On The Train (Wedding, Sungkai, Petai, Tg Malim), May 24, 2010

Another wedding over the weekend and this time at Tapah. It can be just like any other wedding but for the players involved. Sungkai, Tapah and Bidor were where my wife and her family used to reside. They were a part of the mining community there. My wife and her siblings attended their primary and secondary both at Sungkai and Bidor. Naturally they have a lot of friends there and naturally Tapah also came into equation for them. One of her sisters decided to make Bidor her kampung now. As strange as anything can be the family’s, read ladies, tailor is also at Tapah. So we frequently travel there to visit and recently my wife started to reconnect with her old family friends in the areas. Our host for the wedding was one of my wife’s closest family friends that I would not wrong to reclassify it as almost as true family itself. It is a place and occasion ‘where everybody knows your name’. Knowing how this thing works and having such an experience myself I was just happy to oblige. I just let my wife had her moment reestablishing her old networks of friends. Surprise as any surprise can be the bride, the host’s daughter, happened to be working in the same organization as yours truly. Now I can potential stake a claim on my wife’s network.

Photos here

After visiting my sister-in-law for a while I took the old route 1 home and when we arrived at Sungkai my wife remarked about the new railway station hidden on our right. You should know by how that I have this thing with train and train stations, I decided to check it out. The new station was not that interesting but being introduced to the old Sungkai town was a nice surprise for me. I’d never realized its existence. Of course my wife rebuffed me saying’ I told you so many times already. You are the one who was not listening.’ He he he, yes dear.

Photos here

When we arrived at Bidor from Tapah earlier my wife was pushing me to stop to buy some petai. Since I decided to take route 1 we missed buying them at Bidor. I drove straight on to Slim River (Mar asked me what is Slim River and I told her Sungai Kurus) from Sungkai firstly to fill up the Ranger and secondly to check whether there was a Pasar Malam there to buy some petai. I filled up the Ranger but there wasn’t any petai only a van full of petai coming along beside us that I tempted to stop. I entered the highway at Slim River and Schumacher my way down south. When we passed Behrang I remembered that there would be a Pasar Malam at Tg Malim town that night. I told my wife and turned left to enter Tg Malim.

The pasar malam covered half of Tg Malim town and to our surprised after we tawaf the whole pasar malam there wasn’t a single sayur kampung on sale. Which means no petai as well laa. But we discovered one of the specialties of the pasar malam, the biggest cheese apam balik that I have seen. Yes, not only it was the biggest it contain cheese as well. I guess you can called it Afem Ballick now he he he.

Photos here.