My journey as a mother: Traditional Food Festival for SSEAYP

Last night I accompanied hubby to meet his photography gang then we went to the residence of Hj Zainal Hj Safar, the owner of Soto Rindu Restaurant for Brunei Traditional Food Festival in conjunction with the arrival of Fuji Maru which carries 300 participants of the 38th Ship Southeast Asia Youth Programme or SSEAYP.

We arrived at the residence at around 8pm and I was really impressed with the huge house with lots of bling-bling and all. This guy really does well with his restaurants and catering businesses. The house was awesome from the ourside and since we sat outside we didnt know how it looked inside but I guess it would be grand as well. Although... not to my liking since I don’t really fancy big and impressive houses lol.. . I much prefer small cute and cozy houses, if you must know... We were lead to the white tents at the front of the house and waited for the guest of honour for the night. While waiting the guests were entertained by traditional music which was really nice and refreshing. A good initiative to promote the local music. The night was graced by the attendance of the Japanese Ambassador Mr Noriki Hirosi and his wife who looked rather elegant in her kimono.

Then the food testing began. There were arrays of traditional Brunei food and the most popular one is the Ambuyat of course. We didn’t know what the Ambassador thought of it though lol.

It was a busy, colourful and loud night. So many people around and difficult to see who were the SSEAYP participants and who were the the locals. It would be nice though if the participants wore their traditional attire for the night so that we knew who they were and where they were from.

When its time to eat, it was rather chaotic, very long queue and most food ran out. I think the host didn’t expect to see so many people turned up lol. I felt so uncomfortable during the queue and we just ended up eating a lone sphagetti, not so Bruneian at all hehehe.

After dinner, there were songs and dance by the participants but we didn’t stay long since our daughter was at home by herself and hasn’t had dinner yet. It was a good night although I didnt know anyone there!