Dim Sum @ Celestial Court Again...

Restoran Beriani Asif

Streamyx sucks! Yes, it has nothing to do with this restaurant but I just want to pour out my anger on TM. As you can see my postings are greatly reduced lately and the main reason is my streamyx line is not stable... some of the times it was disconnected and most of the times it was slow. It takes forever to load the pics! I called TM to make a complaint and they called back the next day saying that it had been fixed. But the problem still persists. Mind you, this is not the only complaint that I ever make but at least 3 0r 4 times already. I guess my patience is soon running out and I'm giving up Streamyx, the Internet Service Provider that I have been using ever since I started to use internet.

Well, back to this Restoran Beriani Asif... my second time to this restaurant on last weekend and found that it deserves for a post here.

It's located behind Lot 10 and at the ground floor of a 4 storey flat. It is not appealing from the outside and the setup inside is small but clean.

Mrs. Chialat ordered a Mango Lassi... @Rm4.00. Tasted OK but not extraordinary.

My Teh Tarik...@2.00. Sweet as usual.

The Lamb Shank... @RM16.00. This is the dish you should not miss. Worth every penny! It's hard to describe the taste but what I can say is close to rendang. The size was big enough to share for the 2 of us but the guy at the next table was actually ordered one just for himself alone to go with a plate of Nasi Beriani and Naan.

We also ordered a plate of Nasi Beriani... @RM 4.00. It was perfectly cooked... not moist and not too dry. It was heavenly to go with lamb shank especially the gravy.

The plain naan... @2.00. They do offer Cheese Naan and Garlic Naan. All of them tasted good. Actually the cheese and garlic naans are good enough to eat it on its own without having to dip with gravy. It's kinda waste to go with the lamb gravy as it will overwhelm the taste of the cheese... and most importantly the price of cheese and garlic naan is a bit pricey...RM5.00 each. So trust me, the plain one is good enough unless you wanna eat it own its own.

Restoran Beriani Asif

No.9, Jalan Padang Walter Grenier,

Off Jalan Imbi

55100 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 012-2498764

Satay Celup @ Capitol Satay, Melaka

The famous Capitol Satay Celup (lok-lok) of Melaka... this set of photos was actually taken quite a few months back while I was making a business trip down to Melaka. It was a short drive from KL and my food buddy just tagged along. He wanted me to bring him to try this Satay Celup which he just heard of but never had the chance to taste it before. So here we came...

The place opened at 5 p.m and we reached there around 6:30 pm. Just look at the queue and if it was not my food buddy's insistence and sheer determination, I would not be part of the queue. Mind you, we had to queue for 45 mins on a normal weekday! Can't imagine what would it be like on weekends.

Got imitation one also??
It is a small place... no wonder we had to queue for so long.
Both of us ordered coconut for RM3.50 each.
The bread and cucumber for Rm2.50 a plate. You can just skip this one.
The foods are skewed or placed in a plate and placed in a big freezer... Just pick your own!
All kind of balls...
Tiger prawns...
Balls again...

The fried ones...

We picked ours...

All your foods to be dumped into this pot of boiling mixture of spice sauce to cook. The spice is a bit too strong for my liking. It was overwhelming the original taste of the food...no matter what kind of food you take, all of them would just taste the same...SPICE taste!

Half way through the meal they brought out 1 huge prawn each for us which was priced same as other sticks. (RM0.80 each if I remember correctly.)

Pacific clams and fake abalone...

The total bill came to about RM50 for 2 of us(can't recall the exact amount). By the time we left, there were people still queueing for their turn. If you haven't tried this tpye of "lok-lok" before, no harm to check them out on your next visit to Melaka.

Address:

Capitol Satay Celup Restaurant

41 Lorong Bukit Cina

75100 Melaka

Malaysia

Ho Chi Minh & Mui Ne - Part 2

3 days are more than enough for Ho Chi Minh City. Mui Ne here we come...

Mui Ne is the premier coastal beach resort in Vietnam. This kilometers-stretch-of-white-sand-beach in Mui Ne is also a paradise destination for kite-surfers and wind-surfers. The long stretch of beach is just like the beach at Sanya in Hainan Island but the Mui Ne town is very much less developed compared to Sanya. However Mui Ne is quite popular for beach vacation among Russians. I don't know why but you can see many of their signs are in Russian language. Though it is only 200 km away from HCMC, it still takes about 4-5 hours bus ride. The bus ticket was about USD6, which we bought from Shin Tourist Corp as well. It's quite convenient and you will be dropped off just in front of your hotel.

One of our meals - The Seafood Basket... The only food that we took there which I can remember of. The basket came with 2 huge tiger prawns, 1 fish, some standard size prawns, squids and scallops - about RM 40.00.

Our Hotel... Sailing Club Resort

I chose this hotel with no particular reason but based on the good reviews from Tripadvisor. It's rated #1 in Tripadvisor. It's a small boutique resort that comes in standard rooms and villas- not more than 40 of them in total.

The poolside... small. Quite empty during our stay.

The room... comfortable bed.

The bathroom... bronze lotus leaf sink.

The shower... just shower no bath.

The toiletries... quite a good one.

Outside our room...

The garden and villa...

The Sapa House... where our room was.

Water feature before the restaurant...

Recreational place...

Open air dining... where we took our breakfast everyday.

The way leading to the pool and restaurant...

The breakfast bar...

Breads, cereals and fruits...

Vietnamese coffee... very nice coffee that you should not miss! All the coffee came in half empty glasses. Why can't they fill up the glasses completely or just use a smaller glass? In fact all the places we had coffee were served half empty and above comment was not limited only to Sailing Club.

We could also order 1 dish from the ala-carte menu...

Mrs. Chialat ordered her sandwich...

I ordered a breakfast set...

The spa... we had the chance to try them out but it was just so so only.

The other "must-see" places in Mui Ne...

We booked our half-day tour at a shop next to our hotel at USD 8 per person. This Chinese made jeep would bring us to the Fishing Village, Fairy Stream, White Sand Dune and Red Sand Dune.

Small village...

The Mui Ne Coastline...

The fishing village... hundreds of fishing boats docked at the port that made it a breathtaking view!

The floating baskets were used to tranfer the catch from the boat.

The Fairy Stream...

The Withe Sand Dune...

Pond at White Sand Dune...

Pond that full of beautiful lotus...

Red Sand Dune...

My advice to those who want to visit these places... go EARLY! The sand was damn hot when we reached there at around 11 a.m. It would be good to start the tour at dawn as you could see more activities at the fishing village when the fishing boats come back with their catch and then reach the sand dunes before it gets too hot.

Evening stroll outside our hotel... street vendors started to set up their stalls.

Shop that sells surfing staff...

The beautiful garden of Terracotta Hotel next to Sailing Club...

Our flight back to KUL was at 20:00 p.m and the bus departed from Mui Ne was either in the early morning or afternoon. We ruled out the afternoon bus as it would be too rush and on the other hand we didn't want to leave our hotel in the early morning, so we booked a 7 seater Toyota Innova for 4 of us at USD 70. It was supposed to be a fast and comfortable ride to the airport but ended up quite a tortured one.

To be safe, we checked out at 1:30 p.m although the journey supposed to take just 2 hours by private car. I was worried as we would reach the airport early and the check-in counter was not yet open for our flight... Damn! We would then stuck in the airport for hours with our luggages and nowhere to go. But all my worries soon diminished...

Our taxi driver in his early 20s, maybe just got his driving license not long ago where he shamelessly drove slightly faster than a bullock cart- 40-50km/hr, all the way from Mui Ne to the airport! Mrs. Chialat was grumbling all the way and wanted me to tell him to drive faster or asked him to get off and let her drive. Unfortunately he didn't understand English and we had to bear with it. Though I was tired but I didn't dare to close my eyes even for a minute as Mrs. Chialat was sitting in front and I was worried that she might suddenly choke him to death. Thanks god this never happened and we finally reached the airport at 7 p.m. That scared the hell out of me as I thought we would miss our flight!

Back to Part 1...