Oct 18

It was a rough and tiring week for me… feeling my ultraman’s light beeping low batt warning after lunch, Joe suggested we go for lunch at Sentul since its on the way back from our meeting. So we head on to Restoran Makanan Laut Zhen Liew Siang in Sentul Raya in KL.

At first I thought Joe was referring to Restoran Makanan Laut Lau Heong (Lau Heong is Cantones for Liew Siang) in Sentul Perdana. So I was a bit confused when Joe brought me there. According to Joe, he used to dined there since the Jalan Ipoh time, and after moving to Sentul, there’s sort of a break off and therefore you have 2 of them.

But this one in Chinese, Zhen Liew Siang means the original Liew Siang ;). Anyhow, since there are just 3 of us, we ordered the ever famous stringray with szechuan style chili on top, steamed. Then the must have sotong and prawns sizzling on banana leaf! We add a fried sweet potato leaf just to balance up our diet :).

To me, the taste in both place is yummy and very good! You just gotta have rice and you will, add rice for the sotong and prawns dish! Each of us got a huge prawns and a bunch of sotong, only complain not enough of the yummy sauce to take with rice!

The stringray is excellent too, soft and the chili sauce on top makes it perfect, again with rice! So, be prepare to add more rice eating here, you can’t resist, trust me.

Total meal comes to RM45.00 for 3 person :). Joe also recommended other dishes here like their curry fish head and deep fried pork knuckle, I will save those next time when we have more people joining.

Open: 11am to 3pm, 5.30pm to 11pm.

Restoran Makanan Laut Zhen Liew Siang.
No.30, Jalan 14/48A, Sentul Raya, Off Jalan Sentul, 51000 KL.
Tel: 03-40413781
GPS: N3 11.053 E101 41.525

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Oct 16

Its been 2 years since my last visit here, although its for work, I still need to eat right? So, I got into a mood to retrace back all the food I like to eat in Hong Kong.

The first thing I had is a superbly yummy bowl of beef tripes noodles, which I had in a small shop with no signboard at Thomson Street in Wanchai. How small is the shop, imagine its a half shop (Hong Kong standard is half Malaysia) and half of it is kitchen and the other half is dining area. The shop fit a max of no more than 8 person, I was the 7th when I got it.

Sharing table is a norm there, most of the time, you need not as, just sit down if there is no one there and they understand, because that’s how their system works. So I ordered my noodles, unfortunately they ran out of “hor fun” (koay teow) so I went with meehoon instead. The meehoon here are the vietnamese type, which are thick.

The broth of the is just amazingly nice… sweet from the flavours of the beef and a nice mix of aroma from herbs in it. The beef are tender, nice and quite a generous portion. It cost HK$22.00 a bowl and this is consider cheap over here as bigger shops may charge more. Add another 7 bucks and I got a nice cup of ice milk tea, which is a must if you are in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, as I was rushing for my meeting and I had only 10 mins to enjoy it.

For dinner, I decided that I want my roast goose (siew ngor)! Roast goose are roast duck like, must the meat are softer and more tender (fats too). I had mine with bbq pork (char siew) as well and it comes with some vegetables and rice. That cost me about HK$35-40.00 I think, can’t remember, excluding drinks!

One of the bread I like in Hong Kong is known as Life Bread, Honey & Egg flavour. Its plain lightly flavour bread and I like to take them plain. A loaf will cost HK$10.00 and you can get this in any supermarket and I find it just lovely to take with a cup of hot coffee or tea :).

Next on my list is a very simple dish, fried luncheon meat with eggs on rice! Its kind of a chinese fast food, you can have this in like most “char chan teng” (coffeeshop). As I was tired and sick after my meeting, I decided to pack and eat in at the hotel. I got mine from Ka Ka Lok in TST in Kowloon, just a short walk from my Hotel.

Its HK$29.00 and comes with free soup! You can either take this dish with just soya sauce on top, or they have sauce like curry, black pepper and tomato to top it. I took mine with black pepper this time and it’s just nice and simple. But the only thing is, there is really not a single tiny bit of vegetables on it, it really means only rice, luncheon meat and eggs!

I went for a set breakfast, its always a value to go for it. For HK$22.00, I got a macaronni with ham, 2 fried eggs and piece of buttered bread plus a hot drink, this can filled you up past lunch time!

Egg tarts, costing HK$4.00 one is also on my list and I took it with a nice cup of tea! Egg tarts are soft and melts off in your mouth but the pastry can be a little heavy in butter though.

Unfortunately, this trip, I was down with flu midway and wasn’t really in a mood to travel to eat or hunt for my favourite food… things like claypot rice, curry fishball, wanton noodles, steam rice, teng chai porridge,  pork chop rice, all sort of desserts, etc. So, technically, these are my breakfast, lunch and dinner that I had in between work :(.

Just before leaving Hong Kong, I thought I try something new and while I had sometime at the IFC where I am taking the train to the airport, I try out the Soup Cafe. They had all sort of set meals here but not very local but I saw a Drunken Wings & Duck Glizzards for HK$25.00.

I gave that a try, its basically chicken wings and duck glizzards, served as a cold dish with a heavy cooking wine tasting sauce at the bottom. To my surprise, its quite nice and I like it ;). But it doesn’t comes with rice or anything, so I found another interesting thing to try at the airport. Oh, while waiting for the train to the airport, I saw this handphone charging station, quite cool, support most phones. The charger fits my phone, but don’t work la… written there O2 and HTC :(

QQ rice, is supposed to be some kind of healthy rice which you can either choose your fillings and rice type or go for the standard recommendations. You can choose from brown rice, purple rice, red rice, etc. with a load of fillings. Check out their menu here.

I took the double pork purple & red rice which is supposed to only have 270 calories at HK$21.00 without drinks or HK$26.00 with a bottle of healthy soya milk. The filling is tasty but the rice is tasteless, so you gotta eat them together la. Its something interesting to try but heck, I won’t eat it again, haha… healthy food don’t taste as nice I guess :P.

Anyway I am glad to be home where I am able to drive to work and not get sardined in MTR and people rushing everywhere and having my nice bowl of prawns noodles for lunch.

Oct 13

I saw this posting on the AMBP website inviting bloggers to participate in a photography trip to Sunway’s Lost World of Tambun in Ipoh, Perak. I did not think much and thought it will be a cool trip to be part of, so I submitted my entry but did not think much about it…

Then i got a call last week to join the trip and after much thought, I decided to go ahead with it. Next thing I know, Friday morning, I am with my backpack at Menara Star boarding the bus (compliments of Mayflower) to Ipoh!

I remembered back in 2004 when I did a makan trip to Ipoh, we stopped by the hot spring in Tambun and at that time, there were just building the Lost World of Tambun. The hot spring was 2 huge ponds with hot spring water and I remember the muds were burning hot! They also pumped the hot spring water into 2 swimming pool and I remember the owner back then had tiger cubs around too and we were told not to take pix of it.

So, I was quite excited to go to the Lost World of Tambun to see how they had turned the hot spring into a themepark. We got there well passed 1pm and were immediately welcomed with a dance by the Malayana Tribe before being transported to the Tiger Valley with a special tiger feeding show just for us! We also got to take photographs of the cute little tiger cubs before our lunch cum photography workshop at Kepura Cave which is a cave turned into a function hall… ermm.. function cave I mean :).

All these bloggers at the trip are pro la… DSLR with different lenses, really serious shuttlebugs. There’s even this guy Lawrence whom I lepak that made his own shutter release! Semangat betul! Me pulak play play here when it comes to photography ;).

We were later shown our campsite at Monkey Village where we had to built our own camps before a free and easy session. As I dipped the heat off at the wave pool, I noticed the nice view of mountains surrounding the themepark which was the same beautiful view I remembered during my first trip to the hot spring in Tambun back in 2004. To me the most magical thing about Lost World of Tambun are the hills surrounding it, combining nature with modern water facilities.

Dinner here was really worth mentioning, besides the fact that we are hungry, I never thought that catering food can be that good. It was a simple dinner, but I really liked the bbq assam stringray and the garlic bread! My impression of catering or themepark food is usually a so-so but this dinner seems to be good ;). The stringray are cooked just right (compliments to the pakcik at the bbq) and the assam curry is good.

After dinner, the guys from Mayflower was kind enough to give us a ride to Giant to grab some essentials for the trip before proceeding with a tactical laser game. This is really fun, imagine running around a closed themepark shooting each other! This is how it works, basically we had to tied 2 censors to our head and 1 on our gun, we can take up to 4 shots before game over. The thing is, everytime you get shot, you have this loud “argghhhhhh…” sound coming your gun and whenever you reload, you hear a loud “ker-chak” and the whole themepark knows you are reloading. Hehe… never the less, it was a really cool game and our team (Team 2) won 3 games in a row! After a good game, we were pampered with more snacks and cold coffee, yummy!

Sounds good so far, well not yet, since its almost 11pm by then with the themepark closed, we got the whole hot spring pool to ourselves! We took a midnight dip to unwind the day and relax ourselves and it was fantastic!

The next morning, I was again surprised by a good catering breakfast of nasi lemak! The tiger guys whom joined me on the same table for breakfast keep scaring us with how tough our morning activities will be but poker face was all over these guys… so I went ahead and join the climb up to Gua Datok.

We started off with a briefing session plus warm up exercises before being armed with a helmet, a head torch, a bottle of mineral water and a cereal bar each. We were then lead to the entrance to Gua Datok where we had to hike up in slippery condition (thanks to the rain the day before) with the help of rocks and ropes. It was quite a climb but I really enjoyed it after having to stop mountain biking for months due to my back condition. I felt good, as if this wildgeek is slowly coming back to action.

After 3 checkpoints (and small mishap of 1 of my shoe falling off down 100 metres!), we finally reached the entrance to Gua Datok. From here, you got a nice view of the new housing project of Sunway by the lake with beautiful hills surrounding it. What a sight! Like any other cave, bats and insects made this their homes and you are able to admire the various stalactites and stalagmites rocks being formed. Too bad I didn’t had a tripod with me! Up to exiting the cave, I was still quite clean all over but just the opposite to mountain biking, easy up here means a hell downhill. The downhill are slippery and i was almost slipping from trees to trees (at this point, I start to believe the tiger guys are not kidding) with cuts and muds all over me!

Nevertheless, once I made it to the bottom, I felt good. No regrets joining this mini expedition to Gua Datok and if I got a chance to choose, I would definately do it again! Thanks to the cool guides from the Lost Wolrd of Tambun for their caring and helpful attitude in guiding us and ensuring we had a good time during this hike!

The trip ended with a good lunch at the cafe plus additional splashing time and not to miss out, I soaked myself in the hot spring to mend back my cuts and wounds from the Gua Datok outing. Although I hike like a wildgeek that morning, the next day, I was walking like a robot… hehe… old liao la… body ache all over :(.

The folks at Sunway was really kind as they sent us of with a souvenir of Ipoh white coffee and a warm goodbye at the entrance. The folks at Mayflower then got us back savely and quickly as all of us was really tired from the great outing and just can’t wait to get home!

Thanks again to AMBP, Sunway, Mayflower and all the friendly bloggers for a good trip ;). *Sniff sniff*… signing off from Hong Kong with a flu (what to do, hectic Sunday after the trip plus rushing for trip to HK today) but do check out some of the posting of the other bloggers on this trip I found on the web:

http://joyce-tedoen.com/2008/10/12/the-lost-world-of-tambun/

http://chongelaine.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html#5249466079514681582

http://my.0163286699.com/2008/10/sunway-memories-with-ambp-part-06.html

Lost World of Tambun
GPS: N4 37.555 E101 09.294

Oct 8

Lunch time and it was drizzling in Bangsar… I picked up Ah Soh for lunch and we were rounding the old Bangsar trying to find parking but its just impossible… then we decided to just go to Bangsar Village 2 (new wing) as parking would be easier plus the rain is getting heavier.

So we ended up here and I took Ah Soh to Delicious to try the Duck Confit Spaghetti which me and my sister really like. Its not cheap, RM24.90 exclude tax, but heck, the place is packed and people are in line for a table, global recession? hehehe… not yet maybe.

Anyway the Duck Confit Spaghetti are basically duck leg, cooked with it owns fat, its a complicated process, very hard to make, you can read about it here. It is served with spaghetti. The duck are crispy but meat are still ok inside, pretty neat.

I got a absolutely delicious cheeseburger, that’s how they called it anyway… which also goes for RM24.90. You get a quite thick beef burger covered with melted cheese and some what looks like sourkaurt on top. The buns are toasted with butter and some greens to go with it. The sides of the burger are more greens, I think they added baslamic vinegar, really crispy frieds and tomato sauce they made themselves.

Overall I enjoyed my cheeseburger a lot, its really nice, especially taking it with the greens and I really like the frieds with their own made tomato sauce ;)… yummy!

Its a bit costly, but food here looks really good, especially cakes and desserts, but for lunch, I am already filled up. Thank you Ah Soh for buying lunch me a wonderful lunch ;). Oh ya, the other good thing, WIFI is free here!

Delicious @ Bangsar Village 2
GPS: N3 07.834 E101 40.288

Oct 8

Con’t from part 7…

It was about 6pm when we finally left JB with Elaine & Patrick leading us to Tebrau to hit the NSE for our journey back to Melaka. Elaine & Patrick head back to JB to continue their hometown visit while the Chung family went straight back to KL. The remaining 7 of us went back to Melaka to spend a night since we don’t have to work the next day and it was a good choice too as the traffic was quite heavy approaching Melaka.

We got back to Melaka and immediate head to Miharu & Sky’s house for a quick shower and rest before heading to Jalan Ong Kim Wee for satay celup as supper. Ah Fei strongly recommended Ban Lee Siang and we obliged. This is Sor J first time trying satay celup… sad KL boy :P.

It was very pack but at least no queue like Capitol… so we got a table at the back and wasting no time, some of us are already picking our celup food. Its the usual satay celup fare, I would not elaborate about it, I am sure enough blogs have information on it but my favourite are the “tau kei” or known as “foo chuk” in KL and also the kangkung veggie. Overall comments are the food at Capitol is fresher but I prefer here, less crowded, at least I don’t have some guy waiting for table standing next to me while I eat! Per stick starts at 50 cents each and we ate more than 100 sticks costing RM69 in total plus drinks.

Ban Lee Siang (Satay Celup)
No.45E, Jalan Ong Kim Wee, 75300 Melaka.
Tel: 06-2841935
GPS: N02 12.121 E102 14.603

Sky, Miharu and the very “kek tung” Ah Fei then had a long arguement on where to go for a drink after our supper and we ended up in Kota Laksamana. Unfortunately the place is so packed that we can’t find a table to sit. Since we are there for drinks only, we just went to 1 of the chinese restaurant for tea and softdrinks.

That night, I think I slept the best the whole trip and we decided to get a little later the next day for breakfast. Before breakfast, we dropped by Sky’s house for a short “Raya” visit as he has all these tit bits to serve us. Right before leaving, Sor J keep asking to go and see Sky new house, so we made a short detour as well. Renovation have yet to start but its really big house with nice plot of land too! Jealous-nya… cheaper than my house somemore bigger!

We went to Jalan Tun Sri Lanang, at the makeshift food court where it sells Hee Kiaw Mee, Chicken Rice Balls and Wantan Mee. We are out of luck that morning, the chicken rice balls stall is out of chicken and we could only get the rice balls. But to me, the rice balls are the highlight, not the chicken, so its ok at RM1.50 per plate of 6. We also ordered hee kiaw mee and some of us had wantan mee. Poor Sor J, again never seen orange color fish paste before and I obviously took the chance to conned him that they put orange in the fish paste… hahahaha :P

Foodcourt at Jalan Tun Sri Lanang
GPS: N2 12.387 E102 15.178

After our yummy breakfast, we then depart back home… 2 hours drive but after a good breakfast, seems damn long and sleepy. We made it back by 12 plus and I actually skipped lunch for the day, ate too much for the last few days. It was a good trip again, really fun and thanks to all the MPs who joined us; Sky, Lee Chen, Jess, Miharu, Ah Fei, Sor J, Ed, Johnson, Elaine, Pat, Chung family ;). See you again in 2009 :P.

The End.

Links:

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 1 - Day 1
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 2 - Day 1
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 3 - Day 2
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 4 - Day 2
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 5 - Day 2
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 6 - Day 3
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 7 - Day 3
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 8- Day 3 & 4

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