2014 Dec - Year End Villages Hopping Trip

It's a super dated blog post. Seems the effort should not be wasted, with the pictures all ready for posting... plus there was great food exploration around Perak, a place consider half or quarter of hometown. Guess it was the most fruitful year end food and cycle expedition.

Taiping
Food :  Keling Mee & traditional black soya sauce Char Kuey Teaw @ Larut Matang Hawker Centre
Stay : Taiping Tune Hotel

Keling Mee & Black CKT

Kuala Kurau
About 45min drive away from Taiping.

Visited place : Salted Duck Egg factory @ Joo Hong Chan Telur Masin
Activity : Cycle with my foldie into the fishing village to hunt for foods

Duck eggs size separation

All packed

Food : Traditional fried prawn cake & local coffee @ 建成利

(The fried prawn cake is a few doors away from the coffee shop and temple)

Fried prawn cake

Back to Taiping in the evening, unfortunately it was raining. We hoped the following morning will be sunny.. too bad, it wasn't and we couldn't cycle around Taiping Lake.

Dinner in Taiping : We wanted to taste the small packeted nasi lemak udang, but Siang Malam food court was closed on a Sunday. Instead, we landed on a Hainanese coffee shop that served their famous chicken chop and CKT. What a combination, it was @ Yew Lee 有利茶餐室

Taiping Lake

Ayer Tawar
A small town between Sitiawan and my dad's hometown. We stopped by for late lunch, because we found the place for lunch in Sitiawan was close that day. Craved for red wine chicken noodle. Instead, we settled here, an old place we use to patron for the past years, @ Sin Han Siong Restaurant

They serve pretty good home cooked dishes too. I like their simple and yet old fashioned setup. From the opposite road, I always think the building is leaning side way.

Red wine rice noodle

Bruas
Following stop... my dad's hometown. Had a night stay over, enjoyed the cool weather and nature. Too bad, some plantation road was too muddy for my little bike to cross over. We had to turn away and return home, as it was slightly drizzling that morning. Nevertheless, air was fresh.

Pantai Remis
Food : We had our dinner with uncle @ Ling Song Kee Restaurant
(Felt a little nostalgic, cos the last time we were there was with my late grandmom)

Main street - Jalan Laksamana

Ipoh
Before returning home, we stopped by Ipoh. Our last stop. Another must-stop town with lots of good food.

Accomodation : MH Hotel, at the new township opposite Ipoh Parade.

Little pantry in the room

Foods hunt :
1. Choy Kee Bakery - Famous for their egg tart. Packed for tea time.

2. Biscuit QunKee - Right oppostite Choy Kee, I personally like this egg tart more, as they had pork floss on it. Salty taste egg tarts, its exactly a nicely blended taste. Probably its just me, one with a weird taste bud. :D This place famous for their kaya puff.

My favourite - pork floss egg tart

3. Seng Kee Food Trading 成记香饼 - Right within Gunung Rapat itself, there are many home made cookies, as comparable with the ever famous and tourist type of Yee Hup. Simple village home where they bake those cookies with old coconut shells.

4. The Happy 8 Retreat @ Old Town - I could not remember what we had for dinner.. but obviously we had gone for a hangout place.. just with a glass of non-alchohol mojito. A place with nice natural wood furniture, stream within the restaurant, unfortunately the design of its gents and ladies were not strategically built, was pretty near to one of the stream-sounded dining area. This place has its own backpacker or boutique hotel upstairs. Well design.

5. Nam Heong Food Court - We settled for lunch after check out from the nearby hotel.  High end food court, and I called it a food court for lazy butt. You can find most Ipoh famous food here, decent quality for some (since I didn't taste all), but expect to pay premium. Why did I called lazy butt, because you don't need to queue up to grab your own foods. You need to place your order via the online tool, waiter will come fetch your payment and there goes your food will be served to your table.

Food court setup

6. 189 香饼行 - Tried another recommended biscuit stall before departing Ipoh, this one with sesame. Quite nice and tasty too. 

Ended the year well... Bye 2014.

Travel - Osaka.Kyoto April 2015 (Part 3)

Final post before I called it an end on my trip report.

Nara - We chose to leave Kyoto, but de tour on a very short trip before heading back to Osaka. It's a town famous for its snowy deer (雪花鹿).

Upon reaching the train station, we had difficulty getting a locker to store our luggage. It's not easy to tug along a 26" trolly bag. I couldn't remember whether we got the XL locker, or 2 medium lockers. Lesson for detour trip, always bring smaller luggage, but the downside is you won't be able to shop more. :)

Glad the weather was good that day. Little sunshine especially when we walked towards the garden full of deers, and a few shrines visit. The walk was pleasant.

Snowy Deer 

Deer, full of love to the elderly

Deer feeding

Deer crossing - caution 

Deer's biscuit food

Shrine wishing plates 

Temple visit

Beautiful flowers 

We settled for a must-eat-dessert of Nara - Caramel pudding. It has been highly recommended in Trip Advisors. I was expecting a nice cafe selling this. Unfortunately, the given route was not accurate. We found a generous by-passer aunty who brought us to the right place, but it ended up that has been converted to its factory. Their store has been moved to the train station. This kind hearted aunty brought us to the station instead. She insisted to bring us, even though we told her we know the way. Japanese are just ever friendly, and most important she can speak English.

Pudding

Pudding store

Yummy~ 

I bought a set of bento sushi from the stall next door. Those filled ourselves for our tiny lunch. 

Sushi stall

Lovely sushi bento

Upon returning from Nara to Osaka. We dropped out luggage at our hotel then went straight for final shopping. Rikuro soft cheese cake was also one of the recommended dessert, we settled for one (in fact it was meant for our mid night supper and next day breakfast).

Queuing for cheese cake

GU & Uniqlo are the must-go place for apparel shopping. We spotted a few in Kyoto, and purposely waited for Friday and weekend for the regular sale. My other favorite place for shopping is grocery place, i.e. Isetan, etc.. why? See pics below.

GU & Uniqlo

Mid sized and mini Yamazaki

Keep trying my favorite choya.. this is sparkling

We were on walking-lunch and dinner most of the time. Final day is worth a proper sit down dinner. We couldn't find a decent and affordable type, ended by settled with Gyukaku for BBQ beef.. I remember my 1st try was in Singapore, someone treated me this good dinner... but I couldn't get the special "pop-ing" BBQ dessert. According to some reading, Gyukaku is like normal chained store in Japan, can be found everywhere.

Beef bbq

The set

The real beef - flowery nice

Checking out our hotels toiletries were fun too. All hotels we had were well equipped with large bottles of body shampoo, conditioner, hair shampoo and even face soap/hand soap. All were Shiseido, the local brand. I personally like one of the ocean seaweed series.. so refreshing. We were interested with the foam type bottle, hence purposely went to shop for some from the Drug stores.

Add caption

Hotel's facial soap

Other shopping, my must buy Phiten.. We took 2 hours walking around Osaka train station to hunt for the shop. Finally, I was able to get what I want, slightly smaller shop compared to Kyoto HQ, but its all good enough.

Phiten

Foods we normally eat.

Wrapped rice

Mini kitkat bites

Lastly, before our flight off at the airport. Had a quick round at the nearby factory outlet, Rinku Outlet. The concept of outlet exactly like what I usually had in US.

Nice walk around, but we caught into some problem at the airport, cos we couldn't find luggage locker (again), which is huge enough for our larger luggage. That spent about close to 1 hour, that was even with the help of an elderly airport attendant, he was so kind enough (while he does not know how to speak English at all), brought us up and down to hunt for luggage space. Tips: Have smaller bags or  travel at some wee hour to get space for luggage, everything is automated and the manual luggage caretaker may cost you a bomb!

Rinku outlet

Again with Ferris wheel

Check out the special edition price

Right before take off

Oh ya.. other important shopping stuffs were chocolates... Royce choco which only available at the airport departure hall. Many nice favor were out of stock that evening before our flight took off. Only managed to get some. I was indulge with the choco dipped chips. :P

The end of report.