotted stingrays.

They always seem to stare up so malevolently at us.

There were also other fairly amusing fish, like this doublebar goatfish. They like to rest on coral and pretend that they are not there, innocently spacing out, as if if they can’t see us we can’t see them!

Others showed off their colours beautifully against the coral, like these panda butterflyfish and peacock grouper.

DC is obsessed with the pufferfish family, just like I’m obsessed with hawkfish. His favourite shot of the whole trip is this seal-faced puffer that he cornered in a coral niche. It’s cute, isn’t it?

Not so cute is this giant frogfish that has its mouth open in wait for unsuspecting prey. In a split second, it’ll pounce and the prey will be in its belly.

Far less grotesque were pretty nudibranchs slowly making their way across the coral gardens.

They were surprisingly hard to spot among the colourful backdrop of coral, but once found, a joy to photograph.

Far harder to photograph were the pink anemonefish, who were so skittish, this is probably the only decent one I got amongst the tens of shots I took.

Going down to the seriously macro-level, I found some large whip gobies on a sea fan and thankfully this one wasn’t as shy as my next subject.

The Denise pygmy seahorses were such a pain to photograph. My camera had great difficulty focussing on the tiny creatures smaller than my fingernail. This one is pregnant and had the tendency to swim to the underside of the sea fan, making it impossible to catch on camera.

DC got this picture that’s far superior to mine, it’s so beautiful how he managed to capture the eye and its almost serene expression.

We had some good luck on sandy patches at the house reef at night. There was a flamboyantly coloured Spanish dancer.

There was also this strange blob of a sea slug oozing its way along.

Much prettier was this variation of a reeftop pipefish that wiggled its pretty pink tail and didn’t seem to mind the many flashes from our cameras.

Then there was the bizarrely shaped longhorn cowfish that seemed to have difficulty navigating its way out of this patch of seagrass.

Back on the coral reef, there were other oddities like this leaf scorpionfish with its glassy white eye staring out at us while swaying back and forth in the water pretending to be a leaf.

In the anemone were some porcelain crabs, which were quite shy. This one kept scuttling towards the underside of the anemone and it was really hard to keep up with it before it disappeared from sight.

A rare sight in the coral was this peacock flounder. Normally associated with muck diving, I was thrilled to see this one swim along and then try to rather unsuccessfully camouflage itself on some maze coral. Its googly eyes and patchy colouration gave it away immediately!

There were also quite a few shrimp and other crustaceans hiding out in crevices. Here’s DC trying to get a good snap of some shrimp.

They were some kind of orange cleaner shrimp that I have yet to identify, very pretty though!

Other cleaner shrimp like these commensal shrimp also hung around the same area. Both kinds would come out onto my hand and pick away at dead skin. I suppose it makes good eating for them. And round goes the circle of life!

There were also these spiny rock lobsters in another hole. I was so tempted to pull them out by their feelers but of course resisted. It’s a pity they were so shy though!

Back on the surface of the coral reef, we were happy to see the bigger fish thriving. There were plenty of sweetlips about, including these adult harlequin sweetlips that seemed to love giving a mirror mirage by going in pairs above and below the coral.

Then there was this emperor angelfish that came up to pose for a picture on my last dive. Such an obliging creature!

And last of the fish, there was this white mouth moray looking out for prey.

Unfortunately, as this video shows, it’s a bit of FAIL because it got slapped in the face by a passing fish. So much for being a lean, mean predator.

The nicest finale to our dive was getting up close to this turtle. As we approached, the green turtle was facing us and knew full well of our approach. Somehow it didn’t swim away.

DC got in close enough for a really macro shot of it.

But then we noticed something odd about the way it was rocking back and forth.

We realised that it was stuck in the coral! For the sake of this turtle, I broke one of the laws of diving – don’t touch any creature – and tugged it gently out. It got free and immediately coasted up towards the surface for a good breath of fresh air.

It was such a lovely feeling to end our successful series of dives by helping out a stranded turtle.

The Black Manta: Pulau Aur

We continued on into Malaysian waters to Pulau Aur. DC made it for the night dive but I was just too knackered. He had fun taking pictures with my camera. The next morning, we did two more dives before heading back to Singapore. Here’s a selection of highlights from all three dives.

DC spotted a cuttlefish on the first dive. The moment we spotted it, it knew straightaway that its cover was blown and it changed colour and markings  in a blink of the eye.

As I got a bit closer, it went into a defensive posture with one tentacle raised, all ready to scoot off on a jet of water. We decided to leave it alone at this point.

There were quite a few cute shrimp spotted in the dives. Here’s one DC saw on the night dive. It’s amazing how delicate it looks, yet its job is probably as a fish cleaner. It eats dead skin and parasites off fish.

Here’s another shrimp, this time one that eats carcasses of dead creatures. If you put your hand close enough to a bold specimen, it’d quite happily hop onto your finger and pick away at the dead bits of hangnail, thinking that it must be some kind of weird dead sea creature.

There are also the famously shy gobies which are a total bitch to snap pictures of. After far too many unsuccessful attempts, I finally caught these two shots.

I still haven’t figured out exactly what kind of gobies these are. Drop me a message if you know!

Another cute fish we found was the brown-banded pipefish. These were at first hard to spot, but once you found one it was often easy to locate the rest in the area.

These relatives of seahorses had such comically serious expressions I could spend ages staring at them glide about the coral.

Other fish were far bigger, like this  map puffer fish cruising around waiting for a little cleaner fish to get on with its job.

Then there was this scorpionfish, most likely a tasseled or papuan one as it doesn’t have prominent eye cirri. Hard to tell though. It was probably a little bit annoyed that its cover was blown as the flash really showed up its pinks, reds and oranges.

Then there was this blue spotted stingray that just couldn’t hide away enough. I think I caught in the act of burying itself in the sand for camouflage.

Then there’s also the typical clownfish shot. Here’s a very grumpy specimen: it’s an orange-finned anemonefish and it’s not as  cute as the Nemo in the cartoon.

And here’s a common lionfish that was so upset that it was just a commoner that it constantly looked down and tried to hide in the coral.

See if you can spot this master of camouflage. It’s a hermit crab. Hint: look for its eye stalks.

I got some lovely macro shots, the first of a flabellina, a kind of sea slug.

Sea slugs have such a bad sounding name, so it’s nice that we call them nudibranchs most of the them. Here’s a really pretty one: it’s a pink dorid and I love how the pink and yellow-orange complement so nicely.

And last of all, here’s a lovely fat little joruna nudibranch.

And the icing on the cake, two joruna in very close proximity… mating?