IF YOU’RE LUCKY, you might glimpse some bottles filled with light-gold liquid on sale in a makeshift roadside stand on a humid day. Then, sampling it, your senses might be confused by the commingled taste of sweetness and slight tartness that puts it somewhere between coconut water and sugarcane juice. It is likely that the sap was freshly harvested that morning, before the heat of the day could sour it.
The drink is refreshing, slicing through the heaviness of a sweltering afternoon. Nira nipah is typically available at Kepala Batas, in Seberang Perai Utara.
The nipah palm (Nypa fruticans) is an odd-looking palm species. Instead of growing upright and extending up toward the heavens, it has its trunk submerged in mud. It bears long, feathery leaves that fan out wide over tidal rivers and estuaries. Its roots turn together in a tight coil in the ground, holding the banks together and serving as a haven for tiny fish, crabs and shellfish. At the backroads of Penaga and Kepala Batas, these palms might look like swamp vegetation to an oncoming car. Coastal dwellers across Southeast Asia—especially those living in the northern states of Peninsular Malaysia—have, for centuries, tapped the stem of the nipah flower to collect its sap, known as nira.
