Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Second Trip For This Sem Break

On Thursday (20th May) my kayah proposed to go to Thailand and asked me to ask Guat Shan along. I then sent Guat Shan an sms asking if she fancy joining my mom, kayah and me to Thailand out of random. And to out of random, she said "Boleh jugak". Next day, we went to the immigration office to have her passport made and following day, we were off to Thailand. How random can we be? Lol.


While we were in Hattyai, we visited places I've been many times before but maybe because this time i went to Guat Shan, it was like a whole new experience to me.. like I've never been to Hattyai XD

So, anyway, we went to the floating market where the main focus in this place is food.  There were boats selling different and variety of food floating (obviously. Takkan they sink, right?) on a wide river. And there were mats on the ground where we can sit and enjoy our food picnic style! But if you didn't like to sit on the ground, there were long benches with narrow tables prepared like how it is in bars.. only thing is that the benches and tables are made of wood.

We also went to Achan Cave and the Stainless Steel Temple, where the entire temple is made out of stainless steel.


We also went to lots of 'pasar malam' type of market where we bought lots and lots of stuff like they were given away free!! Lol.


Of course, we love to eat. We tried lots of different or some even similar to our local food.


I think the most daredevil thing I did while I was in Thailand was that I tried this...


You guess it. They are fried maggots!! 

Lol. I wouldn't really say it's a daredevil act since, well, I just pop it into my mouth XD They tasted like plastic, by the way. Nothing special, nothing disgusting.


Oh, another thing that made this trip different from other previous trips is that I actually drove (from Tapah to Alor Star) from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. instead of just dozing off on the back seat.

What Hattyai is known for.. messy wiring.

2 weeks sem break and I went to 2 different places. Not bad :D

It's already Wednesday today and I'll be going back to Kampar on Saturday, probably. What a short, yet long sem break for me.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Penang... This Time Mainland.

So for the third consecutive sem, I headed to Penang for our sem break trip, only this time, our focus was on mainland Penang rather than the island. This was a very budget trip as we had free accommodation (we stayed in friends' place). Guat Shan and I stayed over in Hua's house and we're very proud of it because according to him, this was the first time ever that he brought a friend (or rather, two friends) to his house, Eric and Beh stayed over in Rep's place and finally Sardin and J stayed over in Jing Wei's house, which was located in the island. However, the latter 2 shifted to Rep's place on Sunday night since Jing Wei had to work on Monday.

Rep, Hua and Jing Wei.. In that order from left.

It was a short 3 days 2 nights trip from the 15th to 17th. I came back home from Kampar on Tuesday and then I took the Saturday 1pm train back to Kampar to meet up with Guat Shan and the rest. I was back home earlier because my paper ended earlier. So, when I arrived at 3.30pm, Guat Shan took Sardin's car and picked me up at the Kampar station and we went for tea time before Dan Dan and Hua came and picked us up over at Sardin's place. In Dan Dan's car, Guat Shan and I made a lot of noise, as usual. Lol. I hope he wasn't distracted because of it.

We arrived at Hua's place in Kepala Batas approximately 2.5 hours later. His mom cooked us dinner! Thanks, auntie! :D The herbal soup was delicious! I also heard that Rep's mom cooked them spaghetti with mushroom soup. Must be as tasty!

After dinner, about 8.30pm, we were supposed to meet up with Rep, Beh and Eric in Rep's place but apparently, Rep took them to Sunway Carnival. We then met up in Auto City to have a little drink in Boston and watch FA Cup finals. BUT!! Guess what? I think it's a special case in Penang whereby they have ESPN but not Star Sports. So, we went to Pelita mamak stall to watch football. After football, we for a light stroll in Auto City and well, things happened and we went back after that. Lol. We were supposed to drop by Rep's place but since it was already late, we headed back home and decided to only visit Rep's place the next day. As usual, when there's Guat Shan and there's Eliza, we chatted till 3.30am before we forced ourselves to shut up and sleep.


Early next morning, we woke up at 8 am. Hua's mom bought breakfast (French toast-like bread with char siew pau fillings) for us. We ate then followed Hua's mom to morning market called Apollow. It was a long stretch of food, clothes, shoes, bags and everything and I managed to get myself a pair of Hawaii-looking shorts :D We then had our breakfast (again!).

We bathed, went to Rep's place to fetch the 3 of them and headed to Queensbay Mall to meet up with the other 3 in the island. Over there, we had our lunch in T-bowl and caught a movie, The Kidnapper. And oh my god! It was not my type of movie!


After Queensbay, the next destination was Ait Itam for their famous asam laksa. We ate in sweat and oh~ syok~! Well, to be truthful, I've never tried asam laksa, even in Klang (because I can't take spicy food) so I couldn't compare and comment when Rep asked me if it was nice. 


After the sweaty meal, we went to Batu Ferringhi, where Eric felt paradise :D


3 hours and a lot of playful bickering between Johor and Klang (Lol! It was Eric and I debating about our own 'territory'), we took the ferry back to mainland, had our dinner and lepak-ed in Rep's place till it's time to go home. What we did? Well, what else? Cards!! XD


Day 3, the day we were supposed to head home. Woke up at 8.30 am and Hua took us for breakfast nearby his house. We then meet up with Bryan and Yuet Fen to give Edwin a surprise birthday celebration. We crashed Edwin's place for a good 1 hour before we went to Jusco Bukit Mertajam for a less-than-an-hour walk and then, to a place called 'Vietnam', I think, for lunch. 


Headed back to Rep's place to buy some time. We planned to leave at 2.30pm or 3pm so that we would arrive in Kampar at 6pm, just nice for our train. While in Rep's place, they played cards again while Bryan and I had a good nice but short chat. At 2.30 pm, we left Penang.


Our lovely Sardin took the wrong turn and we headed towards Perlis instead of Perak. Lol. U-turned, obviously and arrived at Taiping to drop Beh and lepak-ed in his house for half an hour before resuming our journey back to Kampar. We arrived at Kampar close to 6 pm and Eric managed to get the train same time as Guat Shan's and mine. 2.5 hours to KL and we parted with Eric. At 10 pm, Guat Shan and I arrived in Klang, we makan-ed and went back home.

Well, this is the brief details on the trip. Of course, no matter how long I write, I can never describe exactly what we did. Though it was a short trip, we did endless stuff. It was good to be able to meet Edwin, Bryan and Yuet Fen and once again, it was proven (to me and Guat Shan, at least) that destination does not matter when going out with a group of friends. Thank you Dan Dan for fetching us, Hua for letting us crash your place for 3 days, Rep for bringing us around and everyone for making this trip memorable!

I'm on my 2 weeks sem break now :)