Childhood - 4th Offical Mural @ Sibu Central Market

Do you still remember how's your childhood is all about?? If not, the mural titled "Childhood" located at Sibu Central Market level 2 may help you recall some of your childhood memories especially those born in the pre digital age.

This is the 4th official wall arts initiated by Sibu Municipal Council and the 2nd within Sibu Central Market building compound. Before this we have wharf labourer at Jalan Khoo Peng Long, local delicacies series at Jalan Market and wrapped chicken and duck at Sibu Central Market facing Jalan Bengkel's direction.

The most recent mural is located on the wall at eatery section, near to the cloth stalls of Sibu Central Market 2nd floor. It lively illustrated the childhood life around 80's where Internet and digital devices were still absence in our life.

At that time children were playing with toys made of metal or rubber, enjoy the fun of folding paper plane and see whose can fly furthest. Tic-Tac-Toe game is not in digital form, one needs to get a paper, then draw the boxes in order to play the game or the easiest way will be tearing down mathematics exercise book where the boxes are ready drawn!

The wealthier families may allow their children to own a handheld gaming device where Nintendo's Game & Watch was among the most popular at the time. Electronic gaming was pretty primitive at that era where the the device screen is small, monochrome, simple "graphics", less responsive, static and unchangeable game's background as well as very limited movement of the character in the game, normally just 4-5 steps horizontally and the more advanced one may allow vertical movement. Owning one of such device will make the person an idol among their buddies.

One problem of this mural in my personal opinion is the location. As it is located at the eatery section, the tables placed at this area have blocked the view. Another thing is when the tables are occupied during eating peak hours, it may stop people or visitors from taking memorable photos with the mural and for that, the mural couldn't serve its purpose to the fullest.

There are more to explore on this wall painting about childhood life and I'll leave it to you all. I personally like this painting a lot... the best among the 4 murals by SMC Sibu, but I don't like the location.

Taro Bihun and Beef Noodles @ Sibu Central Market Stall No. 52

Sibu Central Market 1st floor has more than 100 food stalls and you may wonder which stall to hunt for good foods?

One of them is stall No.52 specialized in selling taro rice vermicelli a.k.a. bihun. The stall has no name on its signboard.

The cook has been reported in one of the local newspaper for this unique cuisine. The report also mentioned that he was once the apprentice under famous Taiwanese celebrity's chef named "Ah Ji Shi 阿基师".

I believe this is the only place you can find this cuisine in Sibu. The taro are nicely cooked, easily break apart and melt in mouth. They're hot on fresh serving so you may need to be careful when put them in mouth to prevent scald.

The broth is tasty with some mushrooms, celery and pork added, but if you are not favor of celery's smell, no worry... there is no celery's taste at all. RM 5 per bowl and it is quite big serving.

Another cuisine which you can try on this stall is the beef noodles a.k.a. mee sapi. There are 2 variants of beef noodles... the normal one and also mixed beef noodles. I have tried the mixed variant which actually added tripe and tendon to the noodles besides the beef. The tendons are soft and easily chewed.

The only thing I personally not as favor about is the use of yellow noodles in preparing this cuisine as the rounded yellow noodles are thick in size, so when the broth is thin or doesn't have extra flavoring, the boiled yellow noodles may appear tasteless. Anyhow, that's the type of noodles used in preparing beef noodles around the region.

The mixed beef noodles priced at RM 5 per bowl and the normal variant only RM 4.

There are other type of local delicacies served at this stall such as Foochow style cooked or fried noodles and so on. This is one of the stall at Sibu Central Market hawker food center which worth you a trial!