The other goodies here is the koay chap stall which you can order an excellent bowl of yummy koay chap. The koay teow are soft and the soup is tasty plus the pork are very tender and soft inside. Accompany the koay chiap we ordered a plate of braised chicken feet and pork intestines. Again, they are cooked soft and tender yet tasty. Thumbs up here ;).

The tong shui stall here are famous too but I am more eager for ambrah sern boi (ambrah sour plum) drink from the coffeeshop but a little dissapointment, too watery (I managed to get a satisfying cup at New Lane later that night).

I also tried the Nyonya bak chang from 1 of the stall here, its ok not too bad but not as good as the one from Siang Chiang in Melaka.

One comment through, food in Penang, quite expensive la, now that fuel prices is down, hope to see lower Penang food price soon, will be back for more Penang food in 2 coming trips soon :).

Lebuh Kimberley, Penang
GPS: N5 24.986 E100 19.966

Queensbay Mall is located at Sg Nibong by the seaside with a fantastic view of the Penang Bridge and you can see many local and tourist stopping at by the seafront for picnics and photo session. The mall is quite modern and big with a varieties of entertainment, shopping and food outlets is available.

I saw this stall Deli Manjoo, they are selling this corn cake, the friendly lady at the stall told us that it is from Korea. You have this automated machine that keep rotating the hot plate in and out while another lady oiled the hot plate and fill it up with the barter and corn to make the mini cake. It cost RM4.00 for 10 pieces. Its ok la, no wow but good taste of corn in it.

The better one is their curry fishball which goes for RM1.80 for 4 pcs. The fishball are bigger than those you find in pasar malam or Hong Kong and the curry is the key here, their curry is very good!

We the proceed to Taiwan Bull to try some of their snacks. They have a huge variety here but we only had the stomach to try a few as dinner is waitng for us at Lebuh Kimberly :P. The first is their chicken kushiyaki (grilled chicken) at RM8.50, its ok la, almost like teriyaki chicken. Next is their XXL crispy chicken at RM6.90. it is not as tasty those in pasar malam but this means that less ajinomoto? The one that is really good here is their Taiwan shrimp cake at RM6.90, its shrimp meat deep fried, this is nice and a definately worth trying!

Queensbay Mall, Penang
GPS: N5 20.021 E100 18.393

Restoran Satelite have been around for more than 40 years and I used this used to be my every Sunday breakfast place for quite a while when I was young whenever me and my dad went up to Bukit Gasing on Sunday morning for a walk.

There are 2 stalls here, Ipoh chicken rice and wantan mee. Besides chicken rice, the first stall also offer chicken hor fun, curry chicken (pretty good too!), sour spicy vege, etc. To me, the chicken rice here is just as good as the famous shop next door, less commercial and very good old school feel.

The other stalls which is my favourite sells wantan mee, the nice thing about their wantan mee are the soup, so I always go for soup base wantan mee here rather than dried one and their wantan itself.

With oldies playing on the background and have a nice cup of ice barley lime on a hot day with wantan mee or chicken rice definately gives a good feel ;). Pricing here is standard PJ pricing la, about RM5.50 for a bowl of noodles plus ice drink.

Restoran Satelite (Ipoh Chicken Rice & Wantan Mee)
GPS: N3 06.408 E101 39.211

The first night we are there, we headed to the local night market near Dong Xuan market (N21 02.231 E105 50.960), we are a bit late and its already closing, it was about 11pm then. Every junction you passed at the market, there ought to be 1 or 2 stalls selling fried corns, seems to be a popular thing there. The corn are fried in oil with topping of these very small dried shrimps. The dried shrimps are different from those we are used to. It cost 10,000 dong (RM2.30) for it, not sure are we overcharge as for everything else here, tourist pays more. Its not that good to me, corn is very plain and stale.

The stall next to it sells grilled chicken satay, this is not bad, chicken chunks marinated and grilled on charcoal. Tasted like chicken teriyaki and usually these kind of things should not go wrong ;). Hygiene is worry here, so if you want, just order and eat, don’t look and think too much.

At Dong Xuan market, I spotted a few stalls selling Kem Trang Tien aka their local ice cream. The problem here is language is a problem, she don’t understand me and I don’t understand her. Basic English don’t work and we rely on basic sign language. There is no telling what flavour is the ice cream we picked, she keep saying “com com” and I saw com is 5,000 dong. So, we picked the safest color white, its a milky ice cream with like tiny glutinous like rice stuff inside. It quite nice actually and would be better if I know what flavour was it!

Next to Dong Xuan market are a row of stalls selling steamboat and some other food. We settled for Hai San steamboat (N21 02.301 E105 50.972) and they hurried to setup a row of tables for us outdoor. I had my first much heard Hanoi beer here. It cost about USD$1 per bottle (RM3.50) or 15,000 dong, its quite watered down to me but cheap. I found out later that it only cost 8,300 dong (RM1.95) per can in the supermarket or you can have their locally brewed beer at the local beer house at 6,000 dong (RM1.40) per cup but I heard the surrounding is awfully dirty!

Anyhow, we ordered the steamboat, the base soup smells tomyam-ish to me, then it reminds me of instant tomyam soup… hahaha.. but I don’t think it is… I found some big onions in it too, quite nice the soup. We got the seafood set, so we got a plate of fishes, squids, tofu, clams, veges, etc. The highlight was some live prawns that went into our steamboat pot while boiling ;). The portion is quite little but the noodles at the end helps to fill us up ;). It cost about RM10-11 per person at the end of the meal.

Taxi is another experience here, typically they don’t give change or pretend not too, hoping for tips, so small change comes handy. Every taxi I took, the meter is different, some starts at 15,000 dong, some 9,000, some 10,000 and all the meters tick at different speed! The smaller taxis are the worst, try to take the bigger one and MPV from reputable companies.

The next day we went for a tour to Halong Bay, on the way there we got introduced to some mini pineapples selling along the way. For 10,000 dong you get 3 to 4 small pineapples in a packet. Its quite sweet and they are all peeled and easy to consume because of its size.

Halong Bay (N20 57.506 E107 04.670) is really over populated with tourists, the moment you reach there, every corner are tourists waiting to board their junk (boat). The tour guide told us there are more than 400 junks there catering to tourist, imagine the amount of pollution… I wonder how long this beauty will can last at this rate. Anyhow, the whole landscape are surrounded by hills in the ocean plus junks everywhere. The place is quite beautiful and big, I could just imagine how much nicer it would have been before this tourist craze came about.

The tour guide told us that Halong Bay actually stands for “ha” which means going downwards and “long” is dragon. In the ancient times, the Chinese were invading Vietnam and they prayed for help. Down came a dragon hitting the ocean creating all the hills. The Chinese boats were destroyed when they hit the sudden hills and they are were wash ashore by the strong wave to China. Hehe… sounds like something my nephew like to hear.

Our junk took us out one of the valley inside the hills where you see plenty of kelong rearing fishes and meals are served on board the junk. Surprisingly lunch wasn’t that bad, we had boiled prawns, stuffed crabs, fried spring rolls, fried fish, fried squid with big onions, mix vegetables, french fries and rice (yup, fries with rice, weird but the fries are nice).

Ok, enough about Halong Bay… more on Hanoi food… the next morning, we went to a park near our hotel, I must say one thing nice about Hanoi as a city, there are plenty of nice park to go but again, it cost you 4,000 dong to go in. Anyway, we were a bit late but we still managed to get some baguette with the infamous Vietnamese coffee.

The baguette cost 10,000 dong each, again, can anyone confirm if this is tourist rate or the local pays the same? Coffee, we have no idea how to argue with them but everywhere is different, some places 14,000 dong, some 20,000, some 25,000… so again, tourist rate?

The baguette is good, thanks to the french influence during the colonial years. They basically cut the baguette into half and filled it with ham and minced pork. You will see a lot of people selling baguette basically everywhere, even by the road side or highway, its like roadside stalls selling nasi lemak here.

Don’t be surprise if your ice coffee comes in a class full of ice but only half of it is filled with coffee and milk. That’s how it’s being taken here, if you get the hot one, it comes in a slightly bigger than espresso kind of cup. The coffee are thick and very “kau” in flavour, absolutely great and nice to me. We even bought the vietnamese coffee filter home!

During lunch time, we went to Quan An Ngon (N21 01.565 E105 50.601), which was recommended by my friend SL who travels a lot to Hanoi. This restaurant serve all sorts of local food, technically come here and you get to sample everything Vietnamese. It may be a bit more pricey than eating on the street or local shops but at least the price are fixed and its clean. Based on Joe’s advise, I got the waitress to walk around with us and we just pointed and what we wanted.

Some of the good one we ordered were grilled beef, grilled cuttlefish, this “mua chee” like thing but its hot with a bit of soup (no idea what is it called), grilled pork with noodles, etc. Most of the stuff were ok but we did had some nasty one, especially these noodle in a stinky soup with roast pork and shrimp inside, we almost died eating that. It cost about 100,000 dong per person (RM23) makan here.

At night, we decided that we should try Cha Ca La Vong (N21 02.144 E105 50.948) , which is said to be a must go in Vietnam in the book 1,000 places to see before you die. This places look pretty old and famous as we see a number of locals plus foreigners dining here as well. Basically after climbing up the old wooden staircase upstairs, the only question asked is “how many person?”. Next, they put a placecard on the table, “we only have 1 dish here” and it cost 90,000 dong per person excluding drinks!

So what is this dish all about? Its basically snakehead fish being fried then serve on a hot pan with turmeric infused oil on top of hot charcoal fire. The idea is to keep frying the chunks of fishes with dills and spring onions. While that is happening, filled up your bowl with noodles topped with peanuts, mints, fish sauce. Then scope fishes with turmeric oil over the noodles and serve.

Portion is small, so basically I filled myself up with noodles but I heard snakehead fish are expensive but 90,000 is a bit too costly to me. Try it once is ok, no second time for me. Its quite an experience but not much wow factor in taste and yummi-ness to me.

On the last day in Hanoi, we visited Dong Xuan market (N21 02.231 E105 50.960) again in the morning and explored some its alley and KC found a stall that sells the snail, tofu & banana noodles. They basically cooked all those stuff with a thick soup and noodles together, pretty good I must say. We also tried the local pho of beef and chicken choices. The chicken on is a bit scary as it also comes with this funny shape meat. It tasted like chicken balls to me, but no one believes me… haha… its cost 20,000 dong per bowl, expensive!!!

In the afternoon, we went to Ngoai O (N21 01.228 E105 50.716) near our hotel, its a bit costly but at least the food is good here. Its basically Vietnamese style village food. The decor is nice and some of the good stuff we had here includes roasted bacon, fried frog with bamboo (that’s what it said in the menu but the frog looks like pig’s intestines to me!), simmered snail with banana and tofu (the banana comes with skin), roast chicken with fried sticky rice, soup with starfruits, etc. It cost 100,000 dong again per person but the decor and service here is good although we don’t understand anything they saying and vice-versa!

In conclusion, food was ok to me but nothing wow me other than their coffee. Food are also more expensive than I thought it should be and the ambiance is really poor. Somehow for once, I can’t wait to get home while on holiday and I think many in the group felt the same way. Will I go back again to Hanoi? If I have a choice, probably not for now, for me anyway ;).

Its only RM150 per pax inclusive of really generous goodies bag plus accommodation in Penang itself. From my previous experience participating, it is really worth it, its a HIGH RECOMMENDED hunt, so much fun and good food. The prizes are really attractive too.

From what I experienced, you either be the competitor and think about winning, then you will need a strategy, for example sacrifice some points for time consuming task and maximize your time on points gaining task in a short period of time. But for me, its more about enjoying the hunt and the food, taking our own sweet time and all ;).

Unfortunately, this year I could not participate due to prior engagement but I should be in Penang the same time too, hope to bump into some of the food hunters then :).

The immediate feeling I got from this place is it gives you a very good warm weekend breakfast feeling a comfortable homely neighbourhood. With many houses above the shops here, you will noticed that a lot of senior folks occupy this place for breakfast to catch up with neighbours, friends and chat away with hot dim sum and chinese tea.

I would not describe the food here as great, base and texture is there but I feels it lack taste and a bit ‘rough’ type of dim sum, but can be a good thing, meaning less salt and less flavoring! These are just simple and hearty breakfast serving the local neighbourhood.

The most popular thing that everyone eats here is not their dim sum but their chicken rice! Yup, chicken rice in the morning. Its actually chicken with mushrooms and chinese sausages steamed on top of rice then covered with some spring onions and sauce when cooked. Its a bit dry on the rice as the sauce is little but the chicken are soft and tender, something different… if they have salted fish, this would have been a blast in my opinion but then again, they serve food light in taste here?

The dim sum are alright, the average and not salty type like I mentioned, I tend to take it as less salty = less artificial flavoring ;).The loh mai kai (chicken gloutonous rice) looks good, having chicken, a piece of bbq pork (char siew) as well, looks well sauce and moist, just again not salty enough, healthy again ;).

Quite a bit of the folks here also ‘da bao’ (pack) takeaway of chee cheong fun and fried meehoon from the stall nearby and eat here, looks quite interesting, will try it the next time.

To order, you have to get your table, then walk up to the main steamer, grab a tray and order away. Best if you can decide what you want quickly as the queue seems to get long and you will experience that as you are about to select that particular dim sum, a hand come in and grab it away from you. That is how fast things sell around here, so be precise, be fast ;). As for tea, the aunty there will bring it around to your table, don’t worry about that.

It cost us RM29.80 for tea for 4, 8 dim sum, 1 loh mai kai and 1 chicken rice. Not cheap at all, then again what is nowadays? Thanks to the inflation chain caused by the senseless hasty fuel increase :(. I have a good feel having breakfast at this place, not bad, feels healthy too ;).

Tuck Cheong Dim Sum
GPS: N3 08.156 E101 42.784

View Larger Map

I have eaten at their old branch in Sunwaymas various times but they have now located it to Bandar Sunway. You order what you like to eat to go with your steamboat, you will be given a form with a long list of items available and you just tick away.

We sure did ordered a tonnes of stuff, beef tripes, quail eggs, sliced lamb & pork, pork stomach, tofu, vege, porkballs, etc. In total we ordered 20 meats, 6 vegetables, 6 tofu, 2 noodles, 1 egg related plates ranging from RM4 to RM8 per plate. There’s an additional charge for soup at RM25.00 but you get some chicken in it and bottomless soup refills.

The sauces here to dip your steamboat food is quite unique, there are four types, one is a peanut sauce, a sesame sauce, chili paste and fermented beancurds (foo yee). You are supposed to mix the flavours according to your taste ;).

The soup itself is tasty and adding in all the goodies, for sure it will be good, after all you are getting premium soup ;). There are chicken meat and herbs in the whitish soup. The ma la soup is basically dried chili in oil plus herbal chicken soup cooked together. Elaine complained the ma la not spicy enough but her standard is different la :P.

Most of the food are fresh and nice, it is especially fun cooking the sliced meat as they cook very fast and you will need to cook them in your ladder in the soup for just 10 secs or so.

The way chinese tea served here are different, instead of pouring from the pot to the glass and add your own ice if you fancy, they have a beer jug with ice and the waitress will help you pre-mix them before serving, so service is quite efficient here ;).

In total we spent about RM280 for 10 persons, cost more than the average steamboat but once in a bluemoon eating here is ok for me ;).

Sze Chuan Village Restaurant
144, Jalan Changkat Thambi Dollah
Off Jalan Pudu, 55100 Kuala Lumpur.
Tel: 03-21442623
GPS: N03 08.414 E101 42.679

View Larger Map

The chicken rice stall here provides really value lunch meal, a plate of standard chicken rice goes for RM3.00 here. Yup, RM3.00 in the midst of all the increased fuel prices and the whole economy going into recession. So, if want to save money, this is the place to eat!

The chicken rice of standard portion, rice plus roast chicken and a bowl of soup. Joe asked for extra sauce as its a bit dry and the lady offered us the chicken sauce gathered during roasting. The sauce is thick and you just need to dip a little with your chicken and it makes a lot of difference. Plus, its only RM3.00, what you want la???

GPS: N3 07.035 E101 35.944

View Larger Map

We decided to travel by Aeroline to Singapore as it stops at Harbour Front where we could convinently change to our ferry to Batam (no choice la since AirAsia cancelled its direct flight to Batam, what a pity!). The only problem I had taking Aeroline is that Sunway Pyramid decided to hold a fire drill exercise that morning and sort of block off the road to the Aeroline stop, we had to do a tour to the service basement and took the lift up with 2 kids and a whole bunch of luggages, it was havoc but we made it!

This is my first experience on Aeroline and we got the double deck, which is a 30 seaters with seats pre-allocated from my online booking. Downstairs is a small lounge that fits 6 and a light usage toilet and pantry. The seats are really comfortable and spacious and there’s power socket at the both sides the bus on every row making charging of notebooks, phones, PDAs, etc. easy. Too bad they don’t have WIFI like how Oddessy does.

For the journey to Singapore, the service was really good and we were pampered with subway sandwiches, bottomless hot drinks and mineral waters. Only problem was the LCD screen showing the movie wasn’t bright enough and there’s no individual earphones, so volume had to be kept low to avoid distrupting other passengers :(.

Anyhow, it was an enjoyable ride but our coach captain was taking a bit too long and my nephews really lost patience in Johor, I kept getting “are we there yet?”, “how many more hours?”, “why so long one?”… you can imagine the rest. The only hassle of taking a bus to Singapore is having to depart to get go through immigration and when going through Singapore we had to carry all our luggages down to crossover. Maybe driving isn’t that bad the next time *wonders*.

The bus stopped at harbour center and soon we were met by the representatives from Indah Puri Golf in Batam whom helped us to arrange for our tickets and we just left our luggages with them to check in for us. So we finally can move freely and decided to grab our late lunch before taking a short stroll in Vivocity.

We went to the Tuck Shop on the 3rd floor and I ordered the Dry Ramen for S$4.00, portion is small but its very tasty! The coffee here is excellent, very thick, not too cheap and rich with flavours.

Tuckshop in Harbourfront Center, Singapore. GPS: N1 15.843 E103 49.213

After the quick meal, we hang around Vivocity a little then boarded the ferry, its quite systematic as per how they do everything in Singapore. First you are presented with a smartcard rather than holding a ticket upon check in. You will need to scan your smartcard before going through Immigration to exit. In the waiting lounge, its still a bit confusing but the smartcard are colour coded based on different ferry and departure. They will call out the ferry name when you can board and you have to scan your card again and if you miss the boarding, they can check the computer and announce the pending passengers, pretty cool ;). Then just before boarding the ferry, they will collect the card and scan it again to make sure you really board the right ferry.

We boarded the Sea Princess ferry to Batam, its really a small ferry and most of the Indonesians in the ferry will book their seats by placing their bags on the seat and go off smoking. Some of them will just put their bags on the seat next to them, so although its half filled, you still have to find place to sit. This ferry is slower too, from my GPS, its moving average of 30-33km/h and took about 45 minutes before reaching.

In Batam, we are greeted by Indah Puri staff and got an “express” passing through Immigration and transfered to the resort. TIm’s place is pretty neat, facing the sea with the view on one side Singapore and the other side Batam town. Since its the ground unit, just open up the glass doors and its windy throughout the day and balcony makes a perfect place for bbq or a nice morning and afternoon tea ;).

That night, we head to Golden Prawns Restaurant for seafood, there’s 2 of them, one is Golden Prawns 555 and the other is Golden Prawns 933. I read in some blogs that they serve the same food, about the same price and taste too. We went to Golden Prawns 555 and ordered a host of seafood, unfortunately we are seating outdoor on wooden tilts by the sea, so its too dark to take pix of the food.

The oats prawns here is good, fresh and everything fried to perfect crisp, I just ate the whole prawns without having to border to peel off the skin or head. One of the crab style I have yet to taste in Malaysia is Black Pepper Crabs which I had here. Its really nice, the crabs are fresh firstly (what am I talking about, all the seafood are live here!) and its fried with a light coat of black pepper sauce but cooked out dry. ITs superbly tasty and you will just get addictive with it. The other good dish here is their garoupa fish, the taste are just so so but the fish meat have this “qq” bouncy taste. Accordingly to my dad (who was a fish farmer), this fish are caught from the sea and not those farmed in kelong judging from the texture of the meat. Plus a few regular dishes and drinks, bill come up to about 700,000 rupiah, that’s about RM260.00. Is it cheap, well, it could be cheaper in Indonesia but then again, this place are spoilt by willing to spend Singaporeans, so by that standard, I would say it was ok :).

Golden Prawns 555 Seafood in Batam, GPS: N01 09.629 E104 02.225

The next morning we had a good breakfast of home baked breads, muffins, cakes and jam by my sis, all of them are great good especially love the bread and banana cakes. It was really relaxing just sitting facing the sea and enjoying breakfast, then… “suk suk, are we going swimming?”… aiks… time to bring the little monster for a swim. The swimming pool is located next to a driving range overlooking the sea and tennis courts. There’s a small gym by the pool and the pool itself is huge, with 4 different pool and depth joining together, so its for kids as well as adult.

We have our lunch at the coffee house in Indah Puri and the view here is just amazing facing the entire golf course. The food and drinks here are priced in Singapore dollars. It cost from S$6.00 to S$10.00 for a meal here. The food is not bad, I had a sup buntut goreng, basically its the cow’s tail cooked in soup then having the meat fried in sauce serving it with rice and some crackers. There’s a spa below the club house offering traditional massages at about S$20.00 1 hour.

We head to town for some shopping after that, Nagoya is the most developed commercial area for shopping here and we got down at Matahari @ Nagoya Hill. Its a big hypermart here and most of the things are available here, expect for one thing, we just can’t seems to find fresh milk anywhere, strange. We got our food, drinks and seasoning for the night’s bbq and drop by a Polo outlet on the way back. The prices at Polo here is not cheap, after 50% discount, it still cost RM120.00 for a shirt. We could get much cheaper prices in Bandung and everything here is money, even the tour bus outside parked by the roadside needs to pay the store’s guard.

That night, we had a nice and simple bbq and I was dead tired by the end of the day (partly taking care of the kids too). The next day, I got an early ferry back to Singapore for my morning bus back to KL to attend good buddy Kevin & Ashley’s wedding dinner. The ferry back was a bigger one, Batam fast and its more comfortable, bigger and faster, clocking about 40-43km/h on my GPS.

It was a good experience, I am glad I went and I definitely look forward to another trip there, but perhaps allocating more time to just relax and unwind there ;).

They are having a promotion, their usual buffet is RM21.80 but its now RM18.80 per pax (exclude drinks and tax) and you get to choose 3 different choices for your soup. We got peanuts soup, chicken soup and tomyam. The peanut is nice, very flavourful but got a bit salty after putting too much good stuff in it while cooking our food. The chicken is normal la and tomyam is not too sour but not enough kick. Overall, I like the peanut the most!

The food here is quite fresh and there are various choices from seafood to pork, chicken, all sort of meat and fish balls, vegetables, noodles, mushrooms, etc. The important thing is that they are fresh and clean, but the size is a bit small but good also, means can eat more different types ;).

There are also cooked food at the sides like fried rice, meehoon, fried chicken, etc. There are also ice creams and cakes as desserts, eat all you want!

At the end of the meal for 6 of us cost RM154 inclusive of buffet, beers, drinks and tax. The friendly boss also gave us a discount card, if you bring 3 persons, you get 20% yourself, bring 6 and get 50% yourself and if you bring 9 persons, you eat free!

UFO Steamboat Restaurant
No.31 Jalan 20/7 Taman Paramount, 46300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Tel: 012-2219938
GPS: N3 06.581 E101 37.571 (estimated)