A month ago the hot climate reached between 30-33˚c and everyone was complaining ‘it’s hot’ and now it has been raining in Sibu, a little flood due to drain blockage here and there. During my childhood times, once around Christmas the year end monsoon brought plenty of rain. I remember, this song, rain-rain go away, come again another day... was like my prayer song for the rain to stop. Because, dad had promised to take us out for a walk and see Christmas’ Santa as that year we were informed, Santa Claus is coming to town- to Sarikei town.
I remember that night the rain didn’t stop… and I grew up wondering what happened to the Santa that night in Sarikei. Did he manage to find his Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer? Years later I was informed Sarikei's Sebangkoi area was chosen as a town where deer are breed for commercial purposes, I guess that was where Rudolph went to. (Neh! That’s all false about Rudolph)
The afternoon sun was hot in Mukah, it was merely 3pm in the afternoon. We dropped by Mukah’s fish market after our lunch but to our disappointment, there’s nothing left for us not even a single little fish at their market. So we decided to visit their sea product shops.
To our surprise most vendors close shop as early as 3pm and by the time we reached there, however we were lucky to see three shops still open waiting for their last customers which is good enough at least we can get something rather than nothing to take home with us to Sibu.
We stopped at the first shop selling all kinds of seafood tidbits, fish/prawns crackers to everything that came from sea to some we had never seen before like baked fish wrapped in ‘nipah’ (young coconut leafs) and tiny fish pickles in bottles, tiny shrimps soaked in vinegar cramped together in bottles known as ‘chicalok’ to the locals and notoriously pungent odor ‘belacan’ (shrimp) paste.
Mukah is a town by the seaside. Sea breeze keeps us cool. It was a quiet little town where entertainment outlets are not really famous in the majority Melanau-Muslim town, neither pubs nor night clubs but rather a homely town.
Fishermen go out into the sea at night and return home at dawn with their catch. Fish and sago are two items go well with each other. Umai must go along with baked sago pearl or you will find umai ‘boring’ immediately after the next day.
I didn’t get the chance to visit any of their villages but passing by whenever we drove down town, the fishermen built their houses along river where they can park their ‘alui’ (fishermen boat in Melanau) behind their house and process their sea products like dried salted fish and a little shop selling their home-made sea products at front of their houses.
The night after we had our seafood dinner, we spent driving around and last, we dropped by a shop known to us as ‘
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