sorry for the late second installation of the food trip, i was momentarily distracted by a certain new shiny object, hehe….

anyway, after the asam pedas lunch at muar, we drove all the way straight to our destination.

the last time when i was here, was way back 4 years ago and boy, am i amazed by the recent developments, many new buildings seem to have sprung up overnight!

as we drove into the bustling melaka town, the familiar dryness of our throats signaled the need for some cool icy treat and so the first stop was jonker street for, chendol!

we were told that the jonker88 stall sells one of the meanest chendol in town. just a sip of the rich concoction explained why it’s one of the famous chendol in melaka. super thick gula melaka just oozing from the shaved ice, not like the syrupy diluted gula melaka normally found back home. it’s superbly rich and sweet indeed!

after our sweet delights, we explored around jonker street like tourists from err… singapore. well, most of the tourists here looked like they come from singapore anyway. :p

by now our tummy had started rumbling again and what else to do other than to find food! we wanted to try the famed asam pedas but since we had ‘em back in muar, decided to try something else. so we drove to their central shopping mall, the dataran pahlawan melaka megamall. this is a new addition to the usual mahkota parade that i used to visit 5 years back. looks like so much has changed since i last visited the area!

found a halal chicken rice shop at the basement of dataran pahlawan. we were attracted to the signage that they sold chicken rice balls here, a melaka delicacy but alas, were disappointed that the balls had sold out. so we bought the next best thing, chicken rice. quite authentic tasting chicken rice, nice! and to wash it all down with a nice bowl of chendol.

there’s a heritage gallery at the basement where you can get all types of local handcraft and foodstuff under one roof.

a trip to melaka is never complete without stopping over at umbai for the seafood. so after getting our local foodstuff like keropok at the heritage gallery, we traveled south for dinner. the place is really popular among the locals and singaporeans alike. with super fresh seafood and super reasonable price, this place is a must visit!

you just have to choose the raw seafood displayed at the many stalls there and informed the hawker on how you want it cooked. we had our fish cooked half bbq and half sambal. our squid was deep fried and it tasted soft and crunchy. here you can eat your seafood with nasi lemak, piping ones wrapped in a mini newspaper bundle, comes with either sambal or without and tasted so so good with your bbq seafood!

although it was time to go back, a road trip is not complete without a visit to a local night market. coincidentally, we past by a night market on the way back, so without any second invitation, we raided the place. since our stomach were still digesting our seafood dinner, we just took a tour around the area. not surprisingly, some of these food looked too good to miss, fortunately there’s still space in my stomach for some crispy pancake, heh!

so with that last piece of crispy pancake in my mouth, we sped back to woodlands, two super contented stuffed married men

it had been an enjoyable makan adventure for us and we look forward to the coming holidays to indulge again in our favourite pastime. well, this time we are thinking of going further, hmm…

click here to check out the complete food trip pictures!

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we thought the bar was set pretty high when we brought them to gold coast last year.
then club med surpassed it earlier this year.
but now, my friends, it looks like Disneyland has topped the list.

of course, you can blame it on the recency effect.
or, it really could have been that all the hype leading up to the trip matched their actual experience of it…

i’d wished i could have brought them to the disneyland in anaheim where i first went when i was 7 (out of sentimental reasons, obviously), and even considered bringing them to the one in orlando… but having weighed the cost and travel time, especially with two very young, very active kids, hong kong disneyland was simply the most rational choice at this point. AND, seriously, the kids wouldn’t/didn’t even know the difference.

so yeah, there were mostly asians roaming around, and all the performances were translated to cantonese, but hey, mickey is still mickey. the only question the boy raised was, “how come got so many old people here?”, referring to the hordes of senior citizen tour groups from mainland china, practically taking up entire queues in front of us each time. “i thought disneyland is for children?” i too asked the husband. apparently, disneyland is also for old people with a lot of retirement money and a desire for some heart-pumping excitement. “they should come up with a theme park for old people only, and no children allowed in,” the age-ist me brainstormed, after being elbowed by silver-haired elderly women in a 30-minute queue.

speaking of age, the kids (3+ and 6) were truly in the perfect age range to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate all the (mild) rides and shows and wonderment that disneyland offers.

there’s a new Toy Story land that just opened up, and it successfully fired up the kids’ (consumerist) obsession with all things Toy Story. and that’s the thing about disneyland – you know it’s a mega huge consumerist ‘mouse’ trap, so to speak, and yet you can’t help but be sucked into the world when you’re in it – the irresistible lovableness of the stories, the songs, the characters, right down to the merchandise OMG SO SO CUTE I WANT THAT AND THAT AND…. yeah, you see? sigh.

here’s another example how you can unwittingly get sucked into this… world. i mean, it could have been stirred by a deep, unconscious nostalgia, or PMS, but i involuntarily teared up every time a rendition of ‘A Whole New World’ by Aladdin and Princess Jasmine came up. I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND, DAMMIT.

and of course, there had to be fireworks at the end of the evening, to punctuate my already-overwhelmed senses. spectacular, dramatic, grand. finally, a guilt-free fireworks display we can enjoy without people grumbling about taxpayers’ money! ha ha!

and what’s a trip to disneyland without a pair of mouse ears, ey?

oh wait. there’s Day 2. it was sunny.

the disneyland MTR trains even adheres to the theme. SO cute. (i’m sorry, i told you i can’t help it. i mean, look at those mouse-ear handles!)

ok, last thoughts. see, there are 2 hotels within shuttling distance to disneyland – Hollywood Hotel, and Disneyland Hotel. since we went through an agency at the travel fair, they picked the Hollywood Hotel by proxy, and we didn’t really bother checking on it. only when the shuttle bus dropped off passengers at the two hotels did we realise there was a difference. the former, where we stayed in, is more ‘cost-effective’/value-for-money than the latter, which admittedly looks more posh and expensive (which it is). which made me question (to who else, but the husband), “why should there be two hotels with a difference in price, why can’t there just be ONE very nice hotel and everyone gets the same disney experience? this is discrimination!”

but it was fine anyway, because we did spend the whole two days at disneyland park itself and only came back to the hotel to wash up and sleep, and didn’t even bother with the restaurants (we had cup noodles one night and went out to HK island the next night).

the kids are still pleading with us to go to disneyland again.
cannn. but mummy has to work and earn more money first, ok?

unless….

you can find a magic carpet…

and a big blue genie in a lamp who can grant you wishes!

*cue song* A WHOLE NEW WORRRRRRRLLLLLDDDD…

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i happened to catch these trailers earlier today at Funan mall while waiting for the husband to do some shopping i had no womanly interest in whatsoever…

Snow White and The Huntsman

(it’s Thor! it’s Bella! whee!)

vs.

Mirror, Mirror

(it’s, erm, Julia Roberts.)

incidentally, i’d just read to the kids the whole set of classic Disney stories (with a pink book cover, no less), that included Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty & The Beast, The Little Mermaid, and yes, Snow White (call it post-Disneyland syndrome, gah!), so it’s a refreshing change to see less conventional female protagonists after the deluge of frilly, demure, perfectly-poised, saccharine-sweet feminine characters that the Disney machine has so successfully typified.

introducing (yes, i am well-versed in identifying them all now, post-Disneyland):

Cinderella

Belle and Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty)

Snow White (actual name)

and since it was SO HARD to hunt down these live characters around Disneyland to take pictures with (they made special celebrity-like appearances at designated times and places and if you’re a second late to join the queue, there’s no negotiating/pleading/begging their ‘minders’), here’s the full line-up (‘pirated’ figurines courtesy from a hong kong night market stall). (YES I BOUGHT THIS SET FOR AUNI HA HA.)

from left to right:
Cinderella (in blue, for the ball); Cinderella (in white, for the wedding); Belle (that’s french for Beauty, you know); Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty – she was under a kind of CIA witness protection programme, thus the many aliases); Aurora again (different dress colour because her godmothers Flora, Fauna & Merryweather couldn’t make up their minds); Snow White; Ariel (as mermaid, with tail); Ariel (as human, with legs); and Pocahontas.

and since we were on the topic of Snow White, it seems that she has travelled through time looking exactly the same, while i… err…

(Disneyland, LA – 1984)
(Disneyland, LA – 1997)

(no wonder the Queen wants her dead.)

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notes from our recent trip:

1) hong kong is almost like singapore. except, the weather’s much nicer there. it’s the beginning of winter, so it’s not too cold; exactly like the air-con temperature we’re so used to in malls and my infamous Greyville office. no humid sweating, although some days were very sunny.

2) our MRT is an almost exact replica of their MTR, right down to the clock at the platforms, it’s almost like being in a parallel dimension. we don’t take the MRT much back home, but from the incessant complaints we’ve heard about the waiting time, the frequent breakdowns, the crowd, the smells, our MTR experience was a pleasant one – efficient, clean, convenient, civil. no complaints here.

3) a lot has been said about how tiny hotel rooms generally are in hong kong that you hardly have space to navigate in, but at L’Hotel Nina where we stayed for two nights, we had two queen-sized beds, a bathtub, and a coffee table for eating, so it was as comfortable as you can get. the only thing was, it’s about 25mins away from hong kong island and kowloon area by MTR, but the station’s a nice 5-minute walk away, slightly longer if we meandered through the well-kept park in between. (see, there were even cleaners scrubbing the signposts with soapy water.)

4) their pasar malam or night markets may not have greasy ramly burgers or japanese balls, but they have a variety of counterfeit toys, bags, tees, knick knacks, kinda like hmm, petaling street in KL?

5) the Big Bus was convenient since we only had 2 days to do a sweeping ‘tour’, and alighted at popular stops, like The Peak Tram. unfortunately, it started raining when we went to The Peak so we decided not to spend money going up the sky terrace since the view would be foggy. but we did have some silly fun at Madame Tussauds wax museum and lunch at Bubba Gump.

AND I MET RPATTZ OMG. (ok fine, a wax rpattz.)

HYUUUK!

no, these are not wax figures. they’re blond, cute and norwegian. i almost asked the daddy if he knew Morten Harket of A-ha, my favourite 80s band (and the only famous norwegian i know ha ha).

6) the husband asked me to write about the hong kong-ers’ fashion sense but i told him i’m no sartorialist. he found it fascinating to see nyonyas wearing knee-high boots and leather jackets going to the wet market. ok lah, quite fashionable what. we also didn’t manage to go to any branded outlets, so we settled for the normal retail fares of H&M, etc, where price-wise, things were more or less the same as in singapore..

7) food. the one thing we were quite worried about, initially. because pork is in almost everything, apparently.

we weren’t very adventurous in hunting for halal dimsums and other local foods, because the kids simply weren’t interested in eating. and frankly, err, neither was i. (i’m not really a fan of chinese food. sorry!) so we subsisted on snacks, bread, cup noodles (which the kids considered a tasty treat, since they don’t get much of it at home), and then while we were walking around Queen’s Road at Central, aniq paused to snap some pictures of a halal sign (he’s perpetually asking if the food is halal). turned out to be a halal kebab and pizza chain, Ebeneezer’s. kids were pretty happy with the food, so we stuck to it.

ouh, xmas lights… wait, are we at Orchard Road…?

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… was what they proclaimed at the end of the first day in The Happiest Place On Earth (at least in this part of Asia).

well, that’s mummy’s birthday treat to you accomplished, then.

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1) everyone wears them here. (well, almost everyone.)
2) there are a lot of elderly people. (they too wear boots.)
3) i’ve clocked in more time on the public train system here than i have the entire year in sg.

blogging from hk, to be continued…

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gtfts, originally uploaded by izadd.

Harris Planerds @ 313 Somerset!

OMG where have I been all these while…!! I was practically salivating at the selection of books here, and had a hard time tearing myself away.

I pretend-whined to auni, my eyes roving at the beautiful covers of fiction and classics and parodies and graphic books galore: “soooo many booksssss, mummy wants to buy them alllllll…. *whine whine*”

To which she replied, “you can’t buy EEEEVERYTHING nowww!” which is EXACTLY what I always tell her whenever we’re in a toy shop, in the EXACT no-nonsense mummy tone and inflection, so.. touche. well-played. right through the heart.

I’ll be back. (sans the 3yo nag.)

(found the ‘Go The F* To Sleep‘ picture book which I don’t think can be found elsewhere in sg, and which will go straight onto mummy’s off-limits book cabinet.)

And remember, boys and girls: always mind your language. tsk tsk.

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i like love zebras. only because they’re black & white.

of course, auni has to like love unicorns. because, as she will tell you, with all the wisdom and solemnity of a 3.5-yr-old, “unicorns can MAGIC, you know.”

aniq likes likes rhinos. they have horns too, he says, but they’re REAL. i guess he’s more of a pragmatic, being all of almost-6-yrs-old.

(update on auni’s progress on spelling the word ‘zoo’: she no longer spells it as “o-z-z”. she has since been rehabilitated and now spells it as the socially-accepted “z-o-o”. i kinda liked it better as ozz, really…)

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we really have to thank Is for suggesting club med ria @ bintan for the june holidays. as it turned out, we had such a wonderful time that we decided to extend our 3D2N trip to one more day, and the deal was made sweeter with the resort’s general manager’s persuasion (and generous offer).

there, that’s the GM, with the GOs. she is truly an amazing person, but more on her later.

you might think, “meh, bintan? what’s so great about it, it’s so near, and for that amount of money, it’s surely not worth it.” well we did spend over $2k for a family of four for a resort merely 45 minutes away from sg. it included not just the hotel rooms (we had two adjoining rooms – one for the kids and one for us) and ferry ride, but well, almost everything else on the resort. food, drinks, kids’ and adults’ activities were covered. and i think most importantly, the superb service from every staff on the resort made the experience especially worthwhile.

lets begin with the food and drinks: FREE FLOW. the spread of food? REALLY good (especially the desserts, OMG). and with breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea breaks, and supper served continuously, you and your kids NEVER go hungry. there are two restaurants, one with a sumptuous buffet (where GOs randomly sit in, dine and have interesting conversations with you); and the other where you order from a menu (overlooking the beach for a more quiet, romantic ambience).

the thing we liked very much about the resort was that it’s very child-friendly. everything seemed to be designed with the child in mind, even their toilets. the bar too had a special section for kids only…

they go to lengths to ensure that kids are well taken care of, so that parents can choose to go do their own things without worrying about the kids. there are scheduled activities if you sign them up at the kids’ clubs (they have different age categories), and you do feel safe with them under the GOs. plus, they’re all so high-energy and entertaining, the kids were simply drawn to them.

aniq was in the Mini Club (4 – 7 years old), and they had things like swimming (in the kids’ pool, which is separate from the main pools), tennis, basketball, games, movies, beach soccer, circus theatre… if your kids like socialising, they’ll fit right in. we were pretty surprised at the large number of kids from toddlers to teens at the resort, actually.

and the best part, they sometimes prepare for performances at night. yes, there’s a show with a different theme EVERY night – one of the highlights of the day, where we kick back after dinner, sip on mocktails and be entertained.

check out the Fashion Show rehearsal…

and on Show night itself…

great fun and exposure for the kids on stage.

oh and so what DID the parents do while the kids were busy? hmm.. i had to admit i was a little lost for a while without the kids making me crazy, so we filled our time by err, eating, exploring, siesta-ing, yoga-ing (we even did aqua-aerobics ha ha), chilling, and… ahem, checking out the GOs with their hot tans. :p

we had a beach party on one of the days, which was really for the kids. they had a tie dye event, danced with the GOs, played volleyball, and indulged in lots of finger foods, sweets and snacks (it’s okaaay, they’re on vacation…).

there were sea sports activities, which i admit i never thought i’d do. aniq and i had our first kayaking experience, and izad had windsurfing and sailing lessons…

the water was very clear, and deceptively shallow, so it was pretty safe for the kids at the beach. in the morning, we fed fishes with bread we pilfered from the buffet. i think the resort probably has the best part of the beach on the island.

and after the beach, we spent plenty of time at the pool. (it’s a month later and i still have them tan lines.)

being on an island, the weather swayed from super sunny to sudden showers, but the resort was always ready for wet weather. as soon as it poured, there was food set up indoors and GOs passing around board games to guests taking refuge from the rain. we were so impressed; the place was a well-oiled machinery.

and it’s all thanks to this lady, the aforementioned GM. not only does she manage the resort, she’s almost everywhere, popping up to talk to guests, hosting the show every night, and as you’d have it, she also dances on stage, in full costume and doing many complicated numbers. and this was the best part – on the Fashion Show night, she’d memorised the names of EVERY single adult and kid on stage who took part (and if you look, there were about 50 or so, some who’d just arrived). don’t know how she does it, she’s got super photographic memory or something. she didn’t even refer to any paper, just jumped right in to introduce everyone with a “give it up for [insert name]! give it up to the beautiful [insert name]!” so on and so forth. everyone was talking about it the next day.

so, yes, our first club med experience was DEFINITELY worth it, nevermind that it’s only 45 minutes away and on a hardly-exotic island.

and the kids? they’re still talking about it. and i’m very sure this’ll rank high up on their list of favourite holidays.

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recently on our awesome club med holiday, there’s one thing that stands out in my mind. maybe not one thing but more of a collective bunch of people. more commonly known as GOs or Gentils Organisateurs (Gracious/Nice Organizers) they assist the resort manager or chef de village in running of the resort and boy, they really do a pretty mean job! they make the guests, called GMs, or Gentils Membres (Gracious/Nice Guests/Members) feel really at home with their warm and ever so friendly and approachable personalities. they even join us for lunch and dinner at random!

other than having good hospitality skills, they posses an incredible wow factor – talent. some can sing, dance, act and the chef de village can memorise more than 60 different names in 20 minutes, no joke! and this guy below, yep the AYAM man, can mimic the crow of the rooster.

don’t believe me, take a listen below.

the GOs really do have one of the best jobs in the world!!

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briefly, about our brief trip up to port dickson over the vesak day holiday.

we got confused between The Legend Water Chalets and The Legend International Water Homes, which were right next to each other, the latter being a newer hotel with what appeared to be better facilities and had those talked-about indoor pools within the rooms. our room itself wasn’t too bad, really. (the kids loved the bathtub, but of course.) the homes were built over water, which was something of a novelty.

we didn’t have indoor pools, but there were glass panels on the floor. to, err, look into the water beneath. not that there was much to see…

well, except sludge, at low tides.

i had some explaining to do to the kids about the changing tides and water levels which they observed throughout the day. i hope they don’t remember any of it though. coz i may have made up a few facts along the way…. /sciencefail.

the seaview. i also had to explain why the water was green. i said i’d get back to them. (i haven’t.)

kids needed to be entertained, so we rented some trike karts to explore the place.

there was a small outdoor playground. (there’s a small indoor one too, but the ball pit and lego sets were mostly faded, dusty, and quite sad-looking.) there were a few rabbits for petting, and a common pool, crowded with locals (we joked that since it wasn’t the International Water Homes, it must be the Domestic ones). there were also a few jacuzzis – none of which worked. lol.

the kids wanted to see ostriches, so ostriches we went to see. the ostrich farm was exactly the way we imagined a tourist attraction in a sleepy town would be, heh heh. and no, we did not try any ostrich satays. (who knows whether they’re really ostrich meat? i can’t imagine they’d slaughter any of the limited number of ostriches there for the mere consumption of a handful of tourists each day… ok lah, maybe they’re frozen imports of actual farmed ostriches. but still!)

the boy, ever game to try out something new, had a ride on one of them birds. the poor thing (the ostrich, not the boy) had its eyes covered with a sock so it wouldn’t run amok. he (the boy, not the ostrich) later received a certificate for the ride (for RM3).

now, what’s a trip to malaysia without trying out the roadside fares, right? so says the husband. he was pretty excited when we drove past this ‘cowboy’ place. there were loads of hot, steaming barbecued chicken on display. very clever, i say, coz that sure drew in diners. and at RM5 for a set with rice, soup and drink.

now, let me talk about a perennial problem we had while dining in PD. we had a lot of battles… WITH FLIES. they were not just outdoors, they were indoors too, in the malls where we ate.

they were everywhere, pesky and persistent, and drove everyone, in particular aniq, absolutely crazy (and pissed). LOL.

oh look, it’s high tide again.

bed time. we had two king sized beds. the kids watched episodes of CSI and House with me till late at night. i’ve been missing out on a lot of tv. (when did grissom and sara get married?? and house is sleeping with cuddy?!)

we drove up to KL for a night since it’s less than an hour away from PD, and stayed near Berjaya Times Square which had an indoor theme park. it wasn’t too bad – the rides were mostly kid-friendly, and since there was hardly a crowd (just a handful of tourists), there was virtually no queuing time, so the kids could go on the rides again and again and again. mummy and daddy had to try the monstrous-looking roller coaster, so we got one of the counter girls to watch the kids (who were bribed with cotton candy to stay still) while we went on it. (i am glad to report that no children were lost/kidnapped during this time.)

as is tradition when a trip to KL materialises, i had my fix of Carl’s Jr. burgers. (i can NEVER make up my mind when choosing from the menu, to the husband’s frustration. so hard when you have limited time and stomach capacity!) drove up to The Curve in damansara and had one of our favourite things – Bubba Gump’s shrimps.

THE END.

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upward dog, originally uploaded by izadd.

(or just trying very hard to peer down the streets of KL from a hotel window sill.)

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what do you do when you have equally bored kids and parents?

taken at kl parkroyal hotel, room 1520, level 15, under strict parental supervision

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