The Road to Cameron: Nothing Like A Scotch Egg

It's the beginning of the festive season: and today is Deepavali - so it’s a day off! I have arranged to go up to the Cameron Highlands via Ipoh with some friends. This means I have to be up early to get on the road before the other traffic. I had been at work until about 1.30am the same morning, so it was a bit horrific to be woken up at 7am... 

So, a last minute pack of my bag (only 1 night, so I didn’t need much) I pick Charles up from his place and we set off up the E1 NKVE highway towards Ipoh. Along the way Charles calls two other friends, who are heading up to north too and arrange to meet them for late breakfast / early lunch. About an hour or so later we detour off the E1 and arrive at this little village called Bidor Perak which is just mad with people, traffic, festive celebrations, cooking smells, chickens etc and park up to find the Pun Chun restaurant that the others are in, and which has been recommended in the Street Food guide. 

duck noodle soup

Whilst Charles had been keeping in contact with the others along the way, to make sure we met in the same place, they told him that the queue was huge and they’d been there for about 40 minutes and we still not seated, so he asked them to order our food too when they ordered theirs, hopefully so that our food arrival coincided with our arrival too - very clever...

We had something called 'wu kok' and duck noodle soup. Wu kok are a bit like a Chinese version of a scotch egg, only imagine the sausage-meat is pureed yam, the breadcrumbs are a crispy hair-like batter and the filing was hot beef curry rather than egg. So actually nothing like a scotch egg at all, but the shape reminded me of one. 

The duck noodle soup was really nice: the ducks are cooked for ages, slowly, so the meat is so tender, it falls off the bones like an old lady's flesh. It’s so busy here we can’t just sit and take our time, as there are others chomping at the bit to get a seat, so food devoured, we go to our respective cars and arrange to rendez-vous later.