Recently I follow my hubby to Ipoh on a day trip. We had our meal at the famous Nam Heong Coffeeshop in the old town. Each of us also had a cup of the famous white coffee which is very creamy.

After the meal, we went around looking for Lam Fong Biscuit shop that a friend recommended to us. It sells many varities of biscuits and the ones that I was looking for comes in the shapes of animals. Finally managed to locate the shop after going around the area several times.

It is located at No.50, Yau Tat Shin Street, Ipoh (directly opposite Restoran Lou Wong Tauge Ayam). The shop opens from 4pm onwards till 12am at night..... (such an odd opening hours for a biscuit shop).

The shop sells many varieties of biscuits and these are the cute looking biscuits that I was looking for, each costing RM2.

Bought some of them home and now wondering whether I should eat these cute looking biscuits or keeping them.....

For dinner, Hubby and myself decided to have something different. We went for a Korean dinner at Sam Oh Jeong Restaurant at Cantonment Road. This cosy place is located on the right side if you are travelling on Cantonment Road heading towards Gurney Drive. Beside it, is Matsuki Japanese Restaurant.

Like most menu in a Korean restaurant, one cannot figure out what is written in there. So we decided to ask the manager to recommend some dishes to us.

We have the Beef Bulgogi ..........

The side dishes of pickles, fermented vegetables and fresh salad comes along with the Beef Bulgogi. We had a total of ten side dishes.

We laid the beef slices together with the pickles on the salad leaves and roll it up (just like the poh-piah). Very tasty indeed.

The next dish was the claypot rice. The rice has lots of ingredients, a bit sticky and very tasty. This is what is left of the dish when hubby snap this photo. As for the dessert, there were two slices of watermelon - complementary of the house.

This dinner was definitely something different... not only the food but we also had the whole restaurant to ourselves (a family left while we were ordering our food) .... just imagine the quietness with the flow of korean music at the background (scene from a korean drama????).

I recommed you drop by this restaurant if you are looking for Korean cuisine.

SAM OH JEONG KOREAN RESTAURANT
NO. 64, CANTONMENT ROAD
PENANG
TEL : 2294461

Bon Ondori Carnival was held at the Esplanade on 21st July 2007. This year was our first visit to this event. There were many stalls set up by the perimeter of the field - game stalls and also others, mostly selling food and souvenirs. There was a huge crowd.

My hubby went around the food stalls and bought some fried baby crabs (RM5.00) and finds them very crispy. I end up buying a packet of Japanese cake that cost RM10.00.

In the middle of the field is a huge stage where all the performances were held. The carnival started with the Japanese drum performances and follow by their cultural dances.

Many Japanese ladies and children were dressed in their traditional costume. This lady look so elegant and beautiful and so are the children.

We were impressed by the overall cleaniness of the venue. Bravo to the organizer. Its a shame we could not stay on to watch the firework display as it started to drizzle. Hopefully we will be able to attend this event next year.....

The face of Penang is changing rapidly but there are still some colonial-era buildings around. Most of them are located within the city center and these are some photos that I took in Lebuh Muntri (around the corner from CHEONG FATT TZE MANSION). Some of these houses have nice and lovely details carved on the doors and windows.

Patterned tiles are also laid on the walls below the front windows on the ground facing the street. Design of flowers and geometrical are usually found on the tiles.

A photo of a floor tile decoration.

Now, most of these houses have been converted into restaurants, bars and hostels. An example is the GREEN HOUSE which is run by an expat Australian couple. They serve western food and also delicious dessert.

Further down the road is the Hainan Temple called Thean Ho Keong or Temple of the Heavenly Queen. The I00-year-old temple was remodelled by craftsmen from China in 1995 (when it celebrated its centenary) with elaborate stone carvings and dragon pillars.

If you happen to be spending your holiday in Penang, my advice is - hop on a trishaw to travel around. Its the best way to see the town.

We went to Swee Garden Restaurant for lunch with our friend, Dr and Mrs Lim (they recommended this place after browsing through their Rasa Rasa Penang book). It is located behind Maybank in Nibong Tebal, Seberang Prai. It is frequented by many outstation customers. Its speciality dish is the Thai style fried pork trotter.

The skin is crunchy, yet the meat is very tender and comes with some pickled onions. Indeed very delicious. The restaurant also serves many varieties of seafood. We had the steamed fish, fried lala, assam prawns and some vegetables.



Would like to recommend you to try their umbra juice suan -boi (sour plum) that comes in a jug. Penang has a lot of coffee shops and restaurants that serves this juice but this one is the best that we had tasted so far. It is so thick and pure (not mixed with a lot of water). They provide ice cubes for the juice.

The food was nice but it was a bit uncomfortable as there were many flies flying around.

During one of our holiday trips down to Kuala Lumpur, we stayed in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for two nights.

This hotel is in a good location which links up directly to Suria KLCC which is indeed very convenient for us to do our shopping and dinning. The light rail transit is located within this shopping centre too. Besides this hotel is the Petronas Twin Towers and also the new Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.


Together with our children we book ourselves into an apartment suite that has two rooms and a kitchenette. The living room provides a good view of the KLCC park - the landscaping was beautiful.

My son kept this room key/card after checking out - for remembrance. We all agree that we will come back and stay at the Mandarin Hotel again on our next trip. For more details on this lovely five star hotel, do click at : www.mandarinoriental.com/kualalumpur.