Somewhere in a random little restaurant off the beaten tourist track, I ate the following with nasi lemak (because Malaccans are so enamored of the fatty that they eat nasi lemak (!) in place of normal white rice).
Ikan Bakar: with half the fish sliced and cooked in sweet and sour sauce, and the other half sliced and cooked in some... err, other sauce (I wasn't paying a lot of attention when we ordered, perhaps because it was done mostly in what seemed to me to be rapidfire Malay)
BUTTER PRAWNS!: The fattest little suckers I've seen or eaten thus far in Malaysia
Stingray: I kept thinking of the jolly schoolteacher stingray in Finding Nemo. I know. Morbid. It's a good thing the taste was worth it
And, the best for last: Chili Crab! I usually don't like doing a lot of work to get to my food (part of the reason I have never learned how to cook. Other reasons include: having lived with my sister, who now has a CUPCAKE BUSINESS, and my former roommate, who is now studying how to be a chef at the CIA. The way I see it, it's like the Powers That Be gave me a free pass with the cooking thing) and crabs entail a LOT of work.
The exoskeleton is hard as nails, you have to be extremely careful not to cut yourself on the crab shells (or is that just me?) and not to slop crab sauce all over your shirt and face and neck (is that just me as well?) and you work your way through all that cracking and pulling only to arrive at a piece of flesh that is approximately 30% the size of all the exertion through which you went (assuming exertion can be measured in size terms, but my blog, my measurement scales).
Yet it is SO WORTH IT. It is akin to trudging through a treacherous icy mountain to get to an exotic Shangri-La. It is like manually digging giant holes, with just a rusty shovel, over an entire beach, to find a treasure chest. It is similar to watching an Arsenal game full of missed chances and clenched fists and tears of frustration; a game that is redeemed at the last minute by some beautiful footwork executed by beautiful players that culminates in a beautiful, long awaited goal.
If crab meat was the reward of every arduous task I had to face, I might be a lot more productive a person than I am now. 
Ironically though, post-dinner Iman was anything BUT productive. The aftermath was a mini mountain of shells and bones and a comatose overly satiated Iman who kept passing out in the car on the way back. Oh well. Good plan in theory. 
