Hoklo in Hapcai + Singgora, reports from the field

[amhoanna]

The other day I walked down the street where all the stalls selling Buddhist paraphernalia or spreading awareness are set up, and they were playing a religious but pretty much pop song in Literary Hoklo, with the weepy (female) vocal stylings that we seem to love. At least I do!

When I was there, the term my friends and relatives used was just 食菜 "ciah8-chai3".

This is the std TWnese term for VEGETARIANISM too, at least in the context of doing it habitually.

食清 ciạ'cheng shows up in the 台日 kamus with a different meaning... To me, it has a "vegan" ring to it... I wonder if ciạ'cheng means abstaining from garlic, onions, etc. as well, while those who ciạ'chài may be allowed these and other delights?

If I'm not mistaken, this Sat is the day when free food will be provided in huge amounts on Suphasanrangsan Rd here in Hapcai. Khósio' goá ciạ' bẽ tiọ', cin put'hẹng.

BTW the top headline in the business section of yesterday's 星暹日報 (Bangkok-based, I think) was:
新一代年輕人更懂守戒積德

Could you help to elaborate regarding what you mean by "Hokkien bent"? The types of the food, the taste, etc? And what is your personal "definition" of Hokkien food? And yes, please, it'll be great to read your food blog!

U'll have to read Xiaxue for that. I wanted to take a photo of last night's dinner, but I chickened out, it would've been such a cheesy thing to do. It was a little bit of mịsoàⁿ with curry and a buffet of leaves, veggies and dried fish to mix it with, arranged on every table. As for "Hokkien food", I was just shooting from the hip based on impressions . Maybe a tendency towards pork, seafood, and 腹內 paklãi (innards), towards frying, towards brown ingredients (pork, mushrooms and bamboo shoots) instead of greens, towards 重醎 tãngkiảm, and away from foods cold, raw, or lightly cooked. My general indictment of Hokkienese food is: tasty but not healthy.

In Malaya, heavy culinary syncretism took place. For my money, Malaya has the best eating in the world, alongside Vietnam. Phils food would seem to be closer to the original Hokkien food. Just a guess. What about Bagan and Medan??

From the hip, again: the closest relative of Hokkien cuisine seems to be Hakka cuisine. And there may be something "Hmongic" about the emphasis on innards.

If 豬 is pronounced as 'ti' and 糜 as 'bê', this is Ē-mn^g variant, right?

According to our rough and ready hair-splitting schemes, yeah. But there's probably more than meets the eye! The dialects in the homeland and on the islands hv been evolving "all the time", as some say in America. Also, what we call the "Amoy dialect" seems to hv cropped up in all the major Hokkien port cities of the late 19th century: Amoy, Bángkà'-Taipak, S'pore, Manila, etc. Maybe this wasn't so much a "dialect" as it was a "process".

The same kind of thing with English would be the kinship btw the dialects spoken in little round half-bubbles around all the old port cities from New Orleans up to Boston and maybe even on up to Halifax. The most striking is the kinship between the New Orleans and New York dialects. A lot of the common characteristics are also shared with port city dialects in England...

Lí· sī tītô· tútiòh hiâi kuesaíbīn ê guânkang ne?

Kiànnạ ũ Sumatera (Họ'ló'oẹ áncoáⁿ kóng?) lảng. Cú'iàu tữ Sanur. Címmá siũⁿ khí, tữ Klungkung ū cịt ẻ Batạ'lảng kạ goá ka thảumo·, thàitọ· mã bỏ kài hó, ṃ kò' káná hảm cọkkủn bỏ tữtại.

Guá tī hiâi ū bué cìtpún kuésé· Bâlî ê lìtsú· kah hongsiòk ê cu·. Thàk liaú khah cai’iáⁿ tíngpaí ê Bâlî (huncuè kuí’äⁿ kok ê) lâng guânlâi sī cin ok koh bíng, hō· hit tangsî ciu’uî ê huêkaù ông bôpiàn hânghòk ïn.

Hẽⁿ ·a, goá thiaⁿkóng Bảlỉ címmá ẻ cit è̉ hỏpẻng kò' lẻngsiàⁿ ẻ miảsiaⁿ sĩ Auciu lảng téng sèkí ngẽ pìⁿ ·chutlải ·ẻ, ka' hit kuí paí ẻ puputan ũ koanhẹ, in'uị liáu'ạu Hỏlản lảng phạiⁿ tiọ' pháiⁿ miảsiaⁿ. Kò' ũ iáⁿhìtoảⁿ (影戲壇) ẻ "Goona Goona" sỉtại.

Goá cit sìlảng khoàⁿ ·koè siõngkài suí ẻ cabó· tọ sĩ Bảlỉ ẻ Jiáu'oa cabó·, ciàukóng in toạpõ·hụn sĩ Banyuwangi hit ta' ẻ lảng. Goá mã sĩ bỏpiàn hảnghọk ·in. ("Piàn" thạk khiãtiạu a'sĩ cáutiạu?)

Thiaⁿkóng Kuta kah kîthaⁿ uáhaí ê só·caī ū cincuē guātuē laî cuèkang ë. Ubud ê su·ki kā gún kóng Ubud khah bô, só·í ē khah ancuân khah hó·ⁿkheh, in’uī caītuē ê Bâlî lâng be·h póchî Bâlî ê miâⁿsiaⁿ.

Tiọ' ·la', in lóng ańne kóng. Láusịt kóng, goá thảutú'á ũ te' sìn, a' liáu'aụ tọ bỏ be' sìn ·a.

Mālàkká ê bābā kah niûhiaⁿ

nyonya = niủhiaⁿ?
Chùbị!

Jiáu’ua lâng khah cuē sī khah ū lémaū, m-kú khah gaûké. ...

Cit toạⁿ thạk liáu, simthảu lảnbián hoán léng.

Kha' lémạu kàisẻng ka' he "Ìntọ· bủnhoà té" ũ koanhẹ.

...

Yesterday at the market -- the "ASEAN Trade Market", to be exact, but in most ways just a regular market for clothes and knickknacks -- I heard a guy say to his kid, "Maa pai leeo", which calques to the Hoklo sentence "Lải khừ ·a" perfectly.

maa = 來
pai = 去
leeo = 了 (in Equatorial Hoklo)

The guy started striding down the passageway with a straight-ahead gaze, while the kid kind of groaned and dragged his feet like they were made of lead.

Interesting enough, also: maa & pai are probably related to MARI and PERGI in some way.

[amhoanna]

Cit pái lải Hạpcai, kàu kinnájịt uỉcí. Report conclusion:

1 - Hoklo almost never heard in public. I heard it once, but I'm pretty sure they were M'sians. Bummer.

2 - I asked several people if they spoke Hoklo. This was natural since I speak Tai Siam poorly. None of them did. I only asked people that "looked like Hoklo speakers". I was mostly outside the tourist area.

3 - In the high-rise tourist area, a lot of obviously non-Sino people seem to have picked up Mandarin. I was spoken to in Mandarin a couple of times. General interest in learning Mandarin seems pretty high. Let's blame the M'sians for this. The leading language among foreigners in the tourist district seems to be Mandarin, even when they "speak amongst themselves". Nobody walking down the street talking loudly in Canto or Hoklo.

4 - M'sian reports that people in Hapcai speak Hokkien seem to have been overblown. Or it may be restricted to the high-rise tourist area, and maybe certain kinds of merchants or "service providers" within that.

5 - I will venture a guess that few, if any, young to middle-aged local Hapcai Hokkiens can speak Hoklo unless they've picked it up from catering to M'sians.

6 - Malay is pretty useful in Hapcai, kind of like Cantonese in Saigon. I've had no trouble making myself understood in Malay with much of the population, maybe 30%, now that I'm getting my Malay back. They hesitate a bit to speak to me in Malay, maybe b/c they're afraid I won't understand their loghat Patani-Kelate! Or maybe they hv to think before they talk, to conform their sentences to Johor-Riau Malay.

Just now I started speaking to a guy in Malay, and he "offered" a switch to English, but I said, "Saya orang Taiwan," and I guess he took that to mean I didn't speak English (as intended ).

[niuc]

The other day I walked down the street where all the stalls selling Buddhist paraphernalia or spreading awareness are set up, and they were playing a religious but pretty much pop song in Literary Hoklo,

Wow, are those songs composed locally? Do you know whether the Chinese Buddhists there are Theravada or Mahayana, or also 三教 (儒, 釋, 道)?
九王爺 are Taoist deities, right?

with the weepy (female) vocal stylings that we seem to love. At least I do!

Weepy female voice is indeed very suitable for some Hokkien songs e.g. 車站.

This is the std TWnese term for VEGETARIANISM too, at least in the context of doing it habitually.

食清 ciạ'cheng shows up in the 台日 kamus with a different meaning... To me, it has a "vegan" ring to it... I wonder if ciạ'cheng means abstaining from garlic, onions, etc. as well, while those who ciạ'chài may be allowed these and other delights?

I see, so in TW Hoklo vegetarian & vegan are differentiated? I always assumed that Chinese style of vegetarian was always without garlic & onions i.e. 食清. However, the vegetarian temple in Bagansiapiapi is usually referred to as 菜宮 instead of 清宮.

If I'm not mistaken, this Sat is the day when free food will be provided in huge amounts on Suphasanrangsan Rd here in Hapcai. Khósio' goá ciạ' bẽ tiọ', cin put'hẹng.

My mom just told me that my late 姨婆 used to cook a lot more 雜菜 & other dishes on the last day of the festival to share with us & her relatives/friends. And apparently many young people, especially the ladies, became vegetarian for that last day. Some, usually only mothers or grandmothers, became vegetarian for ten more days or a whole month.

I wanted to take a photo of last night's dinner, but I chickened out, it would've been such a cheesy thing to do.

Sometimes I also wanted to take pic but usually only realized it after I had started to eat the food!

It was a little bit of mịsoàⁿ with curry and a buffet of leaves, veggies and dried fish to mix it with, arranged on every table.

Mịsoàⁿ with curry... hmmm, so far I only know mostly bíhún & sometimes tuāmī with curry, but it does sound interesting & delicious!

As for "Hokkien food", I was just shooting from the hip based on impressions . Maybe a tendency towards pork, seafood, and 腹內 paklãi (innards),

I think so!

towards frying, towards brown ingredients (pork, mushrooms and bamboo shoots) instead of greens,

For Bâgánciàh, stir & deep-frying are very common, but I don't think that they are "typical". And we have many green dishes too, but I have noticed that Bâgánciàh is highly influenced by Nyonya/Peranakan cuisine, so is hardly "original" Hokkien.

towards 重醎 tãngkiảm,

Bingo! In my variant, the dishes are called 醎!
Btw, thanks for the TLJ 醎, easier to write than 鹹 and not as ambiguous as 咸.

and away from foods cold, raw, or lightly cooked. My general indictment of Hokkienese food is: tasty but not healthy.

This is quite accurate, IMHO. Bâgán home cooking has quite a number of healthy dishes but they are not necessarily typical Hokkien (may be across Chinese and even SE Asian) and usually not found in food stalls / restaurants e.g. 峇眼雜菜, 辣卵, 峇眼菜包 (番薯皮, 毋是肉包彼種包).

In Malaya, heavy culinary syncretism took place. For my money, Malaya has the best eating in the world, alongside Vietnam. Phils food would seem to be closer to the original Hokkien food. Just a guess. What about Bagan and Medan??

I don't know much about Vietnamese cuisine, but from what I tried here, it used strange smell vegetables. However, I like its dry beef-bíhún dish (forget the name)!

From my limited experience, Malaysian Chinese cuisine generally tastes pretty similar to Medan and Bâgán. I will not be surprised if Medanciàh is very similar to Penang. Beside red/yellow curry (kīng), Bâgán has greenish sticky curry (kalí) that's not found in places around it; also we eat 豬腸粉, 芋圓 and 鹹粿 (in Singapore: 水粿) with 豆仁灰, 蝦米(灰), 醬清, 芹菜, 蔥珠 and 番椒 (=辣椒). Some told me that Bâgán kalípng- was found in Malacca. I wonder if Mallacan eat 豬腸粉 et al the same way as we do.

Btw, Singaporean food actually is similar to Malaysian, but due to "less salt / sugar, no MSG", many Indonesian & Malaysian find it a bit too bland.

From the hip, again: the closest relative of Hokkien cuisine seems to be Hakka cuisine. And there may be something "Hmongic" about the emphasis on innards.

You mean other Chinese don't? Innards are also widely used in Malay & other Indonesian cuisines.

According to our rough and ready hair-splitting schemes, yeah. But there's probably more than meets the eye! The dialects in the homeland and on the islands hv been evolving "all the time", as some say in America. Also, what we call the "Amoy dialect" seems to hv cropped up in all the major Hokkien port cities of the late 19th century: Amoy, Bángkà'-Taipak, S'pore, Manila, etc. Maybe this wasn't so much a "dialect" as it was a "process".

I c. You are indeed right. Probably Ē'mng^uē also was a result of similar process? And probably different variant speakers in those major cities consciously or subconsciously chose Ē'mng^uē as the middle ground?

The same kind of thing with English would be the kinship btw the dialects spoken in little round half-bubbles around all the old port cities from New Orleans up to Boston and maybe even on up to Halifax. The most striking is the kinship between the New Orleans and New York dialects. A lot of the common characteristics are also shared with port city dialects in England...

Wow, thanks for this. So it's quite natural after all.

Kiànnạ ũ Sumatera (Họ'ló'oẹ áncoáⁿ kóng?) lảng. Cú'iàu tữ Sanur. Címmá siũⁿ khí, tữ Klungkung ū cịt ẻ Batạ'lảng kạ goá ka thảumo·, thàitọ· mã bỏ kài hó, ṃ kò' káná hảm cọkkủn bỏ tữtại.

Sumatra, gún sīkóng So·bûntahlàh / So·mng^tahlàh.
Batàhlâng cuè ka thâumng^·ê, kohsī tē'itpaí thiaⁿ·kì ·ne!

Hẽⁿ ·a, goá thiaⁿkóng Bảlỉ címmá ẻ cit è̉ hỏpẻng kò' lẻngsiàⁿ ẻ miảsiaⁿ sĩ Auciu lảng téng sèkí ngẽ pìⁿ ·chutlải ·ẻ, ka' hit kuí paí ẻ puputan ũ koanhẹ, in'uị liáu'ạu Hỏlản lảng phạiⁿ tiọ' pháiⁿ miảsiaⁿ. Kò' ũ iáⁿhìtoảⁿ (影戲壇) ẻ "Goona Goona" sỉtại.

Bôkuài!

Goá cit sìlảng khoàⁿ ·koè siõngkài suí ẻ cabó· tọ sĩ Bảlỉ ẻ Jiáu'oa cabó·, ciàukóng in toạpõ·hụn sĩ Banyuwangi hit ta' ẻ lảng. Goá mã sĩ bỏpiàn hảnghọk ·in.

Ciàu Wikipedia só·siá ·ê, Banyuwangi ê lâng sī Osing bîncòk, suidiân ēsái kóng sī Jiáu'a còkkhûn ê cìtpō·hūn, m-kú mā ēsái sng`tsuè sī līngguā cìtkhuán lâng, ū siū Bâlî bôció ê ínghióng. In ê Blambangan ôngkok sī Jiáu'a'tuē tehsuahbé· ê Ìntō·kaù ê ôngkok. Suidiân siū Bâlî (in kèsī Majapahit tèkok ê kiáⁿsun) ê póhō·, tèbé· āsī pāi tī Huêkaù ê Mataram ê chiú.

("Piàn" thạk khiãtiạu a'sĩ cáutiạu?)

Cáutiāu.

nyonya = niủhiaⁿ?

Sīlah, 娘惹 ingkai sī niûjiah, tānsī Bâgánlâng tàk ê kóng niûhiaⁿ (娘兄).

J
Kha' lémạu kàisẻng ka' he "Ìntọ· bủnhoà té" ũ koanhẹ.

Tongkim guá só· tuhtiòh ê Ìntō·lâng tuāpō·hūn bôlémāu, nā mng-lō· bôkiò kámsiā ·ê. Ciàu guá siūⁿ, Huilìppinlâng ingkai bô símmìh hō· Ìntō· ínghióng, a māsī pí Ìntō·lâng keduā lémāu ·ê. Alisanlâng ū pí Tng^lâng khah ū lémāu ·bô?

Yesterday at the market -- the "ASEAN Trade Market", to be exact, but in most ways just a regular market for clothes and knickknacks -- I heard a guy say to his kid, "Maa pai leeo", which calques to the Hoklo sentence "Lải khừ ·a" perfectly.

Is the guy Chinese? Is the sentence native Thai or slang? As you surely have known, Singlish has many calques from Chinese languages & also Malay. "Long time no see" is a calque from Chinese, right?

Interesting enough, also: maa & pai are probably related to MARI and PERGI in some way.

Wow!

[SimL]

... and away from foods cold, raw, or lightly cooked. My general indictment of Hokkienese food is: tasty but not healthy.

This is quite accurate, IMHO. Bâgán home cooking has quite a number of healthy dishes but they are not necessarily typical Hokkien (may be across Chinese and even SE Asian) and usually not found in food stalls / restaurants e.g. 峇眼雜菜, 辣卵, 峇眼菜包 (番薯皮, 毋是肉包彼種包).

Agreed. But perhaps not limited to just Hokkien cuisine. I was in London last weekend, and had lunch in Chinatown. It was a Cantonese-speaking restaurant (though some of the staff spoke Mandarin too). I ordered "rice and roast pork", and true enough, all there was was a plate of rice, with chopped up roast pork heaped on top of it - no veg! (I'm sure most readers are familiar with this dish.)

It was one of my rare deja-vu experiences of the horrible service I used to get in Chinese restaurants in London Chinatown of the 1980's. I'm happy to say that this is the first such experience in about 10 years. Here is a little extract of what I mailed back to a friend:

<extract>
Today's Chinese meal in Chinatown was one of the worst meals I've ever had. Horrible service: begrudgingly shown a table (which I had to share); I ordered roast pork and rice and was greeted with sullen resentment when I asked for a fork and spoon (I asked for them because the rice was served on a plate, and I only use chopsticks when eating rice from a bowl) - the fork and spoon were practically thrown at me; they kept me waiting for ages for the change; and the food was complete rubbish - no taste whatsoever, very tough and dry meet, and pure salt. My neighbour on the same table had "roast duck and rice", which was very similar. I asked him at the end of the meal (outside the restaurant) and he said his dish had no taste other than pure salt too). I have resolved NEVER to eat Chinese food in London again. French and Indian from now onwards.
</extract>

PS. I dutifully clicked through almost all 2.5 pages of the spam postings! Hopefully the moderators will get rid of them soon.

[niuc]

Agreed. But perhaps not limited to just Hokkien cuisine. I was in London last weekend, and had lunch in Chinatown. It was a Cantonese-speaking restaurant (though some of the staff spoke Mandarin too). I ordered "rice and roast pork", and true enough, all there was was a plate of rice, with chopped up roast pork heaped on top of it - no veg! (I'm sure most readers are familiar with this dish.)

Sim, glad to read your sharings. When I visited Hong Kong more than 5 years ago with my friends, we noticed that Chinese (fast) food stalls only had meats and hardly any vegetables. Only at restaurants we could ordered some vegetable dishes. And we didn't find any "mixed rice" (菜飯 chaìpng-) stall [those stalls usually display more than ten types of meats, fish, seafood and vegetables] as commonly found in Singapore, Jakarta, KL and Bangkok. Here stalls selling chicken rice or roast pork usually sell vegetables as additional side dishes.

[SimL]

Hi niuc,

Thanks for sharing your information and knowledge too! Well, perhaps the amount of veg we get in S.E. Asia is due to S.E. Asian influence then... The Cantonese who went to London Chinatown probably went direct from China or Hong Kong, and perhaps "preserve" the lack of veg from that region.

[niuc]

Hi Sim

Well, perhaps the amount of veg we get in S.E. Asia is due to S.E. Asian influence then... The Cantonese who went to London Chinatown probably went direct from China or Hong Kong, and perhaps "preserve" the lack of veg from that region.

I think we indeed are richly influenced by SE Asian vegetables, e.g. kangkong. However, I also think that our ancestors generally ate more vegetables than meat, because meat was expensive. The lack of vegetable dishes outside doesn't mean that they are not common in house-cooking. A Hongkonger also told me the same. So I guess most Chinese do not eat out just to get vegetables, but meat.

[SimL]

I think we indeed are richly influenced by SE Asian vegetables, e.g. kangkong.

Oh, I simply LOVE kangkong in any form - so wonderfully crunchy!

A Hongkonger also told me the same. So I guess most Chinese do not eat out just to get vegetables, but meat.

ROTFL!

[amhoanna]

Do you know whether the Chinese Buddhists there are Theravada or Mahayana, or also 三教 (儒, 釋, 道)?

The latter, from the looks of it. It also seemed like a lot of ethnic Tais have been enlisted or brought into the fold, at least for the rituals. Tai guys with bicycle handlebars bored through their cheeks for 九皇爺, for example.

In my variant, the dishes are called 醎!
Btw, thanks for the TLJ 醎, easier to write than 鹹 and not as ambiguous as 咸.

Yes! There's usually a happy medium. Good pt about DISHES = 醎.

Bâgán home cooking has quite a number of healthy dishes but they are not necessarily typical Hokkien (may be across Chinese and even SE Asian) and usually not found in food stalls / restaurants

Interesting.

I don't know much about Vietnamese cuisine, but from what I tried here, it used strange smell vegetables. However, I like its dry beef-bíhún dish (forget the name)!

Those leaves are the key for me. I'd enjoy my daily rice a lot more if I could get a plate of leaves with every meal, and a thing of fish sauce. There are a great number of leaves, used in different combinations. Seems like U're talking about some kind of bún bò.

Ciàu Wikipedia só·siá ·ê, Banyuwangi ê lâng sī Osing bîncòk, suidiân ēsái kóng sī Jiáu'a còkkhûn ê cìtpō·hūn, m-kú mā ēsái sng`tsuè sī līngguā cìtkhuán lâng, ū siū Bâlî bôció ê ínghióng. In ê Blambangan ôngkok sī Jiáu'a'tuē tehsuahbé· ê Ìntō·kaù ê ôngkok. Suidiân siū Bâlî (in kèsī Majapahit tèkok ê kiáⁿsun) ê póhō·, tèbé· āsī pāi tī Huêkaù ê Mataram ê chiú.

Tiọ', kài chùbị. Goá cin ǹgbạng khừ tữ hit ta' melantáu cịt po· kú, choạ cịt ẻ sìn Ìntọ·kàu ẻ bó· tuíⁿkhừ Anlảm. In ẻ imgạk mã kài hóthiaⁿ, hõ· lảng chibẻ.

Tongkim guá só· tuhtiòh ê Ìntō·lâng tuāpō·hūn bôlémāu, nā mng-lō· bôkiò kámsiā ·ê. Ciàu guá siūⁿ, Huilìppinlâng ingkai bô símmìh hō· Ìntō· ínghióng, a māsī pí Ìntō·lâng keduā lémāu ·ê.

The Indian South has been overrun in some ways by the Indian North too. Just a guess.

Alisanlâng ū pí Tng^lâng khah ū lémāu ·bô?

In kha' bỏ hià' gảu ké.

Tạkgẻ nạ ũ kihoẹ thang khoàⁿ SEEDIQ BALE (iáⁿhì), goá cin chuiciàn.

Is the guy Chinese? Is the sentence native Thai or slang?

No, obviously not Chinese. มาไปแล้ว turns up a healthy number of hits on Google. Not sure if it's used in Bangkok Tai Siam. It's possible that it's specifically Southern Tai. And the isthmus area is very syncretic, with people speaking Tai-icized/Malayish Hoklo in Kelantan, etc., and a long history of Hokkienese settlers.

(菜飯 chaìpng-)

Hoklo for NASI CAMPUR?

For some reason, the "Hong Kong" style of serving food is what I'm more used to. In Indo and Thailand it used to frustrate me that I couldn't sit down and have a budget rice dish made for me on order and served hot. I like the Canto diners with their long list of rice dishes... The 會飯 in TW really bothers me, there's just too much sauce, it's like soup, except the soup is all salt and sugar and MSG and food coloring, etc. But in all these places there are new ways of budget eating to be discovered.

[amhoanna]

The road from Hapcai to Taipak led through Alor Star and KL. We crossed at Sadao. On one side, whores and bright lights. On the other, the smell of fresh-cut lawns, a sure sign of continued subservience to Anglo ideals.

Somewhere around Alor Star, the bus pulled into a remote lot with a patio diner serving caffeine and Malay food. It was mid-evening and the rest of the plaza was shut down except for a little restaurant at the other end, a Chinese restaurant. I walked over to see about maybe buying a pack of kretek. It was striking how hibỉ it was over there. Nobody was behind the counter, but a lady seated at a table seemed to be the owner, so I toggled through the options for a second: Tai Siam? No, no more of that now. Malay? No, that would be weird. Mandarin? Definitely OK, but not for me. Canto? Yeah, I guess. Me: "呢度有冇賣 kretek?"

She didn't understand me, probably b/c of the word KRETEK. My brain woke up. I realized where I was. I said, "Lín cia kám ũ te' boẹ kretek? Lín kám ũ te' boẹ Ìnnỉ ẻ hun?"

The lady confirmed that I was asking about "hunki". A guy at the next table gave the universal SE Asian "no have" hand gesture while saying, "Bỏ." There was something warm, friendly and open about these seemingly downtrodden people.

Back to the caffeine joint where all the busses pull up. I ordered kopi o kosong. The girl said something about "kosong" that I didn't understand. I figured she was confirming my order. Then she proceeded to forget my order -- on purpose, seemed like. I could only chalk it up to the ongoing Malay-Cina impasse that taints life on the Straits side of Malaysia.

The bus dumped us off on a deserted street in central KL around about 4:30 am. Deserted, b/c the city was built on an Anglo model. It seems that buses do not see fit to pick up and drop off passengers in a real terminal when they get to KL, but instead at random points scattered everywhere. Reminded me of the KL light rail system, where no line connects to any other line or even shares ticketing. I stumble off the bus. In a very Malaysian moment, the Malay cabbies go after the Malay psgrs while the Chinese cabbies look at me hopefully since I was one of the only East Asians on the bus. An older gentleman glommed on to me and lied to me gently and sincerely in Cantonese, pretending to be on that "this is Malaysia and we are Chinamen, so I will take care of U" tip.

I went in a convenience store to buy overpriced kretek and get directions. The Malay chick on duty was pointedly rude. When I asked for directions, she cut me off, turned away and pointed at a guy who was sitting by the door reading the paper, as if to say, "Ask one of your own kind." So I asked this young Tnglang guy where I could catch a bus to the LCCT. He spoke high-speed Cantonese and I had to get him to repeat himself a few times. He threw in the expression "lí pat ·mo" a few times. I understood he was asking if I understood, but I was half asleep and it didn't hit me till afterward that he was probably offering a switch to Hokkien -- maybe he figured I was a Hokkien from "the provinces".

As I left the store and lit a kretek, an Indian cabbie came up to me. It hit me that ironically it was easier to talk to an Indian cabbie here than any other race of cabbie. I walked to the bus stop as indicated by the young guy. A couple of minutes later, the young guy himself -- probably on duty at some business nearby -- showed up at the bus stop too and sat there for a couple of minutes before going back. He might've gone out there to make sure I found the bus stop. I've run into this kind of kindness many times in M'sia, mostly from Tnglang but from bumi as well.

Last but not least, hours later, as I approached the gate at LCCT, Formosa-bound, there were two M'sian immigration officials doing a final passport screening just outside the waiting area. The Tnglang one barked something at me in an Asian language waktu dia khoàⁿ tiọ' goá ẻ Tải'oản họ·ciàu. I realized he was speaking Hokkien. He asked me, "Lí sĩ m̃ sĩ Tải'oản lảng?!" It was sure enough interesting to run into such a surprise Hoklo shibboleth at a boarding gate in KL -- no Mandarin involved. I'm guessing they were working to screen out aTiongs with forged or doctored TW passports...