Kingdom of Cambodia

Finally, after the long awaited opportunity to visit the Kingdom of Cambodia,  I managed to set foot on to the soil of this kingdom.  Though it was a business trip but the excitement to be in such an exotic part of the world enveloped me.  The Ketsana Typhoon has been hostile to the northern part of Cambodia killing at least about 9 people.

Compared to her neighbor, Vietnam, there are lesser motorcycles on the streets but more 4WD mostly LEXUS, TOYOTAS and within a short span of 30 minutes, 3 HUMMERS are seen cruising the dusty city streets. Though Cambodia has her own currency, RIAH, USD remains the main monetary mode of business exchange . There is a substantial number of Vietnamese working in Cambodia due to the lure of being paid in USD instead of the Vietnam Dong. (USD 1 – VND 18,300 vs USD 1 – Riah 4,000)

After having finished attending to our official business appointments, we checked ourselves in at the Phnom Penh Hotel.  The guest services and the general perception of the hotel is considered as great for  a place like Cambodia. Charging at USD60.00 per night with a USD 2.00 for extra charges I’d say that this hotel is a decent place to rest your head where the pillows are a therapy to the worn and weary traveler.

Since we managed to visit all our planed customers in Cambodia on the first day, we took the opportunity to explore the local area and find out what the local scene is like in this exotic place. Just 15 minutes walking distance away is Phnom Penh’s Local Central Market.  Offering a myriad of local produce ranging from, vegetables, sea catch, poultry, jade, shades and other local ornaments.

English is widely spoken here as compared to Vietnam, making communication a lot easier. Taxis are not common; the only means of taxi equivalent is the local version of Tuk tuk.

Spending an hour or two  exploring the streets of Cambodia is totally insufficient.  I am planning to make a long delayed back packing trip in Cambodia particularly in the northern region; Siem Reap. Anyone interested?

Vietnam Revisited…

With the mid-autumn festival just round the corner, the task of distributing mooncakes to our faithful customers in this region was undisputedly handed over to me. Boss had to make a trip over to China. 6 cartons filled with 12 boxes each with extras of 8 boxes of mooncakes to be hand carried.

Oh yeah .. we hogged the check-in counter at LCCT indefinitely. With the overweight costing us MYR20.00/kg the Vietnamese customers had BETTER be happy with the gift because the over weight fine alone totals to about 2/3 of the actual TOTAL cost of the mooncakes.

Since my boss is not travelling with me this trip, it’s good bye to better hotels, not that I care because of the strict regulations as well as everything needs money including internet services. This time around my Vietnamese Agent put me up at a hotel in District 1. The hotel is nothing fancy, similar to the budget hotels we get back in Malaysia but the great thing is, they offer FREE wireless connectivity. Yeah.. damn you Equatorial Hotel! Apart from that, scouring for local delicacy was a breeze with lots of offerings just walking distance.

Glue man and I had the pho next to our hotel and it was great. Check the pics out. It’s not the normal pho bo that comes to your mind, rather the beef stew version of it. It’s funny how we always related the cold rice rolls to Vietnam but I was hunting for it at every opportunity I get. The deep fried ones are always available rather than the cold Vietnamese rolls.

The one you see in the picture is not the conventional one. Its rolled with broad rice noodles. Yes Kway Teow.

If you are planning on a trip to Saigon @ Ho Chi Minh you may want to give the following a try:

Hotel: M2M Hotel

Address: 21 Bui Thi Xuan Street. Ben Thanh Ward District 1, Ho Chi Minh City

Price: USD35/night

Food: Pho Ha Noi

Type: Local Vietnamese Pho

Location; Next to the above mentioned hotel

Food: Bin Ky

Type: Local delicacies. (I’d recommend the steam boat)

Address: 137 C Nguyen Trai  District 1

Location: 5 minutes by taxi

Bad Ass Coffee!!

Venue: Tropicana City Mall, Damansara,

Finally, a coffee parlour that has surpassed the giants like Starbucks and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Opened for a just over a month and a week, hailing from Kona Island, Hawaii, Bad Ass Coffee provides not only quality coffees and food but a bad ass environment with reasonable pricing as well.

First of it’s kind that i know of, an indoor seating area, al fresco as well as an air conditioned smoking room fitted with lounge like settings. Blissful. The selection of music played are the likes of Sade, lounge, and jazz.

Customer Retention Card: Unlike Starbucks and Coffee Bean, whereby you’d need to reach up to a certain amount of stamp to get either a free drink or purchase a drink at a discounted rate, here at BAD ASS Coffee, you’d get a discounts off drinks and food even at your second visit!! now.. how ‘bad ass’ is this?

Pricing: Mocha Latte @ 16oz (regular)MYR: 13.50 Beef Burger MYR 12.90

Now the beef burger is really a burger in the sense that the patty IS BIGGER than the bread! Stop being conned by misleading advertisements of Mc’Donalds and Burger King. This my friends… is the real deal.

Environment: Chill-laxing. Great staff attitude, comfortable and good selection of music to relax whilst enjoying your caffeine addiction.

Rating: 1 – 5 ( 1: wtf? 5: BAD ASS)

I’d give this place a rating of 4/5.

Here’s and excerpt of their story:

The native people of Kona, Hawaii remember the days of  ’bad ass ones’. The bellows of the donkeys could be heard echoing through the mountains as they hauled the heavy loads of coffee up and down the mountainside. In honor of these hard working donkeys, we name our coffee company. The legend of the Kona Nightingale (wtf??) lives on right here at Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii.

Vietnamese

Fancy some vietnamese beef noodles? Drop by at Tropicana City Mall 1st floor. Pho Hoa.. a vietnamese chain store that offers vietnamese delicacies at very reasonable prices.

As for the beef noodles or pho, there are three categories for you to choose. the special, the normal and the adventurous.  The difference is not really in the broth but the variety of  moo moo parts. The adventurous selections comprises of the steak, tripe, and tendon.

There you go … the large bowl is priced at RM17.35 and when they say large it really is LAARRGGEE!!!  Easily 2 servings if you are a small eater. Looks nice but this is the actual thing when served in front of you. ( pictures on menu are always deceiving.

Though it may not give you a 100% representation of  having the actual thing in Vietnam but it’d give a 3/5rating and would visit this place the second time.

Apart from the pho, Eddie and i also had the lemon grass chicken priced at RM4.95. Frankly speaking, there’s nothing to shout about for this dish so basically you can do without it and opt for the vietnamese rice roll instead.

It gets  warmer as you make yourself towards mid bowl  level of your pho. Though Pho Hoa is equipped with air conditioning and additional fans,  the difference was only minute.

Cam on.

KL Tower

Standing tall at 1,381 feet above the sea level, crowned as the fifth tallest tower in the world is the Menara Kuala Lumpur. Used for communication purposes. So basically it’s the antenna  that helped Menara KL to to gain that height.

The roof of the pod is at 335 m (1,099 ft). The rest of the tower below has a stairwell and an elevator to reach the upper area, which also contains a revolving restaurant, providing diners a beautiful panaromic view of the city.

Dining at the restaurant re-defines fine dining.. that is IF we omit the quality of the food and food selection!! all in all if you would like to have something different for dinner, the view is a great appetizer and dessert. For main course I am very sure you’d be focussing on the food rather than the view since you are paying a BOMB! for it. Food to go for… oysters, sashimi, and all the expensive stuff. We need to eat our penny’s worth right? One of the local selection for dessert was interesting and worth trying and being a durian fan is a prerequisite. Imagine Nasi Pulut and durian ’sauce’.

not lighted, lighted, glowing

( much apologies for the blurred pictures… Nokia punya pasal lah tu …)

Sago Dessert

Fancy dessert after your meal? Drop by at SS2 for ice shaved fruit sago. They come in a few varieties of flavor namely, Mango, Strawberry, Kiwi and Mat Toh Lou ( which means all in !!) It’s  at the same row as Maybank and also the ‘Little Dim Sum House’.

Strawberry

Mango

Do make sure that you mix everything before indulging into it as the most precious treasure is at the bottom!!

Ipoh Sar Ho Fun

Mention Ipoh and a few things will come to mind. One of it is the famous Lou Wong Taugeh Chicken. On the way down from Penang we stopped by for an early dinner. Ipoh Sar Ho Fun !  mm… simply irresistable.

ipoh sar ho fun

the fat juicy bean sprouts

Just behind the store, there’ s a shop called Yee Thye Cake House and Confectionery ( Jalan Theatre) that sells local specialties like the Tambun bun, Heong Peng and Kaya Pau at afforadable prices. Mouth watering, don’t leave ipoh without these. Perfect as gifts too!

Penang..

We were up there for business visit and put up a night at a 4 month old boutique hotel at Abu Siti Lane. Hotel PP Island used to be a college building, reconstructed into a 62 room hotel. Their current promotion is RM78 per night for a standard room and RM88 pernight for a deluxe twin. It’s a pretty good deal for that kind of price and the quality of room offered.

The rooms are pretty well designed, modern, fitted with a wall mounted LCD screen and a panasonic shower just as shown on tv with a lil kid. The location is strategic as well. Just below 5 minutes walk to the main road, you find yourself staring down Macalister Street, with lots of hawker stalls to quench your hunger for local delicacies. The best place however requires you to walk about 10 minutes down to find the current best local food galore. Situated at New Lane, just outside Sunway Hotel, you can indulge yourself in many varieties of local delicacies. However the fried kway teow there isn’t as good as how the famous  penang char kway teow ought to be. Utterly disappointing. The ABC and chendol on the other hand is nice.

In between Nagor Lane and Swatow lane, you’ll find yourself  in a modernistic chinese heritage row… the little shanghai of Penang. Buildings are purposefully constructed to have a historical feel.

I wished i had a DSLR with me at that time but I don’t and I do not own one…yet… I suppose. So we’ll have to make do with a camera phone for now. Anyway, speaking of fusion food, we’ve found this place that truly defines fusion.. a mixture of east and west.

This is a must visit destination. Penang … your trip here is not complete without eating the ever famous penang asam laksa and penang har mee ( we did not have the time to hunt for this… surely the next trip up). 30 minutes away from the city is a place called Balik Pulau. Make your way to the Jalan Tun Sardon intersection, a corner lot shop. One of the many gems of Penang food. ASAM LAKSA!!!  for RM 2.50 a bowl we had second servings each for the plain and also the Lemak Asam Laksa. My personal favorite is the Lemak Asam Laksa. It has a more flavoured body and the taste is simply worth seconds! the normal asam laksa

lemak asam laksa

OMG i so want that now..

the best of the best indeed

So folks each time when you are up in Penang.. don’t forget to drive up to Balik Pulau for this baby .. it’s worth it. Char Kway Teow the famous one is still in lorong selamat though a lot of the Penangites mentioned that she has been really cocky and her food is seriously over-priced. Har Mee, personally the last I tried and satisfied with is at a coffee shop near the Kek Lok Si temple.

Batu Ferringhi night market is not to be missed! Offering you a wide range of selection from pirated DVD’s, T-shirts, make up accesories etc etc.

Penang and island of unending wonders and adventures.

Vietnam

Electric wires decorated the city sky line like pine trees at Christmas, the aroma of freshly baked french loaves filled the streets as the city folks zipped left and right through every orifices that they could find on the busy traffic on their vespas and Honda 100cc bikes.  Who would have known that a normal bike has transformed itself into a family van carrying 4 -5 members of the family on the space constraint mode of transport. Who would have known that the 100cc bikes is able to be used as a delivery for  piglets , glass, plastic tubes and building materials.

Clad in mouth covers and fancy helmets, donning business wears and dresses such is the normal traffic scene in the streets of Vietnam.

 

The south city of Vietnam, Saigon or better known as Ho Chi Minh City was our first stop. Greeted by warmth of the night and pouring rain at dawn. Government effors are trying to build  new drainage system to resolve these matters but the local infrastructures, finance, weather are taking a toll on their progress. The densely populated city of Saigon possesses narrow streets in the city servicing a community of 10 million people. The sounding of horns from cars and bikes, chirping birds, street peddlars yelling out for customers for their day’s trade adds an exotic ambience to the mystical Saigon.

There are much more activities going on in Saigon as compared to Hanoi, building are more modern-like with international coffee chains blending into the traditional local coffee stores. However many still prefer the ‘road side cafes’ with low seats and tables. Much have changed since my last visit to Saigon. Six years have treated the city well. The Vietnam Dong (VND) is not widely available in plastic as compared to the dirty, crumpled paper that once served as a business trade. More bikers are wearing crash helmets as compared to back then. It’s  was a second attempt by the governmnet to have bikers wear crash helmets and apparently the safety implication was not captured. Street side peddlars offer a myriad of crash helmets along the likes of Coach, LV designs, a cross of a crash helmet and baseball cap are available. Safety features of a normal crash helmet is compromomised as the main reason they wear a crash helmet is to avoid summons instead of protecting their skulls in case of an accident.

 

The transition of scenery was obvious between Saigon and Hanoi. The feeling of antique, old, historical, slowly envelopes you. The stretch along the highway from Hanoi airport is filled with the green paddy fields, simply breathtaking. Life seems simple and relaxed here but we do not see the hardship and poverty that clings on these farmers.

 

It was nice to see the famous vietnamese hat in action. Protecting the bearer from the scorching sun and heat. We spent only a night in Hanoi. Dinner was fantastic. We had normal meals but imagine having dinner in Hanoi among the locals and having a really old street building as yoru background. It gave you a momentary feeling of the wartimes. Alas I did not bring my camera out that night shucks…

We spent a night at an industrial district about an hour away from Saigon and the highlight of that night was duck’s tongue for dinner!! Sounds disgusting and weird but in actualy fact it tasted quite nice  Apart from the stereo type beef noodle seafood is basically a big thing here in Vietnam. Serving you  various ways of seafood cooking indegenious to Vietnam.

We were caught in a jam on the way to the airport returning to Kuala Lumpur. Caught in traffic accompanied by a sea of crash helmets. The pedestrain walkway was not spared from used as an alternative road for bikes. We took  slight detour and to a local fruit stall to load ourselves with some dragon fruits and a refreshing coconut drink before squeezing back into the jam. 

I spotted a Vespa parked nearby, after obtaining permission from the owner.. I took it as my own for a mere 5 seconds… enough for a pose and a click from the camera.

Vietnam is a must visit place. It’s culture, food, people are worth exploring. It way better than going to a tourist commercialised place where you know  most of the things are created or made to look good and pretty to impress the tourists or business people.  It is downright authentic here in Vietnam, exotic and exciting! 

I would love to have a leisure trip in Vietnam again but this time would aim for central Vietnam and perhaps the out skirts. Anyone interested?

Greetings

Hello world indeed.. this is just an introduction of what is to come in this blog. Basically just a tool for friends to keep in touch with and an easy read while you are in the office having a coffee break or just trying to kill time waiting for the end of a working day. I hope this blog lives up to your expectations.