trip

I’m in Phuket for the weekend!

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phuket airport

Sawadeekap again! I’m *back* in Thailand after my trip to Bangkok barely two weeks ago. I’m staying at Outriggers Laguna Resort Phuket for the weekend – just checked into the resort and got a beach front room.

phuket welcome

It’s going to be a chill trip so I’ll have time to catch up on the blog posts which I’ve been neglecting. The past week has been a bit crazy for me – haven’t even had time to surf blogs, so it’s a well deserved R&R where I can just relax by the beach, enjoy the resort and blog. 🙂

Posted: 11:17 pm 31st May Phuket time (GMT +7)
(which is technically a month behind Malaysia – love the timing of this post!)

The Damnoen Saduak Floating Market Scam

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damnoen saduak floating market

or how we got scammed in Thailand and ways to avoid it

I have vague memories of people being scammed at the Damnoen Saduak floating market in Bangkok but never really researched it. Thus, when our taxi driver offered to take us on a full day tour for just THB 1,200 (RM 120), I didn’t bargain and thought it was a pretty good deal.

boat tour

I didn’t want the extras, I just wanted to cram in two floating markets (Tha Kha and Damnoen Saduak) for the day. It takes about 40 minutes to an hour to reach the latter and there’s a reason the taxi driver gave a lot of excuses not to go to Tha Kha (it’s too small, you won’t like it, etc).

floating market

Damnoen Saduak floating market is basically a well known tourist trap. It’s what you see on the postcards and has lost it’s original meaning of being a floating market for locals but rather a scam to bring tourists there for the same trinkets and souvenirs you’ll find on the streets of Bangkok.

tha kha floating market

Tha Kha floating market is the one that locals go to.

scam floating market
Unhappy tourists who were conned before us

Anyway, the way the scam works is that taxi drivers offer you a really good price for a day’s tour (you can hire the cab to go anywhere for the day) and bring you to a pier where you’re forced to take a boat tour. Our driver kept insisting that there isn’t a way to go to the big Damnoen Saduak pier, which isn’t true as we found out.

salt farm

It took us an hour and you can see lots of salt flats where they farm salts on the way to Damnoen Saduak floating market. It’s quite interesting to see the locals harvest salt and sell it in bulk by the roadside.

damnoen saduak scam

We got shuttled to Shang 2 Pier. I later found out that there are heaps of “private piers” like this one – they arrange a commission with the cab drivers to bring tourists here. A woman immediately approached us as we pulled in and told us it’s THB 3,000 per person or THB 5,000 per boat for a 1 hour boat tour of Damnoen Saduak floating market.

That’s RM 500 for the boat!

floating market scam

I said no way and walked back to the taxi driver and told him to bring us straight to the Damnoen Saduak floating market pier. He kept insisting that there’s no roads to go there except by boat. His English was pretty bad but I told him I don’t want a boat tour and finally the woman (who followed us over) said she’ll do it for THB 2,000 (about RM 200) per person.

That’s a ridiculous price and not knowing if there’s actually a way to the pier of the Damnoen Saduak floating market, I finally bargained with the woman and got us a covered motorized boat for a 1 hour tour for THB 1,700 (RM 170) per boat.

private pier

I realized later that we could have gotten it for much cheaper had we bargained more but there’s no way out of this scam, the driver will just drive you to different “private piers” which are just fronts for scamming people into expensive boat tours.

boat vendors

The driver of the longboat to Damnoen Saduak floating market was nice though and even helped us take a photo (which we learned some other less scrupulous drivers will charge you for).

damnoen saduak us

Damnoen Saduak floating market is a tourist trap but it’s worth a visit for the experience if you don’t mind paying the over-inflated price. It’s like the Venice of Asia with the canals and waterways. The shops are right beside the canal – it’s now concrete after the tsunami and floods but still interesting to see shops where you literally have to row up to.

coconut sugar farm

There are also various boats selling food and a coconut sugar farm inside.

coconut sugar

I liked the coconut sugar – it’s exactly like those brown sweets from primary school except this is a large, hot wok and the taste straight from the paddle is incredibly sweet and nostalgic. They also offer a tour of the coconut factory but we didn’t go for that one.

It’s quite a nice experience sitting in a boat while traversing the waterways of Damnoen Saduak floating market but getting scammed into the boat tour took some of the fun out of it. You can get a (much) cheaper boat hire by getting to the Damnoen Saduak floating market pier itself. The pier bit in that last sentence is the most vital part – that’s where the regular boats depart.

floating market stalls

I hear it is near impossible to get a taxi to go to the pier itself since they have lucrative deals to scam tourists into the private piers for the commission (the lady consulted with our taxi driver on the THB 1,700 price before agreeing). There are also tours which scam you into the private piers so be careful of that.

damnoen saduak pier

My suggestion is to go to a floating market that the locals actually use e.g. Tha Kha floating market and take a boat to Damnoen Saduak floating market from there. I got quoted THB 200 an hour per boat for a tour (RM 20) departing from Tha Kha before bargaining.

floating markets

That’s a huge difference from THB 1,700 and closer to the real price. Tha Kha is more of a pier and not the postcard picture perfect floating market you think of but it’s a nice market where practically no one speaks English and meant more for locals. It’ll be hard to convince a taxi driver to go there though.

grilled bananas

Ours didn’t want to go to Tha Kha at all until much coercion and asked for THB 100 for lunch which I absolutely refused to give after the scam he pulled. I only gave it to him when he said it’ll come out of the THB 1,200 price we agreed upon (e.g. I’ll just pay THB 1,100) coz he didn’t have any money for lunch.

damnoen saduak

When it was time to go back, our taxi driver put the meter on so I thought he wanted to scam us again (it’s THB 2,000 from Damnoen Saduak floating market to Bangkok if you follow the meter) but I was quite hostile to him and paid just THB 1,100 and left.

damnoen saduak photo

The Damnoen Saduak floating market scam is pretty well documented. Be careful of the private piers and go straight to the Damnoen Saduak pier. If you want a more local experience, get a taxi that’ll bring you straight to Tha Kha and head to Damnoen Saduak floating market from there, which will cost just THB 200 (RM 20) per boat.

One day in Bangkok!

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bangkok

I applied for a debit card before I came here coz I always felt that having a debit card when you’re traveling is essential. I also thought that since I’m gonna be spending more often than I would while back home, it would be apt that I tried to win prizes every time I swipe my card. 😉

cash connect

Speaking of which, RHB is currently running a ‘Spend Small, Win Big’ contest, and the prizes up for grabs are pretty attractive:

  • 1 x Nissan Almera 1.5E(A)
  • 1 x Honda CBR250R Mugen
  • 3 x iPhone 5 (16GB)
  • 5 x Mini iPads (16GB)

I’m eyeing the iPhone 5 myself. I just needed to spend the equivalent of RM 30 to qualify for an entry – it’s all done automatically so you don’t even have to fill out any forms! I’ll have plenty of quirky places to do just that on my vacation so I figured it would be nice to bring it to Bangkok! 🙂

Jatujak Market

jatujak market

The place is heavily commercialized now but still fun to go to when you’re in Bangkok. Contrary to popular belief, this is no longer a “cash only” market – you can also use cards. I applied for the RHB Debit Cash-Connect MasterCard and put cash in it so that I can manage my spending.

jatujak

You know how hard it is to do that on vacations if you have a credit card. I figured it’ll be much safer to bring my RHB debit card instead of lots of cash and use that instead.

shop

I bought a couple of shirts and souvenirs here. There are boutique shops that will even customize attire for you! I spent THB 400 in just one shop (about RM 40) – it’s one of those witty t-shirt places and a bunch of Americans (I presume) were laughing loudly at all the funny words and pictures on the shirt.

Internet access

hotel

Our packaged tour got mixed up and we stayed at 3 different hotels over 5 days (!!!). The first one doesn’t have internet access so I bought a 24 hour net access card for THB 600.

pool

That’s around RM 60…

net

…and the worst part was we shifted hotel right after I bought it. -_-

Oh well, at least that got me a contest entry.

Groceries at 7-Eleven

thai easter eggs

Now, the 7-Eleven in Bangkok has a lot of interesting stuff. I’ve mentioned it before on one of my posts. I only got the equivalent of RM 10 at the time but on the last trip (we went to 7-Eleven each night) I spent almost THB 500 (RM 50).

frozen pork burgers

I mostly got a lot of these microwave pork burgers to bring back home. 🙂

security

My check-in luggage got opened by customs – probably due to the suspicious package – so it’s a good thing I had a TSA lock (which allows customs to open your lock with their special key without damaging it).

Gourmet Market @ Siam Paragon

durian chips

This is an awesome place that first visited 7 years ago. Siam Paragon was a new mall then and the Gourmet Market was newly opened. It’s an import specialty shop.

hello kitty rice

We bought loads of stuff to bring back. Everything from Hello Kitty rice flavoring (it’s supposed to be sold only in Japan according of the label on the back)…

durians

…to durians!

hokkaido milk

I also got some awesome Hokkaido milk! The total cost was THB 857.50 – about RM 86.

Mango Sticky Rice Blizzard

dairy queen

You can only get this Blizzard at the Dairy Queen in Bangkok. 🙂

thailand dairy queen

It’s a country-specific specialty that goes for 690 baht (about RM 6.90) for the large version. It has a lot of sticky rice on top of mango ice cream and it tastes really good – a great twist on the street vendor version.

dairy queen mango bar

There’s also Mango Bars – only available in Thailand. I figured since we were going to freeze the pork burgers to bring back, we might as well try bringing this back too. The total amount on the bill was around 350 baht (RM 35) – bought an extra couple of sticks of ice cream to bring the total over RM 30.

dairy queen mango sticky rice

My RHB debit card also has a 0.5% unlimited cash back in addition to the contest. You just need to apply for the RHB Debit Cash-Connect MasterCard and tell them you’ll be traveling so the card will be activated for overseas spending. The best thing about the contest is that you only need to spend RM 30 and entry is automatic! No more filling in long and bothersome forms while you’re on vacation! 🙂

Eating Fried Insects in Bangkok: Beetles, grasshoppers, frogs, crickets, worms, red ants!

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fried insects

It’s a veritable feast of creepy crawlies! The first thing I think of when I see, say, a spider, is to throw a shoe at it. The Thais go about it in a completely different way. The immediate thought seems to be “I’ll fry and eat it!”. smirk

fried insect stall

I found this street vendor selling all sorts of deep fried insects on the streets of Bangkok. Okay, frog is not actually an insect but she also had grasshoppers (huge and small ones), crickets (not the sport), beetles (which I am secretly scared of) and even red ants! Deep fried red ants! Imagine that!

deep fried insects

I bought a pack of large grasshoppers for 20 THB and a mixed bag of every single insect she had for 30 THB (RM 5 total). The street vendor laughed and complied with my request – a deep fried cricket here, a sprinkling of deep fried red ants there. There’s even two types of beetles (water beetle and weevil). It’s supposed to be a delicacy here.

fried bugs thailand

I ate it sitting on the steps where my girlfriend took this video of me eating all the deep fried insects:

I also made her eat some, much to her disgust, but at least now she’s tried it. 🙂

I’ll give a quick review of the insects:

fried grasshopper

Deep fried grasshopper
Surprisingly crunchy and delicious but the legs can have spines that can cut your tongue.
Deep fried frog
These are tiny frogs that can fit in my hand. They don’t even remove the bowels! Tasty and crunchy.
Deep fried beetle
The wings can be hard to swallow coz it sticks to the top of your mouth like peanut butter.
Deep fried cricket
Tastes like grasshoppers but has more of a bee-like texture to it.
Deep fried bamboo worms
Tasty and creamy!
Deep fried red ants
Highly toxic when consumed in large quantities. It makes my mouth itch just thinking about it.

eating insects bangkok

I’m not a huge fan of deep fried red ants – it’s hard to pick up (they’re tiny) and I find their venom to be a bit hard to take. It actually made me sick!

snacks insects bangkok

I was feeling slightly unwell after eating all these, she thinks it might be coz of the fried grasshoppers, I thought it was the toxin from the deep fried red ants. It’s an interesting experience nonetheless! 🙂

Posted: 10:30 am Bangkok time (GMT +7)

Bangkok: The airport security incident, RM 1 Red Bull and pork, pork, pork!

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breakfast

Sawadeekap! I’m in Bangkok, Thailand! Six of us flew in late last night – it was supposed to be a couples trip planned after a HCMC trip was cancelled. We’re staying at Indra Regent Hotel, which is just a stone’s throw away from the overrated and commercialized Platinum Mall.

hotel room

Oh! I’ll tell you an funny incident last night. I was going through airport security, and took off my belt to go through the metal detector. I don’t know what happened, but it must have been stuck in the machine coz I didn’t see it – worse – didn’t realize it until the plane landed in Bangkok, I reached to tighten my belt…

belt

…and noticed it wasn’t there. -_-

sliced milk bread

Anyway, we hit the local 7-Eleven opposite the hotel as soon as we finished checking in. The 7-Eleven over here is really quite good – it has a lot of interesting stuff and it’s cheap!

red bull

The Red Bull over here is particularly cheap – all of them going for THB 10 or less. That’s about RM 1 – a price which you’ll be hard pressed to find in Malaysia! In fact, I paid less than the equivalent of RM 10 for all my purchases!

pork tom yam noodles

There’s a lot of nice pork wares too – even the store branded instant noodles is Pork Spare Ribs with Tom Yam Flavor. It sounds very Thai. 😉

pork pocket sandwich

We had this Shredded Pork Mayonnaise Pocket Sandwich for breakfast just now. THB 12 or RM 1.20 for a sandwich stuffed with pork floss and mayo with the edges (crust) sliced off, just like your mom used to do for you when you were a little kid. smirk

sliced butter bread

I also found this interesting bread product that goes for 7 baht each – around RM 0.70. I don’t know how to translate it properly coz the writing is all in Thai. It’s just a slice of bread with either butter or milk spread on top but it’s super delicious!

Posted: 11:42 am Bangkok time (GMT +7)

Eating pong tia koon – Cambodian balut!

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duck-embryo

Pong tia koon is the Cambodian version of balut. It’s simply a fertilized duck embryo which adds a lot to the eww factor for a lot of people. We were in Siem Reap and saw a street vendor selling it – that’s the only way to eat pong tia koon! 🙂

eating balut cambodia

I’ve eaten balut in the Philippines before. On the streets of Manila, eating fertilized duck embryo is just a simple matter – you crack open the balut, suck out the juices and get a twist of salt to go with the egg. It’s just that simple.

cambodian balut

However, the process of eating pong tia koon is quite complex in Cambodia. Cambodians have a wide variety of condiments to add to the fertilized duck embryo before it’s ready to eat. There’s almost a ritualized feel to it. It’s balut, Khmer style! smirk

eating pong tia koon

The egg is cracked into a plate, with the embryo and juices flowing freely. Fine salt and black pepper powder is added to it. Fresh lime is cut while a mixture of garlic slices and chilli is liberally poured into the plate and Cambodian mint (laksa leaves) sprinkled before it’s suitable to be served.

cambodia balut

It’s delicious! I found the Khmer style of serving balut to be extremely tasty! I ordered 3 pong tia koon and it left me wanting more. It’s just 1,000 KHR (0.25 USD) per egg. The mixture of spices goes very well with the egg and also the tiny duck inside. I told Ling it just tastes like chicken soup and got her to eat some so she’s experienced eating balut before. 🙂

pong tia koon

The Cambodian pong tia koon is a lot more intense in some ways than balut in the Philippines – they keep the duck longer (19 days compared to 17 days) so you can see a mature chick inside. It’s fully recognizable as a baby duck!

balut developed chick

There’s a head staring back at you with huge eyes, a long neck, webbed feet. You can even see the rib cage of the baby duck! It’s delicious though – the sweet, sour and spicy condiments make this a truly delicious dish that you’ll crave for instead of something to eat just to experience. 🙂

My girlfriend’s two birthdays!

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Birthday #1

ling birthday

This was my brainchild and happened on the day before her actual birthday (we flew to Siem Reap for her birthday vacation). I had planned a series of surprises for the week leading up to her birthday. 🙂

Patchi chocolates

patchi

The first was chocolates from Patchi. This has a special meaning for us (not the brand itself) but coz one of the first gifts I gave her was from Royce, followed by Godiva and this the trilogy of “premium chocolates”.

patchi chocolate store

I got their signature collection from MidValley – she was actually wondering what shop it was and I remember walking in the first time, saying I’ll get her a box and she looked at the price tag and said she doesn’t want it. I know, she’s really an *awesome* person like that.

patchi chocolates

I decided to drop the subject since I knew her birthday was coming up and I wanted this to be one of the presents…and thus, I gave it to her as the start of the birthday gifts. 🙂

24 pink roses bouquet

pink roses

I also planned to walk into her office with a bouquet of flowers that I got from Bloom (which actually has great service compared to Giftlab, the latter has rude delivery guys). I got the 24 stalks of pink roses at my condo, and drove out to her office with the intention of surprising her by walking in unannounced.

girlfriend birthday

It was foiled coz she was already standing outside, ready to go out. I didn’t make it in time before she headed out for lunch. Oh well, it was still a good attempt. 🙂

Giant macaroon birthday cake

giant macaroon

She didn’t want a birthday cake coz she already had some and I remember her saying something about macaroons when we first met that I’ve kept in my mind ever since. I ordered a giant macaroon in lieu of a birthday cake – I got two of them in fact, one pink (salty chocolate) and one red (lime flavored).

macaroon cake

I also got 3 candles for her 30th birthday and pretended I was too tired to stay up…before surprising her with the giant pink macaroon. Well, it’s not exactly gigantic (there are bigger ones) but it’s hard to maintain the crispiness when it’s huge. This size was pushing it.

macaroons

She liked it though and that’s all that matters.

Pandora’s box(es)

pandora

This was a series of surprise gifts I sprang on her. She was staying over since we had an early morning flight (turned out we didn’t have time to sleep at all). I bought her a charm bracelet and three charms from Pandora coz I remember walking through a mall with her and the little ones once and she looked wistfully at the collections.

I made a mental note then to get this for her birthday. 🙂

pandora charm bracelet

I actually asked the Pandora sales person to wrap it in 3 different packages (one of them I just took in the box since I wanted to present it to her in Siem Reap and it’ll be hard to pack a bag without her noticing) so I can do my sequential surprises. smirk

I gave her the charm bracelet first and apologized coz it’s empty and I didn’t have money to buy her charms.

pandora box

She said it’s okay, she’ll just wear the bracelet like that.

I said I bumped into a friend who told me I needed to get a charm chain coz if the charm bracelet accidentally opens, all the charms will drop out (thanks Wendy!).

pandora bracelet

…and I gave her another box.

I said that’s it, sorry about it being so empty and while she asked if I was going to put it on for her…

pandora charm protector

I then presented her with the third box, which contains a pink heart charm. It’s supposed to mean something which I only told her.

pink heart charm

I said that’s all I had, no more surprises (but notice I only gave her 3 boxes when I bought 4?). She was touched though and I’m glad I managed to make her happy during her birthday. 🙂

Birthday trip to Cambodia

birthday trip

We didn’t sleep at all and I drove to the airport the next day. I had booked a very nice boutique resort in Siem Reap which did all my requests for her birthday trip.

happy honeymoon

They wrote “Happy Honeymoon” on the bed and had a bottle of champagne chilled in an ice bucket waiting in the room.

campagne

I also arranged for a Cambodian birthday cake to be presented to her. I got this in advance since it was her birthday the *very day* we flew. We arrived in the morning so we had a day of going around Siem Reap (will post more on our trip soon) and I had to pay for the birthday cake without her knowledge, pretending to go out or forgetting stuff in the room while I was actually talking to reception about when to reveal the surprise.

The birthday cake was presented to her by the poolside (she was puzzled as to why I wanted to hang out there and was annoyed by the mosquitoes). The staff came out and sang “Happy Birthday” and a bunch of French guests there wished her a happy birthday too!

cambodian birthday cake

It was a 3D/2N trip, I told her to bring her passport and I’ll handle everything, from flights to currency, it’s her present so just bring herself! I gave her some USD so she can get back to the resort in case of emergencies though. I’ll write more on the trip later, the last surprise was close to midnight of her actual birthday when I gave her the Pandora charm that I had secretly packed to complete the dual charm collection.

It’s “I LOVE YOU” with a heart made of pure gold which I had hidden all the way from KL. <3 Birthday #2

checkers

This just happened last weekend! Ling and the two little ones came over to my place coz it’s closer to town before getting ready. We had a sit-down birthday dinner at Checkers. It was Florence’s idea – cheers for making it two weeks later so I could do the birthday vacation surprise! 🙂

cakes

The food was pretty alright – they had a decent cheese and bread selection…

hors d oeuvres

…and they had some nicely plated hors d’oeuvres.

lamb

But I thought the best part was the mutton / beef / chicken satay station and the fresh oysters.

tiramisu

The little one took this so it’s a bit blurry:

birthday photo 2013

Happy birthday dear, I hope this was a memorable one for you. I love you always. *hugs*

Cambodian pancakes, Bolt and 4G LTE: Fast. Faster. Fastest!

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cambodia pancakes

I was in Siem Reap in Cambodia and found street vendors selling the ubiquitous meant-for-Caucasian-tourist pancakes that I thought are similar to the ones that are sold in Bali.

cambodian roti canai

They’re not the same!

cambodian pancake

This is actually a Cambodian style roti canai – it’s practically made the same way. You can have it with Nutella, banana, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, Milo or combinations of the above for just 3,000 KHR (0.75 USD).

banana chocolate pancake

It’s served differently though. We had a banana and chocolate pancake and it’s rolled up in a piece of paper so it’s easier to eat.

cambodian pancakes

It’s fast food, Cambodian style!

Closer to home, I saw this TV commercial featuring Usain Bolt running through KL city:

If you don’t know who he is, I honestly don’t know what to say. smirk He’s just the fastest man in the world, being the first person to hold the 100 meter and 200 meter world record and also the first to win 6 Olympic gold medals in sprinting.

He’s faster than you can imagine and he’s now the official ambassador for the Celcom network.

Celcom has come up with the 4th generation of wireless mobile communications, dubbed 4G LTE. LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and it’s 10 times faster than what you’re used to. It’s 100Mbps so think of it as a classic Cat5 cable (LAN cable) running at max speed (that’s the reference for all computer geeks like me ;)).

It was the fastest speed we could go in our university back then and to put 100Mbps into perspective:

  • Downloading a 5 MB song will take 2 seconds flat
  • Downloading a 750 MB movie will be completed in 5 minutes

…and all that on your smartphone!

Celcom has officially launched this service and you can get the 4G LTE modem at only RM 199 for the first 1,000 subscribers! Just visit Blue Cube @ Sunway, Pavilion or Menara Celcom and you’ll even get the first 3 months of data subscription totally FREE! Get more details on the fastest speed in town here or try your luck at winning a FREE LTE modem with 3 months data + subscription with your best Usain Bolt pose on the Celcom First Facebook page!

How to cook kangaroo meat: A kangaroo roast dinner!

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cooking kangaroo

This is perhaps one of my greatest culinary achievements. I did this in Melbourne during my last day there. I wanted to cook a full course dinner with kangaroo roast as the flagship for my loved one and here’s the recipe for everything!

raw macadamia nuts

I bought everything at Coles Express in Melbourne CBD.

coles receipt

The grocery shopping bill came out to AUD 70.19 (about RM 221) so that’s how much it costs.

raw kangaroo roast

There are five (5) courses to the dinner:

kangaroo roast dinner

Italian Salad with Fresh Garden Greens and Honey Balsamic Dressing
This is the starter (of sorts) – gotta have foliage in the diet.

Roasted Stuffed Chicken with Gravy
I’ll call this the appetizer since that was how we ate it.

cooking seafood

Sixthseal’s Seafood Supreme (TM) with cream, white wine and garlic – prawns, Tasmanian mussels, bacon, cheese, exotic mushrooms and macadamia nuts with traditional bread
This is the best dish I came out with, according to Ling, and I’m quite proud of myself. It tastes really great! I think it deserves that (TM) bit. 😉

Herb & Garlic Kangaroo Roast
This is the main dish – the one I slaved over for hours, coz I wanted her to try kangaroo meat.

kiwiberry cranberry fondue

Kiwiberries + Raspberries with Caramel and White Chocolate sauce
I’m quite proud of this dessert too!

That’s the menu for the night and I started out by preparing the salad.

Italian Salad with Fresh Garden Greens

coles-salad

It’s a bit of a cheat since it came in a ready made bag but I can’t cook everything from scratch. Haha! Even the sauce came in a miniature bottle that was right beside the salad. It’s “sweet, crisp leaves balanced with shredded radicchio and a hint or aromatic parsley”.

coles italian sauce

I just put the entire contents of the bag into a salad bowl and poured in the 125 ml honey balsamic dressing. It’s store brand but quite good. Ling actually ate a lot of this.

italian salad

I didn’t.

Roasted Stuffed Chicken with Gravy

roast chicken

This is her suggestion coz she thought I’ll take a long time with the kangaroo roast. She was right. We bought 1/2 a stuffed chicken. It comes in a bag and you just need to chuck the bag into the oven and heat it up.

microwave bag

The bag works to keep the moisture in. I kept the bag to use for my kangaroo roast too.

stuffed roasted chicken

It’s pretty good since you can’t very well go wrong with a pre-cooked item from Coles. The stuffing was salty, the meat was tender and it’s delicious coz we were so hungry at that point. I was still slaving over the kangaroo roast at this point.

Sixthseal’s Seafood Supreme (TM) with cream, white wine and garlic – prawns, Tasmanian mussels, bacon, cheese, exotic mushrooms and macadamia nuts with traditional bread

seafood recipe

My proudest dish! I must tell the entirety of this story.

garlic prawns

We bought garlic marinated prawns from Coles – it comes in a package so we didn’t need any other sauces. We were just there for a day and didn’t want to buy large bottles of seasoning.

bacon

I also went to the meat counter and got a rasher of bacon. It’s huge! The bacon measures 1 1/2 feet long and several inches wide – there’s a photo of me holding it later. I wanted the rinds to cook with.

macadamia

Macadamia nuts were from the raw produce section. It’s raw nuts at AUD 33.98 / kg. That makes it AUD 7.56 (RM 25) for the handful of a few nuts I grabbed! I calculated, that’s RM 1.30 per nut. 😡

exotic mushrooms

The mushrooms came in a pack that that was labelled 3 gourmet mushrooms – there are two familiar ones (they aren’t “exotic” to Asians) but the orange fungi is new to me.

cheese

I went to the cheese counter and chose bocconcini – a mild mozarella type cheese that you keep submerged in liquid. It would be really hard to find this here but I ate bocconcini for fun as a snack when I was studying in Melbourne.

bocconcini

The best thing we saw was the Tasmanian mussels!

tasmanian mussels

It was marked down to just AUD 0.50! That’s a 92% discount! It was such a good bargain that I wanted it for my seafood bonanza. It’s the best buy of the trip – there’s always price cuts but this just takes the cake.

traditional bread

The traditional bread is supposed to go with this dish to wipe up the creamy gravy (and also to go with the kangaroo roast). There are no preservatives and it’s very good bread – artisan bread handmade using kibbled wheat. AUD 5.50 (RM 17). It’s not cheap, this 800 gram loaf of traditional bread.

seafood ingredients

The ingredients!

seafood stew recipe

I sliced up the bacon rinds and fried it for a bit before dumping in the rest of the bacon.

bacon rinds

I then added in the mussels with all the cream, garlic and white wine marinate…

mussels

…and then the prawns with it’s own garlic marinade.

prawns

Awesome stuff!

cooking seafood stew

A wonderful smell was starting to waft out and this was when I threw the raw macadamis nuts in.

seafood stew macadamias

Added the mushrooms and cheese last and let it simmer for a bit.

adding bocconcini

It’s delicious! I cooked a mess…

adding mushrooms

…but Ling plated it so nicely it could be a restaurant dish!

sixthseal seafood supreme

Ta da!

seafood bread

It tasted wonderful – sweet and salty, with lots of seafood and delicious liquids for the traditional bread to soak up.

Herb & Garlic Kangaroo Roast

kangaroo mini roast

I had a lot of trouble with this. I set the oven wrongly and the bag nearly caught on fire (which has the potential to trip the fire alarm, causing a huge fine).

kangaroo roast

Luckily, she smelled something burning and I sorted it out.

eating kangaroo

I wouldn’t want to go through the arduous process, but it was 3 am when this was finally ready.

kangaroo meat

It’s worth the time and the blood, sweat and tears I put in though – it’s cooked to perfection!

roasted kangaroo

Ling tried it and had several more pieces, she said it tasted like liver. Oh well, at least she’s tried kangaroo meat now.

me bacon

I liked it – I ate quite a fair bit of the kangaroo roast. It’s gamey and flavorful, with chewy meat. I’m glad we didn’t cop out and go for kangaroo burger patties or kangaroo steaks – a kangaroo roast is the proper way to eat kangaroo meat. Lovely stuff!

Kiwiberries + Raspberries with Caramel and White Chocolate sauce

kiwiberry

This is the dessert I made for her – kiwiberry is a small fruit that looks like mini kiwifruit and tastes like kiwifruit but it’s much sweeter. You can just pop it into your mouth to eat it without peeling anything.

kiwiberry-chocolate-dip

The raspberries are fresher too and I mixed both fruits into a glass (don’t have a parfait server).

chocolate caramel dip

I had two dips of caramel and white chocolate and I spooned each in turn into the fruit mixture to create contrasting textures.

kangaroos

It was so good we finished the fruits the next day by dipping it straight into the leftover caramel and white chocolate dip. 🙂

kiwiberrry cranberry

I had fun cooking for her. It’s a nice change, and it’s kind of her to rinse the plates before I loaded the dishwasher coz I was bushed by then. She got to eat kangaroo meat and it was an awesome way to spend the last night in Melbourne together. It’s a lovely end to a wonderful trip!

Mi Char in Cambodia

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mi char vendor

This is one of the common street food in Cambodia. You can see it being sold from mobile stalls on the street in the evenings at the Old Market in Siem Reap. Mi Char is basically the Cambodian version of maggi goreng! smirk

mi char

There’s actually two versions – one that’s made from a loh shi fun type of noodle and the more popular one made from instant noodles. The brand they use is Red Bear Chicken Flavored Instant Noodles. I noticed that all the mi char places in Siem Reap use the same type and flavor.

red bear instant noodles

It costs 4,000 KHR (Cambodian Riel) for each plate. That’s about 1 USD (RM 3) since everyone there uses a conversion rate of 1 USD = 4,000 KHR. USD is the default currency but you get small change back in Cambodian Riel.

mi char cambodia

Anyway, the mi char seller will cook one packet of Red Bear chicken flavored instant noodles and then fry it with some shredded cabbage and other vegetables. They’ll also put in the flavor sachet at this point.

fried egg

The 4,000 KHR dish comes with a fried egg! I was wondering if we kena conned e.g. got charged tourist prices, but everyone who came, even locals, were paying 1 USD for that, so it’s all good. Heh.

mee char

It’s a simple but delicious dish! The noodles are doused with chilli sauce before serving. We ate it sitting by the river watching the sun set in Siem Reap. 🙂

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