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Posts from the ‘Asia’ Category

Mar 25

Colours of Penang

Penang is a must-see city if you’re ever in Malaysia.

When I was applying for university many many (MANY) years ago, I opted for Universiti Sains Malaysia as my first and second choice because it’s located in Penang, about 4 hours drive away – the furthest I had ever lived in my life at that point in time. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. Not only did I made some really meaningful friendships, I also spent much of the wonderful 3 years exploring the island’s food prints.

Upon graduation, I still visit the city every now and then, to catch up with friends as well as to continue to pamper my palate. Penang is best known for its street food but in recent years, the island city has become somewhat a yuppie place with many boutique hotels and unique cafes popping up. This is partly thanks to Georgetown becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Area back in 2008, which led to many conservation and rehabilitation projects that helped to preserve the uniqueness of the city.

I must say, Georgetown is more appealing now than in my uni days, albeit the worse traffic jams.

One of the key attractions is the the wall murals by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic, which are scattered in the centre of Georgetown – read his interview here.

Boy on bike - one of the most photographed walls murals in Georgetown's UNESCO World Heritage area.

Boy on bike – one of the most photographed walls murals in Georgetown’s UNESCO World Heritage area.

This lego mural was apparently transferred from Johor after it was banned the painting because it reflected too much of reality. Go figure.

This lego mural was apparently transferred from Johor after it was banned because it reflected too much of reality. Go figure.

Within the UNESCO World Heritage area, there are many colourful colonial buildings. Some of them are still being occupied by residents who have lived here for generations. Others have been converted into guesthouses, or museums, or cafes.

This batik painting museum has red wooden windows.

This batik painting museum has red wooden windows.

 

Colonial buildings serving as shops.

Colonial buildings serving as shops/homes.

In this latest visit, I checked out one of the boutique cafes recommended by a Penangite friend. Ete Cafe is apparently opened by a Taiwanese couple who was once trained in France. The place turned out to be almost a hole in the wall kind of cafe – not easily visible unless you really look out for it. They serve syphon coffee as well as French pastries. The slice of gateau that we had was good but it didn’t come cheap (for Penang prices anyway) as it’s RM15 per slice.

Our slice came with a small macaroon on top.

Our slice came with a small macaroon on top.

Colourful options available @ Ete Cafe

Colourful options available @ Ete Cafe.

Now for street food, I was pleasantly surprise to find a super yummy wanton mee @ Love Lane in the evening. This plate of delicious noodle had pork lards, and as we all know, pork fat makes the world go round 🙂

Best wanton mee I've had in a while. Found at the evening stall at Love Lane.

Best wanton mee I’ve had in a while. Found at the evening stall at Love Lane.

When in Penang, one of the must-try street food is char kuey teow (CKT). It’s stir fry flat rice noodles with chili, prawns, Chinese sausage, bean sprouts and cockerels. Locals are particular about their plate of CKT – it must taste good and not expensive. The expensive and famous stalls are usually patronised by tourists or out-of-town fellas like me and my friend. We went to the stall at Lorong Selamat, which has been featured in various newspapers and food blogs. The kopitiam (local word for coffee shop) only has 1 stall, which is the CKT stall and that’s not common since kopitiams usually offer more than 1 option. This means this 1 stall alone makes enough profits every month to pay for rent. Not surprising since a plate of CKT cost RM8 here – extremely expensive! Fortunately, it lived up to its reputation as one of the best CKTs in town (or at least to our taste buds).

Char kuey teow at the famous stall at Lorong Selamat

Char kuey teow at the famous stall at Lorong Selamat.

To accompany our plate of char kuey teow, we also ordered a plate of lobak from a nearby kopitiam.

To accompany our plate of char kuey teow, we also ordered a plate of lobak from a nearby kopitiam.

Penang is no longer as cheap as it used to be. Prices for accommodations and food have gone up, like the rest of this country. Here’s the expenses for 2 persons for 3D/2Ns.

Accommodations (guesthouse, twin sharing with shared bathroom, excluding breakfast) = RM168/night

Petrol and toll = RM220

F&B = RM150

Feb 17

Bali with friends

Paolo and Anastasia are currently backpacking in South East Asia (P’s blog is found here); and when they told me that they wanted to visit KL, I suggested that they come during the Chinese New Year period and then join me and Blue Eyes to Bali.

In cheerful mood as we attempt the 272 steps at Batu Caves

In cheerful mood as we attempt the 272 steps at Batu Caves

After spending a few days in KL, experiencing the CNY atmosphere, here we are in Bali.

It’s been 7 years since I was in Bali. First time round, I was in Kuta and Ubud. This trip, I decided on Seminyak. Not that great decision. With the exception that we had a fairly nice villa with a private pool, which we paid good money for, Seminyak was similar to Kuta albeit slightly less touristy. Still touristy nonetheless.

The view from the top floor of our villa in Seminyak

The view from the top floor of our villa in Seminyak

But it’s the first time for Blue Eyes and both my Swiss friends so I guess it’s still a new experience for them.

Highlights of the trip (in no particular order):

  • Snorkeling @ Blue Lagoon, Padang Bai – my first snorkeling experience! Won’t say I fell in love with it but I didn’t hate it either, thanks to the gorgeous view down under. FYI, I’ve fear of water, so jumping into the sea is not exactly my idea of fun.
  • Exploring Uluwatu – so I’ve seen this before but the view is still as impressive as ever, plus we watched the Kechak dance this time so it’s now off the checklist.
  • Enjoying Gunung Kawi temple and Tengallang rice terrace – because we only decided at the last minute for this lil’ road trip, we only arrived in the late afternoon and hence, avoiding the crowd. Finally some peace and calm.
Holding tight to guide in my first snorkeling experience

Holding tight to guide in my first snorkeling experience

Best meal:

  • Balinese meal @ Warung Taulan, Seminyak – a bit on the high-end side but food was good, plus the warung was next to the rice fields so the atmosphere was cosy. Service was perhaps the best we had in Bali.
  • Lunch after snorkeling – it’s part of the package and we had grilled mahi-mahi, plus local salads. Super yummy and most satisfying!
Seen here are the Balinese-style salads, part of our lunch after snorkeling

Seen here are the Balinese-style salads, part of our lunch after snorkeling

Somehow, this time round I enjoyed less of Bali. Perhaps it’s because the island has more tourists, plus lot of areas are currently being developed. Even Ubud looked more crowded (people and buildings!) than I remembered the last time.

Think the next place to check out will be Lombok and Gili, after hearing all the good stories online.

Here’s the breakdown of cost per person:

Accommodations (2-bedroom with private pool villa): 42 eur/night

Transport: 20 eur (private driver for 2 days + 2 taxi rides + 1 airport transfer)

F&B: 33 eur

 

Apr 7

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Blue Eyes goes to Melaka

We haven’t blogged much about Malaysia despite the fact it’s the longest blue eyes has stayed at one place during this trip. We haven’t done much, to be honest, except to repaint the walls of my living room. It’s blue eyes’ second time to Malaysia (he was last here in 2007) but it is also perhaps the country that he explored the least. Partly also due to the fact that I don’t have a car to move about and public transport in Malaysia sucks (!!)

Anyway, in his last week in Malaysia, we decided to head down to Melaka, the most historical city in the country (it was the first place that the Portuguese and Dutch landed before they occupied Malaya centuries ago). Getting to Melaka was a bit of a challenge. On normal circumstances, I’d have driven down and it would have taken about 2-hour drive. This time, since I didn’t have a car (I sold it before going RTW) we took the inter-city bus instead.

I’ve never taken public transport to Melaka before. I had to check online to locate the bus terminal. It sounded easy to reach the terminal as it’s connected via LRT and Komuter but it turned out to be a frustrating affair. For one thing, Komuter has lousy frequency. We bought the tickets only to find out that the next train was in 40 minutes (!!) so we aborted the plan and took cab instead.

Upon arriving at Melaka Sentral (the bus terminal of Melaka), we took the local bus to the city centre and had a calm walk to Jonker Street to have lunch – expensive plates of chicken rice balls (apparently I was wrong to think it’s expensive, as I was told that chicken rice in KL is around RM6-RM7 these days …) that cost a total of RM13.70. I’m not particularly a fan of chicken rice balls but it is a kind of novelty if one has never tried it before.

Blue eyes having chic rice balls

We had cendol for dessert and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Jonker Street, admiring the old buildings and taking it really easy. We stumbled upon a shoe shop that sells shoes for bound feet (an old Chinese tradition that is no longer in practice) and blue eyes got interested and started chatting with the owner. After some 30 minutes later, we walked out of the shop with a pair of bound feet shoes, blue eyes’ souvenir from Malaysia 🙂 We took a break after that and sat down for beer at Geographer Cafe.

Blue eyes suggested that we check out the ruins of A Famosa Fortress, which was close to  St Paul’s church. I don’t remember having visited St Paul’s church and was surprised by the nice view on top of the hill. The weather was super warm and humid but fortunately the skies were blue so the pictures turned out quite nicely.

Blue eyes @ St Paul's Church

To get back to the bus terminal, we had to take the cab instead of local bus since I didn’t know where the local bus stops for the opposite route. Taxis in Melaka don’t use metre and the driver charged us RM15 despite me trying to bargain for a better price 🙁 Oh well, the perils of being car-less; you’re at the mercy of taxi drivers! We took the 6.30pm back to KL and upon reaching the bus terminal, again we had to take the cab, and this time round, we had to buy coupon first before getting into the taxi and the taxi company servicing the terminal charged a whopping 30% extra from the terminal to my place. What a rip off! But hey, like the locals always say, Malaysia boleh!

But to look on the bright side, we did have a nice day in Melaka and it was a trip worth making. Don’t believe us, check out the pix 😀

Mar 28

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Testing our taste buds in Singapore

Blue eyes has never been to Singapore and we’ve talked about visiting the city country since it’s so close to Malaysia. It’s less than an hour flight and buses take about 6 hours. We decided on Tiger Airways as it was having a promotion for the days we wanted to travel – cost us only 100 euros for 2 persons!

While getting to Singapore is inexpensive, finding accommodation is another matter. Due to space constraint, hotels and hostels in this island are expensive, especially centrally located ones. The few hostels that I wanted to book ran out of rooms but I found out that we have some points on agoda.com that could be redeemed so I booked the Ibis Hotel instead. It wasn’t the cheapest option but it’s located in Bugis, opposite Sim Lim Square (where all the IT stuff could be found!) and within walking distance to the Bugis and Little India MRTs.

On the first day when we arrived, we took it real easy. We checked out the bar at the hotel and had our first Singapore Slings, followed by a lunch/dinner at the nearby Fatty’s restaurant. We didn’t do much for the rest of the evening as we were tired so we called it a night and headed to bed early.

Singapore Sling & french fries

The next day, we decided to head to Orchard to meet Jaime for brunch as well as to check out the picture hanging system at Takashimaya SC. Jaime brought us to Ippodo for some yummy Japanese ramen. It’s my second time there and I thoroughly enjoyed the food 🙂 Blue eyes survived using the chopsticks; in fact he’s getting very good at it!

Japanese salad @ Ippodo

After checking out the picture hanging system, we decided to rest and have a chat at Cedele. The girls had coffee while blue eyes chose a glass of white wine. We topped the drinks with a slice of walnut carrot cake and the devil’s chocolate cake – YUMS!

Wonders what they're checking out

Since Jaime has a flight the next day, we parted ways soon after our coffee session. Blue eyes and I headed to Marina Bay to check out the latest addition to the high-rise landscape – the Marina Bay Sands – more about that in the next post.

For dinner, we made plans to meet Paula & Malek, whose wedding we attended in Manila couple of weeks ago. Paula’s working in Singapore and Malek has come to join her after the wedding. They brought us to Boon Tong Kee, a famous chain of chicken rice shop in Singapore. I must say, the chicken rice was quite good! Unfortunately they only serve the broiled chicken instead of the roasted ones, which is my favourite.

After dinner, we headed to Bugis for dessert. Malek knows this dessert place called Ah Chew Desserts, which is along a busy food street in Bugis. We chose different types of dessert and we agreed at the end of it that they were all very good 🙂

Our Singapore adventures so far have been eating and catching up with friends. Next up, we’re gonna head to Sentosa for some beach time and theme park!

Mar 13

Manic Monday

Believe it or not, the journey back to Malaysia was quite an adventure. Our flights for the Manila-Kuala Lumpur route were via AirAsia. I had flown on such route couple of years ago and sorta know that the flight departs from Clark instead of Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila. The Diosdado Macapagal International Airport in Clark is about 2 hours away from Metro Manila and is accessible via shuttle buses. Somehow I thought we could take a cab instead of the bus and by the time we got into the cab, I had a bad feeling about it.

The cab driver, for some strange reason, didn’t understand that we wanted to go to the airport in Clark. Instead he drove us to the domestic terminal of the Manila airport and when we arrived and found out, it was already too late as the time showed 8.15am and our flight was at 11.05am. The driver wasn’t keen to drive us to Clark because he says it takes 5 hours and even if we managed to get on a new taxi to drive us there, we won’t make it in time anyway.

So we had no choice but to get new flights from Cebu Pacific 🙁 Since we were at the domestic terminal, we asked the driver to send us to the international terminal. Unfortunately he sent us to Terminal 1, which has most of the airlines, except for Cebu Pacific, which uses Terminal 3 instead. By the time we found this out, the driver has left and hence, we had to take a new cab. As you can imagine, we paid quite a bit for taxi as a result of this boo-boo.

Cebu Pacific has flights to KL at 2pm but it cost close to 200 euros for the both of us. Including the flights we had missed, the total for the Manila-KL flights is almost the same price as our flights from Christchurch to Manila! Oh well, at least the drama ended after this and we didn’t have anymore hiccups flying to Malaysia.

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