A First Timer's Practical Guide to walking the Camino de Santiago

 June, 2022

I wrote this simple guide for those interested in walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain.  It covers in a single place such practicalities as what to bring, accommodation, etc. It is not intended to be a comprehensive 'how-to' guide. There is plenty of information on the Internet on the details of various aspects of the walk. 

A brief note on Planning.

There are many Camino routes.  Do some research and select the one you want to walk, the distance and your starting point. There is no fixed starting point, although practically, people start from towns where they arrive by bus, train or plane. 

 Walking the Camino your way.

There are many ways to walk the Camino:

-          Complete self-sufficiency, carrying everything in a rucksack and deciding each day how far you want to walk.  Many who opt for this will seek out accommodation when they’ve walked far enough for the day.  Walkers can decide how long to walk, whether they want to stay an extra day to rest or go sightseeing in a stopover. There is the uncertainty of finding suitable accommodation at the destination town. During high season, all accommodation can be booked out. Some hotels charge more for walk-ins compared to pre-booking.  The logical stop points are in the larger towns with accommodation.

 -          Going with a company that pre-arranges accommodation. Specialist companies in the Camino can prebook accommodation for you before you leave.  It means a fixed itinerary with a determined distance to walk each day to the booked accommodation. This provides the assurance of accommodation at the end of the day, but also the relative inflexibility of a fixed walking schedule.

 -          Guided:  companies offer full guided services, with a guide familiar with the route who accompanies the walker.  A support vehicle can also be arranged.  The guide provides assurance and local knowledge as well as intimate knowledge of the route and what to look out for.

 

Accommodation

There is a wide range of accommodation on the Camino routes in the larger towns. These suit a variety of needs and budgets. Among them:

-          Albergues are part of the Camino history and tradition, set up to provide shelter to pilgrims. They are usually right on, or very near the actual Camino routes and so are very convenient in terms of location.  Albergues can be public or private, and are usually dormitory style with shared facilities. Typically, they cannot be reserved beforehand, so you turn up and check on availability.   Usually the most inexpensive accommodation on the Camino route.

-          Hotels in urban settings vary widely in terms of quality and price and offer the amenities of typical hotels.

-          Cottages.  These are set in rural areas, usually a little distance away from towns, and may need some extended walking or a taxi ride but they provide a taste of the rural farm life and can be very charming.

-          Apartments, etc through online channels such as AirBnB, Booking.com.

-          Paradors are luxury hotels, which are State run in Spain, usually located in a historic building such as a castle or ex-monastery. The best known of these is the Parador Santiago de Compostella, housed just beside the cathedral Santiago de Compostella. Now a 5-star hotel, it was historically a hospital and an alberque, and considered to be one of the oldest hotels in the world.

 Training

Much depends on the fitness of the individual, there are many online resources which go into detailed training plans and there is no intention to replicate them here. 

There is no fixed distance to walk every day. Generally, assuming a walking pace between 3km/hr and 5km/hr, as a rough guide, daily walks average between 20-30km a day. Camino walks can be tailored to the individual, so distances may be longer or shorter as preferred.  A natural constraint is the availability of accommodation at the end of the walking day.

 

Luggage

-          Carry your own luggage in a rucksack along the way with everything you need.

-          Some companies offer forwarding services: walkers carry a light rucksack with the essentials for that day. Bulky luggage is collected every morning and sent to the next destination for a fee. For this, travelers must have prebooked accommodation at their next destination.

Meals

Most prebooked accommodation can provide breakfast and dinner. If the accommodation is in a rural setting, such as a farm, this may be the only option. Travelers who stay in town can go to a local café or restaurant for their meals.  Meals in Spain are late, lunches start around 1.30pm and dinners start around 8pm or later, which is when restaurant kitchens open.

In the late afternoons, especially in the provincial towns, shops and restaurants close so getting a meal can be difficult.  In the larger towns, some cafes may stay open and offer informal meals such as cold tapas, tortillas and empanadas between meal times.

In the larger towns with a bus or train terminus, there is usually a café open at odd hours to cater to incoming trains and buses. Usually these serve quick, informal meals which do not require kitchen service.

For meals along the trail, there may be cafes to stop at for coffee and snacks. These can be few and far in between along rural stretches. Usually these provide informal easily prepared meals such as empanadas and sandwiches. Some cafes can be crowded with hikers if there are few other cafes along the route during meal times, or if it is raining. 

Travelers should also consider carrying snacks in their rucksacks in case there are no cafes or bars encountered for long stretches, eg, forested trails.

 

What to Bring

-          Walking shoes/boots. Many walkers wear hiking boots, although a good pair of walking shoes will suffice. Make sure that the shoes are broken in and comfortable as you don’t want to develop blisters wearing new shoes on the trail.

-          Sandals/informal shoes for after hiking each day.

-          Socks.  Woolen socks with good padding are recommended.

-          Raincoat/poncho

-          Sunglasses. The sun can be very harsh in the afternoons.

-          Water bottle

-          Trail food/snacks (optional)

-          Hiking pants should be light and well ventilated with pockets. Avoid wearing jeans.

-          Walking jersey/T shirt made from quick drying synthetic material.

-          Jacket/fleece for cold weather

-          Torchlight

-          Personal medication

-          Toiletries

-          Hat/cap

-          Sunscreen

-          Rucksack/Day bag

-          Camera

-          Chargers for camera/smartphone

-          Walking poles (optional, depending on preference)

-          Plastic bags for rubbish while walking.

 

Navigation

The route is well marked with milestones and other markers, so if you don’t see a marker after some time, there’s a good chance you’ve gone off route.  If there are locals around, they are usually very obliging in helping travelers.  There are also many smartphone navigation apps for the Camino, eg, Camino Ninja which can be downloaded and installed.

Markers feature a stylized scallop shell design and/or a yellow arrow.

It is easier to go off-route in towns with many buildings and streets.

 

Others

A local prepaid SIM card is recommended to avoid expensive roaming charges. These can be purchased at the airport or in towns. Useful for communicating with accommodation, for local navigation, eg, finding the way to your hotel in town, as well as browsing for information on stopovers or places to eat, etc.  

 

The Pilgrim’s Certificate

To be eligible for a Pilgrim’s certificate, or compostella, issued at the Pilgrim’s Office in Santiago de Compostella, travelers must walk the last 100km of the Camino, or complete 200km if riding a bicycle or a horse.

The Pilgrim’s certificate is written in Latin script. After a short interview, if the traveler is eligible, the certificate is issued with the traveler’s name and the date of certificate issue. There is no charge for the certificate.

A longer “distance” certificate with additional details is optionally available for a fee of 3 Euro at the time of writing.

 

The Pilgrim’s Credencial (“Passport”)

The credencial is a document carried by the traveler which is stamped along the Camino, like a passport. The credencial can be purchased for a nominal fee at the starting point at churches and pilgrim’s offices.

Businesses and churches on the Camino can stamp the credencial as proof that the traveler stopped at the said point along the way.  The traveler should collect a minimum of 2 stamps a day. Hotels, alberques, churches, tourist offices, restaurants, cafes and bars can stamp the credecial.

The credencial is presented at the Pilrim’s Office in Santiago de Compostella to prove that the traveler did cover the distance in order to be eligible for a Pilgrim’s Certificate.

 

 

Feedback and comments can be sent to me, Lee Yu Kit, at leeyuk9@gmail.com

 

Nangka Burger at The PC Studio Cafe

 By Lee Yu Kit

Jan 2022

PC Studio Café is located in Damansara Intan, a high-rise incongruity in a commercial enclave shoehorned into PJ’s otherwise residential Section 17/19 and SS2 areas.  

In spite of its ground floor frontage and a few reserved parking lots, the anonymously named PC Studio Café doesn’t impress on first entry, into a plain jane interior with wooden tables laid out in orderly rows and a serving counter at the far end. Café, convenient canteen, or restaurant? 

A Harvested Burger

By Lee Yu Kit, Nov 2, 2021, 

Updated, Nov 9, 2021

With the surge in interest in realistic plant-based meat alternatives, food giant Nestle has launched its own line under the Harvest Gourmet brand. Like the poster boys of the alternative meat movement, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, Harvest Gourmet (HG) is all plant-based, with a range of products launched in Malaysia earlier this year. 

The products are made-in-Malaysia in a Nestle plant (See here ) and are available in local supermarkets. If you experienced sticker shock shopping for plant-based meats, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how reasonably priced Nestle’s offerings are.

Back Lane Banh Mi in Kota Damansara

 By Lee Yu Kit, 

Sept 21, 2021

Update: This banh mi outlet closed sometime in 2022. There were plans to revive it but it remains closed as of July 2023.

One of Vietnam’s popular street food dishes is banh mi, sandwiches made with Vietnamese baguette and a variety of fillings.  Quintessentially Vietnamese, banh mi is true fusion food born of France’s long occupation of Vietnam. French baguette is longer with a stronger texture than the smaller, airer Vietnamese version, for example.

Now from a backlane in Kota Damansara, there’s authentic Vietnamese banh mi, served from a literal hole-in-the-wall. The shop is painted a mustard yellow with green highlights, calling to mind a field of sunflowers, with the words “Banh Mi” painted on the wall.

Sarawak Laksa Shootout: Lin Li Xiang and Aunty Lan

 By Lee Yu Kit, April 2021

Being keen on Sarawak laksa, I recently tried out an acquaintance’s recommendation. Lin Li Xiang had been open for about a year when I visited, not the best timing as much of 2020 was the MCO period with restricted dine in. 

Lin Li Xiang shoplot 

Located along a nondescript line of shoplots in Damansara Jaya, Lin Li Xiang is a Sarawak-food theme’d restaurant, a couple of notches above your typical noisy coffee shop. Within, it’s neat and spacious with a tiled floor and semi-tiled walls complementing the wooden furniture, which lends it a touch of class. Posters of Sarawak specialties adorn the walls, both noodles such as kolo mee, tomato mee and laksa as well as dishes such as curries and pig trotters as accompaniments to rice.  The friendly brother-sister couple who run the restaurant hail from Kuching, Sarawak, which boded well for the food.

KFC's ZERO Chicken Burger is a ?

 

Tasting KFC’s first meatless burger available in Malaysia

By Lee Yu Kit

The last time I stepped into a KFC was in 2019, in the town of Maran, en route to Kuantan. I was on a cycling trip with the longest, hottest section still ahead on the open road. It was after lunch time on a swooningly hot day. Most of the restaurants and coffee shops had closed, but there was an air-conditioned KFC open.

What I remember about that meal was that it had rice and fried chicken. The air-conditioning was blessedly cool within the restaurant.  We blinked in the bright sunshine after the meal, smiled bravely for selfies, mounted our saddles and started out on in the sultry heat on the second leg of our journey to Kuantan.

I didn’t step into another KFC until Feb 9, 2021, in rather altered circumstances. The Covid19 pandemic had affected the world in unprecedented ways. For the time being, dine-ins were disallowed. The KFC counter was strangely quiet.   It was the first day of KFC’s introduction of its Zero-Chicken Burger in Malaysia, said burger being its first meatless burger sold the country, following an apparently unstoppable trend sweeping the food world in plant-based meat alternatives. The Zero Chicken Burger has been available in Singapore before this.  

The Zero Chicken burger uses a meat-substitute patty said to be “high in protein, high in fibre, low in saturated fat, and contains no cholesterol’. It’s made by a company called Quorn, which has been producing a meat substitute from the 1960s, well before the darlings of the meat alternatives, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, made their debut.

Quorn has been available in supermarkets for decades, producing a range of meat-free alternatives: sausages, nuggets, meat pies, burgers, fish, among others, using mycoprotein, derived from fungi fermented in large vats. The result is a highly versatile, high-protein paste.

I’d bought and cooked Quorn sausages before. You can read of my impressions here: http://yukits.blogspot.com/2020/08/meat-free-quorn-vegetarian-sausages.html

The burger was presented in a snappy, attractive, green and white banded carboard box.

Within the box, the burger (RM12.99, RM15.99 in a Combo with fries and drinks) fit into the palm of the hand, smaller than I expected.  It didn’t look anywhere as luscious as the pictures, but that’s not unexpected; there’s advertising and there’s reality. 

A single fried patty with shredded lettuce was sandwiched between the two halves of the rather deflated looking bun. Brown barbeque sauce leaked from the burger onto the Colonel Sanders-decorated paper bag it was wrapped in.

The patty itself looked dry, so first impressions weren’t very inviting.  Biting in, the main thing I tasted was the barbeque sauce, piquant and strong-tasting, which pretty much set the tone for the overall burger experience. The bun didn’t belie appearances; it had no discernable character, no bite, no spine, little texture – it was, in other words, blank space, a filling meant to complete the idea that this was a burger, which necessarily includes a bread patty.

The meat alternative patty didn’t make an impression either, with a homogenous, somewhat pastier texture than I expected, with any flavour it possessed being drowned out by the brown barbeque sauce. The lettuce? Wilted looking. I scarfed down the rest of the burger without any sense of anticipation. It was a stomach filler, but nothing more.

Although the meatless chicken burger idea is laudable in coaxing meat eaters away from consuming meat (and the disproportionate resources it consumes compared to plant-based meat, as well as no chicken being sacrificed), the Zero Chicken Burger doesn’t present a strong case for switching over. It’s well-conceived and well-packaged, but the final product is hardly inspiring. It’s disappointing for what it could have been, but is not.

To console myself, I toasted a couple of slices of sourdough bread, spread them over with fresh avocado, fresh red onion, sprinkled with a little pepper. Fragrant, warm and inviting. Now that’s my idea of a sandwich.

 

I Can't Believe It's Not Luncheon Meat!

By Lee Yu Kit

Jan 6, 2021

Luncheon meat was a staple of my early years. I ate enough of it to keep the local distributor prosperous, if not tilt the trade balance with China. Luncheon meat came in cans from China, although the original product is actually SPAM, by Hormel Foods of the US. It was the right product at the right time, meeting a need for an inexpensive source of meat during the Great Depression, and becoming globally popular after WW2, thanks to its wide distribution wherever US troops went.

Luncheon Meat is still hugely popular, although we now know that it’s a highly processed meat, high in saturated fats, carcinogenic preservatives and low in nutrients, and even protein. But it tastes good, being a mainstay of chap fan (economy rice) vendors and a cheap and tasty, if nastily unhealthy food. 

Singapore Fried Hokkien Mee Roosts in S17, PJ

 Dec 11, 2020

Local food specialties don’t always make spectacular breakouts. Sure, you can point out Ipoh’s sar hor fun, Sarawak laksa and Penang’s all-conquering hawker food, which have spread far and wide.

Witness, however, KL’s famously artery-clogging black noodle hokkien mee, which has the aura of almost religious fervour among late-night eating out cognoscenti trawling backlanes and under-the-tree tai chou outlets, but only within the Klang valley.  In fact, many Malaysian small towns have their local specialties, which have a cult-like appeal in a very limited locality.

Vegetarian Restaurant Cafe Bookshop in SS2

 

Residents of SS2, PJ will be familiar with Murni Discovery, the value-for-money eatery that sees tables spilling onto sidewalks since 1999. Murni’s latest venture is something else entirely: up the stairs above Murni is M’Laboori, a modern, spacious nook with clean lines, books on wooden shelves, discreet overhead lighting and air-conditioning. It’s a bookshop cum vegetarian restaurant-café.

Fried Porridge? Really?

 

By Lee Yu Kit

October 5, 2020

 At first blush, Fried Porridge sounds like an exaggerated food oxymoron, like ‘healthy char kuay teow’ and ‘steamed goreng pisang’. Unlike the latter two, though, ‘fried porridge’ not only exists but has been around for several years.

After several close shaves and aborted promises – notably to try Klang’s well-known “Bubur Goreng” in Taman Berkeley, I finally did get around to try the real thing, when MK Porridge opened their 4^th outlet in August, in SS2, Petaling Jaya.

As far as I can determine, ‘fried porridge’ is a Malaysian invention, with claimed provenance from the northern part of the country.  It isn’t as extravagantly outlandish as it sounds, if you consider it to be a logical and wet extension of fried rice.

Meat Free: Quorn Vegetarian Sausages

 

By Lee Yu Kit

Quorn meat-free products are now available in Malaysia. We take a look, cook and taste the vegetarian sausages

 The plant-based meat movement has gained mainstream popularity, especially with Impossible Foods’ and Beyond Meats’ realistic meat substitutes. Lockdowns under Covid19 seem to have increased the popularity of realistic plant-based ‘meats’, and even large food producers such as Nestle and Tyson foods have jumped onto the substitute meat bandwagon. 

Health concerns, the large environmental footprint of producing meat, as well as animal welfare have all been given as reasons for the upward trajectory in the consumption of plant-based meats, although, on a global level, meat consumption overall is higher than ever, largely driven by demand from developing countries.

Of the plant-based meats, UK-based Quorn has been around since 1985. It is widely available in over a dozen countries, including, recently, Malaysia.

 

Vegetable protein: Mycoprotein

Unlike most meat substitutes, which use soy and pea proteins, Quorn uses mycoprotein, which is derived and harvested from the fermentation of a fungus. Nutritionally, mycoprotein is naturally high in protein (11g per 100g) and fibre. It is low in saturated fats, carbohydrates, sugar and salt.  Additionally, it contains calcium, potassium, phosphorus and small amounts of other minerals such as zinc and selenium.

Notably, mycoprotein is a complete protein, containing all the essential amino acids, which is unusual in plant proteins.

A 1992 study linked the consumption of mycoprotein with lowered levels of LDL (“bad” cholesterol) and increased HDL cholesterol (“good” cholesterol).

Quorn also points out that the production of mycoprotein uses as much as 90% less land and water resources than in producing some animal proteins.

Quorn products are available in a range of forms, including sausages, nuggets, mince, burgers and fish fingers. You can check out their range at https://www.quorn.co.uk/products/all.

For those concerned about intolerance or allergies to Quorn products, the company addresses this in their website, https://www.quorn.co.uk/intolerance 

 

Cooking Quorn Sausages

I picked up a bag of at Quorn sausages at Jaya Grocer in The Starling.  At RM31.20 for 12 sausages, that’s quite a bit more than you’d expect to pay for commercial meat sausages.

The cooking instructions were simple: fry from frozen for about 15 minutes in a little oil, which I dutifully followed. Appearance wise, the sausages are short and stubby, and pale coloured when uncooked. The sausages are not vegan, using rehydrated free-range egg albumin as a binder, although vegan Quorn products are also available. Mycoprotein and albumin are the two major ingredients, with others being vegetable oils, rusk, onion, stabilisers, firming agents and flavouring.

In the pan, the sausages turned brown rather nicely as they heated up, with the heated parts browning more than the less heated parts, as with real sausages.  They certainly looked convincing. They smelled quite nice as well. Appearance wise, there was nothing to suggest that these weren’t ordinary meat sausages.  In the attached picture, the sausages are acquiring a nice brown colour in a frying pan.

 

Isn’t this a chicken sausage?

And how did they turn out? The look like regular sausages and when cooked, have a firm texture, revealing a slightly-pinkish cross section when cut. I had the sausages with fried onions, lettuce and tomato slices on bread. The sausages had a good mouthfeel and gave a good sense of satiety after eating.  You can see how the sausage looks when cooked, and served on bread with condiments in the attached picture.

In the taste test, they are most similar to chicken sausages, with the slight bounce and mild flavour of chicken sausages.  It was a good lunch meal, sausages with bread and vegetables.

It’s noteworthy that real chicken sausages can be expected to contain amounts of growth hormone and antibiotics fed to chickens, as well as some saturated fat. Sausages are usually made from the less commercially desirable parts of the animal, ground up with the addition of flavouring, colouring and preservatives, into a homogenous mince.

Although they contain no animal meat, Quorn sausages are, nevertheless, a highly-processed food, made to look and taste like chicken sausages. They’re not the best choice if you want to eat healthily – for that, go with minimally processed, whole foods – but if you fancy chicken sausages every now and then, and have reservations about eating animal meat, these would do the trick.

 

Eating Our Planet

An opinion piece on eating.

September, 2019:  At the time of writing, the Amazon Rainforest is burning.  There are some 80,000 fires that have been raging for a month, with smoke plumes visible from space.  The number of fires is up by 80% compared to last year, according to a report by CNET. Brazil has declared an emergency.  The Amazon rainforest has been likened to the lungs of the planet, supplying 20% of the world’s oxygen supply, with 10% of its biodiversity. 

It’s an oxymoron that a rainforest can burn, but we’ve seen this before, because it occurs with unfailing regularity in our part of the world, with haze cloaking the skies and governments declaring emergencies and closing schools as forests and peatlands in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia ignite and burn during the dry season.  These are some of the lushest, wettest, most biologically rich forests in the world.

How can they burn?

The fires are set by humans, and they spin out of control, destroying ecosystems and throwing millions of tons of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) into the atmosphere, while damaging the capacity of the land to absorb more CO2.    We burn forests because it is the fastest way to clear more land for agriculture and food production for a human population of 7 billion. We, humans, are altering our planetary ecosystem at the most dramatic rate in its history.

In August 2019, the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released a document entitled “Land is a Critical Resource”.  It notes that the way humans use land has a marked effect on climate change. Land use contributes 23% of human greenhouse gas emissions, the report notes, adding that “some dietary choices require more land and water and cause more emissions of heat-trapping gases than others.”  Indeed.

In other words, what and how we eat affects climate change.

Anything but Boring

First published in Options, The Edge Malaysia, May 6, 2019

The Super Boring Club (SBC) entertains patrons in the electric glow of a pink neon sign on bare brick wall, exhaust chimneys snaking down from the ceiling like a Murakami fantasy, a Tokyo-edge vibe, and a Korean-Japanese fusion menu. It’s cosy, noisy and crowded inside, in the way of a too-small Tokyo bar, but that’s part of the illusion.

Developing Trust in the Government with Blockchain Technology

Also in Linkedin: 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/developing-trust-government-blockchain-yu-kit-lee/?published=t

A Deficit of Trust

As we have seen from recent events, lack of accountability, opacity, forged documentation engender the single most crippling aspect of a government: the lack of trust in that government and its processes.

With trust, time, costs and risks are significantly reduced, society becomes more open and participative, and governance improves.  What is needed for trust, that most precious quality of governance? 

For example, if citizens do not trust in the veracity of the National Identity card, the processes which depend on it – financial and banking transactions, voting, security, privacy, personal recordkeeping – suffer a deficit of trust.  Additional solutions and processes incur cost, greater complexity and even less transparency.  Data about persons based on the national ID card become suspect.  All resultant transactions, be they healthcare, social services, financial, claims for benefits, suffer from a lack of trust.

There are various qualities, of which transparency, openness and an immutable audit trail rank among the most important, in developing trust. 

Similarly, transactions which are opaque to the transacting parties are costly, complex and take time because the parties do not trust each other.  If a buying party trusts the selling party and the insuring party through transparency and immutability, the transaction can be a lot quicker, cheaper and simpler.

An Open Government

The ultimate goal would be an Open Government, one where government becomes a trusted partner and reinvents processes to enable collaboration between corporations and citizens.  In such a system, activities, decisions and information would be open, transparent and consistent. 

Is this merely a pipe dream?

Estonia, a tiny but technologically developed nation, has a government-issued digital identity based 

on a technology called Blockchain (more later). A number of digital services is enabled to citizens with the e-Identity.  Citizens can verify the integrity of the records and who has access to them, enabling such electronic services as e-voting and filing taxes electronically.

Dubai has also staked a future based on Blockchain technology: by 2020, the Dubai Government intends for all visa applications, licence renewals and bill payments, about 100 million documents a year, to be based on Blockchain.  All real-estate transactions will be conducted on Blockchain. 

The underlying Blockchain technology is such that it is immutable, tamper-proof and provides a common view of activities, if implemented correctly.  The desired result is that trust in government will increase, and foreign investors will be attracted to such an environment.

Developing Trust in Government

Blockchain is a technology which famously underlies Bitcoin, but Blockchain technology itself is independent of Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency.  Essentially, it is a distributed, shared ledger that provides a single source of truth to all transacting parties.  It is trusted because it is protected by cryptographic technology.  It is revolutionary because it breaks the mould of each transacting party keeping its ‘own’ records and trusting a common, distributed ledger.

It is already used in various industries: Walmart, Driscol, Cole’s, Nestle, among others, are participating in a project on food safety to trace the provenance of food items:  tainted food, such as the recent E Coli contamination of Romaine lettuce in the US, may have been prevented or more easily traced if a Blockchain food traceability system were in production.  

European banks are running a number of pilots and projects to redesign financial transactions such as Letters of Credit and disputes on Blockchain.  Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping operator, is running blockchain to reduce the cost and time for shipping goods from one country to another.

Nearer home, Thailand’s K-Bank has implemented a system for Letters of Guarantee based on Blockchain, with at least one production system in Singapore and several pilot projects in the banking sector.

For Malaysia, reinventing itself anew, there are many opportunities to start by reinventing existing processes to be open, transparent and trusted. Some examples are real estate (land and property) transactions, asset management, contract management and regulatory compliance.

More specific examples are: a land registry with an auditable, immutable trail of ownership, a national registry of vehicle ownership that is auditable and improves road safety, a corporate registry of ownership for accessibility and auditability, even a national registry for citizen identity that is auditable.

While some organisations undertake these projects to reduce costs and improve processes, for Governments, there is the end-goal of engendering trust, innovation, co-ownership with citizens and corporates, and attracting investment.

A Taste of Sichuan in Corporate Singapore

By Lee Yu Kit

Pictures courtesy of Chuan Hung Noodles

Sichuan noodles in the middle of corporate Singapore

The restaurant was barely a week old when I popped by to catch up with Megs, whom I haven’t seen in over a year.  The restaurant was less than a hundred meters from the Teluk Ayer MRT station, located in Singapore’s financial district, with steel and glass towers gleaming in the late afternoon light. 

Inside the restaurant

Tucked into a little corner of another metal-jacketed, tall office complex, was Chuan Hung Noodles.  And there was Megs, looking elegant and cool after a press review and photo shoot of her new restaurant.  The last time we’d met, we were hiking a volcano in Indonesia and were grimy and mud-splattered. 

The restaurant is small within, with barely a half dozen tables, and bar-like seating along the walls, but there’s an airy window and doorway, looking out onto a shaded corridor where you can help yourself to cold or warm water. There’s a small cut-out looking into the kitchen, and the whole set-up throws off warm, cozy vibes amidst the impersonal, corporate surroundings.

Signature Braised Beef Rice Noodles

The restaurant serves Sichuan noodles, sourced from a small village in Sichuan, China, and that includes the cook, noodles and ingredients.  The small menu, with Noodles, Add-Ons and Small Plates, offers a number of options, with either Noodles or Rice Noodles and a choice of Clear, Mixed or Red soups, the latter being of the tongue-tingling, stomach-searing variety that Sichuan cuisine is well known for.

Animal innards and tongue spice up the mix further, but I wisely selected Shredded Chicken with Long Beans (S$11.50), served in a large shallow bowl – narrow-cut rice noodles in a colourful mix of preserved vegetables and shredded chicken.

The white rice noodles had a mild texture, with a spring, slippery yet not slimy, with a middling firmness, and fine enough to slide from the wooden chopsticks. It’s that last two percent which makes noodles memorable or forgettable, and these noodles, which are specially made in a village in Sichuan, were good, with nicely balanced qualities. 

I’d chosen the Mixed soup, with a clear, light-red complexion, not at all oily, with a bit of sting, but not enough to upset the composure overall.  The soup was sweet and clear, in the way that Chinese soups tend to be. A well settled disposition afterwards lent credence to Meg’s claim of not using any MSG. Ingredients enriched the dish, even without the addition of the table condiments of hand-ground Sichuan peppers in oil and shredded salted vegetables, which you can scoop into your noodles for extra oomph.

Sweet Fermented Rice

Desserts are all but unknown in Sichuan cuisine, but the Sweet Fermented Rice (S$3.50) did nicely, a super-smooth gelatinous white gel, with sweet sauce and a few condiments for colour.  What’s interesting is that the cook hand-grinds glutinous rice in a stone pestle and mortar to this smooth paste before further processing.

A bowl of noodles in soup is deceptively simple, yet its very simplicity makes it difficult to master. Chuan Hung Noodles is a modest outlet, worth a visit for its specialization in its niche, of down-to-earth Sichuan noodles, its faithfulness to its roots and its artisanal approach to producing a good bowl of noodles.

King Prawns Noodles Vine Pepper

Chuan Hung Noodles,

51 Telok Ayer Street #01-01 S048441, Singapore

hello@chuanhung.com.sg

Business hours: 11am-8pm daily.

  

Exalted, Exotic and Local

First published in Options, The Edge Weekly Malaysia, 10 Sept 2018

Also http://www.optionstheedge.com/topic/food/food-review-entier

At Entier, uncluttered lines, marble cladding and wooden furniture provide an ambiance of contemporary classiness, with plenty of natural light from large windows looking out onto the uplifting panorama of KL City from the 41^st floor of the Alila Hotel.  

Visiting Wayag

First published in Options, The Edge Malaysia, March 26, 2018

http://www.optionstheedge.com/topic/travel/visiting-wayag

Wayag has acquired a sort of mythical reputation, for in the remote and magnificent Raja Ampat archipelago, it is even more remote and magnificent. 

My first view of the Bird’s Head Peninsula of West Papua was at dawn. From the aircraft window, long slanting rays of morning sunlight reflected off puffs of mist rising from the dense forests below. The aircraft was silent, and as it angled gently, the calm sea shimmered like a vast sheet of gold.  Two hours away by ferry from The Bird’s Head Peninsula, was Raja Ampat.