Sandakan Food Festival draws large crowd

SANDAKAN: The eight days of food and all things food-related had turned Sandakan into a melting pot of activities, colours and flavours.

The Sandakan Food Festival which started from August 26 until September 2, with a selection of fringe events such as the Amazing Sandakan Food Race, a Bao Mountain eating competition and cooking demonstrations by Ropuhan di Tanak Wagu and Sandakan Master Chef Wahidan, had built up the momentum to the main event at Bandar Kim Fung.

On Merdeka Day and the Hari Raya Haji holidays, the food festival village hosted over 40 stalls, serving over 200 dishes from communities such as the Chinese, Kadazan-Dusun, Malay and even Indian.

The festival drew a wide audience of visitors, including many from out of town. Important guests included Chief Minister, Datuk Seri Panglima Haji Musa Haji Aman, who opened the festival village on August 31 and graciously launched the Sandakan Tourism Association mobile app ‘The Sandakan’, covering all things interesting here in this small town.

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Sabah committed to boost tourism

SANDAKAN: The State Government is committed to boost the tourism industry in Sabah and the involvement of youths in contributing ideas to boost the industry is important, said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Musa Aman.

He commended the Sandakan Tourism Association (STAN) run by youths who had come up with various ideas to attract tourists to the district such as the Sandakan Food Festival and other programmes that promote Sandakan as a tourism spot, nature city, seafood paradise and its environment conservation efforts.

Musa also said that about three million tourists came to Sabah last year.

“The efforts of our youths together with the support of local leaders and other agencies are making a positive development on the tourism industry here,” he added when launching the Sandakan Food Festival organised by STAN and other agencies and associations at Yu Yuan Secondary School parking lot here, on Thursday.

STAN chairman Johnny Lim said the Tourism Ministry and Sabah Tourism Board were involved in making the festival happen.

He said that the event which was held for the first time received around 7,000 visitors on its second day.

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Food writers, bloggers attending Sandakan Food Festival

SANDAKAN: As the final ingredients are put in place for the first Sandakan Food Festival (SFF) 2017, the local food and tourism community are excited about the confirmation of important food writers and bloggers travelling to the town of Sandakan.

According to the festival coordinator, Anton Ngui, considerable effort had been put into organising the first multi-cultural and largest Sandakan food platform by the Sandakan Tourism Association (STAN).

“Two seasoned travel and food bloggers from China who feature strongly on the Sina.com blog platform will be visiting.

“From Shanghai, Newpepsibear is a highly popular travel and food blogger, with a quarter of million followers on his Sina and Weibo accounts. With over 100 million hits on his blog since its inception, Newpepsibear is also a travel column contributor to the United States National Tourism office as well as the Sendai City (Japan) Tourism Office.

“Summerdejia is a social media influencer on Sina blog and Weibo, but she also publishes her own cook book, a true food lover. With nearly 300,000 following on her blog and 80,000 followers on her Weibo account, her blog has garnered more than 35 million hits since its creation. Summerdejia hails from Beijing, China,” Anton said.

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