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We checked out from Taiping and decided to do a last stop at Kakak where we whacked some kai si hor fun and discovered kakak ping, which is nescafe mixed with barley! We are there like after 12.30pm and most of the stuff already gone, left noodles only, but I must say, the Kakak ping is quite unique ;).

We then depart from Taiping and head to Butterworth, since we took quite a long time in Taiping, we had to skip famous Loh Mee at Lucky Restaurant my friend told me about because they close at about 1.15pm. So we detour around town and finally found the other restaurant recommended by my friend, Ambassaderess. The char keow teoy here is nice and the prawn noodles is a blast. I managed to grab the last few pieces of the ferry chai kueh with koo chai inside, the nice thing about it is that they also include dried shrimp in it. Since we are technically in Penang, how can we not take a nice cup of ambrah sour plum again :). The noodles are about RM2.50 and drinks are RM1.50, a little more than Taiping but not bad.

Moving on to our next stop, we travelled to Alor Setar and we stay CB Motel, its a budget hotel at Jalan Putra, new, clean and decent. That night, we headed to K Nasi Lemak on the same road as per Ah Loh’s recommendation. Its basically nasi briyani with various dishes you can choose from. The queue at K Nasi Lemak is long, really, and we had to queue for our turn. We order 5 different plates with dishes ranging from squids, fish, chicken etc. The rice is not as rich as normal briyani rice but good enough if you ask me and teh dishes are pretty good too.

Being makan kaki-s as we are, we then headed opposite the road where we found a row of hawkers at Jalan Pintu Sepuluh. There are all sorts of food to be found here and a few coffeeshops as well, lok-lok, kueh kak, chee cheong fun, desserts, etc. We try a few of different stuff here, don’t really want to elaborate but with this good bunch of people around, besides good food, the company is also great!

GPS - Taiping Kakak - N4 51.145 E100 44.427
GPS - Butterworth Ambassaderess - N5 24.542 E100 22.279
GPS - Alor Setar K Nasi Lemak - N6 07.302 E100 21.937

Makan first, think later

I was suprised that the next morning everyone managed to get up much earlier than I expected. We headed to Pokok Assam for some breakfast at the wet market, I always think, the best food in each town can probably be found at the wet market! Here, the lai fun soup are really nice, not to mentioned the coffee too. The lai fun stalls cannot be missed as it was only like 8am plus then and you can see a big crowd surrounding the stall.

The lai fun comes in soup but the spoon are filled with their special chili paste. Most of the gang prefer it as cheng tong but I prefer to mix the chili into the lai fun itself. The lai fun comes with simple side dish which are just slices of fish cakes. Besides that, the wantan mee is also good here as we ordered 2 plates to share which have wantan, kai si as well as char siew! I also went next door to buy some roast pork (siew yok) from the uncle in the middle stall whom just keep chopping as the customers come and go. We saw some interesting small packets of nasi lemak that comes in assam, prawn or anchovies. I took the assam and prawn to try, assam is really weird, its juice tamarind with a little sauce topped on the coconut milky rice. The other one are prawns chilies topped on the rice. The good thing about the trip is that we have 11 ppl, and we only order a few plates of each so that everyone get to try everything! Oh ya, not forgetting, some of the kueh some of us bought from the market is really good too, especially the mini pandan flavour loh mai chee (peanuts and sugar wrapped with rice dough)!

We took a nice walk around the wet market that morning just to see and feel how the local market are, as all nice food do comes from the market after all. We keeping seeing stalls selling tang yuen and we reminded ourselves that the next day is Koh Tung which is one of the significant chinese festive day which marks the begining of winter and family gathers for dinner and everyone will share tang yuen as a mark that you have grown a year older ;). so I guess this year, all of us manage to stay 1 year younger?

To move on, we went biscuits hunting in Aulong searching for this house which bakes excellent chinese biscuits such as xiang bin. The have a such varieties here and a lot of cookies and biscuits that we used to eat as a kid can be found here too!

Before checking out from the hotel, we did a last stop at Lake Garden in Taiping next to our hotel where the gang turned from makan trip kaki-s to photography kaki-s as the shuttlebugs and models just can’t resist snapping all sorts of funny pose in the park, even a tree next to the playground could attract them for 10 mins r so :s. BUt to the credit of the park, its really a beautiful place, having maxwell hill as the background with lots of greens and water everywhere.

GPS - Taiping Pokok Assam Wet Market (food court) - N4 49.878 E100 44.324
GPS - Taiping Aulong, Home Made Biscuits - N4 51.132 E100 42.604

Makan first, think later

After a short rest, we continue our journey again, heading to Matang just out of Taiping for seafood. In Kg Matang, we dined at Restoran Ghee Seng, one of the many seafood restaurant along this main road in the kampung.

Seafood here are fresh and you need to order from the kitchen where they are cooking. They have all the seafood and vegetables available laid out for customers to choose. We order a stingray curry, the pokey snail (chee loh), fried la-la, kung poh sotong, fried fish and 2 fried vegetables.

I must say the food is fresh but the taste in all the dishes is lacks salt, maybe the style here is different, people like the food more “ching” but that’s healthy. Just need to add a little soya sauce of your own and it taste good, especially the stingray curry. The fried fish here, is similar to the “sar chui” but it has eggs in them and are deep fried! Overall, dinner for 11 persons cost us less than RM100.

Raining cats and dogs forced us to cancel our visit to the night safari and since we have a sick Daniel with us, we decided to go the local night market for fruits, some herbal tea and some tofu fah. Lastly, we ended the night with the all popular Kong Meng bbq pork bun, each cost 80 cents and the bbq pork are shredded finely. How good is it? See how our friend eat it below and you will know what I mean! Off to bed now, another day of makan trip tomorrow!

GPS - Taiping Matang, Ghee Seng Seafood - N4 49.176 E100 40.296
GPS - Taiping Kong Meng Pau - N4 51.057 E100 44.507

Makan first, think later

Finally at 8am this morning, we are off! Despites some delay and rain, we departed from our meeting point at Ara D’sara, thanks to Micol for the coffee and biscuits. We then head up to Kampar through NSE existing at Tapah.

Traffic was smooth and at 9.30am we are close to Kampar and the walkies were blaring with hungry souls complaining that they need food. As I am only that familar with Kampar and our unreliable tour guide only knows Yau Kee, we head there for some food. As usual Yau Kee is famous for the curry chicken bread, curry is thick and the bread are good. We ordered some dim sum but they sucks, so not worth talking about it.

After shutting up the hungry souls with food, we walk around Kampar and visited CB, the chicken biscuits place. To my surprise, its halal, I thought the main ingredients are actually pork lard that makes the biscuits good? Anyhow, I wasn’t took attracted by the biscuits and the new packaging is not appetizing. You can read more about it here

We then walk to the place near the wet market and came to a food court here, now how come we did not discover this place earlier? Anyhow, we sat ourselves down and sample the local char keoy teow, which according to Paullie is famous and is fried by this uncle who sit on the floor while frying. How was it? Well, I would describe it as different and some of us take it as healthy, its quite dry, meaning less oil and less soya sauce too. The keoy teow (RM2.40 per plate) itself is small and sticky. But we got our hands on some kampar fish ball noodles and they are quite good but a bit oily. Some stalls serve it with the various kampar fish balls plus pork skins but the stalls I ordered only serve it with fish balls and tofu (RM3 per bowl). There are a lot of other yummies here but we couldn’t eat more.

We finished Kampar at about 11.45am and we had to then rush our way to Batu Gajah for some Laksa Pan Mee. Using the directions provided by Jack and estimated waypoints in GPS, we managed to find our way to Kg Bemban in Batu Gajah. Its a small chinese vilage and we stop at the house no. 753 (or was it 758) and this place serve good laksa (assam) and yong tau foo. The laksa here comes with pan mee, its a bit different but I like it. Its sour and spicy, minus the prawn paste and more chilies! There are some vege with pan mee in the laksa soup (RM2.20 per bowl), I like it even though its burning my lips as I eat! The yong tau foo are also different here, we ordered some and the most special one is the long fish cake (not cheap, 50 cents per slice) that goes with the good chili sauce.

After lunch we head to Kellie’s Castle where the gang do their usual photography stuff. It poured heavily as we are about to leave and it was then a race to the cars for us! We wanted to try the hakka chee cheong fun on motorbike as per Jack’s blog but heavy rain and not able to recall the number made us skipped.

At 3.30pm we arrived in Taiping, where we are ready to eat again! We head to the Larut Matang food court and immediately whack the famous mee rebus, pork satay, fried fish ball keoy teow, taiping kuih, fried oyster, etc. The pork satay (40 cents each) are really good, reminds me of Malacca one! Fried fish ball keoy teow (RM2.50 i think) are basically fried keoy teow that’s wet and served with fish balls and char siew (bbq pork), its really good. The other good thing are the fried oysters which are crispy with kow choi inside!

We are taking a break now at the hotel and will soon head out for more food! Keep on tuning to the blog! Time to wake up the 2 piggies in my room… 1 of them snoring already, hehehe…

p/s: I am trying to update the blog through GPRS, was ok yesterday, but today, can’t, will try again!

GPS - Kampar Food Court - N4 18.857 E101 08.997
GPS - Kampar Yau Kee - N4 18.701 E101 09.145
GPS - Batu Gajah Bemban Laksa - N4 27.513 E101 00.784
GPS - Taiping Larut Matang Food Court (common market) - N4 50.980 E100 44.431

Makan first, think later