Pesta Benak (Sri Aman)

The Batang Lupar flows 200km from its source in the Kapuas Mountains to the Teluk Datu of the Soucth China Sea. At its mouth, the river forms the broadest estuary in Sarawak, as well as accomodating the largest of the four benaks (tidal bore in  local Malay and Iban dialect) that occur in Sarawak. The benak of the Batang Lupar first becomes visible in the estuary region of Pulau Seduku. It reaches its peak as it passes the town of Sri Aman, 90km from the estuary. Along the banks of the town a tidal watching festival was inaugurated on the King Tide of 5th May 2001 -the Pesta Benak. This gave the local boatmen an opportunity to show their skills to tourists, surfing the bore in longboats, Prior to the event, several days were spent flushing crocodiles out of the river for the safety of tourists.

Sarawak Laksa & Midin (Forest fern)

SARAWAK LAKSA

Sarawak Laksa comes from the Malaysian state Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. It is actually very different from the curry laksa as the soup contains no curry at all. It has a base of Sambal Belacan, sour tamarind, garlic, galangall, lemon grass and coconut milk, topped with omelette strips, prawns, fresh coriander and optionally lime. Ingredients such as bean sprouts, (sliced) fried tofu or other seafood are not traditional but are sometimes added.

MIDIN (FOREST FERN)

Local vegetables are served widely in Sarawak. Particularly the two types of crispy jungle fern, midin and paku. Forest ferns have a special place in the diet of the people, with the two most popular ferns used as vegetables being midin and the fiddlehead fern (pucuk paku). Midin grows wild in the secondary forests and is peculiar to the state. It has curly fonds and is very crunchy even after it has been cooked. Rural dwellers have always considered the fern a tasty, nutritious vegetable and the jungle fern's rise from rural staple to urban gourmet green occured in the 1980's with the increased urban migration of the Iban. Aromatic leaves from trees, such as Bungkang, are also used in cooking to flavour food.

Pansuh

The Iban tribe are from Sarawak, Borneo. Their traditional foods are called Pansuh food, which simply means the cooking of food or dish in a bamboo stem. It's naturally clean, easy and simple. The food (meat, chicken, fish, vegetables and even rice together with the spices) will all be put together into the bamboo stem, then directly placed over an open fire to be cooked. The uniqueness of using the bamboo stem to cook is that the bamboo will give a special aroma and texture to the food where it's impossible to have using other methods such as using woks. One of the best known Iban dishes is pansoh manok, which features chicken and lemongrass cooked in a bamboo log over an open fire. This natural way of cooking seals in the flavours and produces astonishingly tender chicken with a gravy perfumed with lemongrass and bamboo.