The year of the snake...CNY

Chinese New Year has just ended a couple of days ago and here I am sharing the first week of cny spent in Malaysia at my parent's hometowns. It has been a few years since I have been back to the hometowns for cny despite living in malaysia for the past 2 1/2 years, the irony. It is not every year that cny is being spent in malaysia, most of the time it is spent in Singapore with the other relatives. This trip was probably pretty meaningful considering that it would be the last time I am gonna spent cny with my family at least for the next 3 years since I will be heading to uk. :( Anyway to get the ball rolling, we drove down to malaysia as usual and thank goodness we left early to escape the unbearable jam. Yes, there were 2 occasions I remember where we drove back and were stuck in a jam for 12 hours? With that time I could fly from Singapore to UK...hahahaha. Anyway, yeah, went back to dad's hometown first for home cooked reunion dinner. Shall let the pictures do the talking...

as usual, abalones are a necessity in all cny reunion dinners and its my favourite.

diamond brand abalone which I heard from my mum is quite famous

fried shredded kampong chicken for the shark's fins soup. this chicken was shredded manually and if you did not already know, kampong chicken meat is pretty tough and the meat seems to be highly attached to the bone making it difficult to peel out the meat as compared to the normal chicken that we normally eat..as they always say good things come with a price to pay.

crab meat for the soup too, again, lots of hard work had to be put in to peel out the crab meat and to resist the temptations of putting it in the mouth. hahaha.

kampong chicken, definitely not my favourite at all because the meat is tough and it has a very strong smell and taste..hahah

ginger chicken is my grandma's specialty and it is always seen on the table for every reunion dinner 

chefs at work :)

steamed fish

yup so this is where the abalone went to, dried chinese mushrooms with abalone, yums.

So after the food comes some entertainment. In malaysia it means playing with fire crackers and fireworks and all that stuff. Awesome.

lil cousin playing with fireworks.

Ended up taking video of the firecrackers and didn't get to take much pictures of the fireworks and all because my camera or rather lens kept failing on me, time to get a new lens!

Then came the first day of cny, didn't go visiting cos we didn't have to, we just sit at home and wait for people to come and visit my grandma...hahaha

meanwhile, this was what we were doing to keep ourselves occupied...playing with the lil cousin

familiar? the all time famous 'pop pop'

old school bicycle spotted in the house.

Went down to my mum's hometown on the second day of cny...

yup fire crackers again before beginning the feast at my aunt's open house. As you can see the fire crackers seem to be a bit bare because alot of it dropped out while it was being carried around...hahaha

FOOOOOD

the awesome asam laksa soup sitting inside this pot

haha, what an innovative way for a candle light dinner

a different version of peking duck

 

let the feast begin!

the aftermath

wheee, awesome asam laksa cooked by my aunt. 

fireworks and I admit I still suck very much at taking fireworks photos

writing on the kong ming deng

there it goes 

Then comes 3rd day of cny, pretty much slacked around and watch korean drama, innocent man.

Lunch was malay asam laksa which tasted good. If only I could have asam laksa or penang laksa for lunch or dinner every week, can never get enough of it!

ABC aka ice kacang

Dinner was at a nyona restaurant, the food was pretty good

curry fish head

tom yum soup

After that, we went to visit our grandparents

fried nian gao

nian gao..yes we brought back 3

crispy fried crackers, super awesome.

killing time camwhoring but the camera refuses to cooperate with us...

found this sticker on the pomelo and decided to paste it on my phone...hahaha

the sister

hahaha, i remember this, they were checking out 4D numbers on the phone.

my sis's attempt at lighting the mosquito coil...which succeeded only after countless of attempts..hahaha. 

finally done

The next day we headed down to kl and stayed there for a night cos I had to collect the remaining stuff from the house I stayed at and then it was back home on the 5th day of cny. So basically that was about it. Probably gonna write another post about the last day of cny. Till then!

Penang & Langkawi Getaway!

A few weeks back just before chinese new year, I went on a pretty short vacation to Penang and Langkawi. It was a get together trip among my friends from IMU and it seems like it is going to be the last trip with them since some of them are starting the local phase soon and the rest of us are going overseas in the months to come. :( The trip was a total of 4 days and 3 nights, yeah, kinda short. Didn't get to do much actually, more of chilling and bumming around.

Took a flight on AirAsia to penang to meet them. 

The usual plane photo that i always take before my flights

another usual photo I always take while waiting in the boarding lounge. This is in terminal 1 where all the budget flights have been moved to.

The first dish upon arriving at Penang, char kway teow. This is the dry version which is supposedly less oily than the wet ones commonly found in kl. Not a fan of char kway teow so I seriously can't judge if it was really nice or not..hahaha.

Some spa/nail shop along the roads of batu ferringhi. Went there to get our hair braided, but in the end, only 2 of them managed to get their hair braided due to time constrain.

Beauty comes with a price to pay - PAIN.

Next up to braid...

 After dinner, headed to China House, a pretty famous hangout place which sells cakes and housed with a gallery on the 2nd level. 

Tiramisu cake to die for. If I did remember correctly, each slice of cake costs around RM15 but it varies according to the flavors. The price is quite reasonable considering the size of it. We ordered 4 different slices of cake for like about 15 people.

Caramel cashew nut cheesecake which was really yummy too!

Banana turtle torte cake which was damm good also

Carrot cake. Don't fancy carrot cakes, but I heard that it is a very popular choice at this place.

Taking random photos in the gallery upstairs

photo of how the gallery looks like

a view of some cakes from upstairs

this is made up of bubble wrap, interesting uh. If I could, I would have started bursting the bubbles...hahaha.

The tables are covered with paper and boxes of crayons are available on the table for customers to doodle. At the end of the night, I think we left with the most messy table..hahaa.

Guest book on the 2nd level where we left our mark

 Went back to the place we were staying to chill out and play cards. The next day, we were off to Langkawi.   A pity I didn't get to eat the famous 'tissue paper laksa'...hahaha. The name comes about a rumour that tissue paper was added into the soup to make it thick..lol. Probably gonna go back to Penang again for more food, don't know when though.

Drove down to Kuala Kedah to take the ferry to Langkawi which is much cheaper than taking the ferry from Penang itself.

Evidence of deprived sleep

the ferry we were on

Rented 2 cars to travel around Langkawi and this is what happens. This is my second time in Langkawi and this is the 2nd time the vehicles they rented us had to petrol in it. Its like, when we enter the car, the petrol light is already on...wth right. Thankfully 1 of the cars manage to survive all the way to the petrol station, so we filled a bottle of petrol for the other car which died halfway.

Interestingly, we found a very nice open concept toilet which belonged to some restaurant. Pretty dangerous I must say because you can actually step over to the next toilet..hahaha.

Beach photos are always a must, lots of tourists this time round. Didn't get to take much photos because of my laziness and because most of our time were spent playing on the beach..so yeah.

So yeah, this is Langkawi. We stayed at Sandy Beach Resort, booked 2 rooms for yes, that many people....hahaha. But then again, we barely get sleep, so it doesn't matter. The beach is just in front of the hotel, convenience is a plus point! To be honest, I haven't really explored Langkawi. Twice that I have been here, our activities were playing on the beach, drinking, shopping for chocolates and all, didn't do much sight-seeing like all the island-hopping and stuff. But it is definitely a good place to chill, the beach is not that dirty, the sand is fine unlike sentosa's super coarse sand where u just want to die playing beach volley especially when your feet is already burned. Imagine this: burned feet running on coarse sand equals epic killer. With all beach rules, always remember to bring sunblock because sunblock ain't cheap there. I slapped on 2 layers of banana boat SPF110 sunblock but still got burnt a little. Also, beware of jellyfish, around April or so is the peak period for jellyfish at Langkawi. This time there were quite a few baby jellyfish and many of my friends got stung, thankfully I didn't! :) Since chocolates and alcohol are duty free, it is really cheap, like 1 bottle of beer costs around RM3-4...hahaha. If possible, bring your own beach balls and stuff, we regretted not bringing a volleyball and when we went out to source for one, they were selling it for like RM50 for a Mikasa ball which they claim is original but one look at it, does not even look original. So yeah.

That's it about my trip in Penang and Langkawi, nothing much but it was definitely a good get together session after a few months. A pity that we are all heading to different places :( Wishing them all the best and hopefully we will be able to have more meetups like this in future. ♥♥♥

back from malaysia

Finally back home from malaysia after 2 weeks. Actually I came back to sg after the first trip for a day to wash my clothes and pack before I headed to Malaysia again for Chinese New Year. And finally I get a good sleep on my comfy bed after 2 weeks, could have been better and longer if not for the skype/ oovoo session with the girlfriends last night :) Will save the trip details for the next few posts to come with photos of course! Now it is time for me to start hunting for a part time job again, someone hire me soon, rotting away at home. I guess I should start some revising and studying before my med knowledge drains away for good, it is already starting to..

On a side note, finally received an email from Southampton confirming my placement there, yay! Once the offer letter and stuff comes in, I am going to be busy again having to settle my flight ticket, accommodation, visa and all. Kinda looking forward to it, but then again, a whole new environment with lots of adaptation to do, probably gonna be tough.

Alright, that is all for now, penang/ langkawi 'travelogue' in the next post! Till then.