Hong Kong with the Lees, Chews, Teohs and Ongs

My wonderful dad decided to treat the family to a holiday in Hong Kong last December and it was a truly unforgettable experience for many reasons.

One, it was the very first time so many of my family members have travelled overseas together in a long while.

Two, it was also the first time bringing Kieran overseas.

Three, we were deceived into thinking it was going to be a holiday.

Ok, maybe reason number 3 is a bit of an exaggeration. We knew what we were in for but I guess nothing could have prepared us for the reality. Forget shopping, eating and sleeping in peace. These were my only conversations with my husband – is he cold? is it time for him to eat? did you remember to pack his water bottle? please remember to brush his teeth. don’t let him run into the lift! can you carry him? pass him to grandma.

By the end of the trip,  the Ongs have lost weight, voices and sanity.

However, if you were to ask us to do it all over again, we would say yes immediately. Despite the stress and fatigue, they were wonderful and fun times spent with my family. We literally snapped hundreds of photos and captured moments which I find myself looking at time and time again. So many shared memories and experiences.

Thanks Daddy, for making it all possible.

I can no longer deny it – I’m in my thirties…

I have to take my hat off to my husband. Every year when it is time to celebrate my big day, he manages to find new, untried and usually good restaurants for dinner, and this year was no exception.

He took me to ‘Ploy’, a restaurant tucked in Damansara Heights which serves a fusion of Japanese and Thai cuisine. Yes…a very unique combination indeed. And to my pleasant surprise, I also found out that it was opened by the parents of one of my students.

The food was superb and the service excellent. The portions were just right for us and the best part is, it’s reasonably priced too! If I’m not mistaken, the most expensive dish on the menu is RM40.

This place is definitely worth a second visit. Thank you Jared and Dian for opening such a lovely restaurant!

Chymes – an unassuming boutique hotel

Do you ever get tired of staying in those huge 5-star hotels along Batu Ferringhi each time you visit Penang? For us, I guess we got tired of driving through those narrow, windy roads for half an hour before being able to hit our beds and snooze.

So this time, my husband and I (without our little boy) decided to try out some of the boutique hotels that this island has to offer. I was given the task to trawl the net to search for a decent, reasonably-priced hotel and voila! I found Chymes.

At the promotional price of RM268 nett per night, this boutique hotel is tucked in a residential area in Tanjung Bungah. Its facade is so unassuming that we missed it twice whilst looking for it. However, do not judge a book by its cover. The moment you enter its doors, you are greeted by a cosy living room with sofas, lounge beds and tasteful art pieces. Turn to your right and you’ll find yourself in a dining cum TV room perfect for couples or a small group of friends.

The hotel boasts of 6 individually themed rooms with irresistable names such as ‘Red Chamber’, ‘Chocolat’, ‘Vanilla Black’ and ‘Aquamarine’. Each has its own charm and uniqueness. Since we were the only guests that weekend, we had the whole bungalow to ourselves and unashamedly ventured into each room to satisfy our curiousity.

After a long day out, returning to Chymes really feels like going back to one’s own home. It definitely lives up to its tagline – ‘A home away from home’.

Getting down and dirty

Our dreams for our little boy include raising him up to be exactly that – a boy! We want him to do stuff that every boy should love to do - getting sweaty and dirty whilst playing at the park, fishing by the river, walking barefoot on grass, catching insects with their bare hands, rolling about in mud (although we haven’t reached this extent!).

And Kieran had the opportunity to do just that during the Raya break when we were invited to join my sister’s family together with Alyssa and her son, Jonah for a picnic by the streams of Kiara Park, Taman Tun Dr Ismail. I was so proud that my son did not flinch or cry when he walked barefooted on the streambed which was filled with rough pebbles, or when he sat down in the water without his diapers.  He got down and dirty just like any boy should have!

After a day of sun, water and sand, he konked off for 2 hours in the afternoon. Ahhh…total bliss (for me, of course!).

1Malaysia

This year, Kieran had the chance to celebrate Hari Raya in school and that gave me the perfect excuse to scour the shopping malls for a ‘baju melayu’ that would fit my tiny little boy. And voila! Thanks to my persistence and with a little help from Shoby, his class teacher (who lent us the ‘sampin’), we’ve got a little ‘budak Melayu’!

Sigh…if only there was a ‘songkok’ that would fit his head…

The hidden gem of Tanjung Sepat

The Raya holidays are coming to an end. And even though my family did not ‘balik kampung’, we visited a kampung in Tanjung Sepat last Tuesday with a bunch of close friends. Until that day, I had never even heard of Tanjung Sepat, let alone know where it was! 

It was a day trip to the small fishing village famed for its fresh seafood, bak kut teh, queue-for-hours char siew pau and let’s not forget the main tourist attraction, the Lovers’ Bridge. We indulged ourselves in too-cheap-to-be-true, mouth watering, high cholesterol salted egg crabs, butter prawns, deep fried squids and bamboo lala at the Baywatch Seafood Restaurant and took a stroll down the Lovers’ Bridge, enjoying the sea breeze and praying that the wooden planks wouldn’t collapse under the weight of all the tourists there!

We drove through the narrow lanes of the village in search of the infamous char siew pau shop, and found a kilometre-long queue leading up to it. Needless to say, we gave it a pass.

En route, we also checked out the Golden Palm Tree Sepang Gold Coast Hotel and the Gold Coast Morib Resort. The photographs posted here are of the former hotel. In my view, the latter is a major letdown. Its only saving grace is the water theme park which was overcrowded with tourists that day.

All in all, it was a fantastic excursion made complete with the company of wonderful friends and gorgeous weather.

And the Daddy turns 30 (ok, thirty-something) a few days later…

For my family, August is a month of celebrations. My husband and son’s birthdays are a mere 3 days apart. Although this gives us a great excuse to party, I am, however, left broke at the end of it all. Nevertheless, I take comfort from the fact that my turn to be pampered and spoilt will come in the following month!

This year, I treated Boo to Italian food at il Lido, Off Jalan Yap Kwan Seng. I ain’t no food blogger, so I’m not even going to attempt to describe what we ordered, except to say that sometime between the bread (which was divine) and the creme brulee, we managed to stuff in pan fried goose liver with duck, fettucine with veal, prime beef tenderloin with truffle potatoes, and complimentary pan-fried scallops, homemade chocolates and a chocolate birthday cake! First, we thought that all the complimentary food was their way of making Boo’s birthday more special. Then, we wondered if the extra freebies were due to the fact that I was carrying my big-ass camera, snapping pictures of everything that landed on our table. Hmm…perhaps they thought I was a food blogger!

Sadly, our childish glee was brought to an abrupt end a few days later when my sister and her husband dined at il Lido and received the same treatment, sans the camera and the birthday cake.

Sigh…guess we weren’t that special after all…