Barbecue Garden.... midst of city

Location: 135A Nam Ky Khoi Nghia, Dist. 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Tel: (84-8) 3823 3340
Operating Hours: 7am - 11pm

I was planning to take my dinner Nam Bộ, but the plan changed last minute. When my counterpart came to my hotel to pick me up, he told me he will bring me to another nice place, similar to Nam Bộ. Since it is a new place for me, I don't mind to try it out.

The restaurant was somewhere near to the Ben Thanh market. It is an open air concept, which resembles a big garden with lighting lit-up at night. It is quite romantic I would say.

My friend ordered the dishes for us, about 6 of us. This time around, I didn't take any photo as it is too dim to take photo. I just enjoying the foods. This restaurant is targeting both the local and tourist, offering Western-Vietnamese taste. Whatever put on the table, I just tried it out.

There is one dish, where my Vietnamese friend asked me to eat first without knowing what it is exactly. I just put it into my mouth, chew and swallow it. However, all the dishes almost looks like the same for me, fried meat, either goat or beef. I just can't believe when my friend told me I just swallowed the goat part where it is use for milk production... OMG... since it is nice, I just continue eating. Yummy!!

Nice food besides Bến Thành Market

Location: Besides Bến Thành Market
Operation: The stall owner will only setup the stall during evening time, about 5pm.

This place actually is one of the tourist spots in Ho Chih Minh City. Many tourist will come over here for dinner, due to the local foods offered over here. It has lot of stalls selling local foods from north to south as well as seafood.

Besides food, there is also some stalls selling clothes, bags, shoes and souvenir around the corner.

1. Tilapia fish + vegetables
The fish is totally fresh, as I discovered when they start to grill the fish. It still moving. As when you order this dish, be expected to wait for about half an hour, as this is one of the signature dish around this area. Once the fish is served, it should be eat together with the vegetable. One has to roll the fish meat together with the vegetable in a soft, thin paper-like crepe. Once you roll it like 'popiah', one need to dip it to fish sauce before put into mouth. If you tried the fish meat just like that, it is very tasty due to the freshness of the fish.

2. Steamed prawn

When the prawn is served, actually it is cooked. However, it still need to be steamed for a while in front of us. What make me amazed what the waitress will peels off the shell from the prawn for us. This really helps us a lot, fully concentrate to enjoying the food.

Foot Massage Salon 137

Location: 137 Ham Nghi Str, Dist 1, HCM
Tel: (08) 3821 7362
Operating Hours: 9.30am - 11pm

This massage center was recommended by my friend, as I am here for the trip, so why not just try it out. It is very near to Ben Thanh Market. If you were at the market, one will see a big roundabout just right in front. Scout for Highlands Coffee shop, it is located at the same row with the coffee shop.

From outside the shop, it is lit up with red-light, seems something fishy here. Anyway, it is a pure massage center. Once entered the shop, I get a copy of the name card for the shop. Printed on the card, it telling me the massage will last for 90 minutes, served with ginger tea and gingersnap at the end of the session.

What stand out the most for me is the HOT STONE massage, one of the few massage style offered here. I never tried massage with stone before, of course I'm very excited about the whole process. This place is jammed by both the local as well as tourist.

The session includes:

• Herbal Foot Soak
• Facial and scalp
• Cucumber Facial
• Herbal Foot Wash
• Pressure Points (reflexology)
• Hand / Arm
• Shoulder
• Back / Bottom
• Hot Stone
• Walk on Back
• Back Extension
• Ginger Tea / Gingersnap

What can you ask more, when it will cost you about USD$10 per session. The whole session really amazing, totally different from the massage I had in Bangkok.

Restaurant Kien Kee

Location:
D-1, Jalan 10/3
43300 Seri Kembangan
Selangor
(Located behind the Post Office along Jln Besar)
Tel: 012-350 9900
GPS Coordinate: N3 01.330 E101 42.292

Operation: Closed on every Monday

1. Spicy Soup or "Lat Tong" 辣汤
This is the signature dish of the restaurant. It is very spicy soup, with the mixture of chicken, intestine, meat, pork tripe etc. Most of all, it contains lot of pepper. This is the best soup we have ever had, especially during the rainy days or winter time (hope we have winter in Malaysia). After we drank the soup, we were sweating a lot. It was still boiling hot when the soup is served. A small portion will do for 2 person like us.

2. Clay Pot Chicken or 花雕鸡

This is another dish that we usually ordered when we came over here. It was cooked with thick black sauce, Chinese rice wine and tender chicken meat. The gravy was extremely tasty, together served with the rice. It can't stop us from eating... yummy...!!!

Langkawi Geopark

Location: Langkawi

We went to the Geopark during our annual company retreat, which this year Langkawi was the chosen destination. The group decided to join the package tour to Langkawi Geopark since we has nothing to do during our 2nd day's morning.

Langkawi Geopark is a geographical park inscribed by UNESCO that covers the entire Langkawi archipelago. The geopark status was according by Unesco to Langkawi in 2007, making it the only geopark in Southeast Asia and the 52nd under the Unesco Global Geoparks Network. The Langkawi Geopark is said to have the best exposed and most complete Palaeozoic sedimentary sequence in Malaysia, formed during the Cambrian age 450-550 million years ago. LADA is tasked to take care for the development for it.

We entered through Kilim Karst Geoforest Park, and needed 3 boats altogether to ferry us.

The first pit-stop was a bat cave. We were there to watch the bat, which most of us has seen it before. We are not allowed to use the flash to take the photos, but some irresponsible tourists took the photo with the flash on. The tour guide told us it will make the bat blind for a while, as well as disturbing them.

I was more attracted to the mangroves area, It is well preserved. Along the way, the tour guide explained to us the rock formation, cave and the plant. Besides that, there are many colorful mini crab as well as monkeys.

The 2nd pit stop, we went to floating fish farm. Over here, they rare some type of fishes, and it is mainly for tourist attraction. We begins with the stingray feeding. The tour guide teach us how to feed the stringray. Of course we took this opportunity to try it on. Besides that, we can also feed mackerel and others giant fish.

The other interesting point is we are able to see how fish able to spit water out from their mouth to get the bread. The bread actually was glued to the wood, and the fish will spit water out from its mouth directly to the bread, and it will falls down to the water. How amazing it is. The fish is not rare, but swimming freely on the open water.

On the way to our next stop, our boatman saw sea otter. He purposely drove slowly to the river bank in order for us to catch a glimpse of it. According to our tour guide, sea otter is harmless. They actually will urinate in circle, make those fishes in the circle dizzy before eating them. Averagely, sea otter needs about 4kg of fish per day to survive.

Our final destination, or the main attraction would be the eagle feeding. The eagle will actually swoop down with amazing agility to snatch the chicken guts thrown into the river by the boatmen. However, if there are too many boat around, the eagle will reluntant to comes down. Up in the sky, you will able to see few hundreds of eagle flying around zooming and waiting for the timing to snatch the food.

Củ Chi Tunnels

Just came back from Vietnam today... while waiting for my flight, suddenly "Chu Chi Tunnels" struck in my mind. I remember I had visited this place on 14th Feb (Valentine's Day) this year, instead spending more time with my then girlfriend (my wife now).

Though I have visited Ho Chi Minh many times, but this is my first visit to the tunnel. The is entrance fee, but I've forgotten how much it cost me. Hehe. In fact, in my personal opinion, this place is worth the visit. I did really experience how does the Viet Cong (known as VC) fighting with the Americans during the Vietnam War era.

These tunnels was once a network connecting underground tunnels across the Cu Chi district. It is used by the VC as hiding spot as well as hospitals, meeting points, kitchen, food storage, weapon cache etc. From another website, it stated that at its height, the tunnel with parts of it which were several levels deep, stretched over 200kms from Saigon to the Cambodian border.

During the visit, we are allowed to see what it looks like in the bunker. Some of it have fake VC doing their daily routine such as dismantling the bombs, digging tunnels etc.... which it can bring you back to the time where they are having the war.

Besides that, you may also see the remains of bombs, bomb crater, granite, old tanker etc. Others than that, there is a shooting range where one can choose which weapon they would like to use for shooting. Most of the visitors like M16, and some even choose machine gun. Different weapons come with different price, and will be provided with the bullet for shooting.

The tour guide showed us how the tunnel is working, and even enter the tunnel himself to show the size of it. However, the tunnel has been modified to cater for the larger size of tourist who can experience to enter the tunnel. In reality, the size of the tunnel is really small and this has prevented the American soldier from entering the tunnel during the war.

Besides that, the tour guide also explained in details how the booby trap is setup by the VC, made of bamboo spikes. There are lot of variances of the booby trap, about 10 different types. The tour guide explained how each trap is working and the consequences if someone falls into the trap. I only can say GOD BLESS should you falls into the trap.

At the end of the trip, I saw smoke came out from the ground. I was wondering why there is smoke suddenly came out from nowhere. The tour guide explains that there is underground kitchen. The smoke will came out when someone is cooking.

On the way out, there is lot of "showroom" where the bunker is decorated as hospital, kitchen, meeting room etc etc.... You can visit each of it. Besides that, there is video show which explains the whole story of the tunnel and also the Vietnam War. Oh yea... they make use of the car's lorry tyre to make their sandal, and it is very lasting...

Ketsana (Typhoon)... or "Kat sana"???

I was right there when the typhoon hit Manila on 26th Sept.... but lucky me... the plane able to take off, heading back to KL just in time. The night before, it was raining heavily when I went for dinner. Non-stop, till the time when I reached back hotel.

The next morning, the chauffeur arranged by the local partner here came to pick me up, it was still raining. Never in my mind that typhoon is on the way to the capital. Along the way to Clarke Airport, it keep raining. Of course being myself, I did fall asleep throughout the journey of about 2 hours.

When I received SMS from my partner who was stranded there, I know something amiss. On Sunday, when I read newspaper, only then I realized how bad the situation back in Manila. I can imagine that time how the people will suffer there. While I'm writing, another typhoon is heading to Philippine, known as Typhoon Parma.

As I think back, during my previous visit, Philippine was hit with Typhoon Durian. And this visit, another typhoon... Is this coincidence?

Kelong Acheh..... off Johore coast.....

On 12th Sept 2009, my family (and of course with my wife, mother, brother and his gf), my sister and her in-law and me set our journey to East Coast. We have planned this for quite some time, and finally we were able to set our journey early on the morning. Though this is our first trip, we only depends on the instruction available from the Kelong Acheh website.

Excited for the journey, we departed in 2 cars. We had chicken rice early in the morning, before planning for our next "pit stop" to have morning tea time.... hehehe..... We travelled all the way... Federal Highway... LDP....Karak Highway.... Exit Gambang.... heading to Pekan.... and this is our first stop... Royal town of Pahang, we trying to get our nice tea break. We found out an old looking restaurant and decided to have our break there. We ordered coffee (of course), toast bread and wan tan mee.... We decided this is the best available options, as we did not go to discover more on this small royale town of Pahang.

We continue our journey to Pulau Tioman jetty, driving along the coastal road throughout the journey. I am always excited to travel along east coast, as we can see the beaches along the way. Half way thru, my brother whom we suppose to meet at Jetty Penyabong (the jetty where we will depart to K Acheh) called us. Of course, we were lying to him that we waited for him at the jetty. Poor boy... he rushing to the jetty after arriving from his long journey from Singapore by bus, taking a cab straight away to jetty. Hahaha.... he called us, and of course we felt sorry for him. So we decided to buy him lunch since it was almost lunch hour. We stopped at our next pit stop, buying some KFC to bring in to the kelong as our lunch.

Finally, we reached at the jetty, parked our car. Here we are, at our destination. Unpack the thing, we heading to the kelong straight away. Once we reached the kelong, we waste no time. My brother, bro-in-law and me setting up our equipment and ready for our first catch. Guess what, I manage to catch a todak soon after I casting my rod. Definitely everyone was very excited about the first catch.

While we setting up the gears, the rest went to have tea time prepared by the kelong. My wife prepared the water melon and tea. Hmmm.... very tasty by default.

When night falls, we have bells on each rod. Soon, we feels tired after a day journey, sun burn while fishing... and I spent some time watching football with my wife.... Man City vs Arsenal... sien lor... Arsenal was losing the match... trailing at 3-2 when suddenly my brother shouted... "oooiii come come... got fish liao... got fish liao".... the fish ate my bait, and it's as long as my arm... after fighting for a while, the fish near the kelong... Ah Yong (the kelong's helper) help us to hook the fish up, but the fish manage to release itself and goes down beneath the kelong. We tried to bring the fish out, but too bad,.... the string not that strong... oppsss.... here the slogan came about "now you see, now you don't" :(

Suddenly everyone so energetic, setting again the rod, make sure it has bait... but for a while only... too tired we were, all of us went to sleep.

The next morning, suddenly I woke up from my sweet dream once i heard my sister shouted "i catch it liao, i catch it liao".... then only I know they already started fishing. Very soon, I joined them for it.... and manage to play around with few more todak.... But my sad feeling still there, how we lose the fish the previous night.

After the lunch, we start packing our belongings. We sent my brother to Mersing's bus station, before start our journey back to KL. Rain heavily along the way, I was too tired for my role as Ahmad. My wife took the turn to drive once we reach Karak Highway....

We decided to stop at Restoran Bukit Tinggi BBQ, but "si beh sui"... the restaurant closing when we reached there. A simple dinner was taken and heading back to our respective destination. Though very tired, but this memory will remains forever, as this is our first trip for most of us. And now, we are planning for second kelong trip this coming November with other kaki fishing member.....

For more information for Kelong Acheh, you may visit http://www.kelongacheh.com/