unsatisfactory lunch

Today's lunch was at a place called Song of Prince Korean Hot Stone Bowl at Bukit Merah Central. Seemed like a decent place with queues of people hankering after that bowl of ramen or spicy chicken/pork/beef hotplate.

I had ginseng chicken soup.

ginseng chicken soup

Bad choice. I have never ever seen a ginseng chicken soup that came cooked with tang hoon, egg and golden mushrooms! Ugh.. yuck. At least the kimchi was nice.

Should've gone the safe route and ordered saba...

Cathy's saba fish set

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

@fat cat

Was at Fat Cat yesterday for dinner. Rained at E-Centre, so took a cab there. Directions would be something like, Serangoon Avenue 3, then turn right to Jalan Girang, then at the junction turn left, then straight up and taxi uncle would comment something like, "here got makan place meh?" and then turn right when you see Jalan Riang signage that's almost obscured by the trees...

Second visit. Ordered a tequila sunrise, and an aglio olio.

pretty tequila sunrise

Turned out the aglio olio still came from Flamin Grills. Same as first visit where I got the steak from,

flamin signboard

seafood aglio olio

The seafood aglio olio came last. Quite a long waiting time. This is the driest aglio olio that I've ever tried thus far. Personally, would prefer tomato based pasta anytime. Plus point, would be the fresh seafood where the prawns were cooked just right and slightly translucent. The squid rings were huge and tender.

We also shared a tom yum soup from Thai Yai but the soup disappoints. Tasted of just the salt/fish sauce but not much of a 'body'. Could do with more flavour.

tom yum soup

ingredients such as squid, prawns, tomatoes and clams

Mr R had steak and he said that it tasted good. Cherlyn n HS had phad thai, and I had a sampling of it.

phad thai

Phad thai was alright, though I prefered the prawns from aglio olio. Didn't get any desserts because everyone was full.

Thanks guys for waiting, as I was the last one to turn up.

the beef noodles that almost got sold out....

Hai Nan Xing Zhou Beef Noodles

Went to a famous beef noodles stall for lunch. The queue was long and saw they have the "排排站" cert displayed. Usually if I see queue that's more than 10 pax, I'd turn the other way. But since we came specifically to try out this hai nan beef noodles stall, to the queue we stood.

We didn't back down. No sir. Not even when tempted by the  super 划算 (worth it) deal of $2.20 per plate from the economical rice stall next to it. This is the first stall that I've ever encountered that gives you 2 meats and 2 vege or 1 meat, 1 fish and 1 vege combo for that price. We also didn't budge, not even when there's only the soupy version of the beef noodles was all they had left. We were resolute. But we may have sweated a little, when it was almost our turn and the noodles ran out... We discussed, we whispered and we almost came to a conclusion that if it ever came to only having the soup for lunch without the noodles, we WILL do so!

Fortunately, the stall uncle had foresight about his customer's dilemma, and returned with the last bag of noodles freshly bought from the market nearby. So in the end, we got what we came for. Our attempt was fruitful. Though, we didn't get to try the dry version which many had raved about. You may want to read other people's review about the stall by ieatishootipost (reviewed in 2007!) or from hungrygowhere.

Special thanks to my makan buddies who made this trip possible.  ; )

choco biscuits

produit de la cure gourmande

small biscuit balls

chocolate filling

Tasted buttery and sweet (but not overly so!). Nice.

at Glenmarie Shah Alam

Reached Subang airport at about 940am, and went to the office thereafter. Training started at 1030am, and we had lunch break eating packed char siew chicken rice in the office.

cool sofa seats in the office for eat-in lunch break

At night, we 'celebrated' Chap Goh Mei at a nearby coffeeshop that serves fusion food. It's not exactly fusion, but the shop serves Japanese, Western and Chinese zhi char stuffs. I had the Chinese bento (like local zhi char serves in bento set...  -_-'') kam hiong (金香) chicken rice set @RM9.80. A normal saba fish set costs RM20+ at this shop. Eating in Shah Alam is quite expensive!

kam hiong chicken rice set

After dinner, it was time to check-in to the hotel. Turned out I wasn't staying at Eastin, but at Holiday Inn Glenmarie Shah Alam.

hotel interior

My room was located at Level 3, and at night it was kinda eery with dark quiet walkways...some of the rooms had called room service and there were like empty plates lying outside of the room.

my hotel room

Standard room at this hotel costs RM278 (incl. of service charge and tax). Not cheap. There's no free wifi anywhere in the hotel, as internet connection is chargeable. It'll costs about RM1.90 per minute or RM57 per 24 hours access.

wired internet connection in room (chargeable)

Items in the minibar are exorbitantly priced. Imagine one can of Carlsberg beer for RM24? 

shower stall

The bathroom was clean but it did smell of bleach... which reminded me of Nat Ho's encounter in one of the Malaysian hotel. You can read about it here. 

Did not sleep much that night, and had a sore neck the day after. Because even the firmest pillow, was quite soft....or my head too heavy? Hmmm....

firm pillow?

morning view from the hotel room

There's free instant coffee as usual in the room, and they had decaf ones as well.

coffee

The decaffeinated ones tasted sour, didn't like it. The normal one is more palatable.

Firefly cupcake.... with tiger stripes? hmmmm...

Having coffee with Firefly cupcake (didn't eat on plane) was quite nice. Hahaha! Checked-out the hotel at 8am, and waited for Mr Ling to fetch us to have breakfast nearby the office. He recommended 'MC Curry Mee'. There's dry and soup version. I opted for the soup version of the curry noodles.

MC curry noodles wet version

The curry noodles was quite nice and not spicy. It has tau pok, sea-hum (cockles), long beans and chicken in it. After breakfast, it was back to the office for more training. At 12+ pm, we broke for lunch, and we ate at Pao Xiang Bak Kut Teh. 

mini bak kut teh

tea

The bak kut teh at Pao Xiang was served in mini container that had tea-lights to keep it hot. First time I'm having bak kut teh in this style.

After lunch, it was straight to a school in Setia Alam. This area is relatively new, and was said to be developed just 5 years ago. The school there is quite big, and we stayed at the computer lab until 6pm. After which, we went to Subang airport to catch our flight back to Singapore.

flying out on budget

Had my first inaugural experience with Budget Terminal and Firefly recently. Budget terminal actually looked quite good in my opinion. Has lesser toilet cubicles yes, but the whole Budget terminal was still nicely spacious and well maintained.

at the terminal

playground for kids.. and for weary travellers to take a nap?

No worries if you haven't had anything before your flight. There's a MacDonalds, and coffee house if you'd like to grab a bite.

at the Departure hall

that's my 830am flight to Subang

Firefly boarding pass

Check-in was a breeze, and there were 3 counters to service the passengers.

there's my plane!

passengers climbing up the short steps to board the plane

inside the aircraft

Take note that the overhead cabin is smaller compared to regular planes, so you might wanna bring a soft duffle bag or a smaller cabin bag instead.

to the skies!

It'll take approx. 1 hour and 10 minutes to reach Subang. Normally, it'll take just 45 minutes to reach KLIA on say MAS or SQ.

Malaysian landscape

Subang airport

the plane has landed

helicopter hangar

inside Subang airport

The return trip was at night, so here's a couple of night view from the plane.

small lights

highways, buildings and cars

Sentosa Boardwalk, Sentosa Flowers, Resort World

Taking a cable car to Sentosa? A train ride from Vivo? How about try walking to Sentosa from Vivocity. Yes, now you can with the Sentosa Boardwalk which links the island to mainland.

look out for the boardwalk signage in Vivocity

Once you're out of Vivocity, you'd be able to see this:

Sentosa Boardwalk

walk straight-ahead

Coincidentally, today was also the last day for Sentosa Flowers event, so we got to see flowers everwhere.

CNY flowers

pretty flowers

Actually, there are travelators along the way if you don't quite feel like walking all the way....

hop on to the travelator, travellers!

Went exploring the F&B areas (need to walk down some stairs), and saw this:

sculpture

flowers lined up

And very quickly, we reached Sentosa. Visitors can use their EZ-Link card to enter via the turnstile entrance. After which, we saw RWS...

RWS balloon

this is like the MUST take picture when in RWS?

And because it is CNY, they have this humongous rabbit:

HUGE fortune rabbit

Inside RWS, there's this big candy shop and outside of it you can see candy 'trees'.

candy trees

As it was lunch time, went to eat at Baits, which turned out to be.. Din Tai Fung. Faints. After lunch, went in search of the Sentosa Flowers, which was supposedly somewhere beyond the Merlion Plaza.

walk up to get to the flowers

Along the way, saw sculpted flowers to represent the Chinese zodiac signs:

rabbit sculpted flowers

chicken flowers

mouse and monkey (at far back)

Then, saw this:

'Le Penseur' aka The Thinker

Walked and walked and finally....

Sentosa Flowers start point... even monks also came to see...

wat's up doc? can't a rabbit take a break?

wishing tree

flora

Many many visitors, and there were flowers everywhere. Was also approached to help other people take their pictures, twice. Hahaa!

After being out in the sun for some time, took refuge in the air-conditioned comfort of RWS.

CNY decor

There were some public performances going, so took a look:

musical emsemble

talented girls, and their musical instruments seemed to be transparent.. cool!

MC introducing the next act

Here's the horoscope for Rabbit this year:

After all the walking around, it was time to go back.

ending with boardwalk

travellator