Bulgogi Beef and Spicy Tou Fu Soup

My first encounter with Korean food was in Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. It was the beginning of winter and the air outside was chilly and crisp. There was a medium-sized family-run restaurant at Namdaemun, not too far from the hotel that our crews were staying.

Raw bulgogi-sauce-marinated beef was left on a portable gas-operated stove to cook while we savour the many different side dishes that come with the main course such as Kim chi (preserved spicy cabbage), marinated beansprout, fishcakes, black beans, anchovies and so on.

Slices of cooked beef were then wrapped in green vegetable and eaten while hot. It was love at first bite. The beef was so tender and juicy that I could not help wanting for more. The taste was a little sweet but unique.

Then came the Spicy Tou Fu Soup. The steaming spicy hot soup served in earthenware for keeping warm, coupled with the softness of the tou fu (bean curd) were just perfect for winter.

Subsequently, I discovered a lot more about Korean food in Korean Town in Manhattan, New York. There are a lot of Korean restaurants that open for 24 hour in Korean Town in Manhattan. Coming from the other half of the globe, 24-hour restaurants are perfect for people like me who are coping with jet lag. Even though Korean Town is about 20 minutes walk away from the hotel that we are staying, the love for Korean food often motivates me to make my way there.

Cuti-cuti Malaysia - Last Day - The Horror of Time-sharing Scheme

We left Sungai Petani (SP) with lots of mooncakes, Old Town White Coffee and pamelos in our car boot. The drive from SP to Kuala Lumpur (KL) was about four and half hour. Driving along the North-South Highway (PLUS), we made pitstops to break the monotony of the drive. Restoran Jejantas (literally, restaurant located on an overhead bridge spanning both sides of the highway) was our favourite place for stopping.

Not only the place has lots of carpark lots, it has big toilets and a variety of restaurants. We could choose among the many choices available, Malay Mixed Rice, KFC, Burger King, A & W or Dunkin’ Doughnut. There is also an Adidas sports goods outlet for us to shop too.

The journey would have been shorter if not for the time taken to locate Golden City Condominium located along Jalan Ipoh in KL. We took an earlier exit from the highway thinking that we could avoid the peak hour traffic jam in KL city. But we still ended up going round and round for a while getting stuck in a jam before we finally managed to locate this condominium allocated for us under our brother-in-law’s participation in a time-sharing scheme.

We have heard horrible stories of a time-sharing scheme. The hard-sell tactics used aside, participants are asked to pay a certain amount of fees upfront to secure a number of holiday stay in participating accommodation facilities such as condominiums, apartments or hotels. Our kind brother-in-law let us use part of his yearly quota since he and his family won’t be able to finish it all due to time constraint.

We already had a taste of what it was when we stayed at the condominium in Port Dickson on our first night of the trip. The place was poorly maintained and was not the best located. And the Golden City Condominium (http://www.leisureholidays.com.my/) located next to the Dynasty Hotel gave us the same rundown experience. The management office was located in one of the condo units in the building. We were greeted by two polite Malay ladies who were watching TV in the apartment when we stepped in.

After getting the keys and went into our allocated unit, we were quite ok to discover the place spacious and had a good view from the living room. However, it was quite obvious that this apartment had not been occupied for quite some time. The floor and bed were dusty. And we also struggled with the remote control to finally realize that only one of the three bedrooms had air-conditioning working.

So I called the Malay lady whom I had just met when I checked in. To my huge dismay, she replied matter-of-factly that all the condo units suffered the same air-con problem, only one of the rooms would have the air-con working. The last straw was that she did not express even a tiny sense of apology.

We have had enough of rundown apartments. We wanted our last night of this driving trip a pleasant and memorable one, so we decided to check out the newly renovated Crown Regency (http://www.crownregency.com.my/crown/). For a promotional rate of RM350 a night, the experience was a whole world of difference!

I am not sure whether all the accommodations available under this time-sharing scheme are of the same standard. Or is it just those available in Malaysia? All the apartments that we stayed in during this trip suffered from poor maintenance and management. A lot of my friends said that this is one of the major problems facing the Malaysia property scene.

Malaysia has a lot of natural resources that offer great tourism values, if only there is proper management and upkeep. Looks like a lot more need to be done to attract both first-time and revisiting visitors.

More info on time-sharing scheme:

http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/InPerson/MajorPerson/time_shares.htm

http://www.globalresales.co.uk/timeshare-resorts/Golden-City-Condominiums.html

Cuti-cuti Malaysia - Day 4 through Day 6 - Sungai Petani and Penang

My hometown, Sungai Petani, SP in short, is often mistaken as a place in Thailand, Patani. And most of my Singaporean friends thought that it is located at the Thai border. Well, it’s nearer than what you thought. It’s just 30 minutes drive away from Butterworth, the seaport town of Penang state in the northwest corner of Peninsular Malaysia. Of course, near or far, it depends on where you come from, right?

I left my hometown for further studies in Singapore 17 years ago. This trip is my first trip driving my first car home. It feels great. It has a sense of achievement attached, especially when I have a family of my own with me.

SP has developed a lot in the past 17 years. Lots of new housing estates sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. Population has grown large enough for big retail chains Giant Hypermarket and Tesco Supermarket to open their stores here.

The economic activities here are mainly industrial. There are a lot of plastic and electronic factories located around this town. They provide the main driving force behind the banking and retailing industries.

I don’t consider myself as a tourist back in my hometown, but the priorities are the same: eating and shopping. My wife has fallen in love with Penang Assam Laksa – noodles in sour minced fish meat soup. There is this particular hawker that sells laksa from a corner house located at a T-junction in SP that is only well known among the locals. My wife could go there everyday if possible.

But, why not go for an authentic Penang Laksa in Penang? And so we went to Penang on day 4 of our trip. Driving to Penang Island through Penang Bridge took us about 45 minutes. The first place that came to our mind was the latest and largest shopping mall called Queensbay Mall (http://www.queensbaymall.com.my/). I won’t bore you with the details of shopping and eating in this mall. But I had my haircut in a newly open Quickcut outlet there. I was quite happy with the service. Not only it was quick – done in ten minutes – the vacuum suction applied on my head and shoulder after the haircut through a flexible tube hanging on the wall left me feeling clean and neat – no more irritating tiny hairs strewn all over my shirt. Do check out their website: http://www.quickcut.com.my/

Of course, Old Town White Coffee (http://www.oldtown.com.my/) has a branch there as well.

After Queensway Mall, we stopped by a coffee shop along Macalister Road for a treat on some mouth-watering authentic Penang hawker fare. Char Kway Teow (Friend Flat Noodles in Hokkien), Penang Laksa, Pok Piah (Shredded Radish wrapped in thin flour wrap), Hokkien Prawn Mee, O Luak (Fried Oyster Omelette) and so on. Felt bloated? Have some refreshing sugarcane juice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penang_cuisine

We spent the next day enjoying the mental peacefulness in SP – something that is hard to come by in Singapore. Met up with our uncle’s family for dinner before preparing for the drive back the next day. Before that, my wife, who is one of the lady bosses of Scent Discovery (http://www.scentdiscovery.com/), did not forget to check out one of the spas providing facial and massage services located in SP as part of her market survey. The service was just standard but overpriced, she said.

Cuti-cuti Malaysia – Day 3 – Around Ipoh

After leaving Fraser’s Hill with lots of mosquito bite marks on Caden, we headed for my hometown – Sungai Petani. But not forgetting to stop by Ipoh for the famous Ipoh ‘Hor Fun’ – white flat noodles that are served together with bean sprout and soy source steamed chicken. It was raining heavily. After much of going round Ipoh town center trying to choose ‘the best’ Ipoh Hor Fun restaurant, we finally settled down with one that said ‘original Ipoh Hor Fun’ coffee shop. There are many ‘original’ Ipoh Hor Fun coffee shops, of course!

We parked right in front of the shop and one of the waiters was really quick to bring us an umbrella. Talk about Ipoh hospitality!

We had a choice of hor fun in soup or in dry soy source. I preferred the soupy one as the steaming hot soup went well with cold temperature.

Guess what we did after eating? Shop! That’s right.

Ipoh, being the capital for the state of Perak, is not short of pamelos and White Coffee. One company named Old Town White Coffee has a franchise of coffee shops all over Malaysia serving white coffee and local hawker fare such as kaya toasts, laksa, curry noodles and so on. I fell in love with White Coffee the first time I drank it. Why is White Coffee white? Isn’t all coffee black? Check this out!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipoh_white_coffee

Our car boot was already three quarter full with our luggage. A few more pamelos and large packets of white coffee sachets had definitely added more load on our poor Nissan Latio.

It continued to rain heavily as we set off to Sungai Petani from Ipoh. However, it did not dampen our spirit to locate Perak Cave – a huge limestone cave which houses a Chinese temple, home to a large Buddha statue and many more smaller sized deity statues. It has a steep, tall staircase in the interior of the cave rising up to the top of its hill where one is greeted by a panoramic view of Ipoh and its surroundings.

We arrived Sungai Petani in the evening. Our Nissan Latio had a good shower by the rain. It also had a wash of ‘its bottom’ as we had to drive through some flood water before reaching our house.