Year: 2008

Min Kong Cafe RM 20 prawn noodles

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min kong cafe

Min Kong Cafe is well known in Sibu for its RM 20 prawn noodles. Their flagship dish actually reached an all time high of RM 25 per bowl before dropping to its current RM 20 rate. There are other places offering the same dish for RM 12 but for the original Min Kong prawn noodles, there is but one place to eat it.

min kong interior

Min Kong Cafe is air conditioned and also offers traditional fare as well as rice dishes but most people go there for their flagship RM 20 prawn noodles. There are actually three (3) RM 20 offerings – big prawn cooked noodles, big prawn fried noodles, and fish noodles.

tiger beer

I couldn’t try all three in one sitting so I had the famed big prawn cooked noodles first with Amy and some other people from work. I also took the liberty of ordering Tiger Beer (RM 8) since I saw someone eating big prawn cooked noodles on the office Intranet (a supplier) and drinking Tiger Beer and had felt the craving for the same ever since. I guess it’s alright since both times I went there were Saturday afternoons. 🙂

big prawn noodles

The cooked big prawn noodles (RM 20) is known as “ta sia chau chu mien” and is the flagship dish of Min Kong Cafe. It’s very well known for its unapologetic pricing and generous portions of prawns. There are four big prawns in every bowl (it’s actually two, sliced horizontally) and the broth is very prawny.

big prawn noodles macro

Min Kong certainly doesn’t skimp on the good stuff and the portions of noodles are reasonable so it doesn’t fill you up too much. The prawns are also pre-shelled so there’s no hassle involved in shelling the prawns in a bowl of soup (which can be pretty unwieldy, and can cause no small amount of splash damage).

min kong amy

I like!

fish noodles

I also went there earlier this afternoon with Faye and she opted for the fish noodles (RM 20) since she’s not a very big fan of prawns (being allergic to most shellfish as it were). The fish noodles is topped with generous slices (slabs?) of prime fish meat on the top.

fish noodles macro

I just love the beautiful mosaic swirls on the fish meat. It’s wonderfully tender too, well worth the RM 20 price tag. This is a good option if you don’t like prawn, the fish noodles is also chock full of prime ingredients (with an appropriate prime price tag to boot).

big prawn noodles fried

I went for the fried big prawn noodles (RM 20) this afternoon. It’s the lesser known contender to the RM 20 cooked big prawn noodles throne but I certainly wasn’t disappointed by its performance. The same neatly shelled prawns are heaped on top of the fried noodles and I even found the feelers nicely shelled and ready to eat! The gravy is very prawny and concentrated, and the noodles fried just right. I would recommend this lesser known dish to real lovers of prawn instead.

min kon faye

Bon appetit!

Word of the day:

splash damage
(verb)
Otherwise known as the mee soup incident, it is the inadvertent soiling of work clothes due to uncooperative ingredients mishandled during lunch hour.

Bukit Lima Forest Park

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bukit lima forest park

I went to Bukit Lima Forest Park with the people from work this morning. It’s supposed to be a jungle trekking session organized by the social club of the company that I work for. I headed over to Joyce’s house at 7:30 am coz I don’t really know the way to the forest park so I need to do a bit of tailgating behind her. 🙂

sandwiches

Joyce is the vice secretary of the social club and she was busy preparing sandwiches when I got there.

joyce prep

I helped out (kinda…at least I opened the packets of sausages ;)) and we loaded up the car with the food supplies and drove down to Bukit Lima Forest Park.

prep

The place is rather hard to find, I certainly would have been lost without her. It’s not very far from Sibu town though, probably about a 15 minute drive away. We arrived there at around 8 am and proceeded to unload the stuff to a sheltered gazebo at the park grounds.

start

I headed straight onto the trail after that. It was a nice, cool morning and the sun wasn’t out in full force yet…perfect for a spot of jungle trekking, The signs read “Slippery Trek” and “Enter at your own risk” – not very reassuring epithets but it turned out to be a comfortable walk along a planked path.

stream

There was a stream overgrown with algae marking the start of the path. I was a little disappointed to find out that the sides were lined with common ferns and trees – no pitcher plants or exotic wildlife to be found here…

tree

The most interesting thing we bumped across was a felled tree partially blocking the planked path but in all fairness, it was a nice, comfortable walk…just not terribly exciting. 😉

watch tower

There was also a three story concrete watch tower near the beginning of the path. In grand Sibu tradition, the whitewashed pillars were adorned with graffiti left by an aspiring adolescent tagger.

graffiti

Me: Oh, look! There’s graffiti on the walls.
Kathy: *peers over* That’s not graffiti ok! That’s vandalism!

foliage

The top of the watch tower affords a view of foliage, foliage and more foliage. The diversity of the plant life is certainly nothing to write home about.

taan trek

There are several trails to go on and we opted for the Ta’an Trek at 2,477 meters.

1km

This is a photo of us after 1 km.

3km

This is a photo of us after 3 km. 🙂
I haven’t actually lost much weight and this is a testament to that. I still have a substantial amount of fat around my waist that I need to shed.

deluxe shed

The Ta’an Trek is still a work in progress as we arrived at a partially constructed shed near the end of that trail.

shed

This is what the completed huts look like. There are several along the path for weary hikers to rest their weary bones in. The partially constructed one seems to be a deluxe shed of sorts as it can handle double the capacity of the normal sheds.

snail

I also found a curious snail on the path. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’m a little annoyed (read: scared) of flying insects and there was no shortage of that in the forest. Me and Kathy got harassed by all kinds of insects during the trek. I couldn’t even see some of them! I only heard the buzz of winged critters and perhaps a flicker of movement at my back which sent paranoid thoughts of cicadas or dragonflies landing on me and the subsequent frantic attempts to dislodge the imagined critters.

flora

I much prefer to stumble across flora rather than fauna…

this way back

Thus, it was with some relief that we reached the sign marking the end of the trail. I walked a total of 5 km this morning – 1 km to the Ta’an Trek, 2.4 km through the Ta’an Trek and 1.6 km back.

finish

It was about 10 am when everyone finished the jungle trekking and we proceeded to the next segment of the program – food.

frying

Someone brought along a tank of gas and a wok and started frying the sausages, fish balls and chicken wings for lunch.

sausages

The sausages swelled to an amazing girth after deep frying in oil. I’m not sure why one brand of sausages does that while the other doesn’t produce an appreciable increase in size after similar treatment.

joyce colin

Joyce and Colin did most of the frying while the rest of us did most of the milling around. 😉

food

There was a lot of food – we ended up with a lot of leftovers and even passed some of the sausages to the security guards on duty, that was how much surplus we had.

sausage wrap

I was introduced to new and exciting ways of eating – this sausage wrap apparently makes the task of consuming the deep fried sausage easier coz the lettuce prevents the oil from coming into contact with your hands.

kids

Some of the staff also brought their families along and the kids seem to have a lot of fun.

bonding

It was a very nice company outing, what some people would call “corporate bonding”. 🙂

group photo

Greetings from the KSP @ Bukit Lima Forest Park!

Random musings

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car crash

I was heading down on a site visit with a coworker this afternoon when we were cut off by a Honda City doing at least 90 km/h on a gravel road. I commented off-handedly that the driver is likely to have an accident judging by the way he/she was driving. Well, next thing we knew, we turned a corner and saw the Honda City lose control and crash head on into a utility pole. I am familiar with crashing into utility poles and judging by the speed the car was going, the driver was lucky the car didn’t crash through and drop into the huge drain beside the road.

There were a couple of security guards from a nearby factory running down the road towards the crash to see if they could help out the driver. It turned out to be a middle aged lady fetching her two kids back from school (they were still in primary school uniform). I am not sure if anyone was hurt coz there was a cement truck bearing down on us and I just had time to get a couple of photos off before I had to get off the shoulder of the road.

evelyn

Anyway, I was out tonight with Katherine and Evelyn. Evelyn (girl in pink) is back for the holidays and she used to be from my high school. Her parents are working in the same field as mine and her brother knows my sister but unfortunately, I can’t seem to remember seeing her in school. My memory is notoriously dismal though, so there you go. She has a degree is psychology (OMG! I can’t believe it! I haven’t had a crush in years! *swoons*) from Otago University in Christchurch, NZ and she’s doing mission work (as in church related) in Singapore.

I still can’t stop kicking myself for not noticing her back in high school and er…perhaps making a move (or two). 😉

Anyway, I’m going jungle trekking with some people from work tomorrow morning. Early day tomorrow. Pictures and report will be up when I get home. Have an outstanding Labor’s Day break and don’t do anything I won’t do.

Ba Sen Baku Teh

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ba sen baku teh

Ba Sen Baku Teh is an eating establishment specializing in Bak Kut Teh (Pork Rib Tea). It’s located in Kampung Hilir and there is a huge bak kut teh ceramic pot hanging outside the large shop front.

ba sen sign

I went there with Faye for lunch on Sunday. You really can’t miss the distinguished signage. 😉

ba sen interior

The interior is nicely decorated with large, ancient ceramic spice holders and see through blinds. It really goes quite well with the warm red tones that the place is painted with.

ba sen pot

We ordered a pot of pork bak kut teh (RM 5). Bak kut teh is by default made with pork meat. There was a variant called chick kut teh (chicken bone tea) during the swine flu scare a couple of years back but that trend kinda petered out coz the tea just doesn’t taste right without the robust taste of pork.

ba sen bak kut teh

Ba Sen Baku Teh offers add-ons ranging from sea cucumber to pork intestines which is charged accordingly and put into your personal pot of baku teh soup before cooking. We went for pork kidney (RM 2.50), pork liver (RM 1), pig tail (RM 1) and sliced pork (RM 1).

ba sen rice

It tasted quite good and Ba Sen Baku Teh also offers pork bak kut mee where they put noodles into the bak kut teh soup. The place also makes dried Klang style bak kut teh during Saturdays and Sundays.

ba sen group

Ba Sen Baku Teh only has bak kut teh on the menu so unless you’re a fan of the stuff, there really isn’t anything else on the menu to cater to your tastes. However, if you like bak kut teh, it comes highly recommended from me. 🙂

…and I know some of the guys out there have a habit of squinting at the interior photos for any inadvertent upskirt pics. Please don’t squint.

ba sen upskirt

You’ll hurt your eyes. 😉

Workshop

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workshop

I bumped into Eddy and Jonalyn while having dinner with Faye last night and we decided to head over to Workshop for a couple of drinks and to shoot some pool. This is a departure from tradition as I usually don’t go drinking with people from work (Eddy is a manager in the company that I work in). 🙂

I also remember singing a couple of off-key renditions of Hotel California and I Will Survive. Heh! Workshop seems to be a rather chill place to hang out on Saturday night. It doesn’t have the massive turnout of 3 degrees Celsius and Q-bar and there’s even room for elbow space.

Watch your steeps

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watch your steeps

Watch your step. Steep incline ahead. A new signboard maker takes the innovative steep, er…I mean step, of combining two “Caution” messages into one. It is widely misinterpreted as bad English.

Watch your steeps.

KFC vouchers

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kfc sibu

I went to KFC last night with Faye and the mysterious child of unknown origin (TM). This is the only 24 hour KFC in Sibu.

kfc voucher

I had been given a RM 10 and RM 5 voucher courtesy of the social club of the company that I work in. It seems that KFC is giving out vouchers to company affiliated clubs to distribute out to their members – we get ours during birthdays.

kfc counter

I haven’t had the chance to use it since I got it early this month so I decided to eat there last night.

kfc food

We got an X-Meal (Zinger), 3 pieces of chicken, cheesy wedges and a couple of sodas. My notorious appetite seem to have left me coz it felt like it’s a little too much for supper for 2 adults and a 10 year old. 🙂

kfc group

I am still having the sniffles from plucking out my nasal hair a couple of days back…

Manly tears

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manly tears

I have briefly touched upon the subject of manly tears in the annals of sixthseal.com. I am personally not very prone to shedding tears myself, and could never understand the more sensitive individuals who’re more in touch with their feminine side…

…until now.

nasal hair

The culprit.

I was driving home from work just now when a friend of mine noticed a particularly long nasal hair sticking out of my nostril. She proceeded to pluck out the offending follicle with no small measure of sadistic glee and left me shedding tears. Manly tears, of course. 😉

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