Herbal Drinks

As usual, I was at my neighbourhood wet market - not just looking for eye candies but really to do my weekly marketing and to see what interesting vegetables they have.

For a while already, I have been noticing this dark purplish-brown plant that looks like a climber (vine?) with sharp serrated pointed leaves and tiny clumps of purplish flowers.

I have not been able to locate a proper name for this plant after digging though my meagre collections of book on medicinal plants and herbs.

If anyone knows the local or scientific name, please let me know!

They are to be found at many of the vegetable stalls and also at the various night markets.

Curiosity kills the cat and also the presence of my favourite belly-button at my regular vegetable stall also charged up the libido!

I went up to my twink and asked him about it. He told me that it was for making a very "cooling: herbal drink but one of the main medicinal claims for this herb was that it was supposed to help cure the sensation of numbness in the fingers and hands - especially when sleeping at night.

Ah-ah - I was thinking if that will help to increase one's sensitivity - especially at night at the height of one's libido :-)

He went on to explain that to extract the full medicinal value of this plant, it was necessary to boil the herbs for four hours and then filtered to make the herbal drink!

So I did the usual when it comes to new vegetables or herbs - right, bought a huge bunch of this herbs to make the drink in the afternoon!

It has no fragrance and when drunk neat is surprisingly tasteless - herbal drinks normally are a bit fragrant and/or at least a bit bitter!

Enjoy :-)

My Garden, KLCC, Food and Men (Part II)

Al Marjan offers both ala carte as well as a buffet at RM38++ pax which is a pretty low price for a restaurant buffet in KLCC.

There were three main parts to the buffet, the salads and starters, the main courses and the dessert - overall, the selection of foods looked rather limited. I always loved the salad section of any buffet and that evening was no exception. I loved the dips (tahini, amongst others). The main courses were disappointing to me, though HIM claimed that the Lamb Meatballs were excellent while I found the dish too gamey.


They also served fish and chips. I was pretty stunned at that but I presumed that this very English dish had probably made it into the cuisines of both Lebanon and Iran but I would hardly have considered it as part of the authentic Lebanese or Persian cuisines!! To be fair, though, the fish and chips were tasty - the fish was rather dryer and firmer/harder compared to the moist and flaky fish in a normal fish-n-chip platter while the chips had some spices added to make it more flavourful.

Next, the dessert - again, the choices were rather limited but there were a couple of interesting looking pudding, one of which was the rice and milk with chopped nuts, raisin and a kind of small reddish fruit, much like our Chinese wolfberry fruit (枸 杞).

Frankly speaking, anything with nuts (all nuts!) automatically fall under my category of "Food of Choice" :-) The small reddish dried fruits was pretty sour but it enhances the flavour of the pudding. I must admit that the pudding was very very good and I had seconds!

Finally, of course, Arabic coffee - served in a dainty little cup - and hence the sight that triggered off that section about the plant in my garden!


By then I was rather full and all in all, the meal was pretty scrumptious and good value for the money paid! On the men, there were a couple of very good looking waiters there and one, in particular, a tall fair Chinese guy, was exceptionally attractive :-)

When we finish dinner, we took a walk on the same floor and saw this big sign .....


I had written about ordering "a la carte men" in an earlier article "Mushrooms, Belly Buttons and Men". Maybe, finally, I could get a man baked to order !!! and I was telling HIM that maybe I can asked them to baked me some of his parts in case he wore them out and as a bonus, a clone of the Chinese waiter we saw at Al Marjan :-)

As we got nearer, I was half-fantasizing and half-expecting to see twinks in bakers hat and skimpy aprons doing the baking .......

Oh well, this being Malaysia, one had to make do with fantasy instead.

My Garden, KLCC, Food and Men (Part I)

At one corner of my garden, hidden amongst other taller and more showy plants, is a small beautiful foliage bush with shiny dark purplish-brown and green leaves. It has no flowers and apart from the very pleasing colours of the foliage it may as well be just be another plant except for a very interesting and probably unique leaf "extension" not seen in other foliage plants.

The tip of each and every leaf tapers into a long thin stem (or streamer) at the end of which is a small leaf whorl or "cup". Occasionally, you can see a drop of water inside the cup. This is not a pitcher cup plant as there are no insect-trapping features to be seen inside the cup and, to date, I have not been able to put a name to this plant. If someone knows the name of this plant, please do e-mail me! I would appreciate it very much.

I decided to write about this plant as I was sitting in a restaurant in KLCC!! Why would I be thinking of this plant? I walked pass it day in and day out and apart from admiring it as I walk by or when I water it, did not really think about it? What triggered this off?

Last Friday, after two meetings (lunchtime and afternoon) in the vicinity of KLCC, I decided to meet HIM there in the evening for dinner.

As usual, the KLCC concourse is an excellent area to look at men and, indeed, they are there - you get quick views of the many gorgeous hunks and twinks striddling purposefully across the concourse all looking busy and on important missions of their livee. One wonders if they ever stop to look around them!

So while waiting for HIM, with eye-candies wandering around, I was wondering where we should be going for dinner. KLCC, despite the many restaurants, is actually rather limited in some sense when it comes to good food. When HIM was working in this area before, we tried many of the restaurants here but eventually gravitated to restaurants outside of KLCC for our dinners!

When we met up, we decided to eat at Al Marjan which claimed to serve authentic Lebanese and Persian cuisines. I thought that was rather strange considering that Lebanon is on the Far West of the Middle East while Iran (Persia) is right to the east!














Having been to both countries, there are similarities in the cuisines of the various and disparate cultures of the Middle East but, why a restaurant combining Lebanese and Persian? Why not the more generic Middle Eastern?

Anyway, we were there to enjoy the food, not the wheres and whys of the cuisines!

(to be continued)

In a Bidayuh longhouse - the culture and the men

When in Kuching, we paid a visit to the Bidayuh longhouse to meet Rengga's family. Rengga is Jin’s BF and the family is staying about 80 km from Kuching, off the Kuching-Sri Aman trunk road.

Along the main road at about the 55 km point, we took a side road for 25 km before reaching the place – accessible only by 4WDs and motorbikes - very near the Sarawak-Indonesian border. It is not a big longhouse, only about 22-doors (or 22 families still living there). Many of the other families have moved from the main building into small houses on adjacent plots of community land.

Even using a 4WD was a bit rough on the butt :-) and the bumping gave one a sore butt – at least I got a sore butt :-)

The longhouse is still pretty traditional but once inside, one realised that the modern world have crept into even this remote corner of Sarawak. The traditional loin-cloth for the men is no more to be seen – more the pity as some of the young men there are really sexy and cute. The people in the longhouse are very friendly and made efforts to welcome us to their place.

Obviously having Rengga with us helped but I believe that things would have been exactly the same even if he was not there!

All of us slept on the verandah of the longhouse - in fact, all the young unmarried guys in the longhouse do that as all the rooms are only for the married couples! Most of the young men slept in just their loose t-shirts and shorts. For those of us more self-conscious, we used the sarong.

For those who do not know what a sarong is - well, the sarong is a piece of tubular clothing 2.5-3 feet wide by 4-5 feet long and one wears it around you at the waist. This is a wonderful piece of clothing that can be used for just about everything :-)

There was a joke that two persons in two sarongs can end up sharing one sarong :-) meaning that a couple can have sex in the privacy of a sarong :-) Looking around me, I certainly would not mind sharing my sarong with some of the young men there!

In their culture, men touching each other and holding hands or each other have NO sexual connotations whatsoever. In fact, that was the norm is most Asian societies until the advent and introduction of Christian moral mores into our societies,

So do not make the mistake that if one of the guys is sensuously massaging the back of you neck, that he is interested in sex with you. He may be but mostly like he is not - so just relax and enjoy it as a friendly gesture!

If you want a good read on the Gawai Dayak Festival, take a look at Mike Reed's article.

The Men of the Night Markets

The recent stormy and wet weather have not been kind to my garden and I had washed-out bare patches, battened-down flower beds and lost fruits.

Of course, such weather is also not conducive to any night market activities.

Night Markets (or pasar malam) are to be found all over Malaysia and here, in Petaling Jaya, there is one every night but in different suburbs of the city (or to be precise, a city only on 20th June). For example, on Monday, the big one is at SS2, Wednesday at Lembah Subang, on Thursday at Cheow Yang, on Sunday at Paramount Gardens and so on.

Of course, in Malaysia, the ultimate pasar malam and the only one famous worldwide is on every night in Chinatown’s Petaling Street in Kuala Lumpur. For those looking for more visual details on this place, you have to visit TV Smith’s EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY where there is an excellent photo essay on Petaling Street.

In general, the prices at pasar malam are not necessarily cheaper than in many local neighbourhood shops or in the big supermarkets but there is an element of fun and excitement to going to such markets compared to the local shops or supermarket.

For people like us, what are all the night markets if not for all those eye candies!!

Night markets are the ultimate place for eyeing men – old, young, big, small, muscular, chubby, skinny – you name it, they are there! It is an veritable feast for the eyes. For those of us living in Petaling Jaya, if you got a hankering for Malay guys, go to Lembah Subang and for Chinese guys, just go to SS2! However, you will find guys of every races at all these night markets and there is a preponderance of delectable young men!

However, for the ultimate display of eye candies where the bare-bodied men wore those low huggers, you have to go to Petaling Street – and then only at between 5 to 6 pm when the stall owners and helpers are setting up their stalls under the hot sun. These sweaty bare-chested guys with their glistening skin are a delight to watch and there are some eye-poppers with their low huggers so low one can see their pubes!

Still, all the night markets have their own charms and men – in SS2, at one corner fruit store, the young helper there is a sheer delight to watch as he flexes his supple firm body and at the fish stall further down the row, the young boss has a body one would like to lick all over – amidst all those fish! Then there is the guy at the vegetable stall who is so good looking I am not sure why he is not a film star! And so on and so forth….

Interestingly, one of my friends does his cruising at such places and had his successes – with shoppers and the stall owners/helpers alike. I know he told the truth because I have met him with one of the gorgeous stall helpers in a shopping mall!

I, on the other hand, just feast my eyes and salivate! Sigh ... all those delectable bodies and out of reach. My HIM with his automatic organic restrain keeps me on a short leash :-)

Kuching, Gawai Festival and Men

In Kuching, one can see the banners about the Gawai or Harvest Festival all over the spanking-new KIA.

Unique to Sarawak, the 1st and 2nd of June are public holidays but really is also the start of what was a month (now probably a week) long festival of feasting, drinking and merry making for the native races of Sarawak. The men of entire longhouses normally became inebriated. They also have the same door-to-door visits for family and friends much like the other races in Malaysia. So, a visit to a 60-door longhouse means that one can hardly walk after sixty thimble-sized glasses of the potent tuak or arak!

The name Dayak is a generic term to call these natives (Iban, Bidayuh, Kayan, Kenyah, etc) ranging from the darker Ibans to the fair Kayans and Kenyahs.

The Dayaks (especially the Iban) men are some of the toughest workers in the world, can work under the toughest conditions and are now to be found all over the world working on oil rigs. Despite their tough macho image, they are generally very accepting of gays and do not treat them any differently from anyone else. In fact, this is true of their society as a whole.

True to their tough macho images, these men, while small of stature, with their lithe yet muscular bodies, give the impression of such sheer raw virility and sexuality that few other men (especially the gym-sculpted guys) can match.

My gay Sarawakian friends who had Dayak schoolmates and colleagues spoke of them as being broad-mindedness about gays and gay sex. In fact, one of them, Jin, has a Bidayuh boyfriend and had, previously, a number of STRs with these young men over the years. Sadly, these STRs never developed into LTRs - all of them got married as they get into their mid-or-late 20's. He is keeping his fingers crossed (being the "“horny"” guy his is, also "“his legs wide open"” :-P) in the hope that his current relationship can last.

So why is their culture of tolerance towards gays so different from that of the other Malaysians? It is really hard to say - most of them are Christians but they have not taken the route many Christians do but have instead retained part of their own culture while accepting Christianity.

Amongst the Dayaks, strange as it may seem, their traditional culture allows trial marriages where young people are allowed to form 'sexual liaisons' without a commitment to marriage. There is a time frame though and at the end of the trial period, they must either marry or terminate the trial marriage. Before the advent of Christianity, this was widely practiced but with the arrival of Christianity in the 19th Century, such practices slowly disappeared or went underground under the disapproving eyes of the imported repressed priests of the Churches.

Tribal or cultural memories of such repressed practices often re-surface with the loosening of the repression. In modern times, such practices came back not as trial marriages but under a modern arrangement of living together.

Gay STRs appear to fall well into this into this category of 'sexual liaisons' without marriage and the temporary relationships these straight men formed with gay men are sexual (non-monetary) in nature. They are also not shy about remaining friends after their gay relationships end upon marriage.

Malaysian society, in general, is not so liberal and one can only hope that this changes with time. We can take a leaf out of the book of life from these Sarawak native cultures for a better Malaysia!

Flying, Food and Men

The unappetizing clumps they call airline food made me wondered if it would make my stomach churned. Right, I was writing this on a domestic flight to Kuching - the food was a typical concoction that was supposed to suit all taste and ended up a mess neither here nor there.

Obviously I was bored by the food - so looking at men was the obvious thing to while away the time.

That got me thinking......

On domestic flights, virtually none of the air stewards are anything to shout about - obviously the 'choicer' guys are on the international sectors!

One does get the occasional cute ones on domestic flights – note I wrote cute ones. You don't see hunks ever - never - not even on the international flights. Hunks probably took up too much space. Obviously, given a choice, in an emergency, I would have preferred to be carried out of the plane by some hunky air steward, or be wrecked on a deserted island with a hunk and not some small slim guy who looks like I will have to carry out of the plane instead in a rescue! The sad thing is that many of our Malaysian air stewards nowadays are just too 'petite' to even lift a notebook and load it into the overhead cabin! I have seen some struggling with small bags - bags I can lift with my small finger (or even you know what!). Sigh...

No good food, no sexy or hunky stewards, the only entertainment left besides reading is to browse through the in-flight 'catalogues' of men. I wrote 'catalogues' as when seated in the rows of seats, they are just like the rows of mug shots you see on those online dating websites!
Just pretend that you are browsing such sites, only difference is that you do not get to read their stats - not that online personal stats are really not figments of imagination!

Frequently, one sees the 'ONE' - a superhunk or supertwink eye candy! More often than not he is also superstraight - for display only, no touching. So you walk up and down the aisle flaunting your assets, if you have them (otherwise, tough luck) and see if you can catch some eye candy's eye.

Cruising does work - not all the time, but it really does work, especially on not-so-full long distance flights - horny males are available for quickies! On short domestic flights, obviously, the deed will be upon disembarkation - have a quick one and then collect the baggage!

KLIA is obviously better - they have clean restrooms near the baggage collection area and there is plenty of time to enjoy a quickie or two while waiting for the baggage :-)