One of the ‘must-eat’ seafood delicacies when you visit Sarawak is ‘teck thung’ (literal hokkien translation is 'bamboo worm') steamed with Chinese wine or stir-fry with curry powder with onions. Yummilicious! The taste and texture is quite unique and I love it with steamed rice. The colloquial Malay name for this ‘worm’ is ‘ambal’. It’s actually not a worm nor is it found growing inside bamboos! This clam is actually a tubular mollusk which lives in a cylindrical thin shell about 1 to 2 inches long; hence the derived local name, bamboo worm. You eat the clam whole, minus the shell of course and because the shells are quite thin, small pieces may break off and do get in the way of enjoying the fat juicy flesh if one is not careful. Exercise some restraint and eat slowly as biting into even a small fragment of the shell is like eating sand!

You’ll have to find and catch the ambal hidden and buried in the alluvial sand and we were fortunate to see how it was caught on our paddle to Bako National Park early on Saturday morning in the ebbing tide when we saw a small group of women on the mud flaps. These ladies ‘ambal hunters’ were dropped off there during low tide when the sandy mud banks are exposed and they would be picked up by boat again before the tide rises back submerging the banks.

In the past before the areas were disturbed by the sand dredging activities at the mouth of Sungai Bako, they could easily collect several kilogrammes before the tide returns. But sadly these days, they would be happy to be able to collect even 1 kilo which they'll sell to a guy who buys from them at RM14/- a kilo back at the village. It's backbreaking work for the money but mercifully the weather was slightly overcast that day. We decided not to disturb them as it takes concentration to catch the ambal and we watched silently while I took a few snaps.

Here’s the fine art of catching the bamboo worms:-

Apart from the impact of sand mining, the waters around Bako are pristine in the absence of any other developments and industries, the ambals and other shellfish caught in the area are very safe for eating without the worries of heavy metals or other pollutants.

So, bamboo worms hunting anyone?

Stumble It!