I’m the type to be really proud of my hometown of Sitiawan, Perak. Located near the coast, it’s the home to really cheap seafood.

The popular seafood restaurants all located in an area known as Kampung Cina. While all is fine and dandy on normal days, problems arise during public holidays.

While some of these restaurants can have 30 or more tables, most of them have only one cook! Public holidays tend to bring in the crowd (everyone seems to be starved of cheap seafood these days) and the phenomenon of kitchen crash.

Orders get mixed up, lost even, food quality suffers and wait times of up to 2 hours are all very common. Here are several tips to ease the suffering when eating out in Sitiawan during the hols.

1. Come early especially for dinner as the crowds are killer. If you manage to get a table at 7, expect to wait for 15-20 minutes for your order to be taken down. Expected time to partake your meal? 9.30 p.m. So come at 6 instead.

2. Check out the other tables. If you notice that a majority of tables are occupied but are not eating yet, get out! Classic signs of a kitchen crash here.

3. If you are the impatient type, you are better off with McDonalds

4. if you have a gastric problem and still insist to have seafood (and join the potential long wait), bring along some snacks.

Hopefully you don’t double over from hunger. Lol.

Ao Nang on the Krabi mainland doesn’t really have much to offer beach wise, but it’s the gateway to some amazing islands and its neighbour, Railay (Rai Leh), a peninsula on the mainland cut off by limestone mountains, and only accessible via boat. This is going to be a long post with pictures, so please be patient.

Railay’s beaches are amazing, rivaling those on the islands in the Andaman Sea, all with the same turquoise waters, and is certainly worth a day trip. To get to Railay, one would simply need to purchase a longtail boat ticket at the counter situated by Ao Nang beach. It’s 100 baht per way, per person, and your mode of transportation, the longtail (named after the really long rotor shaft jutting at an angle at the back) boat, looks like the following, and yes, you’ll need to get your feet wet, no jetties here.

The trip to the Railay peninsula is a rather short one, just 10 minutes and you’ll find yourself on Railay Beach (Railay West). To your left would be Ton Sai bay. Railay Beach is populated with several resorts and the white sand beach is worth a stroll. It’s also the main stop off point for longtails coming from Ao Nang. If you are on a day trip, your boat operator might ask you to head over to Phra Nang beach to get a ride back to Ao Nang. Just be sure to do that before 6 p.m.

In order to get to Phra Nang, you’ll need to get to Railay East first, the mangrove side of the Peninsula.  Home to several resorts and backpacker joints, Railay East is also a place for rock climbing!

Getting to Phra Nang from Railay East is pretty interesting. You’ll be walking right next to the limestone cliffs and there are some small caves to pop into. Somewhere around the midpoint you can take a detour (hike up) to a viewpoint of Railey and Ton Sai Bay, which I didn’t do. According to WikiTravel, the detour (hike down through jungle) can also lead you to a hidden lagoon!

Anyways, you might see more rock climbing hijinks on the way to Phra Nang. We had the good fortune of encountering one guy who was rather enthusiastic about a certain rock face.

Finally, Phra Nang. Another amazing stretch of beach. Very nice to take a stroll on. There’s a limestone hill out at sea which you can kayak to. Since Railay is more of resort place, street food vendors take to the beach (and sea) for their wares. Be warned though, the prices are double that of Ao Nang.

One thing you’ll bound to notice at Ao Nang beach in the Krabi province of Thailand is the amount of Caucasian tourists; it’s possible to walk the entire stretch on Ao Nang without bumping into a single Asian tourist.

The entire place seems to cater to the Western tourist, especially when it comes to food (it’s expensive), but don’t let this deter you as Ao Nang is the perfect jumping off point to picturesque locations in the turqouise coloured waters of the Andaman Sea.

Here’s a rough guide of the place, having just came back from my 4 days 3 nights vacation there:

DOs

• If you are staying in Ao Nang, take a longtail boat ride down to Railay Beach. It’s located on the mainland, adjudant to Ao Nang but blocked off by sheer limestone hills (which explains the need to take the long tail boat ride. Railay is home to Railay West and Phra Nang, both excellent white sand beaches, and is also the hive of rock climbing activity in the region.
• Take a tour of the islands, peak season prices average around 1200 to 1400 baht per person. This usually covers snorkelling at several areas, sightseeing and lunch. Be liberal with the sun tan lotion as it can be really hot out there.
• Go kayaking near the limestone hills.
• Get a Thai massage, at 200 to 300 baht for an hour long session, it’s a bargain.
• Grab a bunch of friends and hop on to one of those cute little taxi lorries for a ride to Krabi town. It cost 800 baht (remember to bargain) for a two way trip and the driver WILL wait for you in town while you get your shopping done (especially if you didn’t pay him yet). Note: lingerie is cheap in Thailand.
• Get a buffet dinner at Bernie’s Place, located somewhere near the same stretch of road as McDonalds, towards Ao Nang beach. 250 baht will buy you a buffet dinner with grilled items and some Thai dishes, and plenty of ice cream.
• Do patronise the 7-11 outlets, home toa plethora of drinks ranging from the exotic such as coconut nectar (sweet sap) to cheap but strong flavoured Thai beer and Red Bull.
• Order a really spicy bowl of tom yam at Wanna’s Place Restaurant. This is the real deal and hotter than any tom yam I’ve tried in the Klang Valley (trust me, I had my fair share) by a mile (or ten…it will burn you).
• Try out the pancakes and other forms of street food at one of the road side stalls nearby the only McDonalds outlet in Ao Nang. The pancake is actually a fried version of Indian “roti”, it comes with different kinds of fillings (e.g. bananas) and condensed milk is usually poured on liberally.
• Use insect repellant, there are plenty of bloodsuckers (vampires…I mean mosquitoes) out at night. You’ll heed this advice if you want an itch free dinner.
• Do take note of the new tsunami signs on the roadside describing how far in-land you should go in the unfortunate event of a tsunami.
• Try out the pad thai at a makeshift stall by the side of the road opposite the Ao Nang police station. The stall is next to a roadside bar whose owner keeps his drinks chilled at the back of his truck and goes: “Happy hour…alcohol!” from time to time.

DONTs

• Ao Nang’s restaurants can be tourist traps if you are not careful. The seafood restaurants by the sea are of particular note. The price of a pathetic mid-sized fish can be around 360 baht, definately not worth the money.
• Muay Thai boxing tourneys are held every Friday and Monday night. Sure there are free transfers but arena tickets will set you back 800 each and a place at the ring side, 1200 baht.
• Shopping for souvenirs at the stretch facing the beach can be an expensive affair, compared to buying stuff from the stretch of shops leading to Ao Nang beach (from McDonalds). There are several exceptions though, particularly the stores nearby Wanna’s Place.
• Don’t eat in at the Hagen Daz outlet, there will be a 10 % service tax imposed on your bill if you do.
• Don’t go around looking for a decent newspaper on the beach stretch. I can’t find The Bangkok Post but you won’t have a problem looking for tabloid rags like The Sun.
• Don’t bother buying video games from the two video games outlet on the beach stretch. They stock everything from NDS to PC games but it’s all  pirated stuff.
• Those good luck lanterns you see selling near the beach for 80 baht, well, they are going for 60 baht in town.

I went for a 2-day holiday at Port Dickson over the weekend. Since it’s the onset of the month of Ramadan, there were not many tourists to this beach town. The Ramadan bazaar, although smaller to what I’m used to in KL attracted a lot of locals, and if you are in the vicinity, head over to the PD Walk area (near The Store) for some buka puasa treats.

I wasn’t crazy about the hotel beach, and instead, the highlight of the trip was the hike through the Tanjung Tuan Forest Reserve to reach Malaysia’s oldest lighthouse, the Cape Rachado Lighthouse (a.k.a Rumah Api Tanjung Tuan).

The lighthouse complex itself is off-limits to visitors (you are free to roam the perimeter, which you can get some nice shots of the ocean), and this is probably due to the really high-tech looking radar next to the lighthouse.

According to my travel companions, no trip to the state of Negeri Sembilan (where Port Dickson is located)  is complete without a meal of Hakka Mee, a dish in which the state capital, Seremban, is well-known for.

Anyways, to cut the long story shot, I had the most overrated and plain tasting bowl of Hakka Mee at a supposedly great Hakka Mee place called Tow Kee. You have to wait your turn here, any  attempt to get their attention to make your order known will be met with indifference.

Your order will be taken when it’s your turn (probably 20 – 25 minutes after you have sat down) and the food will only arrive some 15-20 minutes after your order has been placed. The lady boss (who doubles up as the sole chef,  and frown-in-chief) has one mean laser stare, you don’t want to be messing with her.

Lose the attitude woman, cause your  food isn’t stellar. I prefer the Hakka mee stall in one of the alleyways in KL’s Chinatown area (Petaling Street), or the one served at Lau Fong, Teluk Intan.

Normal video games related posts will resume right after this.

I bought a food guide to places to eat in Perak published by The Star, and although it seems a little strange to have a food guide to my own backyard, it only serves to re-affirm some of the places that I’ve been eating at for 20 over years.

Anyways, I went on a roadtrip during the weekend and if you are interested to know where and what I ate, here’s the list:

• Wantan mee, Pun Chun, Bidor
• Taugeh (beansprouts) chicken rice, Lou Wong, Ipoh
• Tau foo fa, stall near Lou Wong, Ipoh
• Pisang goreng (banana fritters, coated with sesame seed), stall near Petronas kiosk, Sri Iskandar
• Cendol , James Cendol, Sitiawan
• Seafood, Restoran Ah Pek Lee Kou Hock, Kampung Cina
• Dark sauce noodles, Auntie Jenny’s,  Sri Manjung
• Fresh water prawns, Lau Fong, Teluk Intan
• Hawaiian Lamb Shoulder, Chicken and Apple Salad,  Al-Fresco, Teluk Intan

And yeah, whenever you’re in Teluk Intan and craving for some western food, head over to Al-Fresco, located along Jalan Changkat Jong, across the main road from the new Giant hypermarket. It’s the best in town.

I just got back from Penang, and it was a blast! It was due to two factors, the heritage sites and the food. Just driving around Georgetown yielded sights that only Malacca can contend with. I visited Fort Cornwallis and the Khoo Kongsi during my 2 day holiday (stayed at the rather brilliant Northam All Suites).

The latter is a must visit if you are ever in Penang. More contemporary places that I’ve visited were the Toy Museum (largest in the world!) and the Gurney Drive.

At the risk of sounding like a travelogue/food blogger (shudders) or an old record, Penang really is a food paradise. Over the course of two days, I’ve eaten Penang char koay teow, sotong kangkung, o-chien (fried oysters with egg), satay, grilled fish at the Gurney Drive

This was followed by Hokkien mee and apam at Pulau Tikus (opposite the police station), the famous goreng pisang (banana fritters) at Tanjung Bungah, and last but not least, mantis prawns and razor clams at Batu Kawan (Batu Kawan Restaurant). All that for less than RM 100!

If you are traveling on a budget, there’s plenty of cheap accomodation available and there’s also a pretty decent bus service (Rapid Penang) to get about town. What are you waiting for? Get over to Penang..like now? Check out Georgetown’s description on UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre over here.

I’m beat. Today, I drove, with my girlfriend, through 4 States (Johor, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan and Selangor) and stopped by on average, one place per State for some sightseeing and food.

Starting from Pasir Gudang (Johor), our first destination was Yong Peng  for the fish ball noodles. The shop that we visited was pretty high tech, the staff were taking down orders using PDAs and there was free WiFi. Foodwise, it wasn’t really something to shout about, although, the significant lack of MSG was a nice respite from all the crap I’ve been putting up with from KL-based hawkers.

Next stop was Tangkak, also in thQe state of Johor for the beef ball noodles. We had no luck finding the restaurant therefore it was back to the highway for us with the next stop being Malacca Town.

Malacca (Melaka) Town is a World Heritage City and the authorities spare no expense in making that fact known. However, they could really do something about the traffic redirection going on in the town centre as the traffic jam was horrible. In any case, we managed to make our way to the famous Jonker Street and savoured two things, chicken rice balls and pork satay (satay babi). Again, like the fishball noodles we had earlier, these had nothing to shout about.

Somehow travelling out of town would get me mistaken for a foreign tourist. In Johor I was asked whether I’m Singaporean no less than 4 times in 24 hours, while in Malacca Town my girlfriend and I were mistaken for Japanese and Mainland Chinese tourists.

Akward moments aside, the 3rd stop was at Seremban town at a food related place noticeable from the highway. Called Empayar, it’s the place to get Seremban Siew Paus (oven-baked pork buns) and yup, we got several boxes of the good stuff for out friends and family.

Returning back to Klang, I had a seafood dinner in a restaurant in Klang Utama to mark the end of a really tiring day. Phew.

Apparently I don’t.  I was stuck on the first level of Rhythm Heaven for like 5 minutes, having a difficult time getting the pegs in between the square pieces. Apparently I’m either flicking the peg right before or right after the cue.

Maybe the strong cologne from the guy 8 meters away in the airport departure hall was affecting not only my sense of smell but also my coordination. Yuck. But anyways, here’s another bunch of tweets since I didn’t get to blog yesterday evening:

18 hours ago: Skypark Subang is probably one of the nicest low cost airport i’ve been to. Very nice with a touch of class. Puts lcct to shame

18 hours ago: Its pretty quiet here at the airport. Not many flying with fireflyz i guess.

18 hours ago: Big apple doughnuts seem to be food of choice for airport staff at Subang skypark

18 hours ago: Tokyo beat down introduced enemies with automatic weapons. Keep dying all the time

18 hours ago: This is gonna be the first time im sitting a duck (typo: double) propeller plane. Wonder whether would it be noisy.

18 hours ago: There are only like 10 people here at the departure hall. Flight is at 5

18 hours ago: The toilet seats at skypark Subang terminal are all scratched up. What are they cleaned with? Sandpaper?

17 hours ago: Im passing the time at airport with rhythm heaven. Verdict: i suck at it.

17 hours ago: Guy sitting 8 meters away. I can smell his thick cologne. Yuck.

17 hours ago: Skypark is also home to eurocopter. Wonder how they manage with planes flying around

17 hours ago: Preflight headcount. Around a dozen passengers, four with doughnuts from big apple. Omg

17 hours ago: A private jet just took off. Entourage left 5 mins ago

17 hours ago: Reason why im not buying doughnuts like the others coz my gf has some waiting for me. Same brand!

17 hours ago: Super auto saloon sometimi for the ds sucks. Japan has better offerings than this

17 hours ago: Hmm. Passengers exit and board through the back on these propeller planes.

17 hours ago: Around 45 passengers sharing the same flight. Like i said earlier not many fly fireflyz

17 hours ago: By the looks of it, fireflyz doesnt seem to be a wheelchair friendly airline

I took the girlfriend to see the fireflies at Kuala Selangor last night. I’m not too crazy about riding sampans on a river that reputedly has crocodiles (I prefer riding a dhow across a river filled with jellyfish like in Dubai) but the fireflies themselves made the trip really worthwhile. They were beautiful!

We share a sampan with two British old-timers. It’s embarrassing to hear that one of them had been to Kuala Selangor several times to see the fireflies, but hey, it’s never too late. The boatman went out of his way to bring his boat up close and personal to one of the larger mangrove trees and caught one of ‘em light bugs.

I can feel a little warmth from the underbelly of the little fella. Slow lighters are female while those fast blinkers are male bugs. Just make sure it’s “catch and release”, and not “catch and bring home” as you’ll be fined a wallet burning RM 1,000 if you are caught. The little fella flew off after a short ride on the boat with us.

The Best Days To Visit

And I got some tips on what are the best times to see these wonders of nature. The best days are from the 1st to 6th and 18th to 26th of every month on the Chinese Lunar Calendar.

This is when the Sungai Selangor (Selangor River) is at its deepest (15 metres) and the fireflies are grouped together (due to the trees being submerged). Also, don’t let a little drizzle deter you as it’s more important to have no wind blowing (the fireflies don’t like windy conditions).

How to Get There?

It’s pretty easy if you are heading from Klang, as you just need to make your way to Kuala Selangor. There’s a junction before the Kuala Selangor down, turn right and head towards Kampung Kuantan. The firefly tourist complex is pretty hard to miss, it’s on the left hand side 6 kilometers from the junction.

If you have heard rumours that these little fellas have gone extinct, don’t listen to them! Head on down to Kuala Selangor to see for yourself. The fireflies start their show at around 7.45 in the evening so be there early, especially during peak season.

Each sampan can seat four people and it costs RM 40 a boat. 4 bottles of water are provided so you do not need to bring your own. Umbrellas are provided as well in an event of a light drizzle. Each ride takes about 20-30 minutes, and yeah, there was a croc floating around against the current when I was there. Heh.

What I Had for Dinner

No trip to Kuala Selangor (especially at night) will be complete without a mention about the food. Kuala Selangor is an excellent place for seafood and these seafood restaurants are concentrated in the Pasir Penambang area. What you’ll need to do is drive through Kuala Selangor town, cross the bridge (you should be able to see the restaurants lining the river bank from the bridge, just look left if you are heading from Klang), and stick left down a narrow road right after the bridge.

Drive through the narrow road and soon you’ll find yourself in a fishing village. There are signs put up by restaurant propertiers so just follow ‘em. We had dinner at Restoran Kuala Selangor, with a meal capable of feeding 3-4 people. Razor clams, mantis prawns, oyster omelette and asparagus made up the order and the bill was just RM 57!

I’m off to Sitiawan and then to Ipoh to attend a friend’s wedding dinner tomorrow. So, updates would really depend on whether I have an Internet connection or not.

Anyways, I played Time Crisis 4 at an arcade joint today. Interesting game, especially the pedal. And it’s cheap too…RM 2 with RM 1 continues. Maybe I should visit the arcades more often.