Sunday, December 12, 2010

ak-one cafe Kulim

Introducing ak-one cafe at Kulim Hi-Tech. It's just next to the Oldtown Kopitiam Kulim.
You may consider to have a try there. This is a halal cafe.

We were served by a young man with well mannered, i guess he's the boss's son.

The interior of ak-one cafe
The Grilled Chicken Chop - rm9.50

Grilled Dory Fish- RM10.90

ak-one Sizzling Chicken- rm 11.50

Fish and Chips - rm9.50

Saturday, December 4, 2010

We had Meiyi’s Birthday at At the Sun Restaurant called Spring Chamber Restaurant on 12 Nov, it’s a Friday night.


To my surprise, the environment is quite cozy and romantic. It serves fine western cuisine. And of course without any delay, we had our dinner ordered as everyone is hungry already. Most of us had the Set Dinner.

First came the Soup of the Day, it was a mushroom soup.

Next is our Appetizer: Salad with salmon. It quite a big portion for a starter.

Chicken with BBQ sauce(below photo)..Acording to my friend, this was good. The chicken meat were tender and it goes well with the BBQ sauce.

Beef Steak(below photo)

I had this one- Salmon with Japanese Soy Sauce..It was a bit salty and the sauce is too much.

The pizza portion was huge for 1 pax. Would recommend 2 person to share the portion.

Baby girl Eva also wanna sing Birthday song for meiyi..:)

The birthday girl..:)

We had an enjoyable dinner there.

Besides Spring Chamber Restaurant, there's a Summer Court for Outdoor Cafe in the courtyard of Sun Yat-Sen Centre. I guess it opens during day time for teatime, a nice location for meet up with friends.

For more information, you may visit the website: http://www.atthesun.com.my/
The Opening hours is from Tuesday till Sunday from 10am. However, it's closed on Monday.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Langkawi Nature Tour

Thanks to Meiyi for introducing this Langkawi Nature Tour organized by Criz Lai. He's our Blogger representative; arranging this trip for us with Mr. Leslie from Penang.cc.
They have a campaign :-Travel with A Green Heart Site.
Thus, here i would like to intro you guys to watch out for updates on their community site at http://greenheart.penang.cc/

My beautiful Saturday started with a fresh morning. Woke up early and getting ready to travel around Langkawi. It’s a Campaign organized and sponsored by the Langkawi Saga Travels & Tours. Once we reached the Swettenhan Pier, we were greeted by Jeff, our friendly tour guide for the day. At 815am, we depart from Penang to Langkawi. There were many foreigners visiting Langkawi with us as well.

Langkawi island is a well known place for a leisure holiday with its treasures of nature like the waterfalls, beautiful beaches, mountains, peaceful mangroves and its unique limestone there. Aside from the nature, its legend are very well known by most of the Malaysians. The story of a Princess Mahsuri who lived in Langkawi during the 14th century and due to the accusation made to her. As a consequences, Mahsuri laid a curse on Langkawi for seven generations.

Langkawi is indeed a popular island among foreigners. Likewise my german friend, he has been travelling to Langkawi twice in six months’ time.
I believe one would never missed the beaches when they step into Langkawi island. Imagine we were sitting by the beach, relaxing while enjoying the breeze of the wind & the serenity of the beaches. Listening to the sound of the waves, forgetting all the hectic time at work.
After a 3 hrs ferry ride, finally we reached Langkawi. We were taken to the Royal Langkawi Yatch Club at Charlie's Place (http://www.langkawiyachtclub.com/dining/charlie-s-place.html )for a nice lunch.

We sat on the platform; admiring the great sight of the marina whilst having our lunch.

After lunch, we headed to our first destination- Langkawi Cable Car.
Unfortunately, when we arrived the cable car had technical problems. Most of the people were seem disappointed. Heard also that most of the time, the cable car has technical problems. We would hope that this will be improved in order to lure more visitors from all over the countries to enjoy the top view from Mat Cincang Mountain(Langkawi second highest peak); overseeing the landscape of the rainforest and beautiful sea.
Our second destination: Underwater World.
First section were those chameleon and other lizards species.
Next are all different kind of fish spesies.


It has FreshWater Fishes there. Saw a unique kind of fish called ‘Tropical Garfish’. The head of it looks like Alligator. It can grow more than 1.6m length. Understood that the distribution are found at mountain area of China, Tibet, Sze Chuan, northern Yunnan and other smaller region of east Asia. See the below photo of it.

Other fishes like Blue Diamond Discus, normally it swims in a group. Same goes to the Midas Cichlid & Red Devil Cichlid fishes.


There are Mantis Prawns, Jelly Fish and Corals also eg. Purple Tube Anemone.
I would that agree that this Underwater World Centre continue to maintains their facilities there, as many creatures from the sea & the ground; birds, animals spesies are conserved there. It encourage people to appreciate nature and promote conservation.

We do had an interesting view of the Spotted Eagle Ray. While it swims around, there were other fishes escorting it around.

For penguin, I learnt that the African Penguins have an average life expectancy of 10-11 years in the wild. They are also known as ackass Penguins due to the ‘donkey-like’ braying sound they make during the courtship.


Next destination is the Mangrove area at Kilim. It took 30mins drive down from the Underwater world. We had the Mongrove Tour to the Bat Cave, Eagle Watching area & Fish Farm.


We stop at the Bat Cave first. Before entering we were warned not to make noise, do not use flash while taking photographs inside the cave and also not to touch the bridges or the stones surrounding. Jeff were explaining regarding the attitude of the bats in the cave. Questions that people normally query,’Why does bat slept upside down?’ It was due to the bat’s wing ,length that varies from 6 inches to 6 feet which cause the bat to have difficulty in standing or walking. Relying on only the strength of its feet is insufficient to bear its body weight for a period of time. Nevertheless, with this body structure, it ease the bats to land or fly whenever needed. For those bats staying in a four season countries, there is fascinating thing about the bats. It manage to stay at the same position for 3 months time while hibernating.
Another advantages of the bat is that we need bats to maintain the chain reaction of the nature.
Besides that,we also observed stalactite and stalagmite in the cave. Jeff explaining to us the formation of the stalactite & stalagmite were from the rich mineral water deposited calcite.

On our path out from the caves, we observed many small roots like the photo shown below.
Questions from many of us, ‘What is that?’ We got the answers from the board which reminds us on the science we have learnt before. There were the respiration roots called Pneumatophores which grow upward. Its tiny pores enable the trees to breath and ensure ample oxygen supply as understood that mangroves is a anaerobic state kind of habitat.
Additional tips given by Jeff was that if we got lost in a jungle, search for those hanging roots, cut off the roots and we shall have water source from there for survival. Interesting!


We hop on the boat & headed to the ‘Eagle Watching’ area. A few boats stop around the area to view the eagles. One of the boat guide throw chicken skins on the lake to feed the eagles. We had vivid view of the eagles flying down to the surface of the lake to take the food. There were different species of eagles such as Brahminy Kite and White Bellied Sea Eagle.



Then, we headed to the Fish Farm.
We were guided by young boy to brief us on the fishes there. First, he showed us the Archer Fish or we call it Water Spitting Fish. The nature of these fish are it will spit water on the food which are unreachable. The young boy placed the breadbits on the nails above the water and this Acrher Fish will spit water as what you see on the below photo (taken from the webpage) for clearer view.


It will spits many times until the breadbits drop. Its so smart.
We saw the Horse Shoe Crabs & Sting Rays.

Backside of the Horse Shoe Crab..


Next is the feeding to the Spotted Eagle Ray. We observed a foreigner feeding it. Quite interesting part is that its mouth are at the bottom side. It seems trying hard to move above the water to reach for the food given to it.

A bit of the time consume there as there were many students and foreigner visiting this Mangrove Kilim.
Final Destination is to ‘Dataran Lang’. That is where the Langkawi signature “Eagle” sculpture where visitors will never missed also.
We took our group photos of the symbolic Eagle there before headed to Ferry station.
Thanks again to Mr Leslie, Criz & our tour leader of the day, Steven Goh & Jeffrey, tour guide represetative from Langkawi Saga Travels & Tours. I did had an enjoyable day at Langkawi.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Guang Zhou Trip

Before flying to GuangZhou, my friends helped me to search for places of interest for my short trip this time.
I stayed at LiuHua Road, Guang Zhou. It’s quite a strategic place for me to go around.
There’s 2 Lake & Garden there, Liu Hua Lake & Yue Xiu Lake Garden. First day there, I had a walk around Liu Hua Lake.

Next destination were Beijing Road, recommended by the hotel receptionist. Took a cab there. Wow, the streets were so crowded. Lots of people were having their Sunday weekend there. There were the promoters standing in front of the shops to welcome & attract customer to enter their shops. It’s quite competitive as there were many shops there. You could spent the whole evening till 1030pm there to shop for clothes, accessories, snacks and many more. Over there, you could get the best price if you area good bargainer ;P
A reminder, you will need to remember a landmark where you begin, coz you might get lost after walking many stretch & a few corners.




The below shop has a huge crowd buying snacks. I observed that it has quite a numberof outlets in Guang Zhou and most of the time there were crowds buying the snacks.

And everywhere in GuangZhou, you see the Asian Games 5 Goats sculptures.

Some of the shoplot boutique sells clothes at a moderate price, with quite good quality of the clothes.
After a hectic walk around there, I drop by a cafĂ© to have my dinner. I ordered Fried Noodle; sort of fried Udon I would say. Quite nice however it’s very oily.
I had Yin Yong Drink.



Night time, the LED lights were light up on the trees, very beautiful…:)

Observed there were Coca-Cola stalls selling many different kinds of Ice Blended Mango, Strawberry and others..It would be nice if Coca-Cola does have variety of drinks selling in Malaysia too..
Surprisingly, the staff had a short briefing before the starts of the biz at nite.

In the middle of the Beijing Road, the remaining stones from many different Dynasty were conserved with transparent glass on the road itself; of course with lighting during the night. This attracts many people from local and foreigner like us to have nice view during our walk there….

There’s this brand 361 degree, 1 of the main sponsors for the 16th Asian Games Guang Zhou 2010, which ended on the 27 Nov. 2010.

When I went off around 10pm, there were still a lot of people there.
That's my first nite in Guang Zhou.