A Humble Outing to Klang

Papa had been yearning to eat mantis prawn for quite some time already, so yesterday, Papa decided to drive down to Telok Gong for seafood and at the same as outing for the family.

Our regular seafood restaurant in Telok Gong is Good Friends Seafood Restaurant, but this time we decided to try a different restaurant, so this time we went for Coconut Flower Seafood Restaurant.

Coconut Flower is supposedly the most famous and reputable seafood restaurant in Telok Gong, but during the very first time we went there (that time, Papa and Mommy were still at the courting stage and Mommy's mum treat the whole family for dinner there), the food was so-so only and the price not very cheap. The second time we went there was when Papa and Mommy took leave from work to go for 1-day outing  but with Juan Or (then still an infant) at the babysitter's house, to which the food was on the bland side and the price was cheap. Anyway, Mommy didn't blog about Coconut Flower for the second visit because Mommy's style is to blog about the restaurant or food only if Juan Or is with us, otherwise the outing will just go unrecorded! ^_^


So after the food was ordered, came the plates, forks and spoons, glasses and of course the bucket of ice which was Juan Or's favourite! As usual, he would be sucking ice.

Finally, the food came and the wait was not long at all. Very fast, the dishes came out one by one. First dish was kong po mantis prawn and both Papa and Mommy agreed it was very tasty and well-cooked. The mantis prawn also tasted fresh and very prawny. Thumbs-up! Serving size was of standard size and the price was only RM10! Very cheap and good. Other restaurants normally charge RM12 or RM15 or RM16 for this kind of dish.

The next dish was fish slices stir-fried with garlic and spring onion. Again this dish was tasty, though not as tasty as one that we ate in Bandar Puteri Puchong. The price was RM15, the serving size was big and much cheaper than the Puchong one which charged RM18.

The third dish was oyster omelette. The omelette seemed to look dry at first but once eaten, it was tasty! Price was RM10. By the way, Mommy only remembered snapping the photo after Papa had cut out a big chunk of the omelette!

The vegetable dish was sweet potato leaves in sambal belacan. Again this dish was tasty and priced at RM6.

How about Juan Or? This time, his eating-out habit seems to show some improvement. Previously, he would merely eat some white rice and suck ice most of the time, but this time, he ate a substantial amount of rice. Mommy also included some mouth-processed fish meat into the rice he ate and he accepted eating them. Previously, whenever he sensed that there was something else hidden in the rice, he would either spit it out or used his finger to pick it out. As for the vege, surprisingly he refused to eat or even try any of it this time. As for oyster, he used his finger to pick the oysters out from his mouth (which had rice as well)!

The bill came up to only RM48.30 which, surprisingly was very cheap considering that had we eaten in Good Friends and ordered the same kind of dishes, the price would have been about RM60 or slightly more. But then again, Coconut Flower had forgotten to include two bowls of rice, because all in all we ordered for 3 bowls of rice.

After Papa paid, we were given 3 small containers of jelly for dessert which turned out to be Juan Or's favourite (mind you, last time when Mommy bought jelly cake for his 2nd birthday, he doesn't quite know how to appreciate eating jelly!). Actually Mommy was surprised too that Juan Or showed substantial appetite considering that he last had his milk feed about one hour plus ago.

After the satusfying meal, we took Juan Or to see some carp fish in a pond which was part of the restaurant's landscaping.

This restaurant, in Mommy's opinion, probably reputes itself to be the 'tourist spot' of Telok Gong, hence there is a souvenir stall in the restaurant itself selling all kinds of knick-knacks like keychain, pens, hair accessories, small toys, etc. Perhaps this stall is also to cater to the needs of fretful young children who just couldn't keep still or keep calm while waiting for the adults to eat! ^_^

There is also a crackers stall just behind the souvenir stall.

After the satisfying meal, we headed to GM Klang the Wholesale City which is about opposite Jusco Bukit Tinggi. Mommy saw a billboard of this Wholesale City somewhere near Mommy's workplace in Cheras and is curious to see what this wholesale centre has to offer.

This GM Klang has several blocks of one-storey buildings making it looks more like a complex of wholesale buildings. Turned out, apparently this wholesale city thing is based on the concept of wholesale traders renting units in the complex to trade their goods. The kinds of things sold there are mostly clothes, China made toys, hair accessories, ladies' accessories, hair saloon equipment and  items, mannequins. Price-wise? Not as 'wholesale' as thought. The prices of things sold doesn't look like wholesale prices, in fact some are even more expensive than those offered by end-user retailers!


Here are snapshots of some of the tenants in the Wholesale City. Juan Or's hands were very 'itchy'. Whenever he saw those small and cutey knick-knacks like hair clips, key-chains, handphone pouches, soft toys, his hands would touch them and sometimes he would take them and refused to let go. Then Papa and Mommy would have a hard time trying to pry open his fingers to let go off the thing without the fretting and possible crying!

Anyway, Mommy saw these pre-school books on sale there - RM3 per book, comes with stickers as well, and if you buy 5 books, you will get 1 free. Anyway, Mommy bought only 2 books because RM3 is just reasonable (not exactly very cheap though!) for Disney pre-school books published in China and probably does not have the proper license for it. However, there are other common cartoon characters (Barney, Dora, etc.) as the books' themes although the contents of learning ABC and counting 123 are exactly the same. So Mommy chose only Mickey Mouse and Tigger and Pooh for Juan Or since these are currently his favourite characters.

To show Mommy that Juan Or really liked the books, he even insisted on holding these books when lying in the spring cot! ^_^

Fresh Water Big-headed Prawns at Tanjung Tualang, Perak

After we were done at the Lata Kinjang waterfall, we headed further up north till we saw the signboard for Malim Nawar and turned into there. From Malim Nawar, we headed for Tanjung Tualang which Papa got to know from food bloggers that this place is famous for fresh water big-headed prawns.

By the time we reached Tanjung Tualang, it was about 11.00am and Juan Or was still asleep. Fearing that if we woke him up he may end up crying and fretting non-stop, so we parked the car at the road that houses many Chinese restaurants and waited in the car. During the wait, Papa decided to go browse at one hawker stall selling Chinese snacks and Papa came back with a packet of egg shat kek ma for RM3.50 which is much cheaper than the Pun Chun ones from Bidor which probably cost at least RM4.50. Turned out, much to our surprise, this so-called 'brandless' egg shat kek ma is so much tastier than the Pun Chun ones! Yum-yum, this egg shat kek ma has a lot of fragrant egg smell which makes this snack so tasty!

Papa had already eaten slightly more than half of the packet of egg shat kek ma before Mommy could even take a photo of it - an indication that the snack is very tasty!

When it was almost 11.30am, Juan Or was still asleep in the car. Mommy decided to take the risk to wake him up. As expected, he woke up crying so much so Mommy had to 'lecture' him that if he wants to go kai-kai (outing) with Papa and Mommy, he has to be prepared to wake up from sleep anytime for whatever stopover and not cry and cry and cry! Juan Or simmered down a bit after the 'lecture' and Mommy managed to distract him from his fretfulness by asking him to go see some big live prawns in the aquarium and the trick worked! So he happily got down from the car and while we walked on to choose which restaurant to go to, Juan Or happily feasted his eyes on live big prawns and fishes in aquariums placed in front of almost all the Chinese restaurants there.

We finally chose a restaurant to eat, but unfortunately Mommy forgot to take note of the name of the restaurant. During the waiting time for food, Mommy managed to snap some fun photos of Juan Or and the aquariums of live big-headed prawns.

During the waiting time, Juan Or gobbled up a lot of ice cubes - a new habit he picked up recently, but Mommy swears, none of us have this ice-eating habit!

A view of the aquariums containing live big-headed prawns and fishes placed in front of the restaurant.

Papa ordered 1 kg worth of live big-headed prawns to be cooked into two separate dishes - one fried and another steamed. The restaurant charged RM60 per kg for both the prawns and the cooking labour. The interesting thing about these prawns was that the roe was plentiful and was at the legs area.   Mommy preferred the fried one while Papa preferred the steamed one. On the whole, the cooking is good, only thing is that the prawns lacked the natural sweetness, so the prawn flesh, by itself without the gravy, tasted bland. This convinced Mommy that eating Sri Lankan crabs in Klang Valley is more worthwhile than eating this type of prawn.

Papa also ordered steamed pak so kong fish (is this the same as ikan patin?). This dish was excellent - the flesh was moist, yet succulent with its unique texture when you sink your teeth into it and had its own natural sweetness, and the gravy, when eaten together with the flesh, brought the best out of this dish. The price was RM28.00. This is definitely the best fish dish Mommy has ever eaten.

We also had kangkung belacan (water convulus in shrimp paste) which is Mommy's favourite when eating out. Turned out, this restaurant's version of kangkung belacan has no sambal (dried chillies, garlic, and onions ground into a paste). It was only literally kangkung stir-fried in belacan, which still tasted good, though not quite what Mommy expected. This dish was RM5.00 or RM6.00 (can't remember).

As for Juan Or, all throughout the eating session, he merely ate some plain white rice, drank Chinese tea and sucked ice cubes in his mouth. All efforts by Mommy to offer him prawn meat, fish or kangkung were all turned down as he refused to try them in the first place! The final bill came to about RM90-something which Papa said was cheap because if we were to merely eat 1 kg of live big-headed prawns only in Kuala Lumpur, it would have cost us RM100 per kg!

After the satisfying meal, we headed back south to go home. During our stopover at Bidor's fruit stalls (Mommy had wanted to buy some jambu air), Mommy was totally turned off by the throat-cutting price the fruit sellers quoted - RM12 per kg! The most they were willing to lower was only RM11 per kg. So Mommy left their stalls empty-handed.

On our way back to Selangor, just before reaching Tanjung Malim, we encountered heavy rain and cross wind happening simultneously. It was a scary experience because the rain was very heavy so much so the visibility through the windscreen was very low and we could see roadside banners flying wildly and very slantly (so you can imagine how strong the wind was!). Also, we could see zinc roof sheets already blown onto the road. This reminded us of the recent newspaper report of strong wind happening to a Ramadan bazaar in Malacca whereby some people died of getting hit by big metal objects. So we were hoping and praying that no big objects were blown towards our car's direction. Because of this too, Papa kept on driving, but slowly, to minimize chances of blown objects hitting our car. To top the scary experience, the car suddenly had the 'die fire' feeling, so Papa had to keep on revving to prevent the engine from dying out. The prime suspect of the car problem was probably a contact point cable that had its head fitting cracked already. So imagine having three problems at hand - the heavy rain, cross wind and car problem - all at one go! Not having to get stuck somewhere faraway from home was the best we can hope for.

After about 20 minutes of slow driving, we finally got out of the 'terror' area and reached Tanjung Malim where the rain has stopped. We were in luck to be able to spot a car accessory shop, so we stopped there to get the foreman to check the problem, and turned out, the contact point cable's head was indeed faulty! So we bought a new cable to change (cost RM75) and voila, the problem went away!

By the time we reached home, it was near 6.00pm, just in time for Mommy to cook a simple dinner - yes, a simple one would do (rice, stir-fried vegetable, canned sardin in tomato sauce and a vegetable soup) since we already had a heavy and high-protein meal for lunch.

Joyride Trip to Kuala Selangor (Part 1)

After leaving the Hytex Warehouse Sale, Papa headed back towards the Kepong town centre direction. From there, we came across the part of the road where you can either head to Sungai Buloh on the left or Kuala Selangor on the right. Part of Mommy wanted to go to Sungai Buloh because recently, Mommy has gotten the urge to plant vegetables for fun and for own consumption. So Mommy was keen to check out prices of vegetable seeds and packets of black soil. Another part of Mommy wanted to go to Kuala Selangor because the last time Papa and Mommy went there was on the day before Juan Or was born, which means we have not been to Kuala Selangor for 1 year 2+ months already! Finally, Mommy decided to go to Kuala Selangor since we were already far away from Sri Petaling, Juan Or had slept in the car and awaken already, and the time was 11.15am, so might as well make the best of the outing.

After passing through Rawang, finally we reached Pasir Penambang in Kuala Selangor at about 12.15pm. Pasir Penambang is a fishing village and houses many Chinese 'tai chow' seafood restaurants. Some restaurants here operate both in the afternoon and night and some in the night time only. So we headed straight to a restaurant first since it was already lunch time. The restaurant we went to was the same restaurant Papa and Mommy went to on the day before Juan Or was born. (Mind you, it was only about 3 hours after eating in this restaurant when Mommy's water bag burst!).

Just a sidetrack here: During the last visit to Pasir Penambang, Mommy went to the Pasir Penambang wet market to buy fresh tiny lalas - 1kg for RM1.50, to stir-fry at home. After buying the lalas, Papa and Mommy went to eat lunch in this restaurant before going back to Sri Petaling. We reached home was about 1pm plus. Then, at about nearly 3pm, Mommy went to the kitchen to prepare to cook the tiny lala. Just before stir-frying, Mommy went to the toilet to urinate first. That was when Mommy's water bag burst! Immediately after that, Papa rushed Mommy to the hospital and the next day at 4.35am, Juan Or was born. So in the end, Mommy never got the chance to eat those tiny lala!

OK, back to the track again. The restaurant we went to was Restoran Tian Wai Tian. Papa noticed that this restaurant seems to be frequented by the local Pasir Penambang residents because we noticed there always seems to be a group of senior citizens having their brunch there at any one time we eat there.

(Juan Or was waiting for the food to arrive.)

(Never mind, pose for Mommy first while waiting for the food....)

(.....and another pose for Papa to capture!)

Anyway, the food didn't take long to be served. Here was what Papa ordered:

(Kong poh mantis prawn. The mantis prawn was well-coated with the sauce, and the insides were moist. Very tasty! Can't remember the exact price of this dish.)

(Hot plate oyster omelette. The sauce was something like sweet and sour and the amount of oyster given was a lot. Very tasty! Cost RM13.)

(Sweet potato leaves stirr-fried in belacan - very tasty and fragrant! RM5 only!)

(Kam heong lala. The lala flesh was not sweet at all. Probably the sweetness was affected by the storage. Can't remember the exact price of this dish.)

All in all, Papa paid RM40.50 for the entire meal (reasonably cheap!) which includes 2 plates of rice and a pot of Chinese tea. Also, we were not charged any government tax or service charge.

Joyride Trip to Carey Island

Today Papa and Mommy took Juan Or for a joyride trip to Carey Island. However, this is not our first trip there, it's just that Mommy decided to blog about it this time. From Sri Petaling, Papa took the Puchong way into Puchong Perdana, went through a short distance of village road that led into KESAS, then went for Jalan Kebun and Jalan Bukit Kemuning, then ended in some village road again that led to Jenjarom and finally ended up in Carey Island. We like to use this long-winded way for few reasons - there are more things to see during the car ride, avoid paying toll, and the long distance gives Juan Or the opportunity to doze off in the car for at least 1 hour so that by the time we reach the destination, Juan Or should be awake (and not fret and cry due to lack of sleep!) by then.

Carey Island is a private island owned by a plantation company. So all the along the roads in Carey Island, there are rows and rows of palm oil trees. However, the main road in Carey Island is one straight road all the way to the end of the island that ends in a beach. When we reached the beach, Juan Or was still sleeping.

(What a position to sleep in!)

("Eeighhh.....what's with Juan Or's legs!? Why one leg big and one leg small!? Oohhh....the big leg is actually Mommy's left leg. Juan Or's left leg is actually hidden.")

(This is the beach and sea that Papa and Mommy wanted Juan Or to see.)

(A snapshot of Papa and Juan Or at the Carey Island beach.)

(Papa and Juan Or at the road leading to the beach. See the palm oil trees in the background? Next to Papa was a Malay family with their sea catch. )




(Malay men tending to their fishing net. See the polystyrene boxes near to the tent? Mommy saw many flower crabs in it!)

(Some fish fries trapped in the fishing net.)

(This Malay aunty allowed Mommy to catch a picture of her taking the crab out of the net.)

After that, we went to a Chinese seafood restaurant to have our lunch. The restaurant was Sri Langat Seafood Restaurant which is just next to the Langat River. Actually we have been faithfully going to this restaurant every time we go to Carey Island.

(Here is Juan Or waiting patiently for the food.)

(Today is also the first time Juan Or wears his new pair of shoes. Mommy noticed that when Juan Or was wearing the shoes and sitting at the high chair, he tends not to move around so much within the chair.....which is a good thing!)

This time, the restaurant's service was slow (it was not like that last time!). The Chinese tea only came after the first dish was served. By the way, the first dish was sauna prawns. Previously when we ate sauna prawns from this restaurant, the prawns were live prawns, However, this time, the prawns were already dead when the waiter ditched the prawns into the sauna bowl followed by the quick pouring of Chinese wine. So Papa asked the head waitress why dead prawns were served this time to which the reply was the live prawns had not yet arrived. Other dishes ordered were kangkung belacan, deep fried mantis prawns coated with salted egg and sliced garoupa cooked with spring onion and garlic. All in all, the total bill was RM50 to which the sauna prawns were RM16.

(Holy smoke! Sauna prawns!)

(The prawns after being cooked by the sauna stones' heat.)

(The kangkung belacan dish. After that, Mommy didn't take any photos of the subsequent dishes because Mommy's hands were already dirty from peeling the suana pranws!)