Let’s be real here. When you go to Sandakan, you don’t go for the food. The food is really a side benefit to the local adventures. Our local adventure was seeing orangutans. But of course, you can’t simply spend all day watching the world’s largest arboreal primates without eating some food, so we went next door to the Banana Cafe in the Sepilok Jungle Resort.

The menu looked pretty good and the view of the grounds was even better. We spotted some cool birds and even a monitor lizard, but also I spotted the Singapore-Style Noodles. These noodles started out as vermicelli, but along the way gathered curry powder, eggs and some chicken. They were stir-fried up and turned out really tasty. Interestingly, it turns out that these noodles actually don’t have any sort of origin in Singapore and were allegedly created in Hong Kong. Perhaps they are analogous to the French Dip in the US.

Regardless, there is no doubt that I would visit the Banana Cafe and eat these noodles again – even if I wasn’t just looking for something to get me through a day of looking at orangutans. Sometimes “touristy” food can be a bad thing, but fortunately that wasn’t the case at Banana Cafe.

While there is undoubtedly a confluence of cultures in Sandakan, classic Malaysian cuisine seems a little hard to find, especially when you can only eat so much street food. San Da Gen Kopitiam offers just that. The look and feel is clean and resembles a coffee shop much more than a restaurant. Yet, on a blackboard there is a menu filled with all kinds of foods to order.

I started out by ordering the Nasi Kerabu Ayam Berempah because I really wanted to have something with blue rice, because apparently that’s what the “kerabu” means. Unfortunately, all the blue was already eaten that day, so I got the Nasi Lemak Aram Berempah instead. I had expected it to come out wrapped in a banana leaf, but instead it was more of a deconstructed nasi lemak and it was beautiful.

The egg was nicely cooked, there were peanuts, and the rice was tasty. And of course, aside from the chicken, everything else was extraneous. So let’s talk about that chicken for a minute, shall we? It may have been a little on the dry side, but it was super delicious. And, I mean, moist fried food is probably simply not the style here so my American lens is actually very accepting of the dryness. It’s a little harder to accept, though, that there just wasn’t enough of the chicken. I looked longingly at my wife’s beef dish, which seemed to have more meat to it, and no one wants to do that.

Alas, it was still a mighty delicious meal and represented a nice break from the hustle bustle of the rest of Sandakan.

You know what’s great about being Jewish? No Lent. No Ramadan. Sure, there’s been thousands of years of persecution and an annual fast or two, but nothing that compares to the longevity of the institutionalized pain of those two holidays. Worse still, sometimes Ramadan falls in the summer and you can’t even drink water. With all of these thoughts in mind, I found myself in Malaysia in the summer in the middle of Ramadan. And in Sandakan in Borneo, this meant the nightly Ramadan Market. The most impressive part about it is that observant Muslims somehow manage to walk up and down the market and order food without eating a bite of it until the sun goes down. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait.

Some of the goodies are unique to the region, like the banana leaf-wrapped Nasi Kuning Ayam, which is essentially yellow rice with fried chicken. It’s both simple and complex at the same time.

Portable grills like this can also be found all over the market, giving the whole place a delicious smoky haze. They’re mostly used for grilling up chicken.

You can also find roti canai all around the market, which is essentially a fried flatbread. Here, it’s used more like a wrap so the vendors fill it with things like cabbage, eggs and even beef or chicken.

Amazingly, I could only find one tent that came close to resembling Middle Eastern food. They had a bunch of prepared “burgers” and a spool of chicken. However, while the cooking style was Middle Eastern, the flavors and spices of finished chicken pita I had tasted more Japanese than anything else – aside from the pita itself.

A bunch of vendors were pushing noodles in mass quantities that kind of blew my mind. There were generally a couple options to choose from and I had myself some traditional Hokkien-style, which were brown and fried. For spice, they kind of depended on whatever I added to the mix and they also had an option to add an egg, which is almost never a mistake.

But it wasn’t just about the food, stalls were showing off some pretty beautiful drinks packed with strong flavors like bubble gum, chocolate, taro and more. The bagged versions of these drinks were called ABCs and the big cupped versions were called Halo Halos, which is originally a Filipino word, but The Philippines are literally a short boat ride from Sandakan so this kind of made sense.

More than anything, there was an amazing spirit at the Ramadan Market. Smiles abounded, patience was never a concern and cleanliness really never felt like a concern. So maybe there is something to a month-long fast. It gives people an excuse to get together every night, to build up community events and to take down some tasty food and drinks.

While Malaysia is a majority Muslim country, it’s a very mixed country as well. Thus, finding pork is not a problem and, in fact, it is one of the highlights of Sandakan. And that’s because Sandakan has a strong history with a fried pork noodle stall dating back to 1940. Of course, basically the entire city was burned down in World War II so the stall physical stall itself is a bit newer. That, however, doesn’t seem to stop the locals from coming by.

The stall is on the top floor of the market and can be found by looking for the sign that says “Since 1940: The Original Homemade Kueh Teo with Deep Fried Pork.” Outside the stall several picnic-style tables are set up and the area seems to be pretty packed throughout the morning. From what I could tell, this is by far the most popular stall in the market and there are a few people who cook and an additional few who serve.

The fried pork noodle dish is called Kueh Teow and its origins are in China because Malaysia has a very sizable Chinese population. It can come in either a dry or souped up version. I ordered the souped up version at one of the tables, then watched as one of the cooks busily chopped up the pork to drop it into the dishes as they were laid out in front of him.

When my dish arrived, it had a surprising beauty coming from a place like this. When I first bit into the pork, I was taken aback. The texture was like no pork I had ever eaten and at first I thought I was biting into gristle or bone. I couldn’t have been further off, as this was just the crispiness that is the inevitability of deep frying the stuff. After that first bite I couldn’t get enough. The noodles were of the flat and slippery variety, while the soup required some additional seasoning. This was likely on purpose, as a few different sauce options were at the table. I snagged one, squeezed it in and proceeded to love the soup from that moment on.

This stall is a must for any visitors to Sandakan. It embodies the cultural history and diversity of Malaysia and at the same time tastes really damn good. Oh, and did I mention it costs the equivalent of $1. Yes, that’s right. Just make sure you go in the morning, as this is a breakfast only situation and you don’t want to miss out.

For most travelers, Sandakan in Bornean Malaysia is just a stopping off point on the way to see orangutans and other types of wildlife in the jungle. But as for me, I would be spending a couple days in the city and wanted to make the best of it by trying out local foods and getting to know the area. But that would have to wait until after our first meal, at the English Tea House.

You see, as part of getting to know Sandakan, we had to take a tour for a day and the tour took us here. The grounds were beautiful and the views were pretty great as well, but the food left a little to be desired. First off, there were far too many utensils, but I suppose that is the British way. But secondly, I mean, the food was British. Those people aren’t known for good food unless it’s something that their immigrants brought as opposed to the other way around.

And yet despite the Britishness and the ridiculousness of serving soup on a crazy hot day, the soup was pretty good. And, it was pumpkin soup, which is generally something I wholeheartedly oppose. Perhaps it was the jetlag that made me like it. The main course of chicken, was an entirely different story. It was plain, the breast was tough and the garnishment of curled up carrots only made a poor attempt at distracting from the food.

The English Tea House seems to exist solely to serve tourists like us, and unfortunately where some similar places put on an unnecessary and unrealistic (yet often enjoyable) display of local culture, the British Tea House doesn’t even really seem very into that. Come for the view, and maybe literally a spot of tea and then head somewhere better in Sandakan.