Fondue of Life

Din Tai Fung @ Baits

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:49:00 +0000

With such a short Chinese New Year break this year, I could hardly go anywhere far. But one good thing about living in JB is the fact that whenever we feel like it, we can easily cross the causeway and bring ourselves to Fine City, Singapore. I went to Resorts World Sentosa with my family during Chinese New Year this year and the main reason is really to go eat at Din Tai Fung @ Baits there.

I know there are several Din Tai Fung outlets around Singapore and even KL, so why all the way to Resorts World Sentosa just for Din Tai Fung right? Well, truth is although Din Tai Fung has many outlets but they are all not quite the same. Some are more premium than the others while some have exclusive dishes made available only to that designated outlet. And the one at Resorts World Sentosa is one such outlet. Unlike it's other counterparts, Din Tai Fung at Resorts World Sentosa is a conjoint with Baits and even awarded Michelin star.

Long queues outside the restaurant. We waited like 20-30 minutes before we finally got a table

So, what makes Din Tai Fung @ Baits different from the rest? Other than having the Michelin Star and being more upmarket (thus they even serve black truffle xiao long bao), some of the dishes made specially available to the outlet are like nyonya curry fish head in claypot, Hong Kong class steamed cod fillet with superior soy sauce, cantonese sweet and sour pork, homemade bean curd and sea prawns on sizzling hot plate, beef sirloin with black pepper sauce on sizzling hot plate, crispy prawns with plump lychees and juicy peaches and crispy chicken wings marinated in shrimp paste. Surely a twist from their signature xiao long baos and fried rice.

The first dish that came - Braised beancurd with mince meat

We decided to try one of the exclusive signature dish - the Hong Kong class steamed cod fillet with superior soy sauce. The cod is really fresh and it goes rather good with the soy sauce

Pork chop fried rice - the fried rice is a MUST-TRY! Their fried rice is simply good

Springy noodle with special sauce. I actually think this is too plain on top of the fact that it totally lacks of any ingredients. To be honest, I don't quite like the noodles from Din Tai Fung. While they are good with their fried rice and xiao long baos, I still like their arch rival (Dragon-I) noodles better

Stir fried spinach - I'm not much a fan of vegetable, but this plate of simple looking spinach deserves some compliment for being stir fried so well I found myself ended up taking helpings after helpings of it

Steamed red bean bun - the red bean filling is pretty good but I don't like the fact that skin of the bun is a tad too hard

Steamed chilli crab + pork bun

The interior of the bun. I pretty much like this too. The combination of chili crab and pork in a bun is definitely something refreshing to the palate

Their signature pork xiao long baos (steamed pork dumplings). I really really love their pork xiao long baos alot. Xiao long baos are like one of my comfort food. They always makes me crave for them

Grass jelly (cincau) with black glutinous rice - this is like a perfect Chinese desert on a hot day. Refreshing and cooling, this also leaves me craving for more

While the other typical Din Tai Fung dishes are as satisfying as usual, I think the exclusive dish like the cod fish is pretty worth the try as well. I find dishes at Din Tai Fung less oily and less salty comparatively, a more healthier option for those who are health conscious but still wants to enjoy sumptious xiao long baos and whats not definitely.

Gong Xi Gong Xi

So quickly , it's already the 6th day of CNY. I believe most of us are back to work already. Which, in retrospective, being a student is so much more enjoyable especially during the festive season where you get like one week break straight. Anyways, stay safe, stay healthy and continue enjoying the rest of the festive season. :)

Din Tai Fung @ Baits,
26 Sentosa Gateway,
#01-217/222 The Forum,
Level 1 @ Resorts World Sentosa, Singapore

PS : This is not a paid advertorial or review. All opinions are based on yours truly point of view only. As one man meat may be another man poison, yours truly is not responsible for any discrepancy in taste or opinion. :)

Charlie Brown Cafe Penang, Malaysia

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:42:00 +0000

While I was shopping in Singapore the other day at Somerset 313, I came across a Charlie Brown Cafe which remind me of the one we have in Penang, only ours have an even more extensive and complete collection of the Peanuts gang. I haven't had chance to check out the one open in KL but sometime ago when I was in Penang, I managed to squeeze in some time to go hang out at our first Charlie Brown cafe at Straits Quay, Penang. I felt like a blissful little girl sitting there drinking hot chocolate and eating cakes while being surrounded by so many of my fav cartoon characters, Snoopy especially.

Charlie Brown Cafe, Penang

Even the wall outside has the entire gang on it

Charlie Brown says welcome :)

The interior of the cafe

Cappuccino with Lucy on it

Hot chocolate with Snoopy on it! ♥

♥♥♥

They also have tiramisu with Charlie Brown on it

Classic cheesecake

Baked potato wedges with ham and cheese

We only ate some cakes and finger food because the rest of the time was spent taking pictures around the cafe. I mean with so many of the cute figurines around, we just can't resist taking pictures can't we? Furthermore, being in Penang, it's all about non stop eating, so we had to reserve our tummy for more food later.

I ♥ Snoopy. My fav beagle definitely

The many different version of Snoopy. I wish I could bring them all back

There's even a Peanuts gang chess set. How cute!

Oops!

Charlie Brown : "Thanks for visiting." :)

Straits Quay, Penang

The Peanuts gang is technically everywhere in the cafe, from figurines to plush toys to drawings on the wall to paintings to the lights and lamps. Even the television is playing the famous comic. If you are a fan of the comic strip, like me, you'll definitely be in seven heaven surrounded by all the cute and lovely Peanuts gang. To be honest, the food is nothing much to shout about, but just sitting amidst while marveling at all the Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Woodstock, Lucy and the rest of the gang makes the visit worth it. So, if you are a fan of the comic strip, don't miss the opportunity to drop by for a cup of coffee or chocolate the next time you are in Penang (or KL for the KL branch). :)

Charlie Brown Cafe

Lot No: 3A-1-17 & 18, Block A,

First Floor, Straits Quay,

Jalan Seri Tanjung Pinang,

Tanjung Tokong,

10470, Penang, Malaysia

PS : This is not a paid advertorial/ review. All review is based on yours truly point of view only. Hence, yours truly is not responsible for any discrepancy in taste or opinion. :)

Kampachi at JPO

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:31:00 +0000

My love for Japanese food has always send me on a lookout for any new and good Japanese restaurant around. There's plenty of Japanese restaurants in Johor Bahru, but not many are exactly good. The few Japanese restaurants that I really like are like Ninja Jones and Sushi Zanmai but unfortunately they are not available to us Johor Bahru folks.

The latest to add to the list of mushrooming Japanese restaurants around town is none other than Kampachi at the Johor Premium Outlets (JPO). Food there are kinda pricey but pretty much worth it. I wouldn't say it's the best Japanese restaurant around but the standard of quality is definitely there. The salmons and unagi are fresh and juicy and I really like their macha ice cream a lot. Not forgetting, the staff there are all very friendly and helpful. I had been there twice and both left me with a pleasant dining experience. So, go to Kampachi if you feel like pampering yourselves a little with good Japanese food. :)

Kampachi Maki - tuna, avocado and crabstick topped with grilled eel

Shake Aburi Maki - seared salmon roll topped with grilled eel

Satsuma Age Homemade - deep fried home made fish cake

Seafood teppanyaki set that also comes with rice, salad and soup

Sliced duck miso ramen

Saba Teriyaki set - grilled mackerel with teriyaki sauce. You can choose between the mackerel, pike, salmon or cod and if you prefer salty, you can always opt for salt over teriyaki sauce

Macha ice cream with red bean, my favourite desert of all time. This is like really good. Although still can't beat the one I had in Japan, but close enough. Feed me this and I'll be happy :)

Ok now that you have gotten hungry from staring all those food pics, go feed yourself. I know I'm gonna cont feeding myself with all those awesome CNY cookies. Till then, toodles! :)

The Johor Premium Outlets

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:56:00 +0000

Happy Dragon Year all!

As part of the Chinese tradition, every Chinese New Year, on the first day, all Chinese will don on everything new from head to toe, be it new clothes, new shoes, new belt etc to welcome the brand new year in the Chinese calendar. Hence, it's the perfect reason to go shopping of course! :)

And this year, we Johoreans have somewhere new to go shopping; the Johor Premium Outlets (JPO). Opened recently in December last year, it is the latest buzz around town. With more than 80 outlets like Burberry, Coach, DKNY, Armani, Michael Kors, Roxy etc, I was really excited to go check out the place.

I went there with HT about 2 weeks ago, about 1 month after their opening and perhaps it was a week day, the crowd was very much bearable. During their initial opening period and especially on weekends and public holidays, the crowd was maddening. My mum said there was long queues outside Coach and Burberry all the time and the whole place was pack with people it was so difficult to shop.

Located at Indahpura, Kulaijaya, it's about 45 minutes drive from Johor Bahru.

The Johor Premium Outlets

Yay, time for shopping!


Besides Burberry, Coach, Armani, DKNY, Zegna, Michael Kors, La Senza and CK, they also have outlets like Cotton On and Charles and Keith there. The first Charles and Keith in JB! Yay! Honestly, I'm pretty happy with the stuff they have at the outlets. I mean, the stuff there are all pretty decent still, not just oversize, long out of season stuff that most outlets usually sell. Of course, most of the stuff are still off season but some are actually specially designed for the outlets itself. Besides, they have discounts of up to like 10-70% at almost all their outlets which makes the stuff there cheaper than their usual retail prices. It's like in La Senza you could get underwears at 6 for RM 80; jeans at Levis and GAP for RM 99, sandals and shoes at Charles and Keith at RM 40; jeans at CK at RM 350; dresses at DKNY for RM 600; a jacket at Nike for RM 150, bikinis from Roxy and Rip Curl for RM 100 etc. Even our very own Padini and Vincci has their outlets there and their stuff is seriously like super discounted. I just wish they have Zara, Topshop or Radley too. Though I must say, not everything is super real cheap. Some are just slightly cheaper than usual which makes the price the same as outside stores on discounts too. You have to take time to source for the real goodies. And of course having discounts now helps too. But whether all their stuff will maintain this cheap all year round with the further discounts or will the prices be very much the same as outside stores on discounts remains very much to be find out.

Our load after an afternoon shopping. Hehe :)

So after a day shopping at JPO, let's take a look at my steals that day. Just in case you guys like to know what are the prices like, I also include the prices of the stuff I had bought. :)

Bought this bag from Fossil- RM 450. I really like this bag but darn robbers took it that day as well.

Another bag from Fossil. Bought this as a gift so not going to reveal the price. :p. I really like the vintage bags from Fossil. ♥

Clutch from Charles and Keith- RM 60.

Cotton On spree

More from Cotton On. All of these for only RM 200+

Working shirt from G2000 - Rm 40


Shirts from Padini - RM 80 for 2

Charles and Keith sandal - RM 40

Charles and Keith wedge - RM 50

Aside from shopping at JPO, been shopping a little at Singapore too. teehee

I couldn't resist this shirt from Forever 21. Look at all the Scottie dogs. So cute

Got these from H & M

Blazer from H & M

More accessories from H & M

Ballerina flats from H & M.

Another oxford shoe to the collection ♥

This has totally nothing to do with my shopping spree but got the iphone 4s not too long ago only to have it robbed last week! :( But it's only after I lost the phone did I realize the full potential and also the downside of the 4s, particularly the iCloud. I mean seriously I don't exactly get how the iCloud is really beneficial until I had lost the phone. It was then only I realized had I turn on all the applications in iCloud (which includes the Find my iPhone function), I will be able to retrieve them now from any pc as long as I have an iCloud and iTune account. But with the 4s having such an extremely short battery life (seriously it couldnt even last me throughout my shift which is like 12 hours), it's almost impossible to keep all the applications running all the time which then make all those smart apps redundant. Even with wifi and data plans turn off, the battery goes flat in like 10 hours (just using for phone calls alone). Besides Siri is kinda really dysfunctional. I mean at least for users out of the U.S region. It's only fun because it's so lame it will reply you with so much crap but when you really wants it to search for serious stuff, it cannot work or function properly. So, I dno if I be getting another 4s but with Siri being not exactly attractive and it's extremely short battery life, I'm seriously having second thoughts.

For full listings of all the outlets at JPO or how to get there etc, you can check out their website here. Alright, that's all for now. Stay safe and stay healthy this Chinese New Year. Once again, Gong Hee Fatt Choi everyone! :)

Of Marina Bay Sands Skypark and Good Times

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Just a few days ago, something traumatizing occured. It's honestly true that unless you had personally experience something, you can never understand the pain/ fear/ trauma etc. You can empathize but you can never fully understand the kind of feeling until you have had that kind of personal experience. I suffered some material loss but I thank God for keeping me safe. Anyways, let's not talk about the unhappy stuff in this coming festive season and look at the recent good times I'm blessed with amidst the stressful rotation I'm in now.

Last Christmas morning, I was treated to a beautiful view of Singapore from the Skypark at Marina Bay Sands. The view of course was even more gorgeous at night with the blinking lights from the city below illuminating our senses. But imho, the coolest thing about the Skypark is probably the infinity pool where one gets to swim right until the edge and enjoys the city view from there; both in the day and at night. It was a gloomy morning with mild drizzle and at 200 metres height, it was also chilly with the wind blowing hard. There were also restaurants at the skypark and unlike many conventional restaurants, some of the restaurants there allow customers to place orders and then have their meals anywhere within the skypark. Which means to say, you can have your meals by the pool literally if you want to. However, the downside of the skypark being as large as it is, there is only one whirlpool available that overlooks the South China Sea and a pretty small one indeed and it was fully occupied fast. Nonetheless, since we had complimentary entrance to the skypark, I shall not complain.

The view from the Skypark in the day

The night view

The edge of the infinity pool. There's this photography section specially designed for photo-taking purposes so that you can also get a feel of the view from the edge even for non-swimmers

After spending about an hour at the skypark, we decided to head to the adjoining mall, the Marina Bay Sands shopping mall for breakfast. While I do enjoy my simple breakfast of hot chocolate with toasted bread or nasi lemak or dim sum, I was craving for English breakfast for a long time now and as we walked past TWG Tea, their sweet aroma got our nose hooked.

Claim the finest luxury tea brand of the world and honestly, other than the super extensive tea selections which will definitely make you spoilt for choice, TWG is truly like a heaven for tea gastronomers with tea being woven into every aspect of their meal from tea chocolates to tea patisseries.

We were truthfully bedazzled by their extensive list of teas coming from every nick and corner around the world; from America to Africa to China to England and even our very own Cameron, their tea comes from every tea producing country imaginable. Then there's the black, red, white and green tea and being no tea professionals, it took us a while to digest in the whole list complete with their description. Finally we took our pick on this tea with a very lovely name, Valentine something (sorry I couldn't remember anymore) which is really a cup of white and green tea mixture which was superbly awesome. The aroma from the tea was just as exquisite as they taste and it was like we could just sit there and sniff the tea forever.

Our breakfast set also comes with scones with orange jam and sour cream, chestnut cake and scallop carpaccio. The breakfast set costs us like SGD 50++, pricey but pretty much worth the splurge since the food was overall good especially the tea. The only thing I didn't exactly like was the chestnut cake though which was too sour to my liking.

Scallop carpaccio - awesomeness

Chestnut cake with chestnut macaroons! It was just too sour!

TWG also has all these sweet little tea infuse macaroons which is so so good especially the mint one (the white one). This little treasures totally melts in the mouth and it's such pleasure to the palate.In the past, I used to wonder why are so many people so crazy over macaroons when the ones I had tried were all just so-so but now I know why. It takes the right ones to make you fall in love :p

We spent the rest of our day at Universal Studio Singapore before heading down to Clarke Quay for dinner that night.

We decided to go Mexican for dinner and strolling along the busy Clarke Quay, we stumbled onto Muchos whick look just like the perfect place to chill.

Drinks

Nachos - soooo good they just melt right in your mouth

Chicken burritos - this TOPS everything else we had that night. Their burritos is so superb terrific I'm like craving for it right now. And you can actually get them to cut up your burrito so it's easier and neater to eat them *hungry*

Black pepper pork ribs - this is just decent, nothing too extraordinary

Grilled salmon - this is good too albeit it still losing out to the burrito

@ Muchos, Clark Quay - Overall, we had an enjoyable dinner with the food satisfying and leaves me craving for more (burritooooo!!). And being by the riverside makes it a good place to just chill out while enjoying the cool river breeze.

On a totally unrelated note, sometime in the mid of last month, the Orthopaedic department of my hospital had a get-together dinner theme the Orthopaedic night at Grand Paragon Hotel and I not only attended but was also part of the performance. My part of performance was nothing to shout about but what I really love was the costume. I mean seriously being in OG, I realized how much I had missed all the laughter in Ortho even more. And since I had no time to get involve in the preparation for the performance, it wasn't until the night before only did I found out about all the great costume the marvellous, creative girl behind the whole thing had designed and put together.

Seriously I had to say kudos to her for thinking up all these costumes and assembling materials found around the Orthopaedic ward and finally put them together into a fashionable piece of costume.

My Tinkerbell like dress is seriously just made up of bandages. And the girl next to me is none other than the marvellous creative costume designer with her dress made up of aprons, you know the disposable kind. Then M, the 'prince' with his sword had his black cloak made up of some disposable item from the ward as well, H had cut up IVD botttles as part of her costume and finally Hana had like an entire bottom half of her dress made of disposable gloves! Cool, no?

Another one with the rest of my cool 'models'

Nice colleagues

I had been attending a lot of weddings of late too and just in the past month alone, I had attended two weddings!

Kit's Hawaiian themed wedding - but no, there's no hula girls whatsoever. Haha!

Janice, another long time friend also got hitched!

And finally, despite how stressful or difficult life/ work has it for us, with great support from our family and wonderful companions, they are certainly the reason for the rays of sunlight in our life. :)

Ushering in 2012 together :)

Transformers, The Ride at Universal Studio Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:04:00 +0000

One and the half years after my last visit to Universal Studio Singapore (click to read), I recently revisited the colourful, vibrant theme park last month, on Christmas day to be exact. Well, the much anticipated and awaited TRANSFORMERS ride had just recently made it's debut at the USS, being the world's first in fact (premiered on the 3rd of December 2011). Hence, me and HT decided to go check out the much talk about ride. Afterall, Transformers is one of my favourite movie with the first sequel completely got me all smitten.

During the initial opening of the ride, rumours had it that eager riders had to queue like 2 hours just to experience the 4 minutes ride. So, I considered ourselves really lucky to only have to queue for 1 hour on a public holiday before we get to go on the ride. Honestly, there were so many people that day I kinda prepared myself for a 3 hours queue at first.

So, the verdict? After so many positive feedbacks that I had heard prior to our visit, of course I kinda had high expectation for it. And Transformers, the ride truly did not disappoint. Seriously, the ride is super duper awesome and cool. Ok, I don't want to get your expectations too high because you know, sometimes when you have too high hopes/ expectation on something, you are most likely to be disappointed in the end but honestly if you just sit back and absorb the ride, you'll truly enjoy it as it is something really different and brilliant.

We put on our 3D glasses and got into EVAC, the awesome new robot responsible for taking us into the surreal world of Transformers.

Transformers the Ride, the world's first of it's kind!

The queue - look at the amount of people

Ever wonder what is it like to be controlling all those complicated buttons you often see in movies?

The general giving his commands to all of us, his brave fighters to be!

Meet Evac, the exclusive one that will be taking us all helping the Autobots to defeat the Decepticons

Two thumbs up for the ride definitely! ♥

I didn't know what to expect out of the ride initially other than knowing it is gonna be a 4D experience but truth to be told, it is nothing like the usual 4D motion master at all. After we got into Evac, he sped off leading us into endless appearing curved giant screens with the vehicle movement matching the actions on the screen so ingeniously you almost never realized the screen change. It felt so real as you literally got pulled through offices, jumping over robots, got suck down vortex, flying between skyscrapers and dropping off edges. And of course, the ever so cleverly time 4D effect makes the whole ride really fun and cool. We really love the ride and it makes the time spent queing worth it. :)

Bumblebee ♥

We spent the rest of our time at USS exploring and trying out rides that we haven't had chance to try previously as they were still close during our visit then.

Went on the Human vs Cylon which nearly turn my legs jelly.The Cylon is insane. We didn't get to go on the Human because there was some technical error and the management had to close it temporarily that day but the Cylon is enough to make you scream all your stress away. It's one of those roller coaster that has your leg hanging in the air and as it does all it's insane 360 degree turns, upside down, zooming at super high speeds, my heart literally turns 360 degree too doing all those little gymnastic stunts twice as much.

We also went on the Mummy's ride which is just as scary and exciting. Being in the dark creates the suspense and thrill that outdoor roller coaster can't beat. So, in the dark, we were sped off going up and down, front and back (yes, you heard me right. This is one roller coaster that will surprised you by going backwards) as I screamed my lungs out, grasping HT so tightly on the arm I might had created a hematoma.

We went on a few more rides later that night (USS extended their business hours to 9pm that day) but skipped most of the attractions and rides we had previously tried mainly because there were just toooooooo many people that day and all rides had super long queues of people and we were too lazy to join in the queue.

Let's see some of the characters we met and greeted that day. Puss In Boots Christmas edition doing the cute pose. Haha!

Woody Woodpecker - the female one

Gloria with her Christmas hat

Po, so super cute with his scarf

New York street at night

Fireworks to end the night

The whole theme park was in a very festive mood that day and being Christmas, we were all treated to a spectacular 10 minutes of fireworks performance before the night ended. USS is definitely much more worth a visit now than previously as the more scary, thrilling and heart challenging rides are now open. It was definitely an amazing day with the Transformers ride truly amazing us. Autobots, way to go! :)

Taiwan : Tamsui and Shida Night Market

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:28:00 +0000

The past 3 weeks had been pretty hectic. Just as I was getting familiar with one rotation, it was time to move on to the next rotation and it's like starting all over again. And sometimes in the midst of readjusting, coping, learning, fumbling, trying to impress, trying to prove your worthiness, trying to prove your capability, earning trust and balancing everything else in between, it's easy to lose who you really are if you dont watch your steps carefully.

So I had been welcoming newborns into our world as they greeted me with their cries, meconiums, blood, gush of their amniotic fluid, backache from repairing episiotomies and tears and whats not. Of course, there's more to OG than just conducting deliveries but I don't want to bore you with the details for now. For now, let's just wrap up my Taiwan travelogue.

I spent my last day in Taiwan back in Taipei. Just a recap on my entire route in Taiwan, I went from Taipei to Hualien (in the east) to Kenting (in the south) and at last, back to Taipei again. You can read my other Taiwan posts as below (in case you had missed it previously :p) :
Taipei - Beitou Hot Springs
Taipei - Ximending and Taipei 101
Taipei - Shihlin Night Market
Hualien City and Taroko Gorge
Kenting - Part 1
Kenting - Part 2

So we spent the morning exploring around the place we lived, the main train station vicinity before moving on to Tamsui (aka as Danshui) and the Shida night market later at night. Seriously the newly renovated Taipei main station is one huge train station. You can really get lost in the train station if you had missed taking note of your entrance point initially. Besides having restaurants and a food court, they also have shops, boutiques and a departmental store which just opened in March/April this year. It is recommended in Lonely Planet and by our hostel owner that the food court in the train station is a good place for breakfast hence we headed there hoping much to try some local breakfast. However, the food court aka Breeze court is more like a high class international food court which occupies the entire second floor with different sections selling cuisines from all around the world. They have a Taiwan section alright, but I was hoping to try something local and cheap, something like our traditional nasi lemak and roti canai if you know what I mean.

Breeze court - the Taiwan section

My bowl of soup noodle with braised egg and prawn

Just around the corner outside the Taipei train station, we later discovered these wide array of shops that sells plenty of local food and yummy smelling breakfast all at prices at least half of what we had paid at Breeze court. We managed to squeeze in a little more food but too full to try the rest :(

A bubble tea shop! I know bubble tea is like the hallmark of Taiwan but I think due to the whole bubble tea controversy and scare this year, the number of bubble tea stalls and shops seemed to have markedly reduce with mushrooming of fruit juices stalls instead now

So, I had to try but just 1 cup of bubble tea at least right? I mean I can't possibly leave the land of origin of bubble tea without trying the bubble tea. It will be like going to Japan without eating ramen or going to South Korea without eating ginseng or going to USA without eating hamburgers

In Taiwan, they have black and also white bubbles! The best part is, their bubbles are larger, much more chewy and bouncy compared to our local ones. It's too bad they poses such health risk to us human

We also found this beancurd stall which sells like really awesome beancurds. Not only does this aunty sells hot beancurds, she also sells cold beancurds that was perfect for a hot day.

A secret hideout

The cold bean curd with barley. Tasted really refreshing and good

The 228 peace memorial park which is also near the Taipei main station

I really like this pic. Everybody happy natural laughter XD

After lazing at the park, I went on Tamsui (Danshui) to meet up with my friend from Taiwan. Tamsui district, located about 45 minutes from Taipei city by metro is conveniently accessible and is unique and rich with history and culture. It is a very walkable town, making it easy for us to explore the place on foot. Although located near to Taipei, it's much more relaxing to stroll along the riverside here while admiring their historical sites and tasting their local delights. And in case you didn't know previously (like me), Tamsui is also birth place and home to mega Taiwan superstar, Jay Chou and a large part of his movie, Secret was filmed in this popular town itself.

The Tamsui MRT station. So vintage in brick red

The street in front of the famous Gongming Street (fondly known as the Old Street as well)

The variety of sausages. I was intrigued by the black ones and learnt that they are actually squid sausages. Tried that and it tasted not too bad honestly

My friend said the shop with the yellow arrow pointing sells the best pastries and cookies in Tamsui but I personally don't quite like the pastries and cookies there (they gave me samples to try)

Tamsui Gongming Street - certainly not for the agoraphobia.The pedestrian street with shops lining both side of the street selling mainly local Tamsui specialties like the iron eggs, A-Gei and super tall ice creams, arcades, traditional handicrafts and even the Taiwan version of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. The street was super crowded with pedestrians granted it was also a weekend that day

This is known as A-Gei, it's a Tamsui specialty. It's basically deep fried tofu that has been stuffed with crystal noodles sealed with fish paste and served with moderately hot spicy sauce. I do like the taste of it and I think it's certainly worth a try in Tamsui

The super tall ice cream. Mine is a combo of honeydew and corn flavor. Well, the ice cream itself is nothing too extraordinary but it's a touristy thing to just try it since we don't usually see super long ice creams anywhere else

Aside from super huge fruits, they have super huge peanuts too! Seriously those peanuts are for real

Another of Taiwan hallmark and Tamsui specialty - the Taiwan iron eggs. However, just like the bubbles, the Taiwan iron eggs are under much controversy now and all the shops were trying very hard to sell off their eggs by claiming that their eggs are produced with so and so ingredients etc not posing health risks and such

The pink guavas. Notice how huge the guavas are too? Sorry I couldn't help it. All the fruits are so huge in Taiwan I can't help exclaiming how huge they are

Another fruit juice stall with their wide selection of juices

Fresh, steam seafood like squids and ikan bilis that you can eat as snacks

After exploring and eating along Gongming Street, it was time to do a little walking tour around Tamsui to burn off those extra calories. We walked up this narrow steep street and came to our first stop, the Red Castle.

The Red Castle is in fact a very beautiful Victorian style restaurant overlooking the township below. Surely a nice place dine in while enjoying the live band and view at night

The statue of Dr. Mackay, one of the crucial person playing role in the development of Tamsui in the early days establishing schools, churches and hospitals practicing Western biomedicine

Their church - I really like how Victorian style their buildings are

The home of Dr. George Leslie Mackay

Walking further up the road, we passed these walls decorated by paintings from the locals

The view of Tamsui town

The former British consular residence which is like a very popular place for wedding photography. There's easily like 6 couples doing their wedding photoshoot there at the same time that day

For die hard Jay Chou fans, some of you might be able to recognize the building below for their appearance in the movie Secret. Yes, the movie was shot in Jay Chou's former high school itself, the Tamkang High School.

Honestly their school is so gorgeous you can hardly believe it's just a high school

Remember these corridors from the movie? hehe

The finale scene where the building went dramatically crashing down while Jay was playing the piano furiously

The Alethia University

Another popular historical architecture in Tamsui - the Fort San Domingo

Concluding our walking tour at the Fort (where we enjoyed some pretty nice view from the hill), we took a bus to the Fisherman's Wharf in order to catch the sunset, rumoured to be one of the best place to watch sunset in Taipei.

The Lovers Bridge at Fisherman's Wharf. It is one hot spot to watch the sunset

Seafood restaurants along the Wharf

At the Fisherman's Wharf

After admiring the sunset at the Fisherman's Wharf, we took a ferry back to the riverside near the Dan Shui train station

At night, Dan Shui town is equally bustling with food stalls and pedestrians along Gongming Street and the riverside.

However, we decided to head back to Taipei downtown and visit another popular night market in Taiwan, which some deem the queen of night markets dotting Taiwan; the Shida night market. With such limited time in Taiwan, I figured we could at least visit both the king (Shihlin) and queen (Shida) of night markets since we couldn't possibly visit all of them.

The Shida night market is near the National Taiwan Normal University (wonders why they name their university normal? Is there like abnormal ones? ^.^) hence it is filled with more young people. I personally like this night market more than Shihlin simply because there are more boutiques and apparel shops that have better and nicer selections. Which explains why I ended up shopping more than eating at Shida! :) Of course, they have many Taiwanese street food/ xiochi (snacks) stalls as well but if you are looking for the deep fried breaded chicken, then Shihlin is the place.

The Taiwanese basically loves their food cook in 3 main styles - fried, grilled and 'lu wei' which explains why one can see abundant of their street food either fried, grilled or cooked in the 'lu wei' style. I can't exactly find the right translation for 'lu wei' but it's similar to our lok lok.

You can choose from a huge array of choices (ranging from pig blood to innards to tofu to vegetables) all on sticks. After taking your picks, you passed it to them and they will cook your selections in a special black stewed sauce for a few minutes and voila, you are ready to dig into your lu wei!

Their special stewed black sauce which smells super good

My lu wei. It is said that among the 3 styles, the lu wei is the healthiest and less fattening. Well, I suppose so. Seriously, the lu wei is really good. The sauce has a tinge of sweetness and saltiness and each mouthful makes you craves for more

Lastly, time for some dessert. Time for some shave ice!

The wide selection of toppings for the shave ice, from slices of fruits to red beans to taro balls to jellies to nata de cocoas and even Yakult

My selection of mango and taro balls shave ice. Honestly, super refreshing and yummy. The mangoes are really fresh and combine with the chewy taro balls, it was perfect to turn on the taste buds. Craving for one right now. :p

It was a pretty eventful night as I went home happy with the my shopping loot, in fact the most shopping I had done during my entire 7 days stay in Taiwan. XD Of course, with so much delicious food, it is literally enough to keep one happy too. After all, a hungry man is an angry man so a full man is a happy one.

I left Taiwan early the next morning with a heavy heart. There's so much more of Taiwan that I have yet to explore and experience and 7 days was simply not enough. With it's bustling city, sublime countryside and friendly people, Taiwan is indeed a unique country worth visiting. It was also wonderful to be able to meet up with my friends in Taiwan and having them to host me was more than I could ask for. I certainly can't wait to go back to Taiwan again, to explore the other towns and cities next. :)

I Flyyyyyyyyy

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:36:00 +0000

Even if it's only for a mere 2 minutes.

Sorry guys for the long hiatus from blogging. It wasn't intentional but after coming back from Bali, I was too busy working and all my off days are used for more holidays. ^_^. 4 months had definitely went by super fast. It felt just like yesterday, there I was a greenhorn in the hospital. And now I had ended one rotation and will be starting a new one in another department tomorrow. It's amazing how a short 4 months can made so much differences. I must say, I find working pretty enjoyable and although I do love off days and holidays, but I don't dread waking up in the morning going to work (aside from the fact that I secretly wish I could sleep more). Maybe it's just me being a workaholic or maybe it's because I have very nice bosses, MOs and colleagues. Whatever it is, I know I'm going to miss the Orthopaedic department pretty much.

So, before I start my next rotation I took 3 days off and drove up to Genting with my family one of the days. And still having the Holiday card from the previous Bloggers Day Out in Genting, me and B decided to go try being Superman (or Superwoman in my case! haha) at the Genting Sky Venture. I had always wanted to have a taste of how it felt like to be off gravity, to be flying so this is the closest I could get to being a Superwoman in Malaysia.

It was a long wait, not because there were too many people but because the Genting Sky Venture is dependable on the weather. Although it's an indoor thingy, but being a wind tunnel simulator, the air that they suck is directly from the outdoor so in case of rain or thick fog, the Sky Venture will have to be close for safety reasons. And being the monsoon season now in Malaysia, it was raining alot and we had to wait till the rain stop before we were finally allowed our turn.

Nonetheless, it was pretty much worth the wait as flying was absolutely awesome. As first timers, we were briefed on flying first by our instructor and after suiting up, we were ready to go against gravity.

Before we fly

After we fly! Can you see our hair sticking out from our helmets? Our hair was literally standing after we fly. That's what anti gravity do to your hair. haha!

The 2 awesome instructors

Honestly, flying looks really simple right, but the challenge really is the need to find the right balance once you are up up in the air. And of course, being an extreme sports, flying surely requires strong muscles especially the latissimus, rotator cuffs and quadriceps. You need these muscles to support and hold your position in mid air. We had a lot of fun being in mid air and honestly, you don't have to worry about falling because even if you do fall, the instructor will be there to catch you and give you the lift you need to fly.

I had a video of me and B flying, or well at least attempting to (haha) so enjoy! Skydiving next perhaps, anyone? :)

Kenting- Rocks, Ocean, Fire and The Marine Biology Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:59:00 +0000

Planning for a trip is all fun but can be crazy at the same time. I'm going to Bali next month and had been searching for accomodation all day but it seems the more I search, the more I'm bedazzled with choices that its almost nerve wreaking! So anyone that had been to Bali and will like to help me out by recommending places to stay, any strategic location in Kuta or Legian is very much welcome. :)

Anyway, I'm gonna continue from where I left of about Taiwan; Kenting (click to read) to be precise. We were only in Kenting for 1 and the half day strictly speaking but amazingly enough we managed to cover most of the places of interest around Kenting. After spending our first day at the beach, we rented a car + driver for 2500 NTD (~ RM 270) to take us around the rest of the place the next day. Of course, the best and most economical way around is really the scooter but as none of us know how to ride one, we opted for the car instead. There's one thing about renting cars + drivers in Taiwan that I realized was that they charged by hours block. So to rent a car + driver for half a day, it really means you only got 4 hours for the car + driver (of course subjectively some nicer ones don't go strictly by the time) and for a full day, it means only 8 hours.

Our first destination for the day was to Sail Rock, apparently getting it's name because of a rock that supposedly resembles a sailboat set to sail from a distance.

Well, imho I think the rock resembles the side profile of an ape's face more, no?

After some quick shots, we moved on to Shadao, which is just a few minutes from Sail Rock. Shadao is a 220 m long shell beach and is a conservation area in Kenting. Without permission from the national park headquarter, the public is not allow to enter the beach area.

Shadao shell sand beach

There's a shell sand exhibition hall next to Shadao with shell sand, microscope, magnifying glasses and light boxes to help tourist understand about the shell sand. I never quite realized these until the visit to the exhibition hall where we were told that the beaches around the whole of Taiwan are made up of different types of sand. The unique thing about beaches in the south such as Shadao is that their sand are made up of mainly shells including corals and other shell debris. It takes more than thousand years to form shell sand, hence the Kenting national park decision to declare Shadao as an ecological conservation area

This is actually a type of shell organism that lives within the shell sand. When the guide at the exhibition hall first showed it to us, we thought it was just part of the sand!

Next in line was to the MOST SOUTHERN POINT of Taiwan.

After walking about 500 m under the big hot sun, we finally step foot at the most southern point of Taiwan. Honestly, the point is nothing more than a geographical landmark declared by the governement of Taiwan complimented with a blue sea view

Kenting is also very well known for their scenic view thus our subsequent destination was to Longpan Park, a grassland uplifted with unique coral reefs limestone and slumping cliff landforms, sinkhole and fissure facing the magnificent Pacific Ocean. Honestly, Longpan Park offered us such tranquility by just taking in the spectacular view across the horizon. I totally love just admiring the calm ocean crashing against the green grassland.

The gorgeous Longpan Park. Please excuse the umbrella. It was really hot that day and our umbrella kept us from turning into cooked lobsters.

Doing my fav jump shot

Our driver decided to stop us a few minutes away from Longpan Park for this equally gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean

After feeding our eyes with those gorgeous views, it was time for our creative side to take charge as we tried making out the unique rock shapes at Jialeshui. Thank God they have tram services that took us along the 2.5 km long stretch of beach as we tried guessing out the rocks, else we might had fainted from heatstroke. Due to the constant erosion by the sea and strong wind, the terrains here form unique rock shapes which the Taiwanese creatively name after whatever the rocks resemble. Jialeshui also faces the Pacific Ocean and it is more well known among surfers because they claimed it has stronger and bigger waves here but perhaps because it was close to noon and too infreakingsanely hot when we were there, we didn't get to see any huge waves nor surfer boys. haha!

We paid like 80 NTD just to go look at rocks. Well, it's time to exercise those creative cells in you now. See if you see what the Taiwanese sees

Rock #1 - The rhinoceros

Rock #2 - The virgin

Rock #3- The snail

Rock #4 - The frog

Rock #5 - The dead pig

Rock #6 - The toad

Rock #7 - The sea lion

Rock #8 - The wild boar

Rock #9 - Taiwan army base

Rock #10 - Taiwan (as in the shape of the country Taiwan)

Rock #11- The human face. It somehow resembles a very sad human face though

Despite the ultimate hot sun, the wind was actually very strong at Jialeshui, see so strong it blew my hair all the way up like in a shampoo ad :p

Before finally heading to lunch, we stopped by one of Hengchun Old Town most unique treasure, Chuhuo which literally translates to releasing fire in Mandarin. The place is known as Eternal Flame in English and like it's Chinese name, the uniqueness of this place lies in it's distinctive flames, fueled by natural gas that rises through cracked mudstone under the earth surface throughout the year, rain or shine.

We had to walk a little before reaching the magic flames

The area sealed off where the flames naturally rises. Seriously, there's nothing too spectacular about the place apart from watching another of earth magic creation. In fact, there were a little too much rubbish around which kinda ruin the view of the place

Eternal Flame

Our driver brought us to these super tourisy restaurant somewhere in Checheng of Pintung County (20 mins from Kenting national park) for lunch which I wasn't keen on visiting but gave in nonetheless as he claimed there was nowhere else in that area that we could eat at. The restaurant is a beef noodle restaurant opened by 3 sisters with PHD (in cooking beef noodles perhaps? They advertised it hugely on their signage that they are PHD holders) and from the minute I stepped in, I knew it is one of those restaurants that target only tourist. I didn't bothered taking any picture of the beef noodle because it was so horrible that as much as I hate to waste food, I couldn't even bring myself to finish the entire bowl.

Our last destination in Kenting was the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium. Our driver in Hualien highly recommended this place, citing that it is a must visit in Kenting. We were very excited to explore the museum because we really love to meet those cute and adorable fishes and marine animals. The museum, located in Checheng of Pintung County, boast the biggest underwater tunnel in Asia, measuring 81 meters long. The museum then features 3 main exhibition areas, including Coral Kingdom Pavilion, Waters of Taiwan, and World Waters Pavilion where each area offers different exhibits. There's also a number of shows a day like the fish feeding, penguin feeding, seal feeding etc.

The entrance

Our entrance tickets

The outdoor water park, said to be the largest water park in Taiwan

The variety of coral reefs


The most adorable fishes - my fav

Moving along the underwater tunnel surrounded by the many fishes swimming around

Can you believe this is actually a kind of fish too? It looks so much like a snake from afar! Seriously they even wiggle like a snake. *cringe* I was actually very relieved knowing that such fishes exist because I think I saw some of these while snorkeling at Lang Tengah island a few months back and I nearly went into MI thinking it was some sea snakes when they wiggle towards me

Hello, Stingray!

Araipama - the smaller version

The lion fish. This is one fish that kills with it's beauty. Their beautiful fin rays are venomous and can be lethal to human life

Super cute pufferfish. Look at those cheeks!

The beluga whale - it is super adorable as well

Well, I must say my favourite part of the day was watching the penguins. I mean the penguins are like so seriously cuteeeeeeeeeee I want to cuddle one home. I wish I could be Mr. Popper for a day. haha! I just find them like one of the cutest animal around second to dogs. Speaking of which, I can't wait for Happy Feet 2 already.

Look at them, waddling around chubbily and greedily feeding on the fishes

Aww... like human, they love

And get into arguments as well. Really, they were screaming deafeningly at each other

Soooooooooo cuteeeeeeee ♥

We left the museum at about 5pm and went back to our hostel where we packed and waited for the shuttle van to Kaohsiung (paid 350 NTD per person). The ride to Kaohsiung was about 3 hours and I slept throughout the journey. We decided to take the high speed rail back to Taipei as it is much more time savvy and convenient. We had initally purchased the high speed rail tickets for an earlier date but thank God, the Taiwan high speed rail allows exchange and refund so we managed to exchange our tickets instead of wasting over RM 160+ per ticket.

It was my first time taking a high speed rail and I was impressed even from the train terminal itself. The Zuoying high speed rail train terminal is well maintained complete with potter service. Then there's MOS burger where we had our dinner by the way. Our train to Taipei was at 8.54pm and again, they were so infreakingsanely impressively punctual. With the high speed rail, it only took us about 1 and the half hour to travel from the south of Taiwan to the north (approx 250km). The ride was also really comfortable and the best part, food is allow on board. And between cabins, there's sufficient washrooms and alternately, there's even vending machines and public phones.

The HSR

The seats - spacious and comfortable. We have seat numbers too

My lovely company

It was a long day and we were thoroughly exhausted by the time we got back to our guesthouse in Taipei. Although we didn't went to Kenting street nor the filming site for the movie Cape No. 7 though those 2 are like also the must-visit places in Kenting, but it was an enjoyable short stay in Kenting. Despite seemingly having a pretty tight schedule, it was in fact one of the most relaxing time during our trip to Taiwan. The only thing I didn't like about Kenting was the lack of good food. Like for the 2 days we were there, our best meal was probably the breakfast which was bacon sandwich with red milk tea that our hostel provided. But then again, it was most likely due to the fact that we never explored Kenting street where more options for food is available. All in all, Kenting is beautiful on it's own, a nice place to relax and getaway with it's unique creative rocks, vast gorgeous ocean, natural magic flames and a marine biology museum like no other. :)

MNG - The Missing Bag Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:17:00 +0000


My bag!! Oh noooo! My bag has gone missing!

Alert fashionistas!

How does a *FREE trip to Spain + the ability to indulge in the pure joy of shopping in MNG (Mango) at its the birth place sounds to you? It has always been one of my dream to shop for one of my fav brand of all time, MNG at it's birth place, surrounded by the beautiful air of Spain and enjoying the sexy Spanish accent. The good news is, MNG is now giving all of us fashionistas an opportunity to step closer to that dream!

Yes, I'm not kidding. Our fav brand, Mango (MNG) will be sending two lucky fans to Barcelona, Spain and all you have to do is to take part in their 'THE MISSING BAG CONTEST'. You know what they say about finders' keepers? I'm definitely joining the 'search' force for this glorious missing bag and if you think you can outbeat me in the search for the missing bag, then you might want to hurry over to their facebook page and join the contest now.

#1 - Log on now to their facebook fan page (click here) and click 'LIKE' if you haven't


#2 - In the missing bag are some polaroid photos and of course, your ticket for two to Spain. Now, the key to winning this contest is to suggest aka share those polaroid photos with as many people as you know.

#3- The contest mechanics. Of course, to be part of the 'search' force for the missing bag, you will first need to sign up.

#4 - Easy registration steps.

#5 - Ha, now I'm officially part of the search force! All participants will receive 10 points upon successful registration.

#6 - Next, you'll see a series of polaroid pictures like this and all you have to do is suggest these polaroid pictures to as many of your friends as possible. Well, the more you share, the higher your chances to win those amazing tickets to Spain!

#7 - Participants will receive 5 points for every polaroid picture that is agreed by a friend. Of course, you'll need to constantly check back their fb page as new polaroid pictures will be uploaded weekly. For every polaroid photo suggestion that participants agreed to, you will also receive 2 points and if you share that suggested photo on your wall, you will receive an additional 2 points. How awesome is that.

It's honestly that simple. Now I'm just waiting for all of my friends to agree on the polaroid pictures I suggested and start earning points. Remember, the more you share, the higher your chances to win! What are you still waiting for? Head on to their facebook page here now!

#8 - Staring dreamily at the first prize ^_^. The second and third prize is just as delicious.

Oh, Spain, cómo me gustaría visitarte! :)

*terms and conditions applied

MichMatt's Big Day

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:35:00 +0000

Remember I said I was in Batu Pahat last weekend? Well, one of my close friend from school, Mich got hitched last weekend in Batu Pahat and I had the honor to be part of her band of sisters aka ji-mui. I was really excited especially since 'torturing' the band of brothers is one of the most fun part of a wedding. I mean seriously, the guys do deserve some teeny-weeny challenges before they can finally get the bride, no? Else it will have been too easy on them. haha! There were 8 of us altogether and we convoyed up Batu Pahat on Friday night.

Camwhoring with the rest of the sisters with our same neon pink hairbands

All of us ji-mui were in black dresses and the same neon pink belt and hairband that day

The guys were supposed to arrive at 7.30 am but we were down by the pool at 6.45am getting the place ready. In this game, we tied keys to the end of each balloon and disseminated the balloons all over the pool. The guys in return were to look for the right balloon with the right key that will open the door to Mich's room

We had quite a list of challenges at hand that the guys would need to get through before the groom can finally kiss his princess but they were actually late hence in the end, they escaped pretty easy with only a few of the challenges. Seriously, the guys called us their 'torturers' but if we were ever torturers, we must be one of the nicest and kindest in this world because they relatively had an easy time! :p

With time to spare, we started a little phototaking sessions of our own

Oh, and we had the same wrist band too. Hand made specially from our creative bride!

Finally the groom and his brothers arrived dressing up as ninjas


The lovely bouquet of flower

Let's kick it off with a little morning exercise

The ninjas came quite prepared apparently with their swords and all!

Oh yeah, a little yoga to warm up the day

They gave up on the second yoga exercise and hence, had to wax off some of their leg's hair as punishment

The second challenge! It's called bite-the-bickie but instead of cookies, they had to get potato chips from their forehead into their mouth without using their hands. It was a pretty funny sight as their face muscles twitched and turned just trying to get that piece of chip into their mouth

The ninjas smartly utilized their swords to hook up the balloons in search for the right key

Let's count our ang pau and see how much bribed the groom had given. hehe!

Push-up cheat max but we still let them off because we sisters are nice like that

We knew the groom would be hungry from all those challenges so we decided to feed him some tarts even when he was being piggy back

The groom, Matt who is pretty much a banana had to expressed his sincerest love to our dearest princess in Chinese!

That's not all. Ah, yes getting the princess does not come easy! A marriage contract the groom had to agreed to first. Brilliant idea I would say *grin*

And finally, Matt had to serenade our dearest princess with a modified version of any song of his choice

Us sisters with the pretty bride

We even got to kiss the bride before the groom does. hahaha

At last, the groom got to kiss his bride. Awwww!

After all the fun at home, we moved on to the church for their wedding service

The newly wed

Epic posers

Our initial plan was to explore Batu Pahat after the church service, but we were too exhausted that all of us spent the afternoon napping away before heading back home.

Their wedding lunch was on Sunday and I was lucky I managed to get half day off to make it in time.

Mich, my pretty bride

Weddings are also one of those times when you get to meet some friends that you had not been meeting for a long time

The newly wed are very busy hence we got their life size poster as a substitute

Now a real one with the newly wed

One last one, all of us nice sisters with the newly wed

I definitely had an awesome time with the rest of the girls being part of the band of sisters in Batu Pahat. It was one fun road trip but the best part of it all is seeing another of my close friend getting happily hitched. Once again, congratulations to the M & M's, just like the chocolate, wishing the both of you a very colorful and fun marital life ahead. :)

Taiwan - Kenting, Nanwan Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:30:00 +0000

I'm back from Batu Pahat for Mich and Matt's wedding! Had truckloads of fun and pics of course but that had to get sorted out first. Thus, for now, a travelogue post.

After spending only a day in Hualien (click to read previous post), our next destination in Taiwan was Kenting National Park, the extreme southern tip of Taiwan. I was very excited to visit Kenting because I have heard so much about how beautiful the place is and how everyone, literally everyone in Taiwan recommends that we should visit the place especially in summer. And honestly, between industrious and full of skyscrapers Kaohsiung and more laidback with generous sun, beaches and surfers Kenting, I choosed the latter anytime.

Hence, we left Hualien early morning and took the normal express rail to Fang Liao station which is really the station you should stop at instead of Kaohsiung if you want to get to Kenting from the east coast. The train took us approximately 3-4 hours and from the train station, we paid about another 750 NTD for a private cab to take us to Kenting which took another 2-3 hours. A cab isn't exactly the cheapest mode of transport, there's the supposedly public buses but certainly, a cab saved us more time than the buses.

By the time we got to our hostel, we were hungry max and the first thing we did was asking for the best places around to eat. The hostel owner recommended two restaurants to us, one a little too pricey and the other said to have the best beef noodle around. We were intrigued by the beef noodles as that was one of our must-eat-in-Taiwan food but honestly, I was disappointed after trying them. There was nothing to shout about and no offence but it tasted just like a very average bowl of beef noodle.

The said beef noodle with it's chunky huge pieces of beef and soup with very strong smell of beef

Our surfer hostel

This was the initial dorm we were supposed to stay in at 400 NTD a night until the owner decided to upgrade us FOC to a priave room for 3 later that night

A surprise visitor! This is Fei-zhai aka Fatty, a handsome Husky that sleeps almost all the time in our dorm

See, he's so soundly alseep he couldn't even be bothered with our presence. Seriously he would even snort if you make too much noise and disturbed his sleep.

Our hostel is located super near the beach, like just 5 minutes walk from Nanwan beach. Thus after lunch and freshening up, we decided to head down to the beach!

Most of the shops along the beach are just two-storeys high like this and selling a lot of beach wears and accessories

And water sports are abundantly available on this beach at pretty reasonable prices too. We signed up for a triple combo water sports package that includes jet ski, banana boat and this other Taiwan invention that pulls you on this inflated boat for only 600 NTD! One of the operator stall where you can sign up for the water sports

The beach is situated side by side along with a nuclear power plant which can be seen in the distance

Different umbrellas actually belong to different water sports operators so you can only sit under the umbrellas of the operator you signed up with and not the rest, else they will chase you away

They have all these cute little chairs under each umbrella instead of the usual long beach chairs

Surfers attempting to surf

The helmet we had to put on aside from the life jackets

Jet skis everywhere on the beach

The banana boat and the inflated Taiwan version thingy

I love jet ski! It can get very bumpy and dangerous but it's thrilling

This was the best ride we all had that day. We could lie or sit or stand on that thing while being pulled around by a jet ski, something like a banana boat only faster, more exciting and fun

Honestly, I find Nanwan beach insanely dangerous because amidst swimmers, paddlers, surfers, sun-bathers and sand-castlers, tractors, ATVs and jet skis are actually weaving crazily in between them. Seriously, the jet skis are like just weaving pass swimmers by inches at times and it's horrfying. It's not even funny imagining the consequences if any one of the jet ski missed seeing a swimmer, surfer or children happily burying themselves in the sand and accidentally hit them. I mean if they are so into water sports commercialism, they should really segregrate the beach so at least all those motorised sports and tractors do not run drunkenly between people.

And of course, being laden with so much water sports could only mean that the beach is pretty much polluted. The sands are obviously no longer white and all disfigured by huge tyre tracks of tractors and ATVs. Even the sea breeze is intoxicated with waves of carbon monoxide.

Nanwan beach is definitely not one of the most beautiful beach in Kenting, but it is definitely one of the more closer to the town one and easily accesible thus making it a popular beach still among tourist and locals alike. So if it's me, aside from going to Nanwan beach for water sports, I don't see why I would want to go there to sun-bathe/paddle/surf/swim actually knowing the fact that I can't really sun-bathe/paddle/surf/swim in peace for fear that a jet ski might just be weaving pass me possibly missing me by my nose only any minute! I did enjoyed myself with the water sports that day though especially since we managed to persuade SY to try all those water sports for the very first time in her life. :)

Kirishima Shuzou Japanese Restaurant

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:03:00 +0000

I can't believe the last I blogged was about a fortnight ago already. No, I had not forgotten nor am I abandoning this space for good. It's just that I don't really have much time to be regularly updating as often anymore as much as I wish to. It's about one month now since I started working but at times it felt like I had started working for the longest time. It's almost unbelievable that just 4 months back we were all still stressing over exams and all the uncertainties that came along with graduation. And now being on call and post call is like a routine already. My department is running on partial shift now which is really kinda complicated because we are neither in full shift nor are we in the old on call system that requires houseman to work 36 hours straight. Under the partial shift system, aside from very special occasions like Hari Raya (which I had the privileged to taste how it felt like working 24/7 straight), on average we work about 60 hours or more a week. I definitely love being on the shift system because although it's still tiring, but at least we could have a little more time to sleep and rest.

Anyway, I'm going to deviate from writing any travelogues today but rather blog about this restaurant I went to on my birthday (which was about a fortnight ago too). Since I had just received my first pay, I decided to buy my family dinner that night. :) We went Japanese hence we landed ourselves at Kirishima Shuzou, rumoured to be one of the best Japanese restaurant in town.

Definitely not your regular tea. This is dobin mushi which is clear soup with seafood and vegetables served in a teapot and drank from the teacup. So cute right. The soup itself has a very sweet taste and smell. I like.

Gyoza

Barbequed pork with asparagus and chicken with leek

Soft shell crab roll. Tantalizing deep fried soft shell crab with shrimp roe topping

Kirishima special roll - Kirishima style eel maki sushi

Ishiyaki garlic rice served sizzling hot in a stone bowl. My family love the garlic rice so much that they ordered a second bowl of it after finishing the first.

Hotate Mentaki Yaki - Baked scallop with mayonnaise spicy cod roe. Sadly one of the scallops wasn't that fresh though.

Wagyu Ishiyaki - stoned grilled Japanese beef. One of the few Jap restaurants in Jb that actually has wagyu. What makes wagyu so expensive is the fact that wagyu cattles are predisposed to intense marblling and therefore producing a high percentage of unsaturated fat. They are also said to be treated to sake and massage to avoid cramps of their muscles. They are highly priced because their meat is really more flavorful, tender and juicy. Speaking of how luxury treatment really affects the quality of the meat! Their wagyu is currently imported from Australia though in view of the radioactive crisis and stuff in Japan now.

Desserts - azuki macha and mango ice cream. Honestly I didn't quite fancy the dessert because it has to much cream to my liking.

I really had a good dinner that night, enjoying the company and of course, the food which all turned out to be pretty good. With nice ambience, friendly staff and yummy food, they do pretty much lived up to their reputation of being one of the best around Johor Bahru. :)

PS : This is not a paid advertorial or review. All review is based on yours truly POV only, hence any discrepancy in taste or opinion is very much regrettable. :)

Kirishima Shuzou Japanese Restaurant,
(Crystal Crown Hotel),
117, Jln Tebrau,
80250 Johor Bahru
Tel : 07- 2762838/ 07-3334422

Hualien City and Taroko Gorge

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:37:00 +0000

On our 3rd day in Taiwan, we decided to travel out of Taipei and explore the largest city in the east coast side of Taiwan - Hualien. There's no high speed rail that connects Taipei to Hualien, hence we could only take the normal train. There's like 2 main train companies that travel Taipei-Hualien daily, one taking only about 2 hours and the other about 3 n half hours. We had wanted to take the faster albeit more expensive train (time is of essence) but the tickets were all sold out! So in the end, we could only settled for the 7.28am train (the train was so insanely punctual that it departed on the dot at 7.28am) and arrived Hualien station at about 10.30am.

It's nearly impossible to get around Hualien without your own transportation because unlike Taipei, public transportation in Hualien is still not advanced. There's no metros and their buses are pretty much unreliable that they literally do not exist. Thus, I was very glad we had booked our very own private cab for the day through the minsu we stayed at. At 2500 NTD a day, we got ourselves our very own private driver who doubles as our Hualien guide who also doubles as our photographer.

The ride to Hualien

Takeaways like this are sold on the train. A pretty neat combination of meat and vegetables perfect to feed our rumbling tummies for 60 NTD

Our main destination in Hualien was actually Taroko Gorge, one of the most scenic and beautiful place in Taiwan with it's massive marble cliffs, blue stream and green forests. Therefore, our cab uncle wasted no time in heading straight to the Gorge upon picking us up from the train station.

*Funfact #1- In Taiwan, they do not address older males or females as 'uncle' or 'auntie'. They call them da-ge or da-jie instead*

*Funfact #2- Hualien is also dubbed 'City of Marbles*

*Funfact #3- Hualien is known for local specialties such as mua chi and peeled skin chllies (direct translation of 'bo pi la jiao')*

On our way to the Gorge, we passed by this corn stall and our da-ge decided to treat us to their local corns

Apart from the obvious colour difference (theirs is almost whitish yellow and the da-ge said they have purple corns too), we find local Hualien corns too starchy and bland. Now I finally understood why we Malaysians name our corns 'sweet corns' because our corns are seriously much sweeter, juicier and crunchier

'Bo pi la jiao' bottled up

We finally reached Taroko National Park after some 45 minutes

The beginning of our journey exploring Taroko Gorge

The mannequin signal man that looks so real

The much afame Tunnel of Nine Turns (九曲洞 Jiuqü Dong) and Baiyang Trail (白楊步道) is close temporarily due to recent rock falls so we had no choice but to give them a miss. Nonetheless, the da-ge had replanned a whole new route for us to visit some other also famous sights around Taroko instead.

The Bridge of 100 lions. Each and every one of the lion is unique on it's own. There's no two lions that looks the same

Our first trail - Shakadang trail

This trail is built along the river cliff so we mainly marveled at the rock folds, clear water and vast plant ecosystem

The water here looks really mesmerizing especially the deeper pools when it's so super crystal clear blue. The bluer the water, the deeper is it though so all visitors are restricted from swimming or going into the water

The Bridge of 100 lions from the Shakadang trail

Our next stop was the Eternal Spring Shrine (Changchun Shrine) which commemorates the 225 personnel (military veterans) who died and another 702 injured during the construction of the Central Cross-Island Highway (1956~1960) making this the main historical and scenic attraction in Taroko

From the Eternal Spring Shrine, there are stairs leading to higher points where there are more towers and caves (and a more beautiful view) but those stairs are pretty steep and never seems to end. We attempted those stairs but aborted our plan halfway because we were drained off almost all our energy

Those 2 are the higher points we could had got to if we had continued our hike up those steep stairs

The suspension bridge

The Swallow Grotto trail (Yanzihkou)

The pedestrian path

This trail that runs about half kilometer starting from the entrance to Swallow Grotto to the Jinheng Bridge, we can see the Liwu River running swiftly below, the potholes on the cliff faces and the springs sprinkled along the lower parts of the walls

The famous rock formation Indian "Chieftain's profile rock".

Ta-da! A closer side profile of the popular rock formation Indian "Chieftain's profile rock".

Buluowan - a settlement where the Atayal tribe originally lived. It is divided into the upper and lower terrace but it was raining when we were there hence it kinda dampened our motivation to climb up the upper terrace

This 'V' shape valley known as the Cihmu valley (Mother's devotion valley) or something like that is so name because it resembles one part of the human anatomy. Put on your thinking cap and see if you can get it figure out

We also went to Qingshui cliff where it offers spectacular view to drivers driving along the road between it and the boundless Pacific Ocean below

It is indeed magnificent to enjoy the breath taking view of the the ocean extending across the horizon, the waves rolling in crashing against the enormous cliff and feel the cool ocean breeze against us

Before heading back to Hualien city, our da-ge decided to drop us by Cisingtan, one of the most beautiful beach in Hualien apparently. It is not a swimming beach but most people just come here to picnic, cycle, stroll or simply relax

It was almost at the end of dusk by the time we were there, hence our view of the surrounding was pretty masked by the darkness around

We finally got to Hualien city in time for dinner. There are two main night markets in Hualien, one the Nanpin night market that is located right beside the sea and as it coincides with some massive festival in Hualien at that time, there was free concert going on every single night by Taiwan celebrities and fireworks performances.

The other night market, the Ziqiang night market has wider variety of cheap and good food albeit it being the smaller night market. We were more attracted to the latter though because we were more of the gastronomers. I also met up with Sky there, my beloved friend from Hualien and it was really nice of her to bring us around the night market despite the fact that her national's exam was in one week.

This is one must try. This stall sells barbequed meat and we have to take a number to wait for our turn after taking our picks. The current number was 153 and our number was like 212 at that time. Imagine having to wait 50+ people just for few sticks of barbequed meat!

The selection of meats and other food stuff

We waited almost an hour for our barbequed stuff but honestly it was worth all the wait! The barbequed stuff was superbly heaven. They barbequed the stuff with some kind of sauce and every bite makes you just wanting for more. It tops the list of -food-I-miss-in-Taiwan' and my only regret was only picking 3 sticks out of the whole variety of food above. T_T

The barbequed squid that was like soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo GOOD

Our other barbequed stuff - stuff fish thingy and pork blood. I'm not a fan of pork blood but Taiwan's famous for that and Kit and SY decided to give it a try

My beloved Sky whom I met in Japan three years ago. There are also many fruit juices stalls around these days and for only 50NTD, we could get a huge cup of fresh, pure fruit juice from a super wide variety too

I forgot whats this called but this is just as delicious. This is not found at Ziqiang though. Sky bought it for us from somewhere else in Hualien. It is kinda spicy with chilli powders on the outside but once you bite it, there's all these egg yolks oozing out.

The famous coffin bread. We could choosed our own fillings for the bread from sweet to savoury to a mixture of both. We decided on the Hawaiian one, which was a mixture of both sweet and savoury with pineapples, chunky chickens and coleslaw

Hitch a ride on Sky's scooter back to our minsu. Scooter is the most popular mode of transport in Taiwan and almost everyone in Taiwan has and knows how to ride a scooter. If you can ride a scooter, then you can rent one and that's your best way of getting around the country

A shot with our dearest minsu owner and our da-ge

Complimentary candies and mua chis from Wan-jie, our minsu owner

Wan-jie even prepared these organic pumpkin sandwiches for us as breakfast the next day. So sweet of her

The minsu we stayed at. The only disadvantage being it a tad too far from the train station but really close to the beach

We only allocated one day in Hualien but it was a mistake because turned out, there was actually so much more to Hualien to explore and experience. We should had spent more days there especially in summer. For me, I personally love Hualien more than Taipei even though transport was pretty much a hassle but there's Sky, there's all those heavenly food, there's our very warm minsu and we could see the part of Taiwan that is different from Malaysia. Oh well, perhaps that calls for an excuse to revisit Taiwan, no? *grin* :)

Taipei : Shilin Night Market

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 05:28:00 +0000

Hello blogosphere! It's almost 3 weeks now since my last post! Didn't realized I had been involuntarily abandoning this space for so long now. Working had sucked out almost every ounce of energy in me for the past 3 weeks. Honestly working is not that bad, well not as bad as I thought it would be at least for now. It's just that I spent the first two weeks tagging; more than 15 hours a day, 7 days a week and by the time I got home, whatever energy that's left was only sufficient for me to shower.

But it's my off day today and hence finally having the time to kick some life into this space. One of the things I really miss while working is food. Seriously, it's blissful enough if we got the time to actually eat but to eat really good and nice food is so rare that when we have the chance, we don't mind just spending a little more for it if you know what I mean. And so today, I'm going to blog about food, Taiwan street food more specifically.

Taiwan is very well-known for their night markets. Honestly, everywhere in Taiwan, from north to south, east to west, there will be night markets and it's the best place to source for cheap and yummy food. Hence we decided that despite our very limited time in Taiwan, we must at least visit the largest and most famous night market of Taiwan; the Shilin night market.

We selectively decided to eat less during lunch just so that we could save more space for dinner. But still, having only one stomach, it was totally insufficient to take in as much as I wish to. Seriously, the minute we got to the night market, there are like a 1001 stalls selling food after food after food and most of them looks so tempting and good I was so spoilt for choices. We didn't get nor had the capability to try all of course, but we managed to conquer some of the must-eat-in-Taiwan from our list of food at least.

#1 - Taiwan sausages! I mean why go all the way to Taiwan for Taiwan sausages when we have plenty of it in Malaysia right? But it's definitely not the same as the ones in Malaysia honestly. You have to try it to know it. It tasted even better and more flavorful with flavours ranging from garlic to pepperoni to choose from.

#2 - Look at those greasy, fat, well-grilled Taiwan sausages. Yummy yummy.

#3 - The stinky tofu stall. It stinks so much I wish I had selective anosmia. Just kidding. Honestly, the smell kinda stink but maybe because it's covered up by the aroma of the surrounding good food, the smell of the stinky tofu is still pretty much bearable imho.

#4 - Rated one of the top 10 food of the world, the stinky tofu of Taiwan is stinky to smell, crispy to bite and pretty good to eat especially when eaten with it's sauce and chilli. It's definitely better than eating bugs seriously.

#5 - The stinky tofu pose.

#6 - Fishballs of assorted flavors. There's the curry, satay, wasabi and I-forgot-what.

#7 - Them fishballs being cook.

#8 - More Taiwan sausages. And long ones instead.

#9 -This potato cheese stall that is really really famous and has a lot of people queing up each time but we didn't get to try this in the end because there was always so many people.

#10 - McDonald's sundae cone twin but a milkier version.

#11 - Grilled scallop in 'whatever' flavor. Honestly, I'm not making the 'whatever' up. They really have a flavor called the 'whatever' flavor.

#12 - Fried oyster omelette. Their oysters are really fat and juicy and even their chilli sauce tasted more like satay sauce.

#13 - Super huge meatball.

#14 - The whole meatball is pack with mince pork goodiness.

#15 - Grilled bacon wrap asparagus. I love this too.

#16 - The famous XXL chicken cutlet

#17 - The chicken cutlet was really huge, so huge that we had so much difficulty finishing it in the end. But tastewise, I felt that it's similar to the ones we have back here.

#18 - Fried pao which looks and smelt really good but we were too full to try.

#19 - Lu Wei. A local Taiwan favourite where it's something like lok-lok but they boiled the ingredients in some sort of flavoured broth.

#20 - Of course, the night market is also the place to go to look for cheap and nice clothes. Didn't really shopped much that night because I was more in the eating than shopping mood.

#21 - Full but still not so satisfied because there's so much left to try. *greedy*

I really love the Taiwan sausages the most among everything that night. Of course, braving the stinky tofu was a good experience too. In fact I find the stinky tofu pretty good that I thought it was kinda addictive. All 3 of us was so full at the end of the night that I could literally felt my stomach screaming to explode. I really wish we had the stomach of the cows then so we could had tried more. Nonetheless, it was definitely a good start to our gastronomic adventure in Taiwan and after proudly conquering some of the must-try-in-Taiwan off our list, we wrapped our day with a good night shower and sleep. :)

Starting Work

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:21:00 +0000

It's almost 2 months now since we were all giddy with happiness after we passed our Profesional 3 exam. From then on, my world had been changing and moving so fast; I let go of one phase of my life and was on transit to the next phase. June and July definitely went by even faster than the bullet train. For 2 whole months, I was absolutely comfortable with my life and how it was every single day.

Until 2 weeks ago, on my first day in Taiwan, I received news that we had all been called for induction. I was frustrated but not much surprised because to be honest, I kinda had expected that we would be called for work anytime soon since most medical graduates always get called for work about 2 months after their graduation. I was only frustrated because they were supposed to send us some letters 2-3 weeks prior to the induction and they didn't and it was such a last minute information at such a wrong timing. Nonetheless, after some consideration, I decided to fly back to Malaysia for the induction and thus, making the decision to recollect the holiday mood and to start getting serious.

I was in Melaka the whole of last week for my induction with about half of my uni mates. For those who are not familiar with the term induction, it's basically a 4 days course where we were provided free accomodation and food but we had to attend like plenty of talks by various representatives from the government from morning till almost midnight every single day. Induction is like the honeymoon before tough times as a house officer comes. The most exciting thing about the induction was finding out where we got posted imho. We all knew we would get the letter on the first day but they kept us at suspense until midnight and only released our letter before we go off to bed. Although most of us got the hospitals of our choices but almost everyone got pretty emotional after finding out where they were posted to especially those that were posted to East Malaysia.

So now, this is really it. Everything still felt so surreal honestly. We were all supposed to report for work today but because it's a public holiday here in Johor (Melaka and Kedah as well), we got an extra day off and only have to report for work tomorrow. I'm so thankful to have this extra day to sink in the fact that I'll be starting work in a whole new environment, whole new hospital and with a whole new bunch of colleagues tomorrow. I'm also thankful that I'm still close to home and there's actually a pretty big ocean of us who got the same hospital too so at least we are all not alone. I'm feeling pretty anxious but at the same time I'm feeling pretty excited also already, to face this new chapter, new journey and new challenge.

My group members during the induction.

The half of us who were in Melaka. Missing everyone already.

This journey for the next 2 years is definitely not going to be an easy one for all of us but as quoted by one of my friend, K :

' Roses are red, violets are blue, HOUSEMANSHIP is tough, but we can get THROUGH!'

So yes, to all my fellow dearest uni mates, all the best once again in whichever hospitals you guys are right now. We all can surely get through this. :)

Taipei : Ximending and Taipei 101

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 19:42:00 +0000

After a morning getting really hot (pun intended) at Beitou (click to read previous post), our next destination was Ximending; the very well-known young and happening shopping district of Taipei, Taiwan. It wasn't even a weekend that day but the amount of youngster trudging the place were considerably plentiful.

Honestly, the outlook of Ximending reminds me somehow of our very own Bukit Bintang, just that it's a much bigger version with more alleys and lanes and shops. Well, being an acclaim shopping district, there are certainly plenty of boutiques but guess what? I actually shopped like super duper little there. Perhaps because I was only just back from Bangkok last month, I was kinda having this 'compare-to-Bangkok' shopping syndrome. It's like whenever I see a boutique and I see that they have similar style and designs to those in Bangkok, I'll immediately think of Bangkok and then I will immediately compare their prices. I couldn't help thinking like 'if it was in Bangkok, this piece of dress will only be xxx'. So, that's why I ended up buying very little from Ximending. Although there's more Japanese style clothing there but seriously, there's also plenty of sheers and scallops and chiffon and whats not like Bangkok.

Of course, not everything is similar to those in Bangkok though especially their footwear. The footwear in Taiwan are much better and nicer than those of Bangkok. They really have very nice shoes, sandals and boots and the best part is, most of them are not very expensive too!

Lucky kitty. Such a cute sleeping place for him.

Since we wasn't that interested in shopping, we decided to look for yummy food to fill our stomach.

Ah Chong flour rice noodle or better known as mee suah is really really good. Must try!

Price at only 45 ntd, this piping hot, concentrated and fragrant bowl of oyster mee suah is one of the best thing I had eaten in Taiwan. The oysters are huge and fresh and even their mee suah tasted better than the mee suah we use back home.

The famous aiyu bing stall that can be seen commonly around Taipei.

This is known as aiyu bing in Mandarin or ice aiyu jelly in English.

We ordered one cup added with lemon and another with a really fancy name which turns out to be aiyu bing with pearls only. It's really refreshing to drink it especially on a hot day.

A soft toy theme cafe.

Secretly took a picture with this larger than life bear in the cafe.

Most people say even 3 days is insufficient to explore finish Ximending because it's just so huge and happening like that but for us after 3-4 hours, we got bored of the place already. I mean the place is indeed happening, indeed the magnet of the young crowd, indeed trendy and hip but maybe because we didn't exactly explored the whole of Ximending or maybe because the shops there didn't attract us enough, hence we cut short our time there and decided to move on to our next mission in Taiwan, which was to the Taipei 101.

We got off at Taipei City Hall station and it's about 10-15 minutes walk to the 101. The Taipei 101 took over the Petronas twin tower and was the tallest in the world until it was surpassed by Burj Khalifa last year. Truthfully, I wasn't blown away or anything by the Taipei 101. I mean it's tall and unique on it's own but that's about it. It's only worth the visit because it's the skyscraper landmark of Taiwan.

The Taipei 101 from a distance.

Close-up shot.

LOVE Taiwan! :)

So our mission 2 and 3 was also accomplished already. Next up will be on Taiwan street food. Sounds yummy already isn't that? Prepare to get all hungry in the next post alright? :)

Taipei : Beitou Hot Springs

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:35:00 +0000

I'm back from Taiwan! My supposedly 11 days had been cut short to 7 days all thanks to my induction which is starting tomorrow by the way. I had to rebook my return flight, reschedule my whole itinerary and canceled on some friends in Taiwan because I decided to come back to attend the induction instead of deferring although a huge part of me was really nagging me to defer. We didn't get to go to Alishan too which was in our initial itinerary because on our second day in Taiwan, there was a huge storm that hit Alishan area and apparently the road condition there was affected greatly with news of the road up the hill being broken and not accessible by any vehicles for the time being. Nonetheless, this 7 days had nothing been short of amazing especially with both of my darlings, Kit and SY.

This time, we chosed to fly with Tiger Airways instead because at the time of booking, Tiger Airways had the cheapest fare to Taipei among all budget airlines. Besides, flying from Singapore has an added advantage to us JBreans as we do not have to waste time transiting at the airport. It took us only about an hour to get to the airport from JB.

Waiting to depart at Changi budget terminal

We arrived Taipei at about 8.30pm local time (time in Taiwan is the same as Malaysia) and we wasted no time buying our bus ticket from this local bus company call Kuo Kuong to take us to the Taipei main train station. The journey took about 45 minutes and by the time we got to Taipei main station it was already 10pm! And it took us about another 5 minutes to locate our guesthouse (Happy Family). We were so hungry by the time we got to our room but we were also tired so we decided to just look for food around where we stayed instead of going to the night markets. Alas, all the shops nearby our area were already closed hence in the end, we bought our dinner from the Family Mart (Taiwan's equivalent of 7-11).

Our rather pathetic dinner on our first night in Taipei.

Our pretty basic but clean and strategically located guesthouse.

Our room for 3 which was located on the 5th floor!

Taipei main train station from the balcony of the guesthouse.

The busy street of Taipei in the morning.

How cool to have a real time display on the ladies washroom.

Taipei really takes the effort to try to keep us females safe. In case you are wondering what's the difference between this waiting zone and the rest, a female waiting zone will have more cctv's watching over compare to the rest (according to my Taiwanese friend).

Our first mission in Taipei was to go soak at the hot springs of XinBeitou. I know, it is summer in Taiwan right now and at average daily temperature of 35 degrees, soaking in hot springs sounded insane. But hot springs are one of Taiwan's pride and we thought we would just go try it out, you know just to have a feeling of what natural hot springs are like. Besides, the hot springs at Xinbeitou is one of Taiwan's 4 main hot springs and it is located so close in Taipei city itself. We took the mrt to Beitou before transferring on another train to Xinbeitou, home to the popular sulphur hot springs in Taiwan.

The mrt to Beitou.

We bought the one day tourist pass at 180ntd which enabled us to take unlimited rides on the mrt and public buses for the day.

The mrt to Xinbeitou. So brightly painted.

All these cute figurines depicting the town of Xinbeitou. Even from the mrt station itself, we can already smell the odiferous sulphur.

Even the mrt to Xinbeitou has all these cute tubs with a computerized map in them.

It's about 15 minutes walk to the Beitou hot spring public bath.

The Beitou hot spring public bath with an entrance fee of only 40ntd per person.

Photography were not allowed inside the hot spring area for the privacy of all users. Basically, the hot spring public bath is divided into a few sessions a day with each session lasting about 3 hours each. There are 3 main hot springs inside with the temperature of the water varying between each hot spring and there are also 2 cold pool inside, which is superbly useful to cool down the body especially after you feel all roasted from the hot springs. Unlike the hot spring in Malaysia, the Xinbeitou one is all au naturel and bathing clothes are required. They encouraged users of the hot spring to soak at a duration of not more than 10 minutes each time for health purposes.

We managed to stay in the first one for a full 10 minutes but we were already perspiring like crazy at the end of it. Still, we braved ourselves for the 2nd one and this time round, we couldn't take the heat anymore. The water temperature was only about 38 degrees but with the sun smiling generously down on us, I felt as though we were being boiled and baked inside the hot spring. My arteries were all dilating furiously and I felt my pulses really strong already. Hot springs are said to have beauty and rejuvenating purposes, so I guessed we only managed to beautify our skin for like 15 minutes that day. Hot springs are indeed relaxing and pampering, but definitely not during summer. It will have been most ideal to go soak in one during winter.

The Beitou hot spring museum with free entrance. There are many informative exhibits especially on the origin of the hot springs in this town but it's all in Chinese so unless you can read Chinese, you'll probably gain nothing out of it as well.

Can you all guess what building is this?

This is actually the Beitou public library! So beautiful can.

Attempting to blend in at the Katagalan cultural centre.

Alright, that's all for Taipei update for now. Mission two and so on in coming posts so remember to stay tuned to this space. Till then, nights everyone. :)

Humble Beginnings Mille Crepe

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:16:00 +0000

In less than 24 hours, I'll be flying off to Taiwan *excited*. This is actually the first time I'll be backpacking with few of my darlings from high school so double the excitement. I'll also be meeting some friends from Taiwan thus triple the excitement! Well before I go missing for the next 10 days, I just like to share about something known as the mille crepe. For someone who pretty much dislike cream, this is one exceptional cream cake that I actually like.

So what exactly is a mille crepe? A mille crepe is basically a type of French cake and 'mille' means 'a thousand'. Hence unlike normal cakes, these type of cakes are made up of many many layers resembling 'a thousand' layers from afar.

When some of my friends came down to JB over the last few days, we decided to order the mille crepe from Humble Beginnings for them to try. If you guys have heard of Nadege Patisserie mille crepe in Melaka, then the founder of Humble Beginnings is actually the original chef at Nadege. ( I got to know this from reading Jason mumbles blog) So if you think Nadege is good, then you really got to try this. A few years ago, when Amos (the founder) just move down to JB, this mille crepe of his was only available in JB. But little did I realized that now they are also available in KL/PJ and Penang besides Johor Bahru.

No prize for guessing right what's in our hand :p

The very nicely wrapped box.

The mille crepe from Humble Beginnings. When we made an order, we have the choice to request if we will like them to precut our cake into slices or cubes. I had requested for our cake to be cut into cubes because I thought it will be more convenient for consumption.

Beautifully layered.

We had cookies and cream that day hence the cookies and cream between each layer.

Each mouthful was sinfully delicious. I guess what makes this cream cake more bearable and better for me than the rest is the fact that amidst all those cream, there's those crunchy layers and caramelized top which doesn't make me feel like I'm eating all cream only if that makes sense. Well, I think this is something definitely worth a try to satisfy the sweet tooth. :)

Disclaimer : This is an unpaid advertorial/review and is based solely on the author's point of view only. Hence, any discrepancy in taste or opinion is very much regrettable.

Vientiane Riverfront

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:50:00 +0000

Remember somewhere in the mid of last month I posted a post about being in Laos? Well, I'm back for almost 2 weeks now and finally am going to start blogging about my experience backpacking the second leg of South East Asia; the first leg being last year covering Cambodia and Vietnam. This time, I decided to cover Laos and Thailand. Had intended to do more but I had to cut it short because of my convocation.

Anyways, in my previous post, I mentioned about getting our money change at the airport right? Well just a little advice from me : please DO NOT get your money change at the airport because we later found out that getting our money change at the money changers around Vientiane fetched us a far better rate than the airport definitely. No need to rush to get your kips at the airport because while most Laotian uses kips, they widely accepts USD as well. Seriously, we felt so ripped off by the airport. At the airport the rate was RM 1 to 2200 kip and at money changers outside, it was RM 1 to 2540 kip! Argggh! At least that was the rates we got from the money changers that lined Lan Xang avenue. And because of that 300 kip difference, we were paying more with every single cent spent that in the end we used far more USD in Laos which makes everything cheaper after conversion.

Since we were staying at the riverfront, we decided to spend our first day in Vientiane exploring the riverfront. The Mekong river is less than 5 minutes walk from our guesthouse.

It looks like the Mekong river is drying up.

The whole riverfront is kinda like a recreation park now. There were people of all ages jogging and cycling along the river, teenagers and young adults skate boarding, families and children playing in the playground and dating couples just sitting around waiting for the sunset.

Walking on the opposite side of street from the park, there were quite a number of stalls selling pretty crafts and souvenirs.

The Lao love a good ping (grill) so there are countless food vendors along the street selling everything grilled. These makeshift grilled pits are actually used kerosene barrels.

We walked and we walked until we finally reached the end of the stretch of the food and drink vendors. Honestly we didn't know which stall to go because everyone from every stall was trying to get us to their stall. Besides, all their menus are similar, selling same dishes at the same price so there was nothing competitive in terms of prices. Hence, in the end we picked the stall with the most number of locals.

Notice those eggs the yellow arrow is pointing too? Apparently the Laotian love duck fetus eggs too! Seriously ~~almost~~ every table around us had a plateful of the duck fetus eggs on them and just like in Cambodia, they were happily gulping down their eggs as well. Only that the most Laotian take their duck fetus eggs with beer Lao.

The stall we ate from.

We ordered one grilled fish and one grilled chicken. The girl at the stall taught us to say fish and chicken in Laos. Fish is paa and chicken is kai which we later on found out was the same as the Thai language for fish and chicken.

Enjoying a coconut on a very hot day. The coconut was 7000 kip (RM 3). Even the coconut water was warm.

We had to wait like half an hour before our fish and chicken was ready because they were being slowly grilled over hot coals. So in the meantime, we decided to try this local street food which is called nam. It is really a fried ball of sticky rice and shredded coconut. 5000 kip (RM 2.30)

The fried ball cut opened. It's quite interesting to try because we never had such thing in Malaysia but perhaps because it was rice, I felt quite full even eating half of it.

A huge plate of sticky rice. In Laos, sticky rice is the preferred rice. Sticky rice is actually plain glutinous rice and is serve with a dipping sauce.

Our grilled Mekong fish. The whole fish was bathed in thick layer of table salt with lemongrass stuffed down its throat through the mouth. Despite it's not so appealing look (I don't know but I find the lemongrass stuffed into the fish mouth like that not really appealing) and after clearing away all the salt, the fish itself was super fresh and huge. Not to mention the whole fish was only 35 000 kip ( RM 15)

Our ping kai. Honestly, I felt it tasted kinda like our tandoori chicken. 20,000 kip (RM 9)

Everyone else also had a plate of this on their table so we decided to try one too. It's simply just fried maggi but unlike our maggi goreng, it is sweet and sour and had peanuts. If you like sweet and sour, you'll like this.

We initially thought this was some sort of street massage but turn out, instead of the conventional tables and chairs, this are the tables and chairs provided by some of the vendors in hope to attract customers.

I realized they have a lot of this Saigon painting look-alikes and very beautiful lamps.

The riverfront is indeed a pretty neat place to go to sample some of the cheapest Lao street food in Vientiane. I was full to the max after our dinner because as I realized, the Lao people are extremely generous with their food portion. Everything is like super huge plate and even their fishes and chickens are like huge (for the price we were paying, we thought it was well worth it). If I had stayed in Laos for a month, I'm pretty sure with all their sticky rice and huge fishes, I'll definitely gain weight in no time! :)

I'm in The Star Metro!

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 11:38:00 +0000

Guess who was in the paper last Thursday, 7th of July? Yes, it's me in The Star Metro last Thursday! I did an interview with The Star paper the previous Friday and didn't even realized the article was already out until Yi Hui and Dolly told me about it last night.

Want to know what it's all about? Or why am I interviewed by The Star paper? Like really why me right to be featured in a column in our country's leading English newspaper? Read my interview below to find out why.

Thanks Andrew for the scan copy of the article. :)

Or you can read the online version of the article here.

Honestly I was pretty surprised myself when H emailed me some weeks ago and asked if I was interested in doing an interview with The Star to be featured in the Urban Chic section. I was still in Thailand at that time so the email really caught me unexpectedly. But well, life is full of surprises and I had to say this is one fine surprise. Of course, I like to thank Model.com too for giving me this opportunity. :)

Weddings

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 09:53:00 +0000

Wedding bells are ringing. But in case you are wondering, not mine just yet. *laughs* Now that I'm back to JB, I had been attending a few weddings though and more to come in the following months. Literally one wedding each month until the end of the year. It seems just like yesterday we were all still in high school and everyone was joking about receiving the red bomb and at that time weddings are like so far off. But how time really flies. 10 years had quickly past and now one by one, these girls, these women whom I have known for more than 10 years are either married or is going to. While I know that I'm not ready to be married yet, I really feel so excited and happy for them that they had happily found their other half. Of course, weddings are also one of those times where we finally got to meet friends that we seldom see and thus, a good chance to catch up too. :)

One of my good friend from high school, ST was married last month! Was really excited because it was the first high school friend's wedding I attended.

The liveliest table. haha!

Make up and hair do for J's wedding last night.

Girls in black.

Our harmonious combination of colors.

With the lovely bride and groom.

The bride whom I had known since primary school glowing in gold.

With my super pretty friend.

Well, congratulations once again to all my beloved babes. I sincerely wish that as their married life starts, may all the dreams in their hearts come true. Xoxo :)

I Officially Graduated!

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:36:00 +0000

On the 2nd of July 2011 last Saturday. I officially ended my chapter as an undergraduate and will be beginning a new chapter as a houseman anytime soon.

I canceled my flights to Australia and I shorten my backpacking trip around IndoChina all for the sake of this very special day. For this very special day was none other than my commemorative convocation. It was the day I was most looking forward to since the first day I stepped into medical school. It was the day parents watched with pride and joy as their child graduates. It was the day we all had to put on those oversize honorable robes and mortarboards while sitting in neat rows as one by one we make our way up the stage to receive our degree from the chancellor. That piece of completion of course certificate that hereby conferred me my doctoral degree.

#8 - Thanks for all the flowers, graduation bears and graduation Snoopy! ♥ them all.

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#13 - Our mortarboards flew.

#14 - And more flying mortarboards.

#15 - Woooooooohoo! We are now proud graduates of UCSIU!

After 5 years of hard work in medical school, I'm glad that we had all make it and was able to graduate together. It was definitely good being able to see everyone again. Well, although I had missed my trips but this once in a lifetime day was worth it as it will always remain a joyful and meaningful one for me. Although I do missed my brother who is stuck in the deep jungle of Sabah right now, I'm truly happy to have my parents and sister especially coming all the way to KL to celebrate this very special day together. :)

Lang Tengah Island

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:18:00 +0000

A perfect paradise to literally do nothing and just let our hair down. A perfect paradise where all their living creatures whether on land or sea are larger than their normal counterparts, where inviting crystal clear water greets and plenty of dead corals line the beach.

When Siew and I first moved to Moldyland aka Kuala Terengganu, we promised ourselves that we would conquered aka visit all the well known islands around the state by the end of our 3 years stay there. And so after conquering Cotton Island, Redang Island and Perhentian Island in the past 3 years, we finally made our way to this piece of heaven that is pretty much still very undisturbed after our Profesional 3 exam last month.

Honestly after visiting all the other above islands, Lang Tengah is the most beautiful of them all imho. Especially their underwater. Still so crystal clear and practically unpolluted. We went snorkeling at around 3 spots and all the fishes that we saw there are like the combination of fishes from Cotton, Redang and Perhentian islands. Only that there are even more varieties of the fishes, corals and other underwater livings that we had never seen previously. And the fishes there are so ~~not shy~~ friendly they just came nibbling and swimming around us all the time. At times, the fishes were just milimeters away from my face that I could even stroke their scaly cold body without them swimming away. Besides, as I had said all the fishes there are like super well fed because all of them are like super gigantic and huge. All the colorful fishes, the clownfishes and even the sharks are larger and they have like abundant of the Christmas trees corals that I really love.

I really love the tranquility and the serenity of the island. The blue blue water and the even bluer sky. And believe it anot, we also saw a round rainbow! Like really really round. The whole island is quite small and there's not much activities on the island but yet I truly enjoyed spending my time simply sitting by the beach watching the crystal clear water and perfect sky waiting for sunset, walking around taking pictures, watching crabs, soaking my feet in the cold, clear water, reading my novel and sleeping under the shady trees while enjoying the nice cool sea breeze, hearing my favourite tunes and the sound of the gentle waves crashing against the shore. It was perfect bliss.

And guess what? While we were there, we also saw some Taiwan celebrities who are supposedly very famous in Taiwan now which we unfortunately had no idea who they were until we came back and told our friends and our friends went like 'Whoa, YOU ALL SAW ANGELA BABY'? (We only knew Angela Baby was there because one of the crew member told us so) Truth was, there was also the filming of this movie 'Love You You Island' at that time. It's apparently a sequel to the famous 'Summer Holiday' movie filmed in Redang Island (part of the reason why Redang is so famous now anyway) and the best part was, there was one scene where they were actually filming right in front of us while we were lazing our afternoon away and the lead actor was sitting right there in front of us with us trying hard to fit his face into our knowledge on Taiwan celebs. And then I think Angela Baby walked past and there they were filming their scene. The thing is, I'm not much into Taiwan entertainment and such and the only Taiwan celebs I know are like Jackie Wu, Jay Chou, Jolin Tsai, F4, Fah Ren Heit and S.H.E to name a few.

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#14 - This was one of the scene for the movie which was supposedly a secret! I accidentally took this picture on the first day before knowing it's actually part of the movie scene. Now you saw it FIRST here! Actually so small cannot really see anything also. :)

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#23- The many dead corals washed ashore.

#24 - The resort we stayed in. Not the best resort but they have excellent service.

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#27 - Say aye aye to Captain Allison.

#28 - Now say aye aye to Captain Siew.

#29 - The 'island' girl that kinda shocked us with her age.

I was in paradise for 3 days literally practicing the art of doing nothing. The island is really so beautiful that I was starting to feel reluctant to share it with you guys just because I wish to keep the island a secret so that not many people will know about it and go there and eventually spoil the place! I definitely wants to go back again to visit the underwater especially and I do love you long long, Lang Tengah Island. :)

Sabaidee

noreply@blogger.com (Allison) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:52:00 +0000

Means 'Hello' in Laos!

Time in Laos is an hour slower than Malaysia and we had just arrived a few hours ago at 4.30pm local time. Weather here in Laos is super hot for now so much for it's rainy season. The first thing we did was to change some Laos kip at the airport because I had read that it's the cheapest to be exchanging kip at the airport and the rate currently is RM 1 to 2200 kip. Not the best rate I must say because usually RM 1 is to about 2500 kip.

We then hopped into a cab which took us downtown to the riverfront where most of the backpacker's hostels and guesthouses aggregates and fortunately the guesthouse that I was hoping to stay in still has room available so here I am at Mixay guesthouse enjoying their free wifi service in their lobby with their tv in the background playing some super dramatic Thailand drama. Nonetheless, there are certain limitations to their wifi service such as that it's only available daily from 11.00 am to 11.00 pm and that we can only online at the guesthouse lobby.

We only had time for an evening walk by the drying up Mekong River by the riverfront just now and we settled for a local dinner at one of the stall vendors by the river. The riverfront is really pretty much like the riverfront in Phnom Penh or Gurney Drive in Penang. Shall blog about that next time. For now, I just want to say a simple hi to everyone from Vientiane.

My sim card is currently faulty, I don't know why but it can't detect any local network so I can't roam and I can't send out or receive any calls or messages. So, in a sense luckily I had decided to bring my netbook along this time hence still contactable as long as there's wifi connections which is suprisingly good here.

Gonna spend tomorrow exploring Vientiane then head up to Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang in the next few days. So till my next update, take care and have a great day world. :)

Fresh in at Wattay International Airport.

Vientiane riverfront.

Our first evening in Laos :)