Day VI - Kuantan

Day VI
Woken by Wei Shan at 8:20am. Showered and changed + washed undergarments and waited downstairs for the others to get ready. The complete family will be going along for this hour-long ride. Teen Yuen got nagged AGAIN for dilly-dallying and being the slowest to get ready. Started out at 9:25am.

Reached the town of Kemaman at around 10:15 where we had breakfast in a Hainan restaurant. We had this unique dish of curry mee with steamed ikan kembung and sambal on the side. All of us had coffee, kinda funny really, you could tell what everyone wanted to do was sleep in our own cosy beds.

Then it’s off to a town in Chukai, on the way there we passed the Petronas Refinery, where Malaysia earns half of its income from. The whole of the Refinery is so damn huge! I just cannot imagine how many trees are cut down for the construction of this site, it is just so vast.

Like Olympic torch liddat

Next up was Awana Kijal Resort, which to me sounded a lot like Brinjal Resort. Anyway, one thing that I absolutely love about the east coast beaches is that the sea has such a cool shade of blue! It beats the murky brown colour of Batu Ferringhi beaches. It’s not a bad place, for relaxing purposes la, the pools are kinda cool too.

After snapping loads of photos with poor Teen Haw as the loyal photographer, we had lunch in the town. Aunty has already ordered stuffed crab and we brought them over to another restaurant where we ordered some other dishes: Singapore char bee hoon, Char Hor Fun, Hainan mee, fried Taufu with rojak sauce, mixed veggie and fried rice. My stomach was already bloated from the crab that I did not have much of the other dishes, but the food was good.

On the way back we went over to look for some keropok lekor. We did found a nice place where the view is nice, creates a contrasting colour, the rocks and the blue sea.

Postcard perfect

Anyway, the lekor that auntie bought for me was boiled, but not deep fried. It tasted funny and has a raw-ish quality about it, plus it’s a weird grey colour and it twists around in a clump that it sort of looks like dog shit… But I felt so guilty requesting for the lekor and uncle actually went around looking for it that it seems so rude not to finish the lekor, however weird it tasted. Luckily I have a boyfriend with a garbage bin for a stomach and we agreed that he can have three-quarters of the lekor and I shall try to finish the remaining quarter. Thank goodness for boyfriends who eat anything.

Dinner was also simple, we had stir-fried spinach, stir-fried heng chai and pork chop which was prepared by TY’s grandma. Apparently she has not been cooking ever since she fell into coma and when the family heard that she has cooked again, they were so enthusiastic that it was another wave of guilty feeling as uncle said that grandma cooked for me, dunno how far true is that… Felt like I’m adding burden to everyone around me. Unfortunately we still have not had the Tiramisu yet! Tomorrow I will make darn sure that we will eat it, can’t wait!

Day V - Kuantan

Day V
Destination for the day: Sg. Lembing. Up even before the crack of dawn, 5:48am. When auntie came into the room, I was already three-quarters awake ‘cause I just got out of the bathroom after nature’s call. She told me there’s no need to take a bath as we will be climbing up some mountain there. Sg. Lembing is a small quiet town about 30 minutes’ ride from Buaya AND uncle and auntie’s hometown, they used to study in the same secondary school.

Was out of the house by 6.30am, minus Teen Hao and Wei Shan as they have tuition later that day. It was still dark outside and I was so darn sleepy… First stop was at the foot of a hill where there are stairs leading halfway up to the hill. Mind you, the way up was very steep and with the lack of sleep I nearly threw up at one point. There are roaches that live in the hill too.

Back down, we went for breakfast. The town is mostly made up of old people, where uncle told me that the old just sit around yam-cha-ing the whole day while their kids working elsewhere will sent them money so that they can yam-cha for the whole day. It was a pretty laidback town, where everything goes around slowly and the only entertainment available there was karaoke. We had curry mee, that’s one of their specialties there, except that their curry mee is slightly more spicy than the ones in Penang and you sort of choose your ingredients in the mee, Yong Tau Foo-style. I had stuffed brinjal, pork balls (as in meatballs-pork balls, not pork balls-pork balls), fish stuffed lady’s fingers and some other fried stuff.

We tapao-ed quite a number of delicacy, namely ‘nasi dagang’ (glutinous rice with curry), some kuehs with gula melaka). Then it was back home after that, just wanted to get some much-needed sleep. Don’t really feel well the whole time with BTY’s fast and sharp cornering. I was just sitting right behind him and I am beginning to think that I should have thrown up right on the back of his neck to pass the message to take turnings slowly. Darn him.

Auntie taught me how to make Tiramisu! She is so darn geng, she can cook practically everything and she can bake practically everything. First, she baked an inch thick sponge cake, which will later be divided into three layers for the layerings in the cake. Then she mixed 4 slabs of cream cheese with a packet of whipped cream with a mixer until the cheese becomes very soft and gooey. This will go in between the layers of the sponge cake. Then she made this flavouring using coffee liquor called Kahlűa boiled with hot water and then distributed evenly to the three layer of sponge cake mentioned above. The cake is then leave to set in the fridge, takes roughly a day for that. I’m so sure it’s going to be good!

A piece of heaven

Night time had a simple dinner, fried fish with stir-fried mengkuang and stir-fried bean sprout leaves. At 10pm, TY and I went over to a friend of his, Le Seng, apparently also studying in USM (HBP) for Gimrummy. Hui Leng was also there (USM-Chem) and the four of us gambled until close to 4am. I won about 6 bucks whereas TY +1 or 2 bucks. I would love to get my hands on those mahjong tiles and just have them handy anytime. I think it’s fun just to pass time and spend time with friends. Definitely not a reason to earn money obviously.

After the gamble, we SHOULD have just gone back straight as we are, again SHOULD be getting up early tomorrow for Kemaman, a town in Terengganu. But, as it was a Saturday night, I assumed that we can catch some live actions and Ah Guas around Kuantan. We went to a few places but I was fairly disappointed as I only saw a handful of them, some were real old and fat, only a couple I saw could pass as having a voluptuous body. I had wanted to see some action going on, preferably in the back of a car or somewhat but I guess I was not lucky…

Day IV - Kuantan

Started the day 1 hour later than I would have preferred. Up at 10am, by the time I bathed and stuff was nearly 11.

Lunch at home prepared by Aunty. We had ‘min fan gou’ which is basically made up of dough where it is shredded and pressed, mushrooms, a type of veggie and shredded pork, all cooked together until the soup boils. Served with deep fried anchovies, had this sorta meal back in SP a few times and I loved it. Spent most of the day reading the first Harry Potter book: The Philosopher’s Stone. There was a huge storm and it rained heavily again. I love rains. Everything gets dark and cooling, the way I like my days best :P

Rain went on for about 2 hours and when it has stopped, TY and I borrowed bicycles from his cousin and just rode around the area. The weather’s just nice for riding, cooling from the after-rain and not very sunny. It must have been more than a year that I rode on a bicycle, took me some time to get used to it.

Dinner at TY’s granny’s place and we had ‘soto ayam’, a dish from Indonesia. There’s this stuff like pulut with shredded cabbage, taugeh mixed in this soupy saffron gravy thing, which I have no idea how to describe.

After dinner went to 2 different supermarkets in Kuantan to visit 2 of TY’s aunts. Uncle wanted me to play a prank on one of them by asking what’s a BabySham or sumwhat, haha long story. I guess it runs in the family.

Definitely regretted sleeping so darn late last night, plan to replenish my alertness by sleeping ultra early tonight.