Taiping: Le'pak Kitchen

#throwback

If you want me to count how many nice cafes are there in Taiping, it will be an easy task! There are so few cafes here and good or beautiful ones are even lesser. Today, I am going to share a decent cafe, located near Taman Kaya in Taiping. They served Malay + Western fusion style and also photogenic desserts. I've seen a few people posting photos of this cafe and hence I went there to try about a month ago. Sorry for the delayed update! XD

Not hard to find. It has a very spacious parking space, but.... it still gets packed. 

Woods and bricks.

I ordered a photogenic dessert, which serves with bueno chocolate bar. However, I had too high expectation on this. It ends up just so-so to me. 

Craving for some mango sticky rice and so we ordered one to share! This dish looks so flooded as compared to our normal mango sticky rice. And it comes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!! Yumzz...

Grilled chicken chop served with salad and potato wedges. (around RM9)

This is quite a decent plate of grilled chicken. =)

Chicken Chop served with mushroom sauce (RM5)

This is cheap! But it has too much flour. I prefer grilled chicken as compared to this. Of course, the price also doubled. 

Nasi Komando (if i don't remember the name wrongly). It is combination of nasi paprik and nasi pattaya. Ordered this because mom and aunt never try nasi paprik before and I personally like pattaya. Haha... So yea. This plate kills 2 birds with 1 stone =D

Thailand 8D7N Trip: Day 5 Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, Grand Palace, Central World (Kum Poon & After You Dessert)

Day 5: Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, Grand Palace, Central World (Kum Poon & After You Dessert)

Initially, we planned to do day tours for floating market and grand palace for consecutive 2 days. Then we went to the hotel reception to ask if we could get a huge taxi for 6 persons. We were lucky that we chose to ask the hotel reception instead of walking out to the street to get taxi by ourselves. Why so? The hotel receptionist suggested us to rent a car for a day, which can fix 6 persons (or more), to go to both Damnoen Saduak Floating Market and Grand Palace in a day. It costs us THB2500 in total and we are allowed to decide wherever we want to go. This is such a great deal! We managed to save time and also the price is reasonable too.

We wanted to go Amphawa Floating Market at first, but the driver and hotel receptionist highly recommend us to go to Damnoen Saduak Floating Market. So, we decided to listen to locals. 

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market is the most famous floating market, which is about 100km southwest of Bangkok. This floating market is routinely crowded with hundreds of vendors and purchasers floating in their small rowing boats selling and buying or exchanging their goods. Most people live densely along both sides of the canal from one end of the canal to another. Majority of these people are agriculturists. (Click here to read more)

Upon arrival, the driver dropped us at a counter, where it seems to be a boat company that drive tourists around the floating market. We paid the boat fee and then get on board to start our floating market tour. ^_^ We have one boat for ourselves, which is good as we can stop freely whenever we want. Before we depart, the person in charge reminded us to stop the boat if we found anything that we want to buy. If not, the boat will just drive past.  

Amazing view of the floating market.

Bought a coconut ice cream as breakfast!

 This is so unhealthy but this is the first food stall that we found and all of us were starving that time. >.<

There are many vendors, some are on the boats and some are static ones. 

The boat stopped us at a coconut sugar farm for us to observe how they make coconut sugar.

This is quite similar to the one I've seen in Mekong River Tour, but this one at Damnoen Saduak don't have much things to see. 

This is the most happening part of the floating market, where people can get down for the hawker stalls. But our tour did not allow us to get down of the boat. Well, we aren't keen to get down anyway as the food here are really expensive. 

We ordered a plate of Pad Thai to share and this costs us THB200. Super overpriced. 

Tourist spot, what to expect? Hmmm.... And it is bad. =(

Friends were craving for some mango and we spotted a stall! Got this plate for THB50. Price is still reasonable and it is sweet! 

Sinnah and me enjoying the mango and boat ride. =D

We enjoyed our stay at Damnoen Saduak Floating Market but it gets really hot towards noon time. We quickly ran into the car to get some air cond. XD

Then, we asked the driver to drop us to a place for lunch. We managed to fill up our starved tummy with thai food, which are quite good. Maybe we were too hungry! XD Thanks to the driver. 

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NEXT: GRAND PALACE

We reached Grand Palace around 2pm. The weather was really hot, hot, hot! 

For your information, Grand Palace has very strict dress code. Visitors are required to dress appropriately. Clothes that are strictly not allowed:

• Shorts, mini-skirts, short skirts, tight fitting trousers, and tights
• See-through shirts and blouses, as well as culottes or quarter length trousers
• Sleeveless shirts or vests
• Sandals (without ankle or heel straps)
• Rolled-up-sleeved shirts
• Sweatshirts and sweatpants, wind-cheaters, pajamas and fisherman trousers

I made such mistake and required to rent their shirt and "sarong" for THB200 each, but the money is refundable. So no worries. But it wasted us a lot of time to queue up to rent the clothes. And it was really hot to wear double layer. 

What is so nice about Grand Palace? 

The Grand Palace is where every visitor must pay a visit, at least once in their lifetime. The Grand Palace served as a significant royal residence until 1925 and is now used for ceremonial purposes only. It is divided into 3 main zones: The Outer Court (home to royal offices, public buildings and the Temple of Emerald Buddha); The Middle Court (the most important residential and state buildings) and the Inner Court (exclusively reserved for the king, his queen and his consorts). (Click here for more information)

Tourists are everywhere. So crowded! It is really hard to explore the place in peace. There will be people bumping on you, at any time. 

Yes. I'm covered up for sun protection but it is so HOT!

The buildings inside are really beautiful and well protected. 

We spent about 90 minutes here and decided to run out of this place. One of the reason is that the place is closing soon and we are too hot to stay in there. XD

Our day trip ended because we were all wet and tired. The driver kept asking us, "Are you sure you all want to go back already?" He really wanna make our trip worthy. Such a honest and great driver. =) 

We went back to the hotel and rest. We were a little hungry and tried out the Meiji milk that we bought from 7-11 the night before. They are good and cheap! I love it. =) 

I prefer the original milk rather than the chocolate milk. 

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Dinner time @ Central World

Central World is within walking distance from our hotel, so we decided to walk there. In Bangkok, any place that is within walking distance and if you can walk, please walk! The traffic is really bad in Bangkok and you might spend more time and money to travel if you decided to take a cab. 

Central World entrance is strict where people will check your bags prior entering. 

First wefie in front of Central World.

Vietnam: 4P's Pizza

Day 4 of Ho Chi Minh Trip ^_^

After our half day tour to Cu Chi Tunnel (click here for the link), we were hungry and looking forward for our lunch! We booked a pizza restaurant for lunch. Heard from friend's uncle it is really good and worth trying. We made our reservation on the first day of the trip to make sure we could get a table. And hence, we went on a cab and went to 4P's Pizza for lunch.

According to their website, their vision is of "delivering wow and happiness". And 4P's stands for Platform of Personal Pizza for Peace. With their homemade artisan cheese, we really wow-ed whenever they serve us our pizza. It is located at Le Thanh Street, a small alley at the back. We managed to look for it with the help of Waze and taxi driver. 4P's Pizza is famous and not too hard to communicate with the taxi driver. It is also one of the Top 10 in TripAdvisor list. How can we not try? To explore more about this restaurant, you can click this link to read more on their website.

We reached the restaurant around 1.40pm, 20 minutes earlier than our reservation time. Luckily we were able to dine in straightaway. We were brought upstairs into a private room. Yes, you didn't get me wrong. 6 of us were being seated in a grand looking private room. We can't stop ourselves from "wow"-ing and sound like a kampung girl in the room. Haha.... 

The menu is simple but I bet you won't know what to choose when you start flipping.

Everything in it looks soooooo GOOOOODDD!!! It took us some time to decide on what to choose. Savoury pizzas look yummy. Shall we go for pastas? Shall we go for seafood? Meat? Oh my! The Cheese! Dessert Pizza! Awwww....... Yes, it is really hard to choose. =P 

After making our order, we then waited eagerly for our pizzas. Can't wait to try!

This restaurant is quite high class as their table arrangements and services are all very up to level. 

Can you look for the full term of 4P's in this photo? It took us a while to figure out what 4P's stands for. XD

And here's my glass of passion fruit soda! It is homemade soda and it mix quite well with passion fruit. Gassy and sour. Very appetizing. 

Ta-daa! Our first pizza was served with surprise! The white colour stuff in the centre isn't poached egg. It is their homemade burrata cheese. This is call Burrata Prosciutto Pizza, served with Prosciutto, rocket, fresh tomato, parmesan and olive oil. It sounds and tastes really Italian. *Thumbs up!*

WAIT....... The cheese shouldnt be eaten this way..... 

The waitress helped us to open up the cheese.

Ta-daa! The burrata cheese turned into flower shaped! Nicely served on nicely cutted 6 pieces of pizza. *claps*

My portion. Served so nicely on plate. 

Took me some time to cut and taste it. It is sad to cut and eat such beautiful pizza. How it tastes? I would say this is the best pizza I've ever tasted. The cheese tastes like heaven! It is cream cheese texture but a bit harder. It is not too cheesy either.

After we finished the first pizza, our second pizza was served! Tadaa!!! Seafood pizza. 

Oh my god, did you see the prawns! So many and quite big! They are really kind with their ingredients.

Then. our pesto pasta with baby clams was served! 

In Ho Chi Minh, you can find baby clam in a lot of restaurants and they are very juicy. This is sort of a fusion of asian and italian. Very nice one. I like it because the pesto taste is just nice, not too strong, and it is served with almond flakes! *melts*

We also ordered a Zucchini Pizza to try. 

This is so special! I've never seen it elsewhere (Forgive me, maybe it is because I haven't explore a lot yet). It is served with fried zucchini on top of the zucchini pizza. You can have crunchy version and soft version of zucchini in one shot. Heavenly good! Who says vegetarian pizza won't taste good? 

Travel Tips: My Favourite Top 10 Things to do in Australia

,I'm looking back at my photo albums tonight and I really miss the Land Down Under (Australia). Hence, I decide to share my list of the Top 10 Things to do in Australia. These are the things I missed the most and I will definitely go back for it. 

#1 Hot Chocolate Drink 

I miss Max Brenner! It is a must try because till now, I still hardly find hot chocolate that satisfy my taste buds. Drinking hot chocolate in the middle of the night is so sinful, but I did that! Cold weather and hot chocolate -- such a perfect match! =)

#2 Drink alcohol

There are so many types of alcohol here and how could you not try them? I even tried drinking alcohol in the afternoon XD

#3 Have a Fish & Chips by the sea
Pack your fish and chips and have it at a beach or somewhere near the sea. The feel is there. But beware of your food because the birds will attack! 

#4 Explore the small lanes and you will find nice graffiti
Artistic people love to express themselves and they turn small lanes into beautiful graffiti lanes. There are people who come and take wedding photos at these lanes. As a tourist/backpacker, how can you miss this place?

#5 Oysters

Have some fresh oysters when you're in Aussie! You can get them real fresh at Sydney Fish Market/Queens Victoria Market/etc etc.... And... The price is quite reasonable! Don't miss the chance!

 #6 Visit "typical" tourist spots
Definitely cannot miss them because they are so beautiful. Visiting them everyday wouldn't bored me. Nice architecture.

OPERA HOUSE

TWELVE APOSTLES 

#7 Enjoy the scenery
I enjoy the blue sky a lot. Not to say that sky in other countries look nicer, but it may be because of weather there. Cold weather make me feel more keen to enjoy looking at the blue sky. 

 #8 Visit their historical sites/small town
They have nice architecture and it is possible to know more about Australia's history and culture. May have chance to meet aborigines too! 

 #9 Explore cities nearby
I've the chance to explore Tasmania and it was a really great experience. Small town with beautiful views. Totally worth a road trip there. If I have a chance, I would like to go back and explore more places. Adelaide, Perth, Alice Springs, etc etc.... Australia is not just about Sydney, Melbourne and Gold Coast XD

#10 MUST EXPLORE Coles or Woolworths
I love shopping at Coles/Woolworths because they have great offers to surprise me. Cheap Tim Tams. Cheap Coffee. They sell a lot of things that we can't find in hypermarkets in Malaysia (if it exists, it will cost a bomb!). If you are in Australia, don't miss your chance to pack your luggage with your favourite snacks/coffee/whatever. Oh! Just a tip.. Coles sells nice muffins! =)

There are actually more things that you can and you should do while in Australia. I'm just listing my favorite things here. What else? You should definitely enjoy their coffee culture. You should at least see a kangaroo and koala bear once. You should go to the parks because they have a lot (especially in Melbourne). What are your top 10 list? Mind to share?

Kedah: Ginza Japanese Restaurant & Tiffz Coffee Gallery

New Year Eve Dinner (version 2014)

Last day of 2014, colleagues decided to gather for NYE dinner. I joined them for dinner but didn't manage to countdown together. (Thanks to my night shift! Grrr..... Yes yes, I have to jot this down. I have to countdown in hospital. And in fact, I missed the chance to countdown nicely as I was too busy that time. Sigh.....) Ok, back to the NYE dinner, we decided to dine in Ginza Japanese Restaurant. 

We only managed to book a seat outdoor, though we called earlier to book our place. NOOOOO~~~~ When we reached the restaurant and get seated, we kept asking if there is any chance we can be shifted indoor. And thankfully, after we made our orders, they have a table cleared for us! So thankful! So grateful! So lucky! If not, we will gonna sit outside with a strong fan beside us. horrible....

Ginza has NYE set menu -- Set A Salmon set ; Set B Chicken and something else (which I forgot). I ordered a set A and chicken terriyaki don to share with my friend. Such a big eater. XD

Friend's Ten Don. (Tempura don)
Looks nice in real but photo doesn't seems tempting at all.

Our Chicken Terriyaki Don. =D
Simple but nice. 

Our Set A. Lots of salmon!

Salmon fried rice, salmon sashimi, salmon nigiri, salmon salad, salmon terriyaki, etc etc...

Closer look to our salmonsssss! *slurpss*

They really gave generous amount of salmon in their small bowl of fried rice. *thumbs up*

Because my friend does not eat raw food, I have all salmon for myself. *oopss*

Had a really good dinner to end 2014. Enjoyed the night a lot, with good company, good environment and good food. I'm grateful 2014 has been a good year to me. I learnt a lot of new things. I met a lot of new and nice people. Thankful! Hope 2015 would be great too.

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NEW YEAR DINNER

1/1/2015. I worked till 8am and then slept till 6pm. What a good way to start a new year. SLEEP. =D Had vegetarian japanese dinner at Sushi Kitchen with my usual dinner partners and then meet up the rest for second round at Tiffz Coffee Gallery for small talk. Again, good company and good food to start my 2015. 

Our desserts at Tiffz Coffee Gallery.