Food Hunting at KDCA Cultural Village

Hello everyone 👧.

Kaamatan or harvest festival celebration for Kadazan, Dusun, Murut and other ethnics in Sabah will be held on 30 May and 31 May next week. Before the day of celebration, many street food stalls or food vendors related to this festival had started their business since mid of May. My Dad suddenly craving for grilled lamb after seeing his friend sharing a video about it and it selling nearby the KDCA Cultural Village. Thus, my family included me and @butwo when there to buy the grilled lamb as per my Dad requested.

Our initial plan was just to buy the food at the food vendors area that sell grilled lamb. In the video that my Dad shared with us, it says the business started at 3.00pm. Upon reaching the destination around 4.30pm, most of the stalls had not started business, including the stall selling grilled lamb.

Since we did not buy anything from the food stalls that my Dad recommended. It's kind of waste going back empty handed. Under the scorching sun, we just cross the road to KDCA Cultural Village for food hunting as there are more food stalls available there.

Our first purchase was Som Tam, which is my Mum's favorite Thai food. While waiting for our food order to be prepared. My Mum who just recovered from COVID 2 days ago looks fatigued. I ask her to sit on any chair available at food stall and order some drink to rest awhile. Nevertheless, she declined my offer and wanted to follow us for a further hunt for food. Fortunately, not many people were here during our time for food hunt. At least, my Mum got some space to walk looking around without squeezing by the crowd under the hot weather.

We tried to do our food hunt fast due to my Mum not feeling well at that time. Maybe due to this matter, we bought black pepper lamb instead of the grilled lamb that my Dad requested. We thought that no food stalls were selling grilled lamb in this area of food stalls, but @butwo said he found only one stall selling it after we purchased the black pepper lamb. We did not purchase grilled lamb from that stall in the end.

Kaamatan or harvest festival is usually celebrated by having a meal and entertainment such as dancing and singing with friends and family. It is usually accompanied by alcoholic drinks and Pusas at this event. In the Kadazan Dusun language, Pusas mean snacks or food eaten when drinking. For Pusas, the best choice is barbecue food like sinalau vogok or barbecue pork. Thus, in KDCA Cultural Village, most food stalls sell barbecue food. Moreover, many mini bars opened where people could enjoy drinking alcohol with Pusas, dancing and singing.

Last year, I celebrated Kaamatan in KDCA Cultural Village with friends and family by having a blast drinking lots of alcoholic drinks with them and eating delicious Pusas. This year I will skip it and rather celebrate it at home. I just recovered from COVID a few days ago and my finances have been tight recently. It's more cost saving to celebrating this festival at home.

As soon as we have bought the replacement food for my Dad including sinalau vogok for ourselves to eat as dinner later, we buy some drinks and fruits before going out from KDCA Cultural Village.

I would like to buy pirate squid (my favorite food), but I have to skip it. My Mum could collapse at any time, and I worry about that. If I buy this pirate squid, it will take some waiting time for the food vendor to prepare the meal for me.

Not all food vendors in KDCA Cultural Village sell not Halal food (such as pork and alcohol). There are also Muslim food vendors selling food for Muslim people.

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After heading out from KDCA Cultural Village, @butwo and I headed back to my workplace. My Sister, Mum and Dad (who sat inside the car only during our food hunting journey) returned home. Even though my cough still has not completely recovered, drinking this cold drink in the hot weather feels really fantastic. I coughed a bit when drinking this cold drink.

As for the pickled mango I bought from the food vendor just now, it was addictive and I finished it very fast. @butwo has only one piece.

@butwo and I had sinalau vogok and linopot for dinner. The spicy sauce of the sinalau vogok was perfect that made us linger to eat more food despite the fact that we already finished the food on our table. We felt really not satisfying. After that, I ordered fried pork dumplings from the Grab app for delivery. It's more Wow factor when we eating the still-hot fried dumpling with rice and sour soy sauce.

Usually, I eat those dishes as Pusas with alcoholic drinks during the Kaamatan celebration. Luckily I keep 2 cans of beer at my workplace and I drink it when eating the fried pork dumplings. I would like to cheer with @osundu who like to using this phrase. 1, 2 3, Lundus 🍻.

That's all. Thanks for reading my post 🤗.