stilt house (
kamalig) in the Philippines The long, feathery leaves of the nipa palm are used by local populations as
roof material for
thatched houses or
dwellings. The leaves are also used in many types of
basketry and thatching. Because they are
buoyant, large stems are used to train swimmers in Burma. On the islands of
Roti and
Savu, nipa palm sap is fed to
pigs during the dry season. This is said to impart a sweet flavour to the meat. The young leaves are dried, bleached and cut to wrap
tobacco for smoking, this practice is also found in
Sumatra. In Cambodia, this palm is called
cha:k; its leaves are used to cover roofs. Roof thatching with the leaves occurs in many places in Papua New Guinea. In some coastal areas, the
rachis is used for walls in houses, and the
leaflets are used for ornaments. The
epidermises of the leaves are used as
cigarette papers. The leaves are also used in some handicraft works across Southeast Asia, such as the
tempok among the
Orang Asli tribes.
Food and beverages The young flower stalk and hard seeds are edible and provide hydration. In the Philippines and Malaysia, the inflorescence can be "tapped" to yield a sweet, edible
sap collected to produce a local
alcoholic beverage called
tuba,
bahal, or
tuak. A fruit cluster is ready to be tapped when the unripe fruits are at their peak sweetness. The cluster is cut from the stalk about six inches down, and mud is rubbed on the stalk to induce sap flow. Sap begins flowing immediately if the fruit maturity was correctly gauged. A bamboo tube or a bottle is fitted over the cut stalk and the sap is collected twice daily, cutting a half centimeter slice off the end of the stalk after each collection to prevent it from gumming over. Sap flow will continue for 30 days per stalk, and the nipa flowers continuously throughout the year, providing a continuous supply of sap.
Tuba can be stored in
tapayan (earthenware balloon vases) for several weeks to make a kind of
vinegar known as
sukang paombong in the Philippines and
cuka nipah in Malaysia.
Tuba can also be distilled to make
arrack, locally known as
lambanog in
Filipino and
arak or
arak nipah in
Indonesian. Young shoots are also edible; the flower petals can be infused to make an aromatic
tisane.
Attap chee () (
chee meaning "seed" in several Chinese dialects) is a name for the immature
fruits—sweet, translucent, gelatinous balls used as a dessert ingredient in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, that are a byproduct of the sap harvesting process. In Indonesia, especially in
Java and
Bali, the sap can be used to make a variant of
Jaggery called
gula nipah. In
Sarawak, it is called
gula apong. In Thailand, leaf is used for dessert. In Cambodia, its leaves are used for wrapping cakes (such as
num katâm), and the flowers are sometimes used to make sugar, vinegar, and alcohol. By contrast,
sugarcane yields roughly 5200 liters of ethanol per hectare per year, and an equivalent area planted in
corn (maize) would produce only roughly 4000 liters per hectare per year, before accounting for the energy costs of the cultivation and alcohol extraction. Unlike corn and sugarcane, nipa palm sap requires little if any fossil fuel energy to produce from an established grove, does not require
arable land, and can make use of brackish water instead of freshwater resources. Also unlike most
energy crops, the nipa palm does not detract from food production to make fuel. In fact, since nipa fruit is an inevitable byproduct of sap production, it produces both food and fuel simultaneously. ==Cultivation==