My Hong Kong & China Trip

To be honest I never though that I will travel that often in a year, especially when I am officially jobless and work as a freelancer now. In fact, this year along I am travel ways more often that how I was few years ago, usually I will only flight at most once a year, and look at me now I have travel to 5 country in 5 month! I wouldn’t mind to fly various destination, the only issues is that so far all this travel don’t bring foods to my table. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the trip.

It is my first ever trip to Hong Kong & China, it is a exposure trip with me & my friends, I didn’t have a lot of chances to take photo since we are constantly walking, train and bus.

This is a hill view from the hostel we stay while we are in Hong Kong

Here is the night view

On the journey of bus /train / foot

Arrived Shenzhen 深圳

We have our lunch at one of the local stall for ramee, ramee taste so so much better than the one we have in Brunei! Absolutely no comparison!!!

Another lunch we have in Shenzhen 深圳

Checking in one of the Dongguan东莞 hotel. It take about 2 hour from ShenZhen to arrive Dongguan by bus.

After a overnight we have in Dongguan, we took a MRT from there to arrive Guangzhou 广州, and we go straight to this restaurant. Apparently this restaurant have been operate over 100+ years or more and their policy is to keep the foods as authentic as possible. The foods taste really really good.

After that we have about 2 hour plus of shopping in the Guangzhou shopping street. For those love cheap and fashion clothing (without brand name intact) this will be your paradise! Anyway, almost everything in the world is made in China. From one end walk to the other end is like walking from Bandar town all the way to Seri Complex.

My only time to have some quick street candid

Now, this will be my first encounter of photo bully. The moment when I hold up my camera to snap the shoot. This guy wearing red T-shirt was shouting and screaming at me if not mistaken. I just continue walking without any care, since I am well aware that near by me there are 2 policeman and worse case scenario I just have to delete this photo. Well, only those that did something wrong will be very conscious of peoples taking photo around me, so maybe he is so sort of mafia? Whatever? Move on ^w^

It take 2 hour express train from Guangzho to reach ShenZhen station, from then on we walk back across the immigration to HongKong for the night.

And no Hong Kong trip is completed without a HongKong DimSum!!!

Through out the journey I have Canon 7D gripped  with EFS 17-55mm for most of the shoot couple it with Black Rapid strap. I can honestly said I will never go back to conventional neck strap anymore as far as I am concern now, it is really flexible, versatile, secure and fast!

All in all I really enjoyed this trip, and definitely wouldn’t be my last! While it is really rushing to go from place to place, and losing a lot of opportunity to take photo, but I gain the experience of how vast is China. Surprisingly the road traffic here in better than my experience in Indonesia, however the air pollution is way worse than Jakarta so kind of balance out between the two.

No sure when will be my next trip to Hong Kong /China but I wish I will have more time to take photo on my next trip ^W^

You can view more photo from my facebook album

Big catch for the day

So what happen if you love to eat fish? Too lousy to go fishing? But got a brother that just love fishing, some more good at it? It will be like “OH Yeah!!!”

Tan Lee Yong, eldest in the family, the father of 4 children of coz with one wife. The main chef of the house, care taker of the house, any problem regarding home, car, electronic, foods, + fisherman of the house >w<

Fishing have been one of his favourite hobby for the last few years, and I can really see his passion on it. Honestly after my brother into fishing, our family have hardly buy fish from the market at all. Since my brother has been very good with fishing and catch quite a few big fish for the house, and what’s the result? Just check it out yourself ^W^

I think this will take us a few week to finish them all?

This is the biggest one that he caught for the day, and weight approx 3.5kg! Btw, he have caught fish bigger than this, just that I didn’t have any chances to take photo of it, since it already go into our stomach faster than my camera shutter speed.

So? Great! Waiting anxiously for tonight dinner :)

HSBC Seri Branch Hari Raya Open House

Time & times again I just want to thank God for provision, today we are invited to attend HSBC Seri Branch for their Hari Raya Open house, of coz we gladly accepted XD

They have nasi lemak with chicken, various type of cake & drinks, btw the samba taste fabulous! One of the nicest I have try, should have asked them where they cater this.

Thanks for the HSBC ladies for happily allow me to take a few shoot of them. Lovely aren’t there? ^w^

Kitaro, are you ready? By CreativeMelancholic

Who's up for Japanese food today? Well apparently, we all were last Sunday. We've been hearing positive reviews for Kitaro Restaurant located behind Centrepoint, Gadong; what more, the amazing deal they're having for their Sungkai specials. It was $22 bnd for every adult, with an ALL YOU CAN EAT spread. So we decided to take an opportunity to visit the place for ourselves. We reserved a table for a group of friends, and arrived there exactly 7.30pm. But we didn't get a table until 8pm, because the main VIP room was still occupied by guests. So we took over the teppanyaki room, but I especially do not recommend this if you have a huge group of people joining for dinner for the difficulty in passing food from one end to the other. Anyway, initially it was a mess, we were all loud and causing such a ruckus as to what to eat, and asking for saucers and wasabi, but eventually we all settled down as soon as the first glorious plate of sake(salmon) sashimi arrived. And what glorious sashimi it was! Sam, our (un)official photographer of that night, managed to take one snapshot before it was devoured by us hungry beasts! Either I hadn't had a bite of salmon sashimi for ages, or it was really mouth-trembling-good! It was fresh, and it melts in your mouth with such tender sweetness. After that, we ordered about 3-4 more plates to satisfy our salmon cravings. But that's not all that we had. I'm not sure what this piece is called, but it was a pass-able meal, with really soft, literally-melts-in-your-mouth tofu, and scrambled egg on a hot plate. After that, my tamago sushi arrived. I always order this every time I enter a Japanese restaurant without fail. It was obviously gobbled up by our friends in lightning speed, leaving this little fella alone on the plate, but enough time to give Sam a quick snap of it. Again, it tastes standard, but good enough to eat. Here's a cousin from the above tofu clan, but I did not catch what this was called. It was just as soft, and the sauce really complimented it. Our friend Esther, ordered the soba, but I didn't try it, so I guess I can't really comment. I'm not a fan of cold noodles to begin with anyway. (Or was it hot?) Then there's the fish that got pregnant mid-cooking. Okay, I'm kidding, but we ordered a plate of pregnant fishies and that was satisfactory. Then came the sushi clan. We ordered quite a different number of sushi, including the ever popular california maki, but unfortunately it disappeared before Sam could shoot it, so nyeh, you'll have to make do with these photos below. Absolutely delicious, especially the ones with salmon. There were also raw tuna, cuttlefish and eel; and Sam just loves his Tamago Unagi sushi. Delicious, and extremely heavenly each time you pop one into your mouth. Then here comes the main course. This salmon head dish is for you, especially if you love fish eyes. But not for me. I prefer the meaty part. The grilled beef is delicious and lip smacking. It was grilled to almost perfection! And lastly, the idako. A must- have for every japanese dinner. It was fresh and chewy and oh-so-good! I think if I'm not mistaken, for a small bowl, you'll be able to find 4-5 baby octopuses. I wish they'd add more! Now for a food rating, drumroll please......................................... Food: 4/5 (Fresh and delicious!) Service: 4/5 (They were quick, and friendly.) Environment: 3.5/5 (Quite small and narrow, but it has the japanese vibe!) Appetite: 5/5 (Tummy was content) Price: 5/5 (Totally worth it, in terms of the current (Sungkai) promotional value) Overall: 4/5 Now if you were to ask me, which is better? There's no doubt about it, the ever popular Excapade Restaurant got themselves some competition! A lot of people commented that their salmon sashimi was better than Excapade, but I didn't go to the latter for a long time, so I can't really make a comparison right now. But I am quite content with Kitaro, and if they keep the great job up, there's no reason why they can't be at the top of their league. All hail Japanese food! Thank you for reading this fool's review and I would like to thank Sam for allowing me to write a guest blog as well as taking all of the photos you see above. This is my first post regarding food, but do expect more to come. Till then, have a Yummy day! Kitaro Japanese Restaurant All you can eat buffet (ranging from starters & sushi to sashimi & teppanyaki) Tel: +673 245 7373 Adult: $22 (Sungkai Promotion) creativemelancholic

Thanks Amy aka CreativeMelancholic for a well written food reviews ^w^

Mary Khiu Birthday Dinner

Our way of birthday celebration, has been getting more and more grant and creative that it always put me to awe whenever I am there. This time we are celebrating Mary Khiu birthday at Mary place, while it is not her actual birthday so it is more of an advance celebrations for her.

While we always said simple meals will do, but deep down we always appreciate good foods, especially when when couple it with good friends and great times. We have an assumptions 4 + 1 course meals, sayang I miss my opportunity  to take some of the foods photo since I am too focus on eating them.

When it come to celebrate his wife birthday, I can really see Terence work and plan it in such a ways that it will amazed you, and this time he even planned cat walk and a so cal led Academy Awards to spice the nights up. 

Since the dress code is formal, our ladies take their chances to dress their best for the night, and it come to our responsibility that we have to take photo for them. Using the wall as backdrop, I decided to use 1 camera flash mounted to a tripod with a white umbrella partly bound from ceiling and diffuse through the umbrella. To be honest, I am pretty please with the result, I do wish I can use 2nd flash for fill light, too bad that I didn’t bring enough battery for the job. So it is important to check your stuffs before you perform your duty. Of course technically I am not working for this instance.

Then the most important is of course the husband and wife for the night!!!

and here is my favourite snap for the night

Plain, simple yet it contain something that I cannot describe how much I love this photo over all the others.

Then here is some photo of me with others, since I always got complain that my album hardly got me inside, but how to get yourself in the frame when you are the one holding the camera? :p

Then a group snap, but some of them already left. Since the whole things actually carry on all the way til 1 plus am . . . .

 

Thanks to Terence for organize a fantastic night for his wife, and Happy Birthday to Mary Khiu, and we will see what Terence have on his shelves for next year >w<

Cooking demonstrations + Makan

We decided to have a cooking demonstrations for the youth as part of the character & life skill development program. The ideas is to put some receipts into their shelves so that they can use it when they are on their own for further studies or what so ever :p

So we break our self into 3 teams, and each team suppose to cook 3 dishes. So we got all together 9 dishes for everyone to share. So for my case I teamed up with Mary and I have teach them how to cook spaghetti and grilled chicken legs. Honestly I haven’t cooked any main course for so long that I lost count on it, so something having maid to do all the house cord can be a blessing and a curse. I actually feel really rusty  and sometime not sure what I suppose to do >w<

But at the end, all the foods turn out pretty alright and I learned quite a few tricks regard with cooking. So when is the next time I gonna cook? Absolutely no idea!!! BTW, YA count yourself as privilege, even my family members have never tried my cooking before (except Lily)! :p

 

Here is me trying to act pro in cutting chicken >w<

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of the foods photo, teach by us, prepare by youth.

Btw, this is also one of the rare time that almost all the photo was taking by them using my camera, didn’t even have time to really snap at all; but some of the photo turn out pretty well though.