Food Surprises - Lan Je (蘭姐) Steam Talapia Fish, is now in Subang USJ

I have heard of this place selling affordable steamed talapia fish many years ago, it is famous in Rawang. For some reason, there was this someone who wanted to bring me there :P Well, well, well.... time flies, and today I had finally got the chance to try it out at Kota Damansara branch. Thanks to the treat master!

The best joke of the day was -- this restaurant had its latest branch opened at Subang USJ, just approximately 15min drive from my home. Hmmm... comparing the 30min drive we had, we all laughed when ordering our food.

Here's the advertisement, extracted from Media Focus website.

Here are the photos taken... nothing impressive, food was simple. In fact I would not mind, don't get me wrong :) as I would think one of the way of being healthy is avoid tasty and oily food, shift yourself towards steam food will be good for healthy lifestyle.

One of my family member will love this below - Sweet & Sour chicken!

You may check out their list of branches from many food blogs out there.

Taste it out, if you would like steam talapia fish.

Cheesy Tuna Sandwich Afternoon Tea

This is meant to satisfy my blogging need. Being away from writing makes me feel like returning to this cyber world. The way I look at it, one will have more to share only when one open up the heart and gets close to nature or more human energy. Far to be a positive person, one needs to have an opened heart & mind. To absorb once they call energy into his soul. That's where I come from, get close to the nature, see and learn more, most importantly - be yourself!

Alright, philosophy aside. Presenting once my quick afternoon tea preparation, with the new commercial loaf bread in town. The Massimo (by Italian Baker) Wheat Germ Sandwich loaf bread. I searched through some comments over, some commented that it does not meet his/her expectation. Personally, I don't think I would compare it towards wholemeal bread, as the ingredient are totally different. Take it in a positive side, where we have more choice of commercial breads in the market, some might still prefer those from the leading market.

If I have the choice, I will prefer self homemade loaf bread :)

See what I had done with the bread, it was toasted on with sliced cheese, hidden below are tuna chunks and slice of tomato. Yummmm.... served with apple English tea BOH.

* Understand there is still introductory price for these sandwich loaf. From what I know, small loaf of wheat germ cost RM2.50 in the market. However, some Chinese medical hall and kedai runcit may be selling only at RM2.00. It's at your choice, to try & to save!

Photogs Trip, Kuala Sepetang & Taiping - July 15-16 2011

Photogs, a definition made for photographers, some said its professional photographers but some said it also meant for amateur photographers. No matter what, I will only classify myself as a pure amateur one. Solely to fulfill my soul, yeah! Been owning a DSLR since 2007, made me feel somewhat still not-quite-get-it in terms of its technical capabilities. I love it because of art, the humanity behind the scene, the hard work of beautifying it. It's all about positive energy and the eyes we used to "see" the world with.

Anyway, this wasn't the first trip we all been doing. It's been an interesting outing we had, out from Klang Valley and incorporated with fun company and food kakis (those who love foods).

Our journey started 5am that morning, took us around 3 hours to reach Kuala Sepetang, a small fishing village / town nearby Taiping town. It's also named as Port Weld, no so sure about its history, must be something to do with the English colonial time. History aside, our journey was meant for photography. There we headed ourselves to a farm of Charcoal factories nearby. It has then thought me how charcoal are made of, its from Magroves trees (bakau in Malay). Indeed was an education tour cum photography. Came to know one of the factory turned into tourism business, explaining to foreigners the charcoal making methods. They usually exports its dry charcoal to countries like Japan, as they need these during the Winter season.

As my photo editing skills is really horrible... here are all I am able to share from the trip. Plus, I am really a lazy photographer.. could really enjoy photo taking under our hot and humid weather. There goes below, presenting my humble pics.

Our journey continues to Taiping after lunch, checked in to a homestay, single storey bungalow which I stayed about 2 years ago. It was a great and clean place, recommended for group of friends and family trip. Day 1 of photography ended after we completed the unloading part of mangroves bark, sometime in the evening.

Day 2 photos goes by as a below, we enjoy the morning breeze around Taiping Lake Garden. Had our group shootings for several hours around there, then headed for Cendol, before checking out from the homestay place. Here are some photos to share, unfortunately weather ain't good that time, it was full of haze around the town.

Photos below are taken with my Canon Compact camera IXUS 310HS, featuring all foods we had... yummy great!

Started with the breakfast at Kuala Sepetang, and oh no.. we saw dead baby shark in the market.

Simple breakfast taken from a Chinese coffee shop, next to the KTM (Old Train Stasion's) memorial wall. It wasn't a great breakfast, just to fulfill our hunger.

Some better picture taken in the dark dark charcoal factory.

Headed lunch nearby, apparently Mee Udang (Prawn noodle) is their specialties, serve by Malay cafe around. We headed to this stall because a friend been here before. The serving isn't cheap, RM7 for normal prawn, RM11 of big prawn, but the quality was superb. Very tasty prawn taste in the noodle, according to a friend, the soup noodle taste the best! Too bad, I had the fried rice. Prawns were all full hidden within the plate of rice. I could not remember the actual location of this stall, as I think I didn't mark down its GPS location :(

That was lunch, and we had early dinner back at Port Weld jetty. A Chinese seafood restaurant I have been to 2 years ago. The food wasn't that great, but comparing seafood we can get here in Klang Valley, it's consider superb. According to a friend, there's one more restaurant nearby, we should try that other time.

Since we stay in a house, it was easy for us to have a mini durian feast at home. We purposely had early dinner, so that we could have space for supper! Headed to Taiping old market, seems to be a supper hangout place for most. I miss the mini little seafood nasi lemak :)

Just before day 2 'assignment' started, we hit the GPS POI button and hit for a decent food stall. And now, I forgot the name of the shop, somewhere opposite SportToto, that's what I could remember. Food was not bad, it's not the famous Dim Sum shop in Taiping, but fairly decent. Many like their Chee Cheong Fun.

After the couple hours lepaking around the lake garden, we headed off for Ansari Cendol stall. Supposingly the famous cendol shop around.

We checked out from the home around 1pm. Here're the detail contact no., in case you are interested.

Day 2 lunch was an eye opener to me. Seafood porridge at Matang... indeed food was tasty, and interestingly there ain't many such specialty food around us. Lighthouse Seafood Restaurant, you can search it from most foodblog and event GPS POI.

Lastly, we went apart from the group and continued our journey up North, Penang island. Nothing special but Durian (again), this time had it at Balik Pulau, a place which I think I will explore more during my next visit. Foods are more tasty here compared to the town. Had their famous Assam Laksa at the town, it was superb. Scenery from the durian place was great too, windy and fresh. They even have a few rooms to let, check out their website here - http://www.durian.com.my/ (Bao Sheng Durian Farm).

An experimental shot with my tiny compact camera, taken the following Penang Bridge nite scenery. It wasn't too bad, lazy me was real lazy to assemble my tripod for my DSLR, that's the problem.

The end... of my July Photog trip :)

Vege Fish Farm, Hulu Langat & Ampang Lookout Point

It was a huge event, again. In total, there were 41 of us, it was an amazing trip I would say. I happen to know this place from a colleague, earlier that we wanted to organize something for our group's gathering. Anyway, it didn't happen as none of us know the place well, yeah basically none except one.

Thus, after many months and many years of hearing it, finally I was brought there last weekend. It was somewhat an eye-opener place, being it near to the city center, where I would need to travel into every weekday, there lies a fish farm and a huge 'floating' restaurant, which basically built above its fish pond. Very authentic, possible Thai styled since they serve Thai food.

Many has blog about this restaurant. Thus, one may be able to find it from Google search pretty easily. Else, search its Official site here - http://www.fishfarmthai.com/.

Into the farm...

They have a 'real' farm near the fish pond restaurant.

Part of the floating restaurant... basically above the fish pond. Some authentic fruit stall and Thai dessert stall selling some kind, like Mango sticky rice (RM8), etc...

I saw they have BBQ crab, unfortunately... it was not ordered as part of our dish. Hmmm..

Ok, pictures trail below are dishes we ordered. I practically like the so called Snail Meat (what type??), the rest of dishes does not really capture my taste bud. Likely because they are very commercial and served at almost every tables. Mind you, I think they have close to 60 tables.

Some night scenery within the pond.

As most would recommend, a hike up to Ampang Lookout Point is highly recommended. It's just 5min drive away from the restaurant, along the same main road. However, our experience on a Saturday night wasn't too promising. There were huge crowd of peoples, couples, friends, families up the hill top's restaurants. Of course, arranging seats for 41 of us obviously was challenging. It managed to get ourselves on a long joined tables, but somewhat the place we have wasn't scenic at all, and the restaurant was not a good choice after all.

It's nice to spend some night long here, especially when the weather is 1-2C lower than the city itself, especially when the night is clear. It can be romantic too. :)

Location to fish farm :-

Restaurant Thai Fish Farm
Km 4, Jalan Ampang Hulu Langat,
68000 Ampang, Selangor
GPS: 3.130077, 101.803586
Tel: 017-251 5235, 019-260 6493

The original soap

Not too sure when it started, probably when I first bought a bar soap last year over at a family bazaar. I knew soap can be handmade, but I have never venture into trying this kind of art work. Probably it will soon gets into my to-do list.

Considering the fact that today's commercial body bath's harsh ingredient, so much so its use of plastic containers which create extra and additional waste into the earth these days. I personally find that they are waste. Getting a step back to the mother nature, they are still a lot of resources available, which we could reuse, recycle.

It started with the below handmade soap I bought previously in a bazaar, this is made of wheat & rice. Our granny used to soak their hands and wash their faces with rice water, indeed it has proven to be a natural source for nourishing our body and skin.

Later, I found this organic or rather it claims to be environmental friendly (by its company name) Lemongrass soap in an Organic shop back in Ipoh. I like lemongrass, and I was excited seeing such kind of soap made and selling, though I believe it could have been produced in very small scale.

According to some writing, Lemongrass a.k.a. Citronella is good as insect or mosquito repellent. That reminds me, I need to replenish my Lemongrass extract too.

Very soon, I will hit the google page often for soap making tips. As a start, I found this page seems to be pretty interesting, http://www.naturalpuresoap.com/how-to-make-soap/. Let's see how long will it take for me to produce one. :)

Custom Made Wetsuit @ Bangkok Thailand - SportPro

I told myself, I need to blog this after my dive trip of the year. I told myself for the past 3 weeks, I need to blog this out over the weekend. Unfortunately, I have been procrastinating... It has been difficult for me to glue myself on the desk these days, as the weather is just too hot! (cheapo me, or rather environmental friendly me do not wish to turn on too many air-conditioner at home).

So, here I forced myself to complete this post... after pending since March 2011, on my last trip to Bangkok.

This was introduced by a friend, ever since I took up scuba diving course. After some difficult experiences in putting myself onto some rented suits, I gave up! Decided to get myself a custom made suit. What's different, hehe... it is best to have all zipped for the hands and legs opening. It made life easy, as easy as 1 2 3!

If any of you wish to have your custom made wetsuit, you may find your way here to Bangkok. The location is pretty easy to find, located at walking distance on Sukhumvit Rd. - Thonglor interaction. Will supply the detailed address at the end of this post.

Some photos for your viewing here.

The view from inside, while waiting for measurement taking.

The collection & some ready made suits...

If you are weekend tourist to Bangkok, it may be difficult for you to test and collect your wetsuit in time. It usually takes 1 week for fitting, and another 1 week for it to be ready. Thus, it will need at least 2 weeks to collect your good after measurement taking and deposit placement. So, plan ahead and give them a call earlier if you wish to pre-arrange an order.

The address & name card.

The location from Google map. Though it may be walking distance from the nearest Thonglor BTS station... for some reason if you are staying nearby the area, taking a cab may be a better idea (quoted from someone), since cab fare within Bangkok is rather affordable. Once you get into Soi Thonglor 5, you may see the little shop located somewhere next to a logistic company (if I remember correctly).

(click to enlarge view)