Saturday, June 21, 2008

3rd Day in India

It was raining cats & dogs the week before we arrived. Strangely, it was all sunny (yet not humid) when we came over. Good for me as well, since I will be able to take more pics without the risk of dent dent being wet.

View from my room

My daily dosage of newspaper - interesting articles though the entertainment news were quite pathetic.

The flower on my couch has wilted - sign of sadness that I am leaving the hotel soon?

Our breakfast routine :)

The 5 star hotel in Mumbai that commands a hefty tag of $430/night for a room

Booked the meeting room, so that we can get catch up on our emails while waiting for the next appt

The cosy environment made me wanna sleep instead of working ....

Chocolate chips taste way better than ginger chips

Met up with a client, whose office temperature is that of a freezer. We were so glad to get out of the building and basked in the sun. Went to the mall for our lunch @ Japengo cafe.

The cafe serves pretty decent food; 1st time seeing soup noodles served in a square "bowl"

The hot soup certainly did wonders in defrosting my body ....

Rinta & her chicken wrap

Leaving my footprints outside the cafe :)

Met up with Rinta's ex-Bloomberg colleagues for dinner @ the Radio Club; a 10 min walk from our hotel.

Warm brandy = brandy topped with warm water :O The drinks here are pretty cheap, SGD$2 for one glass of red wine.

The gals-in-action :)

The club looks like some old men club, but it does serve pretty decent chinese food. Kinda missed my mum's cooking @ this point in time

last day tml; can't wait to be back home :)

Friday, June 20, 2008

Roadtrip To Malacca

*I had to let this post jump queue, otherwise my head will be on the chopping board *

The Brother and Sisters finally embarked on our first ever road-trip to Malacca!

Meet up with Qian @ JP, 8.15am to have our breakfast - well, Ryan & Miao are supposed to join us, but the former only touch his bed @ 5am while the latter (who told us to meet @ 8am) only woke up @ 8am after Qian's phone-call, haha.

Ordered Happy Meal - been quite a while since l last tasted Mac Hotcakes. Got the 师父 Kungfu Panda toy for Leecher, to pacify him for staying alone in SG while I am away :)
Qian, feeling kinda tired cuz she just landed from HK the day before
Me - all set and ready for the trip!
Presenting to you - our HANDSOME driver for the day, Ryan (need to buy Mac meal to pacify him, so that he can drive us to Malacca, hee)
Miao - the one who overslept :P
And not forgetting the 2 pretty sisters who woke up bright & early but kena fly kite by the 2 of the above, wa ha ha ..
Before proceeding any further, let us express our gratitude to the following .....

1. Ryan's trusty Mazda CX7, that has the privilege of sending 4 pretty gals to Malacca
2. GPS - which works way better than Joe's natural GPS (insider joke, heehee)
Alright, having said that - let's rock and roll to Malacca ~

As we were on the way to Tuas Customs, we received a very "angry" phonecall from Fling ...
She was supposed to meet us on the highway, after one of the toll @ 10am (which was the timing Ryan told her). However, we were still @ SG at the time, she was already there waiting for us, opps ....

Ryan talked to her on the phone for like 20 sec and threw the phone back to us (Qian & me) at the back-seat .... *sorry fling*
Finally @ the checkpoint - my first time entering Malaysia through Tuas *yeah, i sounds so sua ku rite, bet Leecher nv seen this before, haha .... *
Wow, look at the long queue - but surprising, it only took us like less than 30 min to clear it :)
The sky on the other side
We better speed up and find Fling, who would be reaching her boiling point soon having waited nearly 1 hr.

Their toll station

Yeah, Fling has joined us! Bye Noel, we will take care of her and make sure that you can have some peace w/o her for 2 days, :P
The not-so-environmental friendly car needs some fuel, thus we stopped at the nearest petrol kiosk that we can find ....
Cam-whoring while waiting for the car to be ready ~
Look @ what we found in the petrol kiosk! OMG, brings back fond memories ~ 5 sticks of chocolate just enough for the 5 of us :) (better finish it b4 Joe's arrival)
Think Qian has got a wire loose somewhere ...
With Vpower, CX7 only took around 1hr plus to reach Malacca, making up for our lost time
Waiting for the grand arrival of Mr Joseph @ the toll ...cam-whore while eating the chocolate sticks .. we're kids @ heart, definitely
Finally, the person with so much 魅力 that all of us got to travel almost 200km from SG to Malacca to keep him company over the weekend ... Brother, 有没有感动到流泪?
Can't imagine Joe driving this car ....
Doesn't the colour of the car reminds you of

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Ok, maybe not so green though ....

Our pilot-to-be - who has poor navigation skills on land and gave us a tour of Malacca because he cannot find the resort that we're staying :P We need to thank our lucky stars that we finally reached the hotel after soooooooo long :O
Ya, I seriously think Qian has got a screw loose somewhere. Better leave her alone till her screw is fixed, wa ha ha. *be careful old man, don't say I nv warn you*
Think I should grab Fling instead, she's more normal than Qian ^_^
The lobby of the hotel - quite pretty, but the staff sure got attitude problem. We paid X% for the service charge and yet, we still had to make our own way down to the restaurant for a packet of ice, just because the stupid gal was afraid of making her own way up and claimed that there were no guys around to accompany her. Oh, so does that means that the hotel is not safe that even the staff themselves are afraid? However, when Joe went down - the party of 5 (2 gals & 3 guys) were happily chit-chating behind the counter. Super pissed!
Anyway, this is our room number - we got a room with 2 bedrooms and a living room
Splendid view from the balcony ~
Ryan's astonished look when we told him that he should bunk in with Joe @ his place when the gals discovered that there are only 2 beds in each bedroom and there will be no room for him except the living room or Joe's place. Don't worry Brother, 我们不会过河拆桥的.
Time to head out from lunch - everyone famished from the long journey. Went to search for the chicken rice balls @ my request :P
designated parking area for their customers, not bad sia ~
The sisters, with Qian missing in action ....
cuz she wanna be the flower amongst the grass :P too bad, both grasses are taken - but do leave a comment if interested, there's always room for negotiation :)
Our drinks to kick-start the feast. Surprisingly, the sun is freaking hot in Malacca, even worse than SG.
The famous chicken rice balls - don't think they can bounce like those I watched on the show "yuan zhi wei" hosted by Cai LiLian.
Our feast ~ super full after this meal ... and this meal costs around SGD$6/person (i think)
Bought lots of local products @ this store, spent RM$100 there on titbits for Leecher & family. I didn't even buy anything for myself lo, see Leecher, i so teng you :)
Back to the hotel to change and out to enjoy the sea and the breeze, right @ the back-door of the hotel
Trying to do an artistic pic with our background
that literally translated into the following ....
Turned to face the camera, but we were against the light, so turned out to be slightly dark :(
The beach was pretty small and we soon got bored of it. Thus, back to the room to wash up and head out for dinner @ Jonker Walk - it's like a night market, lots of stuff to eat, i like!
Leaving our footprints @ Jonker Street
More pics while we continued to wait for rest to catch up
Wow, they have this stage in the middle of the road with live performances. People will just grab a chair and sit down to enjoy the music while sipping over a cup of tea or a bottle of beer.
Look @ those buns! oh my freaking god ....
It's almost the same size as my hand lo - wait, whose hand is that? Mine?
This stall sells a lot of 串串 - look @ the huge variety that they have :) reminds me of 士林夜市's stalls.
This curry fishball totally wow-ed me over. This made my trip worthwhile
The rest of the 串串; the chilli sauce damn power but it's the curry sauce that made everything tasty. *poor leecher, can only look and drool - too bad cannot ta bao for u *
We literally had to stand in one corner and eat and do the stuff that we normally can't do in SG
The group without me - idiot rite, leave me out of the pic :(
Tried the Hakka 算盘子. Very chewy, but cannot taste anything except lots of dough.
This is the most famous stall in Jonker Street, super crowded.
The interior of the shop , still basking in the early 1980s era.
The famous Assam laksa, unique taste with slight blend of tuna and tom yam.
All set and ready to dig in!
Mango 'ice kachang' to cool ourselves...
My green apple juice, hopefully this will aid in digestion so that I can take in more food later ;P
Came across this stall selling magnet clogs - I am a sucker for cutie stuff. Got Leecher his present here, a pair of clogs featuring CRABS (no prize for guessing why I choose crabs for him, LOL) and the Chinese bride & groom for our future fridge. Fling spent almost $40 SGD just buying cutie stationaries for work.
When you're at Jonker Street, must watch the performance of this Malaysia Boleh. He is such a seasoned performer - always entertaining the crowd, drawing laughters from them and not forgetting to peddle his ointments.
Preparing his whip to "tear" the newspapers apart ....
Ta-Dah!
Breaking the coconut open ...
After the performance, we ventured to eat the satay lok-lok
Typical Singaporean mentality, look at the queue and you will know that this is a can-make-it-restaurant.
To prove my point further, still got the awards/celebrities decorating the walls!
Fling & Miao were happily posting for picture while waiting for our turn to be seated
Each stick costs RM$0.70 and there were lots of food to choose from.
We took a few sticks cuz we were still pretty full from our earlier food conquests
This is the satay pot. The waitress will come to stir the pot once in a while to prevent the peanuts from getting burnt - to maintain the quality of the satay sauce. Look at the size of the prawns, *drool drool*
Time to head back to the hotel after our food quest! Sorry Joe, food certainly is more tempting than going to the Afamosa (Ryan, it's A-fa-mo-sa, not Ah-Far-mo-sa) water theme park :) Had our usual "bonding" till 4am in the morning - which only evolves around 1 topic. It's pretty amazing how we managed to do it though. *secret*

Checked out the next morning. Poor Joe had to be our porter ...
Our 战利品. I think I bought the most goodies, hence taking up 20% of the space. Luckily CX7 boot is spacious enough to put all our stuff.
All set and ready to rock & roll :O
Had teochew bak kut teh for brunch
They served bak kut teh with meatballs and 金针菇,much to Fling & Miao's delight.
The 4 sisters - we have known each other for 12 yrs! gosh, we sound so old now ...
Fling & me with our shades - my 自拍 pics are pretty good, with all the training I had with Leecher.
Joe decided to try out Miao's shades
and prompted me to think that he looks like this :
We made a trip to Joe's flying school
The planes that Joe flies - a pity we can't get to see the cockpit classroom
It was raining, so we couldn't do much except to take pics, lame excuse rite.... 1st take - all the sisters, except Miao, put on their shades. So, we had to take another one
Ryan had requested for me to mention here that both Qian & Fling were wearing his shades. Fling even forgotten to pass it back to him on her journey back home, haha.
The brothers - strangely, Ryan seems to look very much taller here, hmmmm ..
Bidding Joe goodbye near his house. Take care Bro, we will visit you again!
Ryan put his Vpower to test again, but unfortunately, it was starting to rain ... so we had to slow down :(
I managed to capture the lightning. Fling was so scared of lightning/thunder that she will use both hands to cover her ears and shut her eyes. That's also her excuse for not learning how to drive, haha .....
Our last toll ticket before reaching SG ...
Sent Qian back and had dinner at the 179 bus stop Kopitiam
Chicken wings that used to cost $1/wing has now increased to $1.20/wing, no thanks to inflation & raising food prices.
Home sweet home! My purchases for the trip, 50% for Leecher - that will end up contributing to his waistline :P
PS: Ron, if you're looking @ this entry, sorry, you missed out all the fun. Till the next trip!
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