Diving in Redang – October 2011.

I want to dedicate this post to C, who tragically passed away from a car accident while on the way back home from this trip. Although it was only very briefly, I’m glad that our paths crossed and that we had so much fun in those 3 days. I will always remember you – chatty, animated, funny and carefree. Rest in peace.

+++

We took a slow, leisurely drive to Kuala Terengganu (KT) a day earlier. On the way, we stopped by Kuantan and met up with an old friend, Damien for dinner. He took us to this chinese restaurant called Alor Akar Seafood Restaurant and had very a yummy dinner.

# – Noms.

# – Me and Damien. On an unrelated note, my eyebags remind me of sausages.

After dinner, we continued our journey to KT. We found this budget hotel called Hotel Indah going for RM70 per room per night. Well, in spite of its name, there’s nothing “indah” about it.

The bed was basically a plastic mattress covered in really thin, well-worn sheet. Actually, I won’t even call it a sheet. Blanket was just a thin beach towel…for my 6’5″ bf and myself? Oh well, I guess you get what you pay for. Next time, we’d have no qualms putting down RM50 more for a real bed and blanket!

# – God and Moobs sharing a room with see-through bathroom.

Anyway, before bedtime, we walked out to find some beers. We went to a 7-11 but surprise, surprise, 7-11s in KT don’t carry alcoholic beverages.

Then God proceeded to ask the first person he met outside 7-11 where to find beer, a middle-aged lady in traditional headscarf, “Kak, you tahu mana ada jual arak??” (Sis, do you know anywhere selling booze?). I was ready to run, to be honest.

Instead of scolding us though, the lady led us to a dingy coffee shop behind our hotel. A man was helping a very inebriated man out from the shop and we knew immediately, that we’re at the right place. We thanked the lady in headscarf, went into the semi-closed coffee shop and was met with about a dozen Thai people getting drunk and singing to cowboy country music. We bought 2 bottles of beer and a bag of ice.

At our hotel, we cut an empty mineral water bottle into half cause we didn’t have glasses. And no, Hotel Indah did not have glasses for its guests.

# – Moobs with his half.

# – And me with the other half.

The next morning, we headed to the jetty!

# – Moobs and the BF fighting before departing from the jetty.

We reached Redang Bay Resort and was relieved at our accommodation, which was very, very comfortable :D

# – OMG our room even had a mirror!

Despite being at the very end of the season, the weather held up beautifully for us.

# – Sunny sky, blue sea and white sands.

We had a total of 5 dives, including one night dive which was incredibly awesome. Ed, my dive instructor led all our dives.

# – Ed and the BF.

# – God. He took all the underwater pictures on this blog. Check out his awesome blog at www.seapixels.com

# – Meeee!

# – The BF getting friendly with nemos.

# – Me again!!!!

I saw a live turtle for the first time and it was humongous. It was amazing! Also saw a black tip reef shark and a lone barracuda and of course a lot of colourful, weird fish. I finally learnt that nudibranch is really very tiny, I didn’t realise all those pictures of nudibranches were really macro shots :P

It’s a bit hard to stomach that it will be about 6 more months before we get to dive in local waters again. The only option is to dive overseas but we feel like it’s only right to explore all of Malaysia’s diving spots first before crossing borders.

That said, I’m not sure if my willpower could withstand the temptations, already fantastic diving deals in Thailand and Philippines are being thrown at my face T_T

Truly, I’m missing it so much already :(

Eating bird’s spit soup in Bangkok.

I grew up eating bird’s nest and I never knew they were made of bird’s spit until one day, a documentary told me so.

# – A bowl of spit, served with a half boiled egg, gingko nuts and syrup.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t shocked or disgusted. I guess I’ve always been quite gungho and adventurous when it comes to food, I even had a very specific goal of eating dog meat (that’s before I own a dog and vehemently hated pets).

I no longer want to eat dogs and the thought of it and other people doing it truly makes my stomach churns.

# – Mind boggling variety of bird’s nest. The staff tried to convince me to try something that cost a few hundred Ringgit a bowl. Tough luck.

Today I spoke to a friend who’s in China now to study the language and he told me he couldn’t eat pork anymore because his neighbour owns a teacup pig. I can so totally relate.

As much as I really want to own a teacup pig, please don’t give me a teacup pig because I will just stop eating pork, sorry #porkgang. They are so freaking cute!!!!!

# – I went for the cheapest one, RM30 a bowl. I liked that you could control the sweetness of the soup.

Anyway, this was about bird’s nest isn’t it? Sorry about the digression. I just wanted to post some pictures of me eating bird’s spit. I do not have anything intellectual or insightful to speak about this experience of mine.

# – Actually I was most excited about eating the half-boiled egg. Arguably, the bird’s nest made the egg even silkier and tastier.

Have a good weekend, peeps!

Burapa Bird’s Nest
Thanon Plaeng Nam, Samphanthawong,
Bangkok 10100, Thailand.

Singapore shopping haul.

We were in Singapore over the weekend. We stayed at Hotel 81 Star in the middle of the red light district, Geylang. It was an interesting area.

The primary objective of the trip was to get myself a food processor. Since we started on a slow carb diet, I’ve had found myself pureeing and cutting ingredients much more creatively. Relying on just my old school blender and knife was more difficult than I had anticipated.

Plus, I needed a food processor to make short crust pastry…for those wonderful diet cheat days :P

Behold…my new Braun Multiquick 7 K3000 aka the Kitchen Machine.

# – The large box to house loads of accessories.

Our initial plan was to get something from the Philips Robust Collection or a Magimix, but to our surprise, none of the products were carried by the land of Singapore.

The Multiquick 7 caught our eyes and after reading 9 stellar reviews on Amazon, we decided to take it.

# – Wasted no time to test it out.

# – The french fries cutting blade was amazing! 3 potatoes cut to perfection in under a minute.

Unfortunately, as I was too engrossed with my new toy, I burnt my first batch of fries made with the Multiquick 7 :(

But it’s okay, I expect the machine to last me through to my mid 50s. That’s a lot, a lot of fries.

# – I cleared out a drawer specially just to store all the accessories so everything is within reach. The last thing I want is something to sit at the back of the cabinet collecting dusts.

In the midst of hunting for the food processor, we managed to do some unnecessary shopping too.

By the way, we dropped by DFS Galleria, that place is quite scary lor. Lots of ravenous looking rich middle aged PRC women shopping and their men dozing off in the plush sofas waiting.

I can’t say I wasn’t wishful but for now, my man & I happily crossed the bridge to Far East Plaza which is directly opposite DFS, hehehe.

This bag caught my eyes.

# – $49.90 SING for a full leather bag. SCORE!

# – It has baby skulls all over it. SCORE!!

On our last day in Singapore, we also checked out Bencoolen Plaza for cheap Casio watches.

While the man got himself a serious, features-packed G-Shock, I got myself a pink watch.

With pink illumination. Hehehehe.

# – My pink G-Shock.

# – <3

This was by far one of my nicest trip to Singapore filled with good food (yeah, I’m surprised too) and good shopping. The weather held up nicely for us too, not too hot or humid. Will blog about our food trail soon.

Have a good Monday!