Jul 1

This seems to be one of the favourite lunch places on Sunday for my sis and Tim, on so many occasions that I got invitation and couldn’t make it but finally I got a chance to visit this makan place last weekend. Its located behind the BHP station at the village near Bukit Tinggi (its on your right if you are heading to Bentong on Karak Highway).

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On the entrance of the place, you are able to see that it used to be the car wash and probably garage of the BHP fuel station in front. You can still see the BP logo and the word “Cuci Kereta” behind a coat of light paint on the entrance. The place is setup on a basic concept but unique in its own way, the wall of the restaurant are made up of wine bottles from the customers and the ceiling inside are hung with umbrellas from customers.

They have a nice garden full of vegetables and passion fruits on the yard leading to the washrooms. There’s plenty of parking in the compound or just outside the entrance. Besides ordering dishes here, they also offered local pineapples and ginger for sale. I think the pineapple is a bit costly at RM5.00 each but they also have Bentong ginger at RM5.00 per packet. Its on a self service basis, you just pick the one you like and drop the money in the plastic paper provided ;) .

The first thing we had are a plate of the pineapple, at this point, my mum thought I am crazy snapping photo of food we are having :( . I explained to my family that I could be earning money from googleads here and next thing you know automatically they will wait for me to snap a photo of each dish that comes out before eating, hehehe :P .

Anyway, the pineapple is ok, sweet but not as good as those in Sarawak or Sabah. The first dish to be served is this risotto like, which is rice cooked with potato, vegetables, some meat, etc. Its light in taste and is pretty good.

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The next dish is a bbq fish covered with salt, its basically a Talapia fish, covered with salt and bbq. The salt absorbed the moisture from the skin making it easy to peel the whole skin off in one big piece and just having the flesh, surprising there’s no muddy taste from the fresh water fish ;) , very well done.

Apollo, that is the name of the next dish which are big green chillies being bbq with a sweet sauce. Depending on your luck, some of the chillies are spicy and some are not at all, but its still very nice as its crunchy and yummy.

The highlight here is their bbq rack of lamb, which according to my sis, you had to order in advance to avoid disappointment. They make their own mint sauce and each piece of lamb is bbq to brown on the outside but inside is still very tender. Its quite costly but I would recommend this dish if you are there.

We also had some bbq fish steaks, covered in marinate and bbq to dry. Not too bad but the kids (my nephews popular) didn’t really fancy these food, so parents had to order some fried eggs and tofu for them ;) .

Oh ya… one of the dish I like about this place is also their “kai choy” stew with canned tuna! Usually during the Chinese New Year, we will have “sour spicy vegetables” which is “kai choy” stew with leftover chicken, duck, dried chillies, tamarind, etc. This version is just the “kai choy” with canned tuna, quite unique, the tuna tasted like meat minus the usual sour and spicy taste.

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It’s quite an unusual experience eating here, especially after the bill came when you can actually see how they take the orders, its all in symbols and drawing! Kind of funny! Bill came to RM267.50 for all the above for 7 adults and 2 kids :) . Thanks sis and Tim for showing us this place!

GPS: N03 21.258 E101 49.689

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May 26

Time does flies and very soon its already day 4 of our trip, after a good rest at our nice and cozy chalets, we spent the morning dining in the resort to have some laid back time of water polo, swimming and simply just dipping ourselves in the sea. After a relaxing morning, we took our last group photograph as usual before departing to Kuantan for lunch.

Cherating Bayview Resort

Bunch of sor chai and sor poh running into Cherating sea

Johnson took us to Medan Selera Teluk Sisek (N3 49.029 E103 20.321) in Kuantan town where we ordered some dishes from this place called Hor Chiak and sampling some good bak kut teh from Kim Loong. Dishes at Hor Chiak is reasonable, we had assam steam fishes, some vegetables, eggs and tofu. At the same time we ordered some bak kut teh to share with some yau char guai we bought there too. The dishes are alright but I must say the bak kut teh is very tasty, worth trying.

Medan Selera Teluk Sisek Kuantan

After lunch, we stopped near Gambang to stocked up on keropok, sea produces like salted fish, etc. as souvenirs before heading home. Before reaching KL, we also made a stop in Karak, recommended by Ah Fei, we went to Yik Kee (N3 24.830 E102 02.080) for their famous durian bomb and kaya swiss roll. The durian is quite a bomb at RM1.60 for a small piece but the filling are rich and very durianish. The swiss roll is fresh and long filled with a generous amount of kaya at RM8.00 each.

Before letting everyone home, we just had to do our final dinner in KL and since our GM, Jason took us on weird roads to shops that closed, we had decided to go for crabs at Tak Fook (N3 12.697 E101 36.927) in Desa Aman, Kepong. Its the usual fare, crabs, noodles, etc.

We officially ended the trip at 8.22:58pm, recording about 1,286 kilometers (for my car) of distance. Each of us spend less than RM340.00 each for the entire trip including our nice blue jersey, all the makan, accommodation plus transports. I really enjoyed myself and I hope the rest had as well, like most of you, I am already looking forward to the Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip part 3 ;) .

Photos compliments of Law Tien Soon

Peninsula Makan Trip Part 2 Intro

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 1, Update 1, Kuala Lipis

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 1, Update 2, Gua Musang

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 1, Update 3, Kota Bharu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 2, Update 1, Kota Bharu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 2, Update 2, Merang, Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 3, Update 1, Kuala Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 3, Update 2, Chukai, Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 4, Last Day, Kuantan, Pahang

May 21

That wee early morning after picking Micol, Ken Wei, Kit Yee and Ah Fei along the way… we finally reached Jason’s house in Kepong at 5.54:03am which is the meeting and starting point of the trip. Edwin whom spent the night there was already awaked with Jason waiting to greet us with some simple tuna sandwich they prepared the night before.

Soon, the rest arrived and we are all set to go, since there are 14 of us and only 3 cars, we split the passengers into 5 for the Jazz, 5 for the Myvi and 4 in my Ranger but most of the luggages and extra water are all fitted into the Ranger. We depart at 6.43:09am and head out to the Karak Highway heading to Bentong. From Bentong we made our way up to Kuala Lipis, passing Raub on the way.

The makan geeks ;)

At 8.59:35am, we finally reached the center of Kuala Lipis town, like much small towns in Malaysia, the shops are mainly concentrated in one area and its filled with the hustle and bustle of Saturday morning crowd going about their daily morning routine of breakfast, marketing and just opening up their business or going to work. We parked our cars by the jetty next to the river and decided to go on foot to hunt for Chong Ko Hakka Noodles (N4 11.247 E102 03.299) which is located in the middle of this upwards staircase shops. Its quite unique, as you are walking up the stairs, there are food shops on both side of you.

Clams Fried Eggs

Since we are all great and hungry eaters, we all got down to action and ordered a bowl of the noodles for each of us with some addition of wan tan and sui kau. Chong Ko’s noodles goes for RM2.50 for the small one and RM3.00 for the big one (50 cents more with fishballs). We also order a plate of the local specialty, fried eggs with clams. Basically its clams (si hum) fried with 2 sunshine eggs. The local, small town coffee is somehow always good and the aunt selling it was friendly enough to explain to us that all the noodles there are made locally and even helped us to order a plate of fried noodles (with black sauce) to try.

Chong Ko Hakka Noodles

The hakka noodles is great, soft and nice, not surprising since they made it themselves. Its just cooked simple and serve with minced pork on top, the original hakka way but still tasty ;) . The clams to my surprised is very nice too, I mean imagine eating a plate of just clams, yucky right? But this one taste excellent especially when taken with the crispy fried eggs! The fried noodles the coffee aunt helped us to ordered is not bad too but its mostly tasting the local noodles.

Since we are in town, we also headed up to Tong Kok Hotel (N4 11.193 E102 03.259), its basically a low budget motel with a few rooms upstairs for rental and a old fashion coffeeshop downstairs. The unique thing about this place is that they are still using charcoal for their cooking. At the back of the shop, you can see on the side of the staircase leading to the basement are filled with sacks of charcoals. We sat down here for their home made kaya, which I must say is excellent, smooth and rich with some toast and steam bread. The bread are toasted and steamed on a charcoal boiler which the water is also used for drinks.

One funny thing happened here is the way that we are dressed. Imagine you have 14 people, armed with like 7 DSLRs/Semi-Pro plus 1 video camera, all dressed in the same light blue jerseys, and some having tags on them, heading shop to shop to eat and snapping the food like crazy, what would the local think? And sure enough, many of us got the local asking which group are we from? Ken Wei was very happy that one of the local uncle asking where are you “students” from? LOL :D . The lady at Tong Kok Hotel actually asked if we are there to join the singing competition! Seems that there was a singing competition in town organised by the Lions Club, hehe, my response was pure stone-ness :P .

We took a nice group photo by the river before heading out from Kuala Lipis but overall, its quite a neat small town with friendly locals and very nice noodles, a must try if you ever have a chance to in town ;) . We headed out of town at 11.03:47am heading our next destination, Gua Musang.

Photos compliments of Law Tien Soon

Peninsula Makan Trip Part 2 Intro

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 1, Update 1, Kuala Lipis

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 1, Update 2, Gua Musang

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 1, Update 3, Kota Bharu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 2, Update 1, Kota Bharu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 2, Update 2, Merang, Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 3, Update 1, Kuala Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 3, Update 2, Chukai, Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 – Day 4, Last Day, Kuantan, Pahang

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